3 Ways to Market Your Private School

It was simple once, wasnt it? When it came to promoting your private school, you would create  a gorgeous brochure, mail it out to potential families, and wait for the phone to ring and the admissions appointments to be made. Its no longer that simple. Today, schools are finding themselves in a position of requiring a marketing plan to market to a savvier consumer. These prospective families have a long list of things that they are looking for in a school for their children, want to get an excellent education at an affordable price, and they want the best. Schools are facing a competitive marketplace, but many of them are faltering when it comes to marketing. So, how does your private school get noticed and where do you need to be focusing your marketing efforts? Here are three things you can start doing today to maximize your  marketing efforts: Evaluate and Optimize Your Website Today, it’s not uncommon for private schools to receive â€Å"phantom applications† meaning that there is no record of the family in their system before an application is received or request for an interview is made. Years ago, the only way to get information about the school was to inquire. Now, families can access that information through a quick online search. Therefore, it’s essential that your website serves a useful purpose. Make sure your school’s name, location, grades served, and application instructions are front and center on your website, along with your contact information. Don’t make people struggle to find this basic information they want; you might lose a prospective family before you even get a chance to say hello. Make sure the application process is outlined with easy-to-find dates and deadlines, as well as public events posted, so families know when you’re holding an Open House. Your site should also be responsive, which means it adjusts itself automatically based on the device the user has at the moment. Today, your prospective families will be using their phones to access your site at some point, and if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, the experience for the user won’t necessarily be a positive one. Not sure if your site is responsive? Check out the responsive design checker tool. You also need to think about how search engines view your schools site. This is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Developing a strong SEO plan and targeting specific keywords can help your site get picked up by search engines and ideally display at the top of the search list. In the most basic terms, SEO can be broken down like this: Search engines like Google want to show users pages that have interesting and reputable content in their search results. That means that you need to make sure that your school’s website has interesting and reputable content that can be shown in search results.   You’re writing great content that uses keywords and long tail keywords—phrases—that people are searching for online. Start linking to previous content in your new content. Did you write a blog about admission process last week? This week, when you blog about financial aid as part of the admission process, link back to your previous article. This linking will help people navigate through your site and find even more great content. But, how will your audience find your content? Start by making sure you share your content using things like social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and email marketing. And, repeat. Blog, link, share, repeat. Consistently. Over time, you’ll build your followers up, and search engines like Google will take notice, slowly increasing your reputation. Develop a Robust Social Media Plan It’s not enough to have a website with great content. You need to share your content, and a strong social media plan is the perfect way to do that. You need to think about where your target audience is on a daily basis and how you’re going to interact with them. If you’re not already active on social media, you should be. Think about which social media outlet might be right for your school, and pick one or two outlets to use to start, if you haven’t already. Are you more interested in targeting the parents or the students? Determining your main target audience is key. Facebook and Twitter may be ideal for targeting parents, while Instagram and Snapchat could be best for students. How much time do you have to devote to a social media plan? Consistency is essential when it comes to social media marketing, and having regular content to share, and a purpose to what you’re sharing is important. Make sure that you have a plan that is realistic for the long-term, and that you are posting regularly. Ideally, you want to focus on evergreen content, which isn’t time sensitive and has a long shelf-life. That way, you can share the content many times, and it’s always relevant. Things like calendar reminders aren’t evergreen, and can only be used for a short period. Limit Print Advertising If reading this one causes you to panic, hear me out. Print advertising is expensive, and it’s not always the most effective use of your money. It’s hard to judge the success of print advertising truly, but many schools have stopped the vast majority of their print advertising campaigns, and guess what? Theyre doing better than ever! —Why?— Many of these schools have reallocated that funding to inbound marketing strategies, which helps them reach target audiences where they are on a daily basis. If youre thinking to yourself that theres no way your board of trustees will ever go for this, heres what happened with me: A board member at one of my former schools, came to me livid that we werent included in a major back to school advertising booklet that most of our peer schools were in. Four people have come to me asking why were not in there! I simply replied with, youre welcome. Think about it— if someone is looking through the newspaper and notices that you’re not there, is that a bad thing? No! You just saved money by not advertising, and the reader still thought about you. What’s the goal of advertising? To get noticed. If you get noticed by not advertising, that’s good news. And, people might even wonder why you’re not in the paper or magazine they are reading, which means they might head on over to your website or Facebook page to see what’s happening at your school. Not appearing in that Back to School issue might also make people think you dont need to be advertising, which makes them assume that youre doing so well, that applications are flooding in. This is a great reputation to have! Supply and demand. If people perceive your product (your school) as a highly desired commodity, then they will want it even more.  As long as you have other outreach efforts, not being in the print advertising sections isn’t going to hurt you. The benefit of digital advertising is instant conversions. When you can make a digital ad that leads the user right to the inquiry form where you get their contact information, that’s an ideal interaction. Print advertising requires the reader to move from their current media form (the print publication) to another media form (the computer or their mobile device) and search for you. When you advertise on Facebook and show up right in their timeline, that’s only one click to get them to interact with you. That’s easier for the user, and it saves you time and money! More inquiries with less money? Sign me up!