School branding is perhaps the most neglected or, let’s say, the most lagging segment of marketing. Despite the high-tech world we live in, unfortunately, schools are still using outdated modes of branding and marketing.
Clip-art logos, old-fashioned websites, and other outdated marketing materials need to go, and schools need to install stellar models of branding in place.
Revitalizing your school branding will not just boost your institution, but it will also appease parents.
You see, parents are well aware of sophisticated marketing materials because they use them at their workplaces.
Hence, they expect the application of the same marketing techniques in schools that prepare their children for a bright future.
Modern parents are harder to impress, and please, we tell you, it’s time to upgrade your school marketing to meet their expectations.
Below, look at the best ways of revitalizing your institution’s marketing.
Identify Your Market Niche
The process of marketing revitalization must begin by highlighting the target audience. Since yours is an educational institute, your marketing niche will involve outlining what students and age groups your school wants to attract.
You need to identify the marketing group your school aspires to because it will become easier to decide on the appropriate marketing materials for that crowd.
For instance, parents of 15 to 17-year-old students will not find marketing tactics designed for nursery school parents interesting.
The marketing niche helps choose the relevant branding elements, which vary according to the targeted age group.
Upgrade Your School’s Website
A poorly designed website does no good for a brand’s reputation, and it’s the same in the case of a school.
Parents and students will not feel too motivated to engage with you if your school website gives them a less-satisfactory experience.
For an educational institution, the fast-paced operations and workload can consume the employees’ and school management’s energy and time. Hence, it is often easy to neglect the school’s website. Upgrading it can be a good way to bolster your marketing.
Before you invest budget, effort, and time into your marketing strategies, you must build a strong foundation for a stellar website.
If your school’s website relates to the following checkpoints, then upgrading it should be your most important marketing strategy.
- Your school’s website is not user-friendly, and visitors struggle to navigate it.
- Your school website looks outdated and uninteresting compared to other reputed and leading schools.
- Your website is responsive but not mobile-first
- Your website is already three or more years old, and the design and features haven’t changed from then.
Impact of School Marketing on Prospective Students
When designing promotional campaigns for the school, you have to consider the misconceptions prevalent among the students regarding your brand.
Since the key goal of every school is to shape and develop their student’s persona, the management has to glean their students’ misconceptions.
A good way to do that is by interviewing and conducting polls to reveal their perception of your school.
And once you have identified the faulty areas, time to focus on those with your promotional campaigns.
SEO Optimization
An SEO strategy is crucial for the prosperity of brands in this high-tech world and for schools, it’s no different. The fact that SEO is time-consuming often discourages school marketers from investing time and resources in them.
Even if they want to, they often don’t have the means to fund a concrete SEO plan.
SEO optimization requires implementation and keywords across the school website’s on-page content, meta descriptions, and title tags. In many cases, SEO optimization also needs good blog creation.
But often, the most discouraging factor for school marketers is that SEO optimization doesn’t bring instantaneous results.
This is why they often put things on the back burner because implementing an SEO strategy is lengthy.
It could take Google months to crawl and re-crawl your school’s site page before you can start reaping the rewards of the strategy.
However, there is also no doubt that an SEO strategy can significantly increase a school’s chances of surviving in the digital world.
The majority of online experiences begin in the search bar and other factors; it is important that you find the budget and time to craft a successful SEO strategy.
Coordinated Marketing Channels
Another thing that causes confusion and creates a bad impression for the school is inconsistent videos, images, logos, and content across its marketing channels.
When each of your marketing channels has different images and logos, it will confuse the parents and the students.
When they come searching for vital school information, they’ll leave your site feeling confused.
Hence, consistent videos, images, and logos across every marketing channel are a good way to revitalize your school’s marketing.
Online Reviews
For every business organization and school, online reviews are the first impression on visitors.
If they see five stars or four-star reviews, it reduces the school’s chances of earning click-throughs to the school website.
This is not merely a post-pandemic effect. The custom of checking online reviews existed even before it, directly impacting the traffic flow on the business website.
The pandemic only heightened the reliance on online reviews before making a decision.
Today, for parents and students alike, reviews are a high priority more than ever before.
- Approximately 65% of people think of online reviews as the most trusted information source about a school or business. This level of trust outdoes any other offline or online resource.
- According to a survey, 84% of people believe in online reviews, almost as much as they do in personal recommendations.
- Another survey proves that 90% of visitors check a school or business’s online reviews before visiting their campus.
Make Automated Emails your School Marketing Staple
Ever since the culture of work emails began, businesses worldwide have been making the best use of it. So why not make this culture a staple of your school’s marketing strategy?
Email workflows or automated emails as we call them, boost an institution’s inbound marketing.
These comprise a set of emails that start delivering automatically based on set triggers. These triggers could include submitting a contact form, a parent’s persona or enrollment, etc.
Since subscribers’ contact information is already stored, the automated emails get to work to increase engagement the moment they see an opening.
The best part is that you don’t have to put too much effort and time into it because they’re automated. You can use them for a range of purposes, including:
- Promoting school events
- Reminding parents and students of upcoming projects, events, and other school-related activities
- Onboarding new staff and faculty
- Welcoming newly enrolled students etc.
Updating the School’s Technology
Believe it or not, a large part of the school’s branding depends on the level of technology installed in the institution.
Keeping your school upgraded with tech contributes to the success of your institution.
Some ways to revitalize your school marketing are to install smart classes, use school management apps, including attendance and alert features, use school-to-parent mobile apps, and more.
Such installations can boost quick, direct, and transparent communication between parents, teachers, and the school staff.
For instance, one of the apps could instantly alert parents if their ward is late or absent from school.
Other upgraded apps come with features that allow the posting of videos and photos by the parent, leaving the school’s watermark on the files as parents share them.
These tech installations could present your school as a relevant, well-equipped, advanced educational institute.
School Blog
A school is primarily a place of information-sharing, and why not establish your impressive reputation for the same? A simple and effective way of doing that is creating a blog.
It will help you encourage thought leadership, share advice and words of wisdom, raise community concerns, and more.
Your school blog can serve as a remarkable content library, raising your voice while improving your performance as an educational organization.
Perhaps you could consider the following points before you work on your blog creation.
- Does our school have sufficient resources for weekly?
- What topics are appropriate for our school to discuss?
- Who is our market niche? Who are we targeting?
- Can we arrange an editing team?
- Where will we post our blogs live?
- Should we pick members of our teaching staff for the blog content or hire content producers?
Final Thoughts
The expectations of modern-day parents and students are higher than ever before.
To succeed in a fiercely competitive landscape, a school must have a robust marketing plan to adapt to present-day needs.
With the tips mentioned above, your school can redesign and revitalize its marketing plans to ensure your organization is future-proofed.
