Free Award-Winning Digital Marketing Strategy for Schools

Nexa is a digital marketing agency based in Dubai. We have created award-winning strategies for schools. In this article, we're sharing that formula with you, with the digital marketing tips and techniques needed to get your school to the top of the digital ranks.

Digital marketing has become a necessity for schools. To implement a successful strategy, we at Nexa say that you need a combination of two things: storytelling and science. What we mean by that is, you need to incorporate the well-researched techniques with the stories that sell. This allows for a fully-fledged approach and one that has worked for Arbor school. Take a look:

Digital marketing for schools

There are three overarching goals for digital marketing to achieve for a school, namely:

• Awareness: Create increased awareness with digital marketing is awareness through social media, geo-location targeting, SEO and marketing campaigns.
• Events: Host events to introduce people to your school. This includes event planning for a physical or virtual event such as on open day or workshop and managing your RSVP list.
• Leads: One of the most critical outcomes of digital marketing is lead generation. Be sure to capture and store the details of interested members of your target audience. Since leads are of such great importance, one needs to break them down into four stages to engage them fully:
• Begin with attracting potential leads: Increasing awareness for your school should be linked to building connections that create desire or interest in your school. With this, you can gain the contact details of these parties with lead-generation forms. This can be done with lead magnets on social media, search engine marketing, SEO and content marketing.
• Converting leads: There are many ways to convert leads, and each will be dependent on the individual. Your school will need to appeal to their needs favourably. The content shared with them will therefore become more curated, providing them with all of the information necessary to make informed decisions and generate excitement at the prospects.
• Engaging and nurturing leads: Once you have secured interest and connection with your audience, you need to work on building relations with them. Your school should be responsive and consistent, as this will positively reflect your school and keep it as a front of mind option.
• Closing the deal for leads: Call to actions provide audiences with a direction in terms of the next step. It should be a process that is simple to follow, and any interactions they make should be responded to. Your school should complete the application processes clear, including all of the necessary information and steps to take. This should be communicated encouragingly and include the ability to set up direct appointments. This is the final stage in securing your enrollments, so it is key!

The step-by-step strategy

Your school's marketing team can follow the strategy we outline here. However, if you don't have a dedicated marketing department or would like to outsource aspects of it, find an agency to work with who has experience in your niche and understands your school's culture.

Begin with an audit: Your school's starting point will be to assess its current digital marketing. Reports are essential for this step, but even more critical is the insights you draw from these. See what was working, what wasn't and what was missing. This will inform your strategy going forward.

Set goals: As a school, your primary goals will likely be to drive enrollments. To do this, your marketing messages will need to establish your identity, awareness and credibility. This should include both short and long term goals, with KPIs that will measure these once they have been carried out.

Define your audience: Once you have your goals set out, you will need to define your target audience. By creating personas for your digital community, you will be able to research their needs better and target them more efficiently. Schools will likely have a wide-ranging audience, including scholars and parents.

Consider your value proposition: Having a strong school identity is crucial, as this is what will be communicated through your marketing. Since education is seen as an investment, your school's image and the value it can provide to its students needs to be clearly defined and shared.

Budget plans: Digital marketing is affordable, with many ways to spend your budget. This should include advertising spend, as well as the costs related to creating content.

Your digital marketing foundation: If your school is new, then develop a website using CRM software. With this, you can scientifically perform your digital marketing, while also making use of automation to improve your processes and productivity. CRM will practically support your digital marketing and allow your school to build leads and follow up on an individual using real-time analytics. With or without one, you need to ensure your school's website is operating effectively. It should have appropriate landing pages, be optimised for mobile devices and incorporate SEO best practices. This is because most of your digital marketing will be direct people here.

Channels: There are many channels to include a well-rounded approach and maximum reach. This includes:

• Social Media: Increase your school's awareness and engagement, both organically and through paid advertising via social media. Content should be consistent on each of the platforms, though tailored to ensure the audience is captivated.
• Email Marketing: Email marketing is still highly effective, so growing your emailing list and sharing valuable content with them needs to be a priority. There are various details and updates regarding your school to communicate with people through multiple stages of their process of enrollment.
• Search Engine Marketing: Increase visibility in online searches with paid search ads, which can be targeted to people searching for schools in a particular area.
• Content marketing: Showcase your school by sharing added value with your audience through various forms of content, from text to visuals - on your website and other channels.
• Public Relations: Supplement your direct marketing with public relations as this form of communication can help boost your school’s image and reach among audiences.

Engagement: When sharing messages with your audience, you need to aim at creating interactions with them. Video content is a great way to hold attention, which should be followed by your marketing team, providing timely responses, otherwise referred to as community management. The marketing team needs to develop a content plan for each of your marketing channels.

Tracking: Digital marketing needs to be tracked following the KPIs set out in the goal-setting stage. There are many figures and analytics you can use to create reports and draw helpful insights from. This will inform your marketing strategies going forward and increase the successes thereof.

To wrap things up

Digital marketing for schools is more critical than ever before. Nexa's experience in creating an award-winning strategy is to consider the following:

• The overarching goals of increasing awareness and enrollments
• Having a focus on leads
• A holistic approach to marketing, with various channels, is best.
• Factoring the above with a step-by-step formula of how to go about reaching and interacting with your audience
  Book a session with us to get started. 

Nexa’s Award-Winning Strategy

Nexa has won multiple awards for our work with education businesses.  If you'd like to understand more about how we can help you drive more admissions, speak to our team today.  To get started, complete the form on this page.