Do you have a school and looking for ways to promote it online effectively? Well, then this is an amazing guide that might help you market your school online effectively and get more admissions fast.
The major challenge faced by many schools is to get the admissions fast and close them. But filling them fast requires to market themselves effectively for reaching the probable target audience like the parents.
Even though there are both ways to promote online and offline most schools prefer to spend a lot on offline marketing channels such as billboards, newspapers, etc. But today it is important to focus on promoting the schools online as well because people are using online platforms and spending their time with more attention towards them than the traditional ones.
Moreover, promoting online is a much profitable choice as we can reach the specific sets of the target audience and track the performance for analysis which is not at all possible with any online.
Not just schools but for effective promotion of any brand online requires to have a proper website optimized to provide a better experience for every visitor. Some of the most important factors that you need to check on your website and improve them to provide better user experience for the visitors are:
i. Loading Speed:
Every website should load fast within a few seconds. Taking too much time to load might make your visitors click the back button instead of viewing your website. So it is important to optimize your website for loading speed. You can check your website speed from here.
ii. Responsiveness:
Every website should have a responsive design so that people visiting it from small resolution devices like mobiles, tablets, etc can have a better experience in using it avoiding people have a weird experience just because of the screen size.
iii. Proper Navigation with Contact Details:
Visitors can easily know more about your school when the website is easy to navigate for finding the information they want to know.
Remember only when they spend more time browsing through your website there is a higher chance of them contacting you.
Additionally, you need to make sure that the contact forms and contact details are easily accessible from any page on your website.
Once you have checked the factors and improved your website to provide better user experienced for every visitor you are ready to use it for promoting your school online. Now let me share with you the ways to promote your school online effectively and get more admissions fast.
Search Engine Optimization is the most cost-effective to increase your visibility online and get more visitors for free once your webpages get ranked higher on the search engine results pages. Search engines are used by the parents to know more about your school for checking your official website or any other online listing even before they contact you for admission to their children.
Especially when they are shifting from one city to another they would definitely use the search engines to find a new school to join their children. They might search for something like “the best school in India” that has more than 14,000 searches per month according to Semscoop, a keyword research tool. This is just a generalized phrase but you need to focus on getting your web pages ranked for terms that are specific to your location such as “best school in Noida” or the “best school in Delhi” etc.
So make sure to optimize your website depending on the various keywords that a parent might use to find a new school in your location. Also, remember that SEO takes time to show the results so it is better to work on it even before admissions are opened.
2. Search Engine Ads For Immediate Traffic:
If you are looking to get immediate traffic and admissions then search engine ads are the best choice because when you bid on the right intent-based keywords you would be able to reach the right audience. So they have a higher conversion rate compared to the other types of digital ads.
The search engine can be Google, Bing, or any other that is popularly used by the people in your country. But never get started with online advertising without a proper plan as you might end in wasting money while spending the advertising budget.
But before proceeding to advertise about your school, get the answers to these questions
- Who are your target audience and their demographics.
- How long do you want to advertise for the entire year or just before the admissions.
- Is it a good idea to advertise for the planned duration of time
To get the best results from ad campaigns and plan or implement effective strategies you must have good experience in running the campaigns using platforms like Google Ads, Bing Ads, etc. You need.
- Ad copies with Attention-grabbing headlines that are optimized with the right keywords and speak to the target audience.
- Landing pages with good design, copy that helps in delivering the right message to the visitors using the same keywords that were used in the ad copy. Remember you need to give a clearly specify them on what action they need to take such as filling your form or dialing your number.
Apart from the above your support team should be ready to assist the people who contact you checking these ads and help you get an admission into your school.
3. Communicating With Emails and Messenger Bots:
Sending a normal email doesn’t help you build a relationship with your audience. Sending personalized emails to share updates related to your schools such as a newly published blog or achievements of your students. Even a monthly newsletter would be useful.
Messenger broadcasts work great as they have higher open rates than the emails and you can send various kinds of updates related to your school easily.
4. Facebook Communities:
Online communities have always been useful for brands to communicate with their target audience and have a conversation with them. Facebook Groups are one of the easiest online communities to create because there are a lot of users of this platform making it easy to invite people to join them.
You can share information or updates and even collect the opinions or feedback from the members of the groups. You can create polls, run contests, share the opening days or holidays of your school with the members.
5. Marketing Videos To Communicate Effectively With The Target Audience:
Videos can help you visually communicate and hence they are the most effective ways than the text content. You can create videos around your school infrastructure, testimonials from the parents of your students, etc that would not just communicate but build trust about your school.
You can upload these videos on YouTube or Facebook Page or any other social media asset to attract more audiences from the users of those platforms.YouTube SEO can help you reach more people organically without spending any money. Additionally, you can launch Facebook ad campaigns or YouTube video ad campaigns advertising and promoting your school paying money.
6. Building Online Reputation:
Parents today check your reputation before they actually connect with your school. So building an online reputation is an important strategy that can help you get more admissions apart from the word of mouth referrals for your school. But there are many places that people check online for reviews or testimonials about your school.
Creating a google my business listing and sharing the URL of the listing with the parents to write reviews is the best option because most people use Google as the search engine. The more positive reviews regularly would not just help with building online reputation but also helps in higher ranking of your listing whenever someone makes a search for the terms like “best school in your location”.
Also listing the reviews received on various platforms like Facebook pages, Google Reviews, etc on your website would be a good option as well.
7. Facebook Advertising:
Facebook advertising is less costly compared to search engine advertising. But you can get more admissions with the right strategy with low costs.Once you have the emails or phone numbers of your current students or parents you can create a Look A Like audience to reach more similar people using Facebook.
You can create custom audiences using the emails that you have or from website visits to retarget them and acquire the admissions.
8. Blog Content:
Publishing content regularly on the official blog around the topics that are useful for parents is good enough to engage with them. Not just you as an owner, even your staff or students can publish the content and it can be a normal post or infographic as well.
But only thing you need to remember is that the post should add value to the reader or target audience. So for parents, content around topics that would help them choose the right school would be useful to build trust and contact you for admission to their children.
9. Groups For Alumni Students:
Creating groups for ex-students of your school bringing them together on Facebook Or LinkedIn is a great way to build relationships with them and a good image for your school. Engaging with them through those groups or through your Facebook/LinkedIn pages is an excellent strategy to build trust and attract more parents for admission to your school.
Conclusion: Promote Your School Online
Getting the admissions fast and closing them is the goal of any school. But to achieve those goals promoting your school online is important in the modern world of the internet. Online marketing strategies can be highly useful and cost-effective compared to traditional offline marketing strategies. So make sure to use the above methods to get more admissions fast.
If you are looking to outsource the online marketing of your school then please feel free to get in touch with me. Having more than 7 years of experience as a professional digital marketer, I have worked with many top schools like Oxford in promoting their brands online with effective marketing strategies.
