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Digital marketing for schools is not easy. To execute an effective strategy, you need a solid plan—one that is better than your competitors.
As you know, educational institute clients, whether students or professionals, require a little more nurturing. Both for B2B and B2C models. Therefore, we require a more comprehensive funnel approach with more steps, just like the one we developed in our digital marketing template.
Whether you want to increase student enrollment or enhance your institution’s reputation, this article, along with our template, will help level up your plans.
Digital Strategy for Educational Businesses
Deploying a robust digital strategy is no longer optional but a necessity. This is why educational businesses must create a marketing strategy similar to the one in our template, at a minimum, to stay competitive. This level of planning will empower you to refine your digital presence and put you among the top players in your industry.
By using AI capabilities, notably with ChatGPT, even those without deep marketing expertise can create a decent digital strategy. ChatGPT is great at completing premade templates, and its recommendations have surprised some of the most seasoned marketers on our team.
This article will guide you through the template and offer extremely relevant considerations regarding digital marketing for schools.
Understanding Your Audience: The Student Persona Template
Understanding the demographics, behaviours, and motivations of students and parents enables you to craft messages, visuals, and content that genuinely speak to them. By addressing the unique challenges and interests of your target audience, you make your school appear more trustworthy and attractive.
Essentially, these personas serve as the blueprint for your entire School Funnel and Digital Communication Strategy.
While extensive customer analysis can be overwhelming and sometimes unnecessary, a focused approach to relevant data is key. Not every piece of information is critical for engaging prospective students and their families.
We suggest gathering insights through surveys or publicly available data to create rich, detailed personas. Platforms with rich profiles, such as educational forums or community groups, can offer more relevant insights than generic personality tests.
This targeted approach to understanding your audience lays the groundwork for a marketing strategy that effectively draws students and parents to your school.
The Educational Marketing Budget Template
For schools looking to navigate the competitive educational environment effectively, setting clear, measurable goals and conducting a comprehensive Cost of Customer Acquisition (COCA) analysis are essential steps. This approach ensures schools can accurately track progress and make informed decisions to meet their enrollment targets.
Our tailored template is designed to aid schools in determining the necessary amount of website traffic or landing page visits to effectively meet their enrollment objectives. Use the benchmark percentages as a starting guide, and then refine your data based on actual enrollment numbers for greater precision.
Cost of Customer Acquisition (COCA) analysis
Central to this process are the COCA calculations, detailed in step two of the template. This begins with estimating the Total Lifetime Value (TLV) you anticipate from a student, subtracting costs to determine your Gross Margin (GM), and then calculating the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). The crucial step of deriving the COCA% involves deciding the proportion of the CLV you’re prepared to spend on acquiring a new student. Multiplying the CLV by this percentage provides the COCA$, which represents the exact investment schools are ready to commit to for each new student acquisition.
To calculate the overall marketing budget, multiply the number of students you aim to enroll (your goal) by the COCA$. This gives you a concrete figure for your marketing budget, aligning your financial planning with your enrollment objectives.
Understanding the Maximum Cost Per Click (Max CPC)
Understanding the Maximum Cost Per Click (Max CPC) for paid advertisements is crucial for optimizing your educational marketing spend. The third step in our template involves dividing your marketing budget, calculated as above, by the number of web visitors required to achieve your monthly goal. This helps in determining the maximum you can afford per click, ensuring that your marketing budget is spent efficiently to attract potential students.
Remember, establishing monthly goals and performing COCA analysis are not one-time tasks but ongoing processes. Effective strategies might need adjustments over time, so it’s important to continuously review and refine your approach based on the latest data. This commitment to adaptability ensures that your school’s marketing efforts remain effective, driving continuous improvement in enrollment numbers and contributing to the long-term success of the institution.
Digital Marketing for Schools Funnel
The marketing funnel is crucial for schools aiming to enhance their digital strategy and attract more students. It begins with sparking interest through engaging online content showcasing your school’s strengths and educational philosophy. This initial step is about drawing in prospective students and their families to learn more about what you offer on social media.
Next, we incorporate lead magnets—like informative digital brochures or interactive virtual tours. These resources aim to provide value and foster deeper exploration of your school’s offerings. As interest grows, in-depth content such as detailed program descriptions, success stories, and educational webinars offer a closer look at how your school meets their educational needs and aspirations.
The strategy then introduces opportunities for direct interaction, including online consultations, virtual open days, or sample classes. These interactions are pivotal in showcasing the unique benefits and community your school offers.
The ultimate objective of this marketing funnel is guiding potential families towards enrolling, effectively focusing your digital marketing efforts on those most likely to join your school community.
This approach not only optimises your marketing initiatives but also ensures they are meaningful and engaging to your target audience. By tailoring the content and tactics at each funnel stage to align with the needs and preferences of prospective students and their families, you craft a more personalised and impactful digital strategy for your school.
Crafting a School-Focused Digital Communication Strategy
The Digital Communication Strategy Template equips schools with a systematic method to devise a strategic plan for their digital outreach, particularly emphasising the selection of optimal communication channels. Central to this approach is a nuanced understanding of where potential students and their families are most active and receptive online.
A successful digital communication strategy for schools hinges on precisely mapping out the prospective student journey, ensuring that the school’s messages are strategically positioned on channels where potential students are most likely to engage. Here is how you can align your different offers better by choosing the right communication channels.
Tailoring Digital Communication for Schools
For warm audiences, those who are already somewhat familiar with your school and closer to making a decision, the strategy focuses on showcasing core offerings. This could involve virtual open days, one-on-one consultations, or special enrolment offers designed to cater to those who are on the verge of choosing your school.
In contrast, engaging cold audiences—those at the early stages of their search and not yet familiar with your school—requires a strategy aimed at building initial awareness and trust. This necessitates leveraging platforms where these potential students and their families are likely to spend time, such as educational blogs, social media channels, and through resources like eBooks or informative webinars, introducing them to what makes your school unique.
Social media platforms and SEO are particularly effective in reaching cold audiences for the first time, serving as a critical tool for raising awareness. Additionally, optimising your school’s website for search engines is crucial in generating organic traffic, thereby enhancing your school’s visibility and establishing its authority online over time.
Identifying and utilising the right communication channels at each funnel stage is essential for the efficacy of your strategy. By downloading our template, you’ll gain insights into tailoring your digital communication strategy to leverage the strengths of each channel effectively, ensuring that your school connects with potential students and their families where they are most engaged.
Digital Marketing for Schools needs to be Cohesive
In the competitive field of education, a cohesive digital strategy is non-negotiable. It ensures consistent messaging across all channels, builds your institution’s brand, and online discoverability. Remember, the goal is not just to attract new students but to build a community around your educational brand, fostering long-term loyalty and success.
Marketing Tips for Schools:
Leverage Social Media for Storytelling: Use platforms like Instagram and Facebook to share the success stories of current students and alumni, showcasing the real impact of your educational programs.
Optimise for Local SEO: Many parents and students search for educational institutions within their locality. Make sure your school appears at the top of those search results by optimising your website and content for local SEO.
Use Video Content: Video tours of your campus, interviews with faculty, and student testimonials can significantly boost engagement and help prospective students and their parents feel connected to your school.
Engage in Community Events: Hosting or participating in community events can increase your institution’s visibility and demonstrate your commitment to the local community.
Implement Email Marketing Campaigns: Keep prospective and current students and parents informed with regular updates about your institution, upcoming events, and program offerings through targeted email campaigns.
By following these guidelines and utilising our Digital Communication Strategy Template, educational marketers can craft a powerful strategy that aligns with their institution’s goals, engages effectively with their target audience, and ultimately drives enrollment and success.
