Do you have a school and need advice on the best marketing strategies to boost enrolment?
Like any other business, marketing is a crucial function for schools looking to increase their enrolment rates. Your school must have superb recognition to attract significant enrolments year after year. This aspect calls for a well-thought and designed marketing strategy.
However, developing effective marketing strategies for schools can be challenging, even more, challenging if your school does not have adequate resources to fund massive marketing campaigns.
So, how do you position your school in your local area as the number one students’ choice in a competitive environment? Here are some of the most effective marketing strategies for schools that you can consider adopting.
Start a School Blog
Microsoft’s Bill Gates once said, “Content is king!” For many schools, blogging doesn’t seem like an effective marketing strategy, but it is.
Many school marketers do not consider blogs, and others have no idea how to go about starting one. If you want your school to enhance its enrolment and awareness, starting a blog is a good idea.
A blog will increase your school’s website performance on search engines and boost inbound traffic. As you know, blogs contain crucial information that helps your target audience to get answers to their queries in a ‘non-salesy’ way.
Also, blogging acts as a pillar for building trust and creating brand awareness. Your target will admire and love the information and helpful hints they receive regarding their children’s’ education, and spend time on your website looking for accurate and authentic information.
If you own or run a school, consider incorporating blog page onto your website and updating content frequently as one of your marketing approaches.
SEO Optimising the School’s Website for Search Engines
Search engines are the first place where people go to look for information.
A parent or student seeking a school in which to enrol will first go to Google or Bing before considering other options. In this essence, how well your school website ranks on these search engines has a direct link to your levels of enrolment.
Hence, SEO optimising your school’s website is a critical marketing strategy. Here, you need to conduct keyword research to know what your target audiences are searching for online and utilise these keywords into your website content. Consider using low difficulty, high conversion keywords that will rank your website higher with less competition from similar businesses.
Also, you should optimise your website by making it easy to load and use. User-friendliness is a critical factor in determining how high your school’s website ranks.
Remember, rarely does anyone go beyond the first page on a search engine when looking for information. So, focus on putting your school website on the first page and where possible, on the first five positions of search engines.
To achieve this goal, you’ll need to equip your marketing team with enhanced SEO optimisation skills or hire an SEO expert to do it for you.
Exploit Social Media Platforms for Remarketing
Social media is the new meeting place of the 21st century.
People check in to their social profiles to view current updates from friends and family almost daily. As marketers have realised that people enjoy ‘killing time’ on these online channels, they have exploited these platforms for advertisement purposes.
Remarketing and audience customisation are tools digital marketers use to target audiences likely interested in a set of products or services. When people visit a website, these websites save cookies that profile the customer.
If you market to people who have previously visited your school website, this audience is considered a ‘warm’ market, as they likely have some interest in your school and are likely to convert and become confirmed customers.
As such, you can use remarketing ads to reach them wherever they are online as they are likely to click your ad and probably take the requested action.
Use Letterbox Drops
Although many digital marketers will recommend leaning towards online marketing campaigns, letterbox marketing remains one of the effective marketing strategies for schools.
This approach involves dropping school catalogues and brochures in your target audience residences and mailboxes. As many Australians still rely on physical promotional materials to get their information, they are like to consider your request and join your school.
Letterbox drops may be more expensive than digital marketing campaigns. Still, they also have the advantage of approaching your audience in a more personalised manner, which could get them to warm up to your proposition and convert faster.
Final Thoughts
As we’ve seen above, there are several marketing strategies for schools that you can apply to enhance your school enrolment. Some of these approaches, such as blogging require investment in time or if possible, a professional content marketer. Others, like letterbox drops, may require a substantial budget, but used wisely, will lead to high conversion rates.
