How Can Digital Marketing be Effective for Schools?
No matter how much we hope society can return to the “pre-pandemic normal”, the reality of a post-pandemic world is here to stay. As a result, every brand – including school institutions – must adapt to our permanently digitalised society.
In other words, today’s consumers expect to find every business easily online. Otherwise, if a company is not readily found through a Google search, they run the risk of being completely invisible to their target market.
Between the dozens of mandatory lockdowns, schools quickly turned to online learning, and everyone, including education companies, teachers, students, and parents, had to spend most of their time online. Even our grandparents had to get comfortable with sourcing everything online! This is why internet marketing has become so necessary…
Therefore, to satisfy the digital demands of today’s families, your school’s marketing ideas must be changed, redesigned, or perhaps cancelled entirely. Instead, educational institutions can use digital marketing to disseminate information, advertise themselves, solve problems, and reach previously unavailable audiences. Plus, digital marketing is less expensive than traditional marketing!
How Can Digital Marketing Improve Your School’s Enrolment and Retention?
In recent years, every market has changed dramatically, becoming more competitive and brutal. Digital marketing, like every other business sector, has become a necessity for today’s schools and institutions to improve market standing and reach their desired target audience effectively.
Everyone uses the internet to inform their judgments these days, even if they aren’t aware of it. What people see online on websites, emails, and social media has a persistent impact on their subconscious.
Even if people are perusing the web without looking for colleges, efficient digital marketing will ensure that users remember the advertised institution for future decisions or conversations. In addition, schools must have effective and “top of the search results” digital marketing to attract students.
Most schools build a website with digital marketing in mind, yet a website alone is insufficient. Instead, an end-to-end digital marketing strategy is multifaceted, utilised to advertise online, reach its target audience, present a positive brand image, demonstrate its value in the market and surpass its competitors.
However, this is only achievable if schools use effective and powerful digital marketing and promotions to communicate their characteristics and qualities to the correct audience. An excellent website combined with an effective digital marketing plan may assist schools in showcasing their unique traits and best aspects to their target audience, focusing on improving admissions and campus culture.
If you believe that digital marketing consists solely of publishing on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, you are mistaken. In reality, digital marketing services include a range of internet marketing tools and online strategies, so let’s get a closer look at some of the most beneficial digital marketing services we use for our school clients.
- School Website
One of the greatest and basic ways to sell to your ideal demographic is to create a website, but not everyone uses the platform efficiently. Your website should be more than an information hub; it should be your institution’s 24/7 salesperson.
One study found that 94% of initial website impressions are influenced by design, while another found that a website only has around 10 seconds to establish an impact on a visitor. As a result, if your website appears to be outdated or difficult to access, it may immediately negatively influence your school’s public image and enrolment rates.
With a reliable school web design agency, like RGC Digital Marketing, we specifically create a bespoke website tailored to the unique branding and requirements of a school. Our school web design Sydney, will choose the style and CMS that best represents your school online based on the size, number of students, and ability to develop enrolments. With our school web design company, you’ll get an easy-to-manage website with CMS access, online tour bookings, and enrolment inquiries, as well as marketing advice from a team that specialises in school marketing.
- School Blog
With a blog, your school can remain in touch with its audience, provide advice, establish thought leadership, share unique tales, elevate the voices of your community, build a solid content library, and improve your organic search results.
By publishing fresh blog posts about school-related issues, these articles will begin to rank on Google, bringing your posts to the attention of your target audience. Users may then browse your website and subscribe to your newsletter.
While a school blog isn’t as crucial as some of the other marketing methods on this list (like your school website!), it’s an excellent place to start for schools and educational institutions wishing to take control of their online narrative. Blogging allows your school to gain trust from your target audience while also giving them valuable information, concentrating on the needs and wants they’re looking for.
When working with a reliable school web design agency, like RGC Digital Marketing, we also offer blog writing and content creation services. We compose blogs with searcher intent, your school’s branding, marketing goals, and target audience all in mind, thanks to analytics tracking, competitive assessments, and industry discussions. Our school web design company and writing staff are well-versed in SEO best practices, so you can rest assured that each blog post is written with the goal of achieving high search engine rankings.
- Social Media Management for Schools
Schools can use multiple social media platforms – from TikTok to Facebook and Instagram to Pinterest, and much more – to build an online community and drive engagement. Plus, since every age group has a social media account, a more extensive range of individuals can be reached. Therefore, social media marketing can be used to target students, parents, families, and grandparents.
Well-managed social media exudes progressiveness, and curiously because it has not been a traditional marketing method from educational intuitions. But the success of social media services for schools relies on identifying your target market and which social media apps they prefer.
For example, if you’re a higher education school trying to reach 18–20-year-old students, you’ll need to concentrate your efforts on the website, TikTok and Instagram apps. However, if you want to reach parents seeking primary schooling for their children, you’ll need to promote them on Facebook and YouTube channels where they’re most active. Digital marketing will be ineffective if it is not targeted correctly.
LinkedIn is another social networking platform that can be useful for schools. In contrast to Facebook, LinkedIn primarily serves as a platform for professionals to network online. Your school’s LinkedIn profile is a fantastic opportunity to improve your search engine ranking and encourage people to connect professionally with future and former students. In addition, it will help reinforce the school’s image and brand.
- Programmatic Advertising for Schools
The automated buying and selling of web adverts through software are called programmatic advertising, rather than taking the time to do all the hard lifting yourself. Most of the analytical work is handled by computers and algorithms, leaving our Digital Marketing teams with the assignment of negotiating or focusing more on targeting. When targeting, buyers and sellers can use various data sources and KPIs to ensure that the proper audiences are reached.
The capacity to reach the exact target audience necessitates a clear understanding of who to focus your efforts on. For example, if you want to increase Kindergarten to Year 2 enrolment, your programmatic should target younger parents rather than older parents.
Programmatic advertising is an excellent tool for reaching your target demographic. It can send tailored messaging and adverts optimised across the whole customer journey, from awareness to enrolment.
- SEO Strategy for Schools
A search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy will help you attract and engage prospective parents. When parents are looking for schools, they will turn to the search engines such as Google, so it’s critical to be at the top of their search results to have the greatest chance of interaction. Your school’s website will be able to obtain this visibility with the help of a good SEO approach.
Creating keyword-rich material that is routinely updated is an integral part of a solid SEO strategy for your school. Your website’s content must be updated frequently to contain new keywords to keep on top of search engine results pages. This entails a thorough understanding of your target market and their search behaviours.
Long before they come to you with queries, parents do their homework. This is why attracting and engaging parents on a search engine is critical.
- Google Adwords for Schools
Google Adwords is a type of pay-per-click advertising (PPC) where schools will probably find the best and quickest results. Google AdWords allows your institution to select the keywords for which you want your site to rank (like SEO), with advertising appearing on the first search engine results page.
Google AdWords campaigns are becoming an essential tool in education marketing since they give you complete control over your ad budget and message. However, losing money is easy if you don’t know what you’re doing with Adwords. A successful digital marketing campaign with Google, Bing, or even Facebook necessitates knowledge of the platform and a grasp of how your target audience interacts with it.
- Email Newsletters for Schools
Email newsletters are a low-cost way to promote your school and communicate with your target audience. From the first point of contact to enrolling, an effective digital marketing strategy will have tactics in place to increase your email list and engage families. RGC Digital Marketing can start your email campaign by simply sending existing parents a weekly or monthly email newsletter with exciting campus news or interesting blog articles.
Is Your School Looking for Assistance with a Digital Marketing Strategy?
The cost-effectiveness of digital marketing is a benefit that is often overlooked. For example, a monetary-backed Instagram post promoting your educational institution has the same (if not more) favourable effect on marketing, just as a giant billboard over the highway for a fraction of the cost.
As digital marketing has demonstrated, clever advertising isn’t always the most cost-effective solution, as digital is considerably easier to organise and requires far less staff. Traditional marketing worked well for those with money, but digital marketing has levelled the playing field and created competitive marketplaces in industries that previously didn’t have them.
If you want to undertake Digital Marketing for your education institution, we can assist you. Allow the experts at RGC Digital Marketing to perform all the legwork for you and be your marketing partner. By handling day-to-day marketing operations and maximising your marketing budget, we will propel your institution to new heights.
Ready to work with a Digital Marketing Agency Sydney? To learn more about the Digital Marketing Services we provide, please call our expert team on 1300 770 985 today and get ranking! RGC Digital Marketing is a Digital Marketing Agency in Sydney that offers creative services, web design services, SEO services, digital marketing services, programmatic advertising, and many more services to improve our clients’ digital presence online.