Without students, a school is just a building. Many learning institutions suffer from a lack of minds to mold less because of the quality of their programs and more because of a failed marketing campaign.
There are many dos and don’ts when it comes to school advertising. If you have a slow website or don’t work on your SEO game, we can tell you that it’s going to be hard for students and parents to find you.
You’ll get overshadowed by all the other schools in your area. Check out this guide to learn how you can get back on track with your school marketing strategy and pull in students.
Start with Your Website
Out of all the Marketing tips for trade schools, this one is the most important. A good campaign starts with a strong website. If it’s unresponsive, parents and potential students will get frustrated and visit another school’s site.
Similarly, someone isn’t going to want to spend half an hour looking for basic info like a phone number or a list of your programs. Your website has to be simple to navigate.
Your website shouldn’t look like it’s still stuck in the 90s with large, cluttered stock images, and flashy icons. It has to have an air of professionalism or you’ll ruin your credibility.
Improve SEO
A parent can’t call your school and ask questions if they can’t find you. You see, most parents do a general Google search of schools in their area and check out reviews before picking up the phone.
You need to make sure your learning institution is up toward the top when it comes to rankings. Not a lot of people will bother going to the second page of Google. If you’re not one of the first ones that pop up, you’re losing students.
To this end, you need to work on your SEO. Many companies elect to do their own SEO work but it’s wiser to reach out to a specialist.
Turn Your Social Media Page into a Community
Use your social media page to open up a conversation between the school and parents by posting pictures of what the students are doing. Create polls so they can chime in on issues and feel like they are part of their child’s education.
Advertise using videos. Considering people retain about 95% of what they watch in a video, whatever message you’re trying to convey in your marketing should get through.
Use Offline Communication to Boost Your Online Presence
You need a mixture of offline and online school advertisements to be able to gather an audience. For example, if your school did something awesome, by all means, have it posted in the newspaper.
You’ll want to include a link to your school website in the news story though.
The Key to Successful School Advertising
Are you disappointed by the low number of students that have come to your school this semester? it sounds like it’s time to up your school advertising game.
Make sure that your website is fully functional, hire an SEO company to boost your Google ranking, and don’t forget to use both online and offline marketing. Do this, and we promise your halls will be full soon.
Getting your social media marketing down can be difficult. Let us help. Check out the social media section of our blog daily for all the latest posts.