You might think what does an educator have to do with marketing? The answer is simple: everything!
Creating a reputable and thriving learning community is a task that needs a lot of hard work and consistency. You don’t just need to have a great school, you also need to tell people about it. If you want more students on your roster, you need to get a hang of school enrolment marketing. This blog will tell you the basics you need to know.
1) Join relevant Facebook communities
Ever noticed how this digital universe is like a treasure trove of groups catering to every possible interest? It’s mind-blowing, really. Whether you’re into knitting cat sweaters or decoding ancient hieroglyphs, trust me, there’s a Facebook group for that!
If you’re on the quest to spread the word about your awesome services, it’s time to get cozy with your local community. Facebook’s got your back with a bunch of opportunities right in your neighborhood. Here are some Facebook group niches to look into when it comes to school social media marketing:
- Housing community groups
- Study groups
- School groups
What’s really great about these online hangouts is the sense of camaraderie. It’s like everyone’s your virtual BFF, ready to give you a digital high-five. For parents, having a tutor nearby is the perfect solution. As you make your mark with your teaching skills, happy parents will sing your praises to the rest of the community.
Remember – you’re not just promoting your tutoring biz, you’re becoming part of the local squad. It’s about making connections, sharing knowledge, and spreading word of mouth.
2) Run sponsored ads during admission season
Once admission season is around the corner, you want to prepare for it by having professional looking ads ready to take your school’s social media. If you don’t have the resources or aesthetic sense to design these ads from scratch, then simply use free online templates and make things easier for yourself.
Remember these ads will serve as the first impression of your school, so make sure they are complete and professional. Once the content is finalized, look into using Facebook business manager to set target audiences for your advertisements.
The best part is you can ‘create’ different audiences on Facebook business manager. This means you can pick certain age groups, genders, regions, and even interests that your target audience may have so that Facebook can show your ad to those people specifically. You can make different school flyers for different age groups and then target them accordingly. Simple as that!
3) Content marketing
Content marketing is the future. You cannot excel at marketing unless you know the art of putting out valuable and useful content. Even an academic institution is not free from the shackles of content marketing. Here are a few ideas to kickstart your content game across different platforms:
- ‘Edutainment’ content to inform as well as entertain
- Testimonials from satisfied parents
- School tour videos
- Guides for new students
- FAQ forums
- Blog posts for teachers and parents
- Infographics to show educational trends
Having a strong online presence will help your institution not only be credible, but also extremely relevant. How often do you see schools with a genuinely interesting social media profile? Not many. That’s exactly why you must cater to this gap in the market.
4) Connect your social media platforms
This may seem pretty obvious to you, but a surprising amount of people don’t know this. You can connect your different social media accounts so that they can automatically post updates across them. Sounds confusing? It’s actually pretty easy.
Social media is a mentally taxing thing to keep up with constantly. If you had to manually post each little story across every different platform, your job would never end. Lucky for you, it’s super simple to link your Instagram account to a Facebook page. Once you give the apps permission to cross-post, your content will automatically post on both platforms at the same time.
Even more helpful is the fact that ads you choose to boost via Facebook are also shared on Instagram. One payment covers two platforms. That’s the dream. PosterMyWall offers the feature to schedule content for automatic posting. You can bulk upload everything and sit back for a week while the content posts itself!
Better yet, try exploring PosterMyWall’s Content Planner feature. It lets you view a whole month’s worth of content in one place, making it much easier to schedule and post.
5) Email marketing
Building a solid email list is the key to nurturing relationships with parents. Emails aren’t quite as obsolete as the younger generation may believe them to be, so don’t give up on email marketing just yet.
Divide your email list into segments, you won’t want to be sending the same writeup to students and parents alike. The more specific your segmentation, the easier it will be to share promotional emails to precisely the right group of people and this will lessen the chances of your school getting marked as spam.
Emails don’t necessarily have to be plain and boring. There are so many tricks to writing a readable email, and you need to keep them in mind.
- Personalize emails. Refer to people by their names!
- Use a catchy subject line. It’s okay to sound moderately clickbait-y.
- Utilize PosterMyWall’s school enrollment email templates to add some personality.
- Add links to your social media accounts for easy accessibility.
PosterMyWall’s email maker will let you write interactive and catchy emails that you can directly send out to your mailing list. You can even plan ahead by using the scheduling option so you can get your work done in one go.
6) Collaborate with local influencer parents
There are influencers in every niche that you can think of, and influencer marketing is an avenue you need to explore in today’s day and age.
Reach out to local influencers who also happen to be parents. There are quite a lot of bloggers whose whole persona revolves around perfecting the art of parenthood, and with a little looking you are sure to find reputable ones in your area.
Reach out to these influencers and offer them either monetary compensation or encourage them to enroll their own children in your school at a lower admission fee. This will not only make their review more credible, but your high educational standards will also help a concerned parent find a great institute for their child.
And one thing is for sure, word of mouth travels fast when it comes to parents.
Getting a great review from a highly followed and respected influencer will do wonders for your school’s enrollment this season.
Wrapping it up
In the stress of learning marketing and promotion, be careful to not lose sight of your main goal – giving young minds a comfortable environment to learn in.
As an academic you might naturally feel like social media promotions are a bit out of your comfort zone, but you need to adapt to the times. In order to target your audience, you need to exist in a place that is accessible to them. That place just happens to be the internet.
Digital marketer and content writer at PosterMyWall.
