How to Market Education Programs – School Marketing Ideas, Tips, and Plans
August 10, 2018
From charter schools to private colleges to specialty education programs, the business of education is booming. Here are 7 excellent educational service marketing ideas, tips, and plans to help recruit new students and build a solid reputation.
At Marketing 360®, we work with a variety of educational services, including community colleges, Montessori schools, charter schools, music academies, beauty colleges, and martial arts schools. The primary mission of these organizations is to educate students and improve their opportunities for success and happiness.
But while altruistic intent drives these schools, that alone does not fill classes. They need an educational service marketing plan to reach prospective students at the right time. They also need to use education as a marketing tactic, informing prospects about why the school is a great choice for their needs.
Schools are communities, so social media offers many marketing opportunities. Other tactics are more direct; sometimes you just need to get an ad in front of the right person.
Here are 7 education service marketing ideas, tactics, and plans that work well at building a community, educating prospects, and converting them into new students.
#1: Develop Your Educational Service Website
All businesses need a website today, and an educational service website is particularly important. Not only is it the first impression most people will have of your school, but it’s also a resource for vital info about enrollment, curriculum, and school culture.
You want a polished, modern website design that creates a professional impression. The best school websites use real images of their facilities/campus, staff, and students (as opposed to stock photos), which gives the content an authentic feel.
You want to have several conversion options that are easy for people to complete, such as a newsletter sign-up, short inquiry form, or request to schedule a tour.
To give you an idea, here is a mockup design from the UXI templates:
If your school has a lot of information about classes and registration, make sure it’s well organized and easy to navigate. We see many school websites that piled content onto their site over the years, resulting in a confusing mess that’s all but impossible to navigate.
Think carefully about the impression your website makes. Consider, for example, this website for an art school:
This is an art school…yet their design looks like it was done by a first-grader.
If you offer dance, give your site a lively, dancing vibe. If you offer theological studies, create a design that’s reverent and dignified. A charter school should have positive feel that gives a sense of what the students and school are like.
Based on the impression your site makes, people will decide if you make the list of schools they’re considering.
#2. Develop a Video
One of the best ways to communicate a sense of what your school is like is to film a video introduction. This can serve as a virtual tour, provide testimonials from students, and introduce staff members. Here are a couple of good examples we developed for our clients.
#3. Facebook Advertising & Social Media
Facebook is a valuable platform for educational advertising because students/kids (and by extension their schools) are popular topics on social media.
In fact, the largest user demographic on Facebook is women, and some of the biggest Facebook groups are moms. With the right content, a school can reach a lot of prospective clientele.
Start by creating a Facebook page for your school. Add some excellent images, embed your videos, and offer a clear description of what the school is like.
As with your website, avoid stock photos here. We realize there’s an unlimited number of stock photos of students available online, but using them on a place like Facebook makes you look unauthentic. The entire idea of the channel is to give people an authentic impression of your school. Fake images pretty much defeat the point.
Get students, family members, staff, local business and community leaders to like your page. Post images and videos with events, updates, success stories, and education-related news items.
Set up messaging so people can contact you through Facebook, and make sure your contact information is complete.
As a school, you have the chance to connect with a lot of people and build your brand through social media. You’ll also want to have active Instagram and Snapchat accounts, particularly because the younger demographic that may comprise the majority of your student body favor those platforms.
Pro Tip: Use Facebook Advertising
We’ve had good success marketing schools using Facebook Ads.
Their platform lets you target demographics and interests with considerable precision, so you can put ads in front of people who:
- Follow education Facebook pages or visit school websites
- Have an interest in a particular area of study
- Fit specific demographics including age, family income, education levels, careers
- People with children of a certain age
- Hobbies that relate to your courses
- Have life events coming up such as a career change or graduation
Often, the person you’re targeting is the parent of the prospective student. Here is an example ad:
Like we said, social media lends itself well to the education vertical. You can even get ads to be shared across networks. These ads can also run on Instagram.
Learn more in this case study on using Social Targeting Ads in the education vertical.
#4: Master Search Marketing
Many people looking for educational opportunities will start their research on Google. You need to place your listings on page one of results. There are three tactics to focus on.
The first is pay-per-click advertising. These ads are run through auction-based systems like Google Adwords and Bing Ads. The main advantage here is that you show in the top positions (reserved for paid ads) and that you can control the ad copy and landing page. For example, you might want to run an advertisement for classes on your summer curriculum. Your ad and the page it goes to on your website can match that offer.
Next, you need to set-up and rank for Google My Business. This is the maps listing and review platform Google uses for geo-targeted searches. It’s a free listing you can optimize with your descriptions and by getting customer reviews.
Then you have the organic website listings. These are also free clicks, with ranking gained by optimizing your website for keywords, gaining links, getting social media traffic, and adding content to your blog.
For Google My Business and organic listings, you’ll want to optimize for searches that have a location modifier. For example, a Denver-based charter school would target “charter schools Denver”. Optimizing your online content for your location will help Google understand where you are, which helps your rank for “near me” searches or even searches where Google understands the intent is to find a local service.
If you do each of these tactics effectively, you can show up in three places on page one:
#5: Manage Your Reviews and Online Reputation
Many schools are getting a late start with understanding the impact of reviews and managing that content. But like all businesses, reviews impact recruitment and lead generation.
It’s not that all schools have problems getting reviews. In fact, often they get them too easily. Unfortunately, they come from disgruntled students who want to vent for any of the plethora of reasons a student might not like a school.
Most people will recognize and dismiss an unfair rant on Facebook or Google that was clearly written by a kid with a chip on their shoulder. Still, it’s in any schools best interest to get legitimate, positive reviews written by students and parents.
The best way to get more positive reviews is to ask for them. Speak with happy families as they’re completing programs and ask them to write an online review. You can also use email follow-ups that have links to the platforms you need reviews on.
Also, get some testimonials to use on your website. You can have a page of testimonials and success stories, and use them in videos as well.
How you use reviews depends on the type of school you operate. It can be hard to capture the experience of a multi-year program in a short review, but they can communicate a lot about classes and shorter programs. Reviews are also really effective for children’s programs when parents relate their positive feelings.
As for students leaving disparaging remarks, the best thing is to treat them like the tantrum they are. Ignore them.
#6: Content Marketing
Educational organizations have opportunities to reach potential students by presenting useful information that relates to the training and classes they offer.
Often, prospective students will start by researching careers and other opportunities related to the courses of study.
On your school’s blog, videos, and social media channels, you can provide information that helps people make educational and career decisions. Blogs and videos are also effective for SEO, you can get your branding in front of people as they research educational and career topics.
Infographics also work well for this type of content. For example, a business school could use this infographic:
The key is to predict and answer the types of questions prospective students will ask as they research their options. Well developed blog articles that include videos, images, and infographics will rank higher in searches.
Learn more about how to create an informational niche for marketing.
#7: Use Marketing Software
With all the channels involved in digital marketing today, it can be a challenge just to keep track of what you’re doing. If you use multiple vendors to manage your search, develop content, design collateral, and manage social media, it can be all but impossible to execute a cohesive strategy.
Marketing 360® is designed to overcome this issue. It’s a marketing software platform that centralizes the management of all the channels we’ve discussed. It also includes a CRM for small businesses and email marketing software.
With the support of a dedicated marketing executive and a team of designers, writers, paid advertising and video pros, you’ll project the right message to your audience and maintain a presence as they go through their decision-making process.
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