WELCOME TO
A Comprehensive
Guide to School
Marketing in 2022
A Comprehensive
Guide to School Marketing
Ever since the COVID-19 outbreak, it has been a struggle for school
owners. The economic challenges pushed many schools in India to shut
down, while others remain in a difficult position, barely surviving.
But that said, even before the world knew of the coronavirus, many
schools were already at the tipping point financially, dealing with high
competition, falling short to meet their student enrollment targets.
If you're a key stakeholder at any private school in India and are looking
for ways to scale the institute, school marketing is the ultimate answer. In
this guide, we cover all the various aspects of school marketing. By the
end of this, you will be positioned to take marketing initiatives for your
school and ensure its growth.
Table of Content
1. Introduction Page 01
2. How will marketing impact schools? Page 01
3. Prioritize to plan-the options available Page 02
4. Creating a strong online presence Page 04
5. Preparing to rank high on SERP Page 05
6. Creating content for the win Page 06
7. Getting louder on social media platforms Page 07
8. Reaching out to parents with targeted ads Page 08
9. Frequently Asked Questions Page 10
10. Partner with LEAD Page 10
Introduction
Your school needs more awareness.
And that "awareness" should ideally
be positive.
With the right marketing strategies,
you can achieve both, getting in front
of the right parents at the right time
and with the right message, driving
them to take action and enroll their
child in your school.
A comprehensive school marketing
plan should be holistic and have
elements of all marketing verticals.
While this may require a bigger
budget, it also, if implemented well,
assures greater returns.
How will
marketing
impact
schools?
Why do schools need to market
themselves? Can't they simply function The schools that employ minimal
without adopting marketing strategies, resources on marketing will surely
as schools are an integral part of save money, human resources, and
learning? time. However, in exchange for these
savings, they will enter a vicious
Before establishing the importance of cycle of marketing doom. There will
devoting resources to school marketing, be a drop in admission rates, and the
we need to know what is school schools will face losses and cutbacks.
marketing. It can be defined as a cluster
of activities that the marketing team If you think that just word-of-mouth
leverages to enhance the school will attract students, your brand will
“experience” for everyone, drive brand face a downslide and simply put,
awareness, collect more leads, and other schools will write and rewrite
maintain active enrollment. their success stories.
01
Prioritize to plan
The communication and marketing strategies that used to work earlier will not work
in 2021 and beyond. The landscape has changed completely. Plans have to be
adapted, renovated and even scrapped off entirely to meet newer expectations.
Digital marketing for schools has to undergo a radical transformation as the owners
often make the mistake of comparison with the direct competitors. The present-day
parents now have liquid expectations. Especially with everything online now, there is
a direct comparison between the online experience
with Netflix and online teaching from schools.
What are the various marketing strategies that schools can adopt?
1 Redesigning
the website 2 Improve the
search engine strategy
If the school's website is coming Depending on the long-term and
under any of the following boxes, short-term goals of your school, you
you have to redesign the site have to invest in the following:
immediately.
• SEO or Search Engine Optimisation
• The website is three years
old or more • Paid Per Click Advertising or PPC
• The website is not • Online Reputation Management
mobile-friendly
• In comparison to direct
competitors, the website
appears outdated
• The website is quite
challenging to navigate
02
3 Building email
overflows 4 Starting a school blog
Blogs are always the best ways to
share advice, tell stories, build
Email workflows, also commonly
thought leadership and develop a
referred to as "automated emails"
robust content library.
or "email drip campaigns", are
integral parts of the inbound Overall, you can improve the
marketing strategy of any school. organic performance of a search.
They are the set of emails that are
automatically sent to a database of
subscribers
5 Invest in meaningful social media ads
The prospective clients, i.e., the parents, spend a lot of time on social media.
So, it is a smart way to leverage the power of social media to build
awareness and eventually increase admissions.
Parent and guardian expectations are always higher, keeping in mind the
umpteen options they get.
Therefore, it is necessary that your school marketing and communications
strategy have an alignment with them
03
Creating a strong
online presence
The first step to target your potential customers
is paying attention to your website. It is the
primary source of information from where the
parents will know who you are.
Let us quickly consider the following figures:
• 52% of the users do not show any further
interest in engaging with a company if
there is a bad experience on mobile
• 40% of the traffic will leave if the website
takes more than 3 seconds to load
• 79% of people always opt for another site if
they do not get what they want on one site
• You have to spend a good amount of time
and money in creating a good school
website
What makes a
good school website?
Mobile-friendly Search Fast loading Simple Engaging and
design optimized time navigation informative content
Even if you are not a website expert, you can immediately distinguish between a
good and a bad website by looking at the design. While good design can instantly
encourage a visitor to hang around on to the site and browse, it also helps “sell” the
school. There are two kinds of content:
Visual content: videos, graphics, photos, infographics, and design elements.
Written content: the text that you use to tell your story. This comes in the form of a
good 'about us' section, value propositions, paragraphs, calls-to-action, headlines,
lists, blogs, and much more.
04
Preparing to
rank high on SERP
Paying attention to Search Engines Results Pages or SERP is one of the most
important school marketing tips. Every search engine strategy will have three main
elements:
Search Engine Optimization is a long-term game that many schools often don't pay
attention to. It requires research on keywords, technical improvements, and other
initiatives. Why is it still a dark horse?
It is because the results are often not as instant as paid advertisements. Thus, SEO is
often put on the back-burner. Experts will tell you that it often takes months after
implementing an SEO strategy before benefits are reaped as the search engines take
a long time to crawl and rank pages.
Still, a solid SEO strategy is an essential ingredient in digital marketing for private
schools. After all, 90% of all online experiences begin with a click for search. If you
want your school's website to be visible when relevant queries are searched, you
must find the SEO budget. You can follow the following six steps to ensure optimal
performance of your website:
1. Clean up the website or detect issues
that inhibit the users and the search
engines from indexing or properly using
your website.
2. Think about loading speed. Slower speed
can always negatively impact UX. Studies
have shown that faster website speed
increases conversions.
3. Updating the content and incorporating
relevant keywords are always helpful in
attracting more traffic.
4. Link the content/ pages internally. The
users can easily navigate and refer to the
content that remains hidden. With the help
of links, information hierarchy can also be
established.
5. Local SEO is an important step to
enhance local online presence. Contact
information and other vital content parts
are addressed here, thus driving local
traffic to the site and capturing more leads.
6. You are doing everything but are you
measuring the impact of the steps
adopted? The Google Analytics report
section helps you identify some severe
issues like not setting up goals, not using
the annotations, or not understanding how
the filters work.
05
Creating
content for
the win
Building an effective content
marketing strategy is the key to
attaining optimum engagement
with the audience you want to
target. Let's try and understand
the minute details that go behind
the content marketing strategy.
Creating the right kind of content
might appear to be the most
crucial part, but analyzing,
generating, and promoting them
are also equally important.
Content analysis- With the help of content analysis, you can understand
how your content is performing, who it is reaching and how other pieces of
content can be improved.
Content creation- This is the most obvious part of the process. You need
to create high-quality content that addresses the target audience and resolves
their pain points.
Content promotion-The next important thing in the line is how you boost
your SEO rankings by promoting your content.
Promoting website content- Your website is the first identity you have,
it being the first thing that the students and the parents see. The most important
information has to be presented clearly, and one should be easily able to locate
the rest of the content.
Photo galleries, school news, updates, quotes from the managing committee and
parents and pupils and recent ratings should all be featured in an appealing way.
This will highlight why your school would be the best choice for the parents to
trust for the overall development of their children. Publishing optimized content
and updating the site with new information is always a welcome choice.
Producing blogs- The more blogs you include on your school website, the
higher the chances of your website being discovered through organic means. You
should include school trips, competitions, awards, and every other topic that
interests the parents you’re targeting.
Optimizing images, creating infographics, and creating video content are also
excellent content school marketing techniques.
06
Getting louder
on social media
platforms
If you are savvy enough, you will know at
least a hundred ways to use social media for
education. Social media can promote your
school in a never-thought before way. Your
brand following comprises a community of
audiences with diverse backgrounds.
The kind of content that you are sharing on
your school's social media accounts should
be able to do the following:
1. Increase enrolments- It is always good to
connect with prospective parents and
students on social media. You can keep them
updated about the various events going on in
the school or even remind them about the
admission process.
2. Keep an active alumni group- A popular
school always has the practice of keeping its
alumni group active. One way of doing this
would be to moderate designated profiles on
social media.
3. Develop and manage the school's
reputation- You should not always expect
appreciation and accolades to ring your bell.
Be ready for negative reviews and criticisms
too. The type of content you use to deal with
these responses and reacting appropriately
matters mostt.
4. Fostering a community- Schools should
not be a place of business but a safe and
secured community of parents, students,
teachers, administrative staff, managing
committee members, and every other
stakeholder. Content can be used to start
conversations between every member of this
“family” with the help of social networking.
5. Share important information and promote
events- You should always keep your online
audience abreast of all developments at the
school.
07
Reaching out to
parents with targeted ads
Parents are spending a huge time online; meaning, they are more likely to see the
paid ads. Most of the parents are millennials now, some being young parents too;
so you can stay assured of the time they spend on the web.
Reaching parents is not that tough but targeting the right people with the right
message is what is needed now. Paid ads are one of the best school marketing
ideas for those who need “quick results”.
Google Ads
Google Ads is the best resource a school can use for its marketing. It provides the
institutions with an easy-to-apply message in front of the parents. It is pay-per-click
advertising, wherein you pay every time an action is taken on your ad.
Google uses a system to auction where you will have to place bids to display your
ads to the audience.
Google Ads are relatively cheaper (based on the keywords you’re targeting), more
accessible, and highly effective. Unlike conventional modes of advertising, your
communication will not enter a stage of a void, and people looking for good schools
will see your ads.
Google Ads appear almost everywhere on the internet. Whether browsing or
scrolling websites, sending emails or watching a YouTube video, you will definitely
see one. Google boasts that for every $1 you spend on the ads, you earn $8.
So, if you are looking for a surefire way to build your school's reputation and drive
student enrolment, look no further than Google paid ads.
08
Social Media
Did you ever get surprised after seeing an
ad in your preferred social media channel
about something you were talking about
or searching for earlier?
You can be 100% sure that your device is
listening to you. The amount of
information that various social media
platforms have about you is beyond
imagination.
Social media paid campaigns are great
ways to make your school the “talk of the
town”. They can be used to drive
conversions in an event. A brand
awareness campaign can help people
know about your existence and how you
are different from others.
With a smart campaign targeting the right
audience, you can generate demand and
capture more leads.
Frequently Asked Questions
about School Marketing
1. What is school marketing?
School marketing is a collective term for all the initiatives a school takes to improve its
brand discoverability and increase student enrolment. Something as basic as posting
on social media with a prompt to check out your website or asking parents to sign up
their kids at your school qualifies as school marketing.
2. How to do school marketing?
Times have changed, and many schools find it essential to engage in
performance-oriented marketing strategies to thrive. You have to go with the world
and create a school marketing plan that will be the roadmap to success for your brand.
With the online world booming, you have to take the help of the tools and resources
available to impact the audience on the other side of the screen. You can opt for DIY
measures, doing SEO, social media marketing, and PPC yourself. OR, it is best to
depend on reputed marketing houses which can charter the best school marketing
plan for you.
09
3. How do you make a school marketing plan?
A school marketing plan that meets the needs can be made keeping the following
questions in mind:
• What are the primary and secondary goals?
• Who is your target audience?
• What are the pain points of the target audience?
• What are your competitors doing?
4. Is marketing needed in schools?
Marketing should be an integral part of the schools for the following reasons:
• It helps to keep up with competitions.
• It connects with prospective parents who are looking for a school for their child.
• It attracts high-quality teaching staff.
• It improves brand image and unlocks growth opportunities.
Partner with LEAD
LEAD is empowering 2,000+ schools across India.
We are the country's top school academic and
marketing solutions provider, empowering schools
to grow and succeed. We offer end-to-end
solutions, helping our partnering schools with
everything, from defining curriculum for the
students to boosting their student enrollment
numbers. We bring the best school ed-tech
solutions to help schools deliver the best learning
experience to the students and write big growth
stories for self. Learn more about LEAD solutions
here.
If you're struggling with school marketing or want
to take your school to the next level, connect with
us today. Partner with LEAD and lead with an
edge.
10
Contact Us Head Ofiice
Email : [email protected] 401/501, 4th floor, B wing, Business
Square, Andheri Kurla Road,
Whatsapp: +91 86828 33333 Andheri(East), Mumbai 400 093
Toll-free
(Sales/Support) : 18001032863
