Introduction
Private school marketing is like the rest of the business world: If you want to succeed, it takes more than just throwing up a website and sending out a few emails. You need to plan and create an effective strategy to help your business stand out from its competitors. Here are our 5 steps for creating a successful private school marketing plan:
Create a Marketing Strategy.
The first step in creating a successful private school marketing plan is to define your target audience. You will want to know who you are trying to reach, their interests, and the problems they are facing.
Once you have defined these things, it's time to set up a marketing strategy that focuses on solving those problems for them.
There are many ways of doing this, but one way is by offering solutions based on what we know about children, parents, and teachers (for example: if parents don't have enough time or money, then we should provide training courses). Another way is through targeted advertising campaigns where we show off our school appealingly with posters or Facebook ads, etcetera.
Create a Content Strategy.
Content marketing is the best way to reach your audience and build their trust. It can help you connect, build credibility and increase traffic to your site.
A successful content marketing strategy includes:
- Creating an editorial calendar.
- Creating engaging pieces of content that are relevant to your audience.
- Sharing those pieces on social media platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn.
- Measuring the success of each piece of content by analyzing its metrics like engagement rate (how many people liked it).
- Traffic from social media sources (Facebook likes) and more.
Create a Social Media Strategy.
Social media is a great way to connect with current and potential students. You can use social media to create a buzz around your school, share relevant content from your school and other schools, and market events and programs.
Here are some tips for creating a successful social media strategy:
- Create an account on all major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).
- Get creative with how you post content—you might want to post videos rather than text-based posts.
Include Email Marketing in Your Mix.
Email marketing is a great way to reach out to parents, students, teachers, staff members, and alums. It's also an effective tool for communicating with staff members because you can address them by name.
Email marketing allows you to be more personal than other forms of communication like Facebook posts or Tweets because it allows you to communicate quickly without waiting hours until the message reaches its intended recipient.
Measure, Test, and Adapt.
- Measure, test, and adapt.
- Keep track of your marketing efforts by keeping tabs on KPIs (key performance indicators) and benchmarks. These valuable tools can show you how well you're doing with each process step and what areas need improvement.
- Use analytics to measure how many potential students visit your website or interact with social media posts about the school through tracking devices like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, or Twilio Analytics; these data points can be used to inform future decisions about content creation or advertising campaigns.
Get your school more attention with a marketing plan
- Create a marketing plan. The first step in creating a successful school marketing strategy is to take the time to create a thorough, comprehensive plan for your school. A good way to do this is by asking yourself these questions:
- What kind of content should we create? What kind of social media strategy will work best for us?
- How often should we post on social media, and what topics should we focus on?
- How can email be included in our mix?
Conclusion
We know that a private school marketing plan is not easy to create. But it can be done if you follow the steps outlined above. With these five steps, you will clearly see what your school needs and where it should be marketed. You will also have an actionable plan for each component so that all of them are working together as one cohesive strategy. A good marketing strategy is always about putting yourself in your customer's shoes and understanding their needs before deciding how best to reach them with relevant information or services.
Author Bio
James Alexander has been a Marketing Strategist for more than a decade. He is a full-time marketing strategist working in School Data Lists, a company that provides education industry data for businesses. James has been part of the research of the education industry market for the past five years.
