In the world of school marketing, recruiting and admissions, promotional marketing has been engrained in every school’s head for a very long time. Replicating what has been done in the business world, schools would do their very best to aggressively push their product into the lives of prospective families. This traditionally has been done through:
- radio, TV, billboards, newspaper
- magazine ads
- flyers, door hangers and direct mail
- billboards
However, in spite of our cultural rejection of much of this “interruption” marketing, schools have continued. But let’s consider the following:
- Radio has given way to iTunes, Spotify or Pandora
- TV can be fast-forwarded or DVR-ed, thus almost nullifying any $$ spent on expensive commercials
- Billboards remain an expensive 5-second drive-by with little metrics attached
- Printed newspaper subscriptions continue to dwindle in favor of digital versions
- Our hurried culture tosses anything that shows up on our windshield, door knob or counter top
There are exceptions where traditional marketing works. I would also suggest that social media and inbound marketing efforts by themselves may leave you wondering about ROI. So how do we market our schools in this contemporary age?
By being useful!
Jay Baer, author of Youtility, suggests “if you provide something truly useful, customers will reward you eventually with their attention, purchases, and loyalty.” Your school marketing seeks to produce loyal ambassadors through the 3 Rs of school marketing: recruitment, retention and referrrals. But if you try and market solely through interruption marketing, you will miss your audience. Instead, learn how to be useful!
Read Brendan Schneider’s “useful” interview with Jay Baer on EdSocialMedia.com.
Your content can be created and curated. The latter is when you find links to other third-party sources that serve the needs of your audience (prospective families and/or current families, for example). The former is what you create yourself. Let’s examine the difference.
CURATION: for simplistic purposes, you follow some education expert on Twitter and you retweet her article. Later, on Pinterest, you click through a recipe only to find a link on the “Related Posts” to a great parenting resource that you post on Facebook for your parents’ attention. You did not write the content yourself, but you organized the content you found on external sites and shared it with your targeted audience. In the world of content marketing, that’s “curation”.
CREATION: this type of content exists on your campus, in the minds of your staff, in the experiences of your students and their parents and in the hallways of your buildings. When prospective families read a claim of “college preparatory” or “world changers” (both are fairly poor descriptive phrases unless backed up by proof), you must provide them with hard evidence to back of your claims. Sitting in the jury box, these potential parents are examining the evidence and the content you create helps build and back up your case.
So, whether you are curating or creating it, your content marketing must be targeted to your audience(s) – and most of the time should in one way or another, resonate with a felt need, problem, pain, frustration or fear they are experiencing. Your content calendar (download a CALENDAR and a GUIDE here to help you plan your year) must be robust, intentional and strategic.
Before outlining the 5 characteristics of compelling content, let’s review how content is shared (curated or created):
- Written (testimonials, articles, experts posts)
- Audio (podcasts, audio files)
- Visual (photos/graphics/videos)
So now you know that whether you are curating or creating content, your arsenal has been expanded beyond just “words on a page” and now includes other rich media. All three forms of content are valuable!
Finally, the 5 characteristics of great content:
- Content must tell stories – moving away from bullet points and billboards, we bring to life the experiences of families who have benefitted from their time at your school. Prospective families and students need personal stories with whom to connect. These stories remind them that they can fit in, they can relate and they will do well at your school. Remember: inspiration before information!
- Content must differentiate – in a cluttered and cloudy world, prospective families must be able to clearly distinguish you from your competition. The one-size-fits-all marketing messaging should more accurately be labeled, “one-size-hits-small”, a not-so-clever punch highlighting the reality that if our message is too broad, it reaches very few people (if any). Do not create a video testimonial that sounds like something your competition’s parents would say. Capture the unique angles of every family’s story and show how they differentiate your school.
- Content must educate – FAQ pages, webinars, free reports, survey data….these are examples of producing content that helps a prospective family cut through the clutter and make a clear decision. Even current families continually need education that will help them become further convinced of your value and also arm them with referral material to pass on to their friends at church, the soccer game or during a conversation at the coffee shop. I borrow from Jay Baer’s book, Youtility, in a post about providing HELPFUL content – read “You don’t attract families with promotional brochures“.
- Content that builds trust – prospective families may know who you are, know the competition and have you ranked in a private poll that is as dynamic as political races every 4 years. How do you stand out? One of the most powerful ways is to put forth “social proof” – the kind of content that displays to your jury of prospective families that not only are the marketing claims true, there are families willing to go on record to back you up! Grab as many reviews as you can possibly get in online forums (such as your Google listing, GreatSchools.org, PrivateSchoolReview.com and your school’s Facebook page “Reviews” tab). Start asking your best ambassador families to step up and record a video story or write their own testimonial and journey of coming to your school (be sure and have them include the barriers, obstacles and challenges). This content breaks down the wall of suspicion consumers who have been “marketed to” all their life. Whether it’s a hotel on the summer roadtrip, the latest tech gadget on Amazon, or their child’s education, what parent wouldn’t highly value the opinion of a family who has determined it valuable to enroll at your school.
- Content that enthuses – when polling my Twitter followers, Simon Hepburn (follow him @mktadvice4schls), suggested this idea: your content should “enthuse”. That’s so simple I almost overlooked it! Content, in written/audio/visual formats, should make parents and students take notice and compel them to inquire, apply and enroll! Be funny, be inspirational, be authentic and showcase your best!
Content is powerful when measured by characteristics that hold them to a higher standard than just the same ol’ stuff you see on every billboard, brochure and bullet point.
If you need help setting up your content strategy, we can help! We offer a free 30-minute phone consultation to show you how we integrate a targeted content marketing strategy inside your school’s customized marketing system.
-Randy
[Update]
** TWO ADDITIONAL IDEAS**
- Content that showcases – this is what I often call “scrapbook content”. These are things to promote that showcase various events, successes and daily snapshots of campus life of your school. These are the most compelling pieces of content, but it’s what I see the most. I would use this sparingly and created more targeted content that differentiates but I recognize there is a place for this type of content.
- Content that provides evidence – to be more specific than any of the 5 above, some content is created to back up claims that you make on your website, on your social platforms, or even things you say in person while giving a tour. Prospective families are looking for specific examples of how you are producing “world changers” or how you offer “superior academics”. Rarely make a claim without providing evidence to back it up! Read this article: “Show Me the Evidence”!
While Twitter and especially Instagram occupy the mobile devices of most of your young students and young families, most Christian school marketers still need to reach their audience through the most common network: Facebook.
Of course if you are at all familiar with Facebook, you know their algorithm changes often and lately, your posts are definitely not reaching 100% of the people who have liked your page. If you’re an admin of your Facebook Page, you probably see your actual reach significantly lower than the number of likes on your page. Discouraging, but reality. (On a side note, consider increasing high quality, shareable, remarkable content that your audience will like, comment and share. If you are not getting this “triple play” on your posts, then consider changing up your content. In addition, boosting your posts will help also help extend the reach of your posts. You can set a budget and this can work well – not for every post, but on some important ones.)
One trick I suggest is to form a secret Facebook group (that’s Facebook’s language, not mine…click here to learn about the different types of groups you can set up). When you set your group as “secret”:
- Anyone can be added but they have to be added or invited by a member
- Only current members can see who is in the group
- Only current members can see what is posted in the group
- Current members can get notifications when something is posted in group
Using a secret Facebook group for marketing your school
- As the admissions/marketing/communication director, you (and you alone) should invite specific staff members or parent ambassadors to join this secret Facebook group. Invite a small group at first, so you can see how it works. Start small with trusted parents and staff who can be trusted.
- Now, whenever your school’s Facebook page posts something, you should go to the group and make a posting about the new content. Encourage the group members to like, comment and share the new post that your school’s page just posted (if necessary, include the link to the post). Since the Facebook algorithm limits your reach, this ensures that your best ambassadors see the content.
- Group members receive notifications for every group post (and these notifications serve as reminders, even a day or two later, to take action).
- Not just on Facebook, but when there is a new review on GreatSchools.org, something new on Twitter or Instagram, you can alert your members to share the content. You can also send urgent notifications when there is a negative review on your Google page, hopefully spurring members to write a review themselves or call out to their cavalry of friends to post positive reviews (on GreatSchools.org, they are currently listing the latest 10 reviews, so you want to be diligent to get that negative review pushed to page 2 as quickly as possible; or at least pushed way down the page where it gets “lost” among so many positive reviews).
- You can also use your Facebook group to alert members of other marketing-related activities….for example, signups for video testimony day (which I suggest you do).
- As well, members of the group can post content or ask questions of the group (and while the discussion shows up in your news feed, it is not visible on anyone else’s feed). Perhaps an ambassador parent hears another mom at Starbucks talking about a great success story, then the members can alert the professional staff to contact that family to share their story on a video or in a new blog post. Or a parent sees a good article elsewhere on the web that would help your school marketing. If members wanted to collectively brainstorm about a new marketing campaign, this secret group would provide an easy forum for sharing without having to assemble the group in person (who’s got time for another meeting?)
Setting up a secret Facebook group of your school’s marketing professionals and parent ambassadors can give you a marketing army who can help you market your school even better!
-Randy
If you want to discuss this idea further with me, please sign up for a free 30-minute phone consultation and let’s talk about how this can help you!
BONUS: Here’s a more lengthy article on how to set up the secret group (with step-by-step instructions and screenshots…although they may be outdated since FB changes so often): http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-secret-facebook-groups-to-enhance-your-business/
