When everyone is going digital, why schools should lag? Digital marketing is an integral way to promote schools. People look for schools on the internet and judge their caliber with their online presence, This is why it is important for schools to mark an impeccable presence on the internet.
Schools try to attract enrollment through posters, banners, and other traditional marketing techniques. These offline marketing techniques do not work the way they used to work. And private schools are like businesses that want to attract people.
Let’s have a glance at digital marketing strategies for schools.
Is it necessary for schools to go digital?
The answer is yes. It is very important for a school to go digital. And it is more than important for schools to choose the right digital marketing strategies for schools.
Nowadays, parents do not consider visiting the school for every small thing. Instead, they prefer checking everything on the internet.
If they find your school on the internet this adds to the reputation of your business. You can also provide valuable information and study material through the website. It is a great way to increase visits to your website.
You can produce blogs and articles on your website to increase engagement. It also affects your brand value. So, it is necessary for schools to go digital.
Now, let’s have a glance at some of the most effective digital marketing strategies for schools.
10 Digital Marketing Strategies for Schools
Get a perfect website
Your website is going to create the first impression in the minds of students and parents. This is why it is necessary to have an impeccable website. The colours and theme of your website should match the colour of your schools. You can’t afford to skip a website like this is one of the most useful as well as effective digital marketing strategies for schools.
The font should be readable as well as understandable. Your website should be responsive and should function well on different devices like mobile phones, tablets and laptops.
The navigation should be clear and the user interface should be smooth. The speed of your website should be fast. It should get loaded within 3 seconds. 77% of users leave a website if it does not open within 3 seconds.
It is not easy to get a school website designed as you have to keep several things in mind. You have to provide a lot of content on a school website so you have to be careful with what and how you are presenting your content.
SEO is important
Search Engine Optimization is important for everyone. It helps in improving the organic ranking of your website. You have to choose the right keywords and optimize your website to rank better than your competition.
SEO is one of the most talked-about digital marketing strategies for schools.
SEO is defined by various on-page and off-page factors. On-page factors are under the control of your business. This includes images, external links, internal links, number of words, title and meta description.
Off-page factors include backlinks, guest posting, social bookmarking, social media engagement and much more.
SEO helps in improving the reputation of your business. When people find you at the top, they start trusting your brand.
You should also focus on Local SEO. Research and find some local keywords and optimize your website accordingly.
It is advisable to use long-tail keywords as more than 50% of searches are made using four or more words.
Start networking or building communities on Facebook
This is one of the best digital marketing strategies for schools to build communities on Facebook. It is a great place to build the brand and generate conversions. You can post videos, images, captions, run polls and ask questions.
In this community, you can welcome parents and students and keep them updated with your improvements.
You can also post about functions and competitions that are conducted in a month and can also go for Facebook advertising.
Your tactics should depend on your objectives. Never copy anyone. One technique may work well for your competitor but it may or may not work well for your business.
Google Adwords can help
Google Adwords is one of the most powerful digital marketing strategies for schools. You can promote your school right after they made a search. It is a technique of marketing that helps marketers to reach the target audience through search engine platforms and sites.
Like any other platform, whenever you are planning an online marketing campaign, you should have a complete idea of that platform. While creating an ad copy use relevant keywords that insists users click on the ad. Direct users to the landing page that speaks to the audience. The next step is to analyse your ad performance, know how you are getting conversions.
Start Engaging with old students and teachers on LinkedIn
The basic purpose of online marketing is to expand reach, build connections and promote your business. Engaging with old students and teachers on LinkedIn is one of the most amazing digital marketing strategies for schools.
First of all, build a page on LinkedIn and provide necessary details. After that, start connecting with school alumni and teachers. There are many ways to engage with people and build connections. You can comment on their post and reshare their posts. Make sure you are adding some valuable comments to their posts. This adds to the reputation of your school. And when you will do this other parents will start noticing your account.
You can even hire staff using LinkedIn. Also, keep posting regularly. LinkedIn is a platform where you can post anything. The only requirement is that the content should be relevant and add value to others’ feeds. If people will find your content relevant and engaging, they will start commenting and involving with your content.
Video marketing
Video marketing is one of the best digital marketing strategies for schools. You can make videos covering different activities provided in your school. You can also cover infrastructure, school functions, classrooms and upload them on different platforms.
You can also record videos of your teachers, students and even old students and post them on your website. Video content works better than any other form of content and utilising it in the best possible manner can help you in attracting more business.
You can even add small clips and videos to your websites. Make sure it is not affecting the loading speed of your website.
Start communicating with email newsletters
Email newsletters are a great way to promote and communicate your stories. It is one of the most affordable digital marketing strategies for schools. You can send weekly or monthly newsletters to parents and students. You can even send personalised messages to parents. For that purpose, you can use automated tools to send messages.
Hone your communication skills and use them to improve online activity
This is one of the most important digital marketing strategies for schools. It is very important to work on your communication skills when you are running a school. You should know the right way to deal with parents and students both.
You are going to connect with them through messages, calls and social media. When you will connect on social media platforms, you have to take care of certain things like tone, choice of words and relevance. The tone of your messages should be warm and your message should be informative.
You can even engage parents on social media by using your extraordinary communication skills. This is going to impact your online activity for sure.
Start a blog
Starting a blog is not a bad idea. You can create content on multiple topics. As you are creating content for the blogging website of a school, you will get a plethora of topics. You can create blogs and articles on science, social studies, English literature, lifestyle, moral science, networking, cryptocurrency, economics and much more.
All you need to do is choose a relevant topic and create valuable content. You can even make divisions based on classrooms. For example, a blog section for classes 4-6, 7-8, 9-12 and much more. This is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies for schools or any other business.
Manage your online Reputation
Managing your online reputation is one of the most important digital marketing strategies for schools. You have to work on multiple things like the website, social media profile, Google MyBusiness and much more to have an amazing reputation on the internet. You can even connect with reviewing sites that write about schools and get an amazing review of your school on their website.
Conclusion
Using these digital marketing strategies for schools, you can attract enrollment better than ever before. As you know people look for schools on the internet and by getting positive reviews on the internet, you can get more students.
Registering your school on Google MyBusiness is very important. Provide your contact details, website link, email id and upload your images on Google MyBusiness.
Make sure you are providing an overview, description and other important details on Google MyBusiness. Do not forget to mention your visiting hours as it is very important for schools to mention the same.
Most of these strategies are going to work well for every school.
Which of these digital marketing strategies for schools is going to work for you? Drop your answers in the comment section.
