School Marketing Whilst in Lockdown

In recent weeks, everything that we thought we once knew about school marketing has changed. Schools have been forced to place even more importance on digital communications.

We’ve seen the tone of voice change considerably, as messaging and communications have become a lot more mindful of the times that we now find ourselves living in. Empathy is now the goal, with schools becoming even more community-driven than before, showing solidarity and support to all involved in the day-to-day school operation.

You may have noticed that your school website is getting more traffic to it than ever before, as parents are seeking more updates about the school during the closure. Many now expect to see regular updates on how the school is attempting to navigate this difficult time.

Never before has the role of the school website been so important.

Why your school needs to stay digitally active

There has been a lot of debate recently about whether schools should be engaging in marketing activities at the moment. It has left many school marketers wondering whether they should be carrying on as normal or focusing their efforts elsewhere.

Whilst the immediate future does appear to seem uncertain, one thing is definitely for sure, the school admissions season will not be delayed!

Staying digitally active may prove to be the critical factor in setting your school up for success for the upcoming academic year. Turning off marketing could strike a fatal blow.

It’s not all doom and gloom, sunshine is on the horizon

Now that many of us have become accustomed to remote working and staying at home, the vast majority of people are now living their lives online.

Prospective families are hoping to embark on a digital journey through the school website that can replicate the physical experience of visiting the school. Current families are expecting to access regular updates about the school whilst it’s closed and wants to be assured that the school is adjusting to distance learning. And we haven’t even considered other key stakeholders such as staff, alumni and the local community yet!

Whilst this situation will not last forever, focusing efforts on digital activities and setting your school up for the long haul, may put you in a position to cope with a different world when this is all over.

Areas that you can be focusing on are:

• Keep creating and sharing content – Content distribution is one of the best methods of keeping in touch with your audience. Educating prospective families on how the school has adjusted its admissions process may prove very helpful, whilst informing existing families of any considerable changes to school operations may put their minds at ease. We appreciate content creation can seem like a huge task, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Sharing old posts and stories of some historical school moments can provide your audience with some nostalgic throwback moments, which may remind some of happier times.
• Focus your school newsletter – A school newsletter can be a very easy and cost-efficient way of keeping in contact with parents. Adding some colour and life to their inbox may help them through this tough period, particularly with the amount of information being created online currently. By structuring your newsletter content and ensuring not to include too much, it may prove to be more widely received. If you’re a school that has a lot of staff, then you should seriously consider a staff-specific newsletter to help ensure all members keep connected.
• Be more social – More of us are living our lives on social media more than ever before. Social media pages can prove to be a great way of sharing information on the school’s approach to COVID-19. Sharing images and videos of teachers and pupils engaging in lessons online can be a fantastic method of showing your audience that the school has adapted well to distance learning. They can also be used in admissions emails or in your school newsletter too. Ensuring that your social media profiles are integrated into your website experience will keep it dynamic, making it an ever-changing digital experience.
• Growing your online visibility – Having a robust organic and paid search strategy may help increase your school’s awareness to prospective families online leading to more enquiries. Seeing your school climb to the top of the search engine results pages certainly doesn’t happen overnight, however, carefully selecting your target keywords is a great place to start. Google’s Keyword Planner can help you to discover your target keywords with help on identifying average monthly searches, level of competition, and even suggesting how much you should bid for that term. Exploring paid advertising could prove fruitful too, as other schools may have already paused all paid activity.
• Be more social – More of us are living our lives on social media more than ever before. Social media pages can prove to be a great way of sharing information on the school’s approach to COVID-19. Sharing images and videos of teachers and pupils engaging in lessons online can be a fantastic method of showing your audience that the school has adapted well to distance learning. They can also be used in admissions emails or in your school newsletter too. Ensuring that your social media profiles are integrated into your website experience will keep it dynamic, making it an ever-changing digital experience.
• Obtaining testimonials – School reviews and testimonials will become even more important as people will begin to rely on the experiences of others. Attaining testimonials from existing parents and staff, you can help present your school in a positive light.
• Refreshing your school website – Is your school website the best it can be? Does it showcase your school in the way you want it to? Now could prove the opportune time to review your school website and have it ready and launched by the start of the new academic year. It doesn’t need to be a complete overhaul, redesigning certain pages may help increase conversions. Moving away from a clunky CMS to something like WordPress may save you considerable time in the future by providing the ability for you to update and manage your website internally.
• Adopt a test and learn culture – This will ultimately save you from investing in areas that are not proving worthwhile for your school. Setting up Google Analytics will allow you to use your own data to drive your future marketing plans. Be sure to also configure your dedicated landing pages to your target keywords and to any paid ads. It’ll provide the visitor with a better user experience and allow you to monitor the performance of your ad spend too.

Opportunities for your school website

• Interactive maps & virtual tours – Despite the school being closed, prospective families would still like the opportunity to explore the school and its surroundings. We’re huge fans of this feature as we think it is a fantastic way of experiencing school life without having to leave the comfort of your seat. You might think that this isn’t something you can do whilst working remotely, however it can be done. If you have aerial images of your school or maybe some drone footage, an illustrated version of your school can be created using a satellite view of your school from Google. We have seen a huge increase across the sector in schools incorporating an interactive map or virtual tour into their website experience.
• Utilising pop-ups – We build an emergency pop-up feature as standard into our client websites, as we believe it to be a great way of providing the visitor with important information that they need to be aware of instantly. As of late, the importance of this feature has increased, with daily updates from the government allowing schools to share the latest announcements with their website visitors. Pop-ups can also be a fantastic method of directing the visitor to a specific page on your website too.
• Create a COVID-19 page – Keeping your parents and the rest of the school community in the loop should be a key objective for any school website over the next few months. Having a dedicated page that houses all of the information about school closures, new distance learning plans, answers to FAQs, as well as a number of handy online resources and email links, should be something to consider on this page.
• Consider an online secured staff area – This is a challenging and uncharted time for staff too. Many will have questions about how they need to adapt their role and how they can continue to carry out their job in the same manner as before. Having an online area for staff that requires a login, will allow staff access to answers to FAQs, links to learning tools and materials, as well as possibly having a chat facility just so they can keep in touch. This will be of a particular benefit to schools who do not have access to a school intranet.
• Online admissions forms – If you haven’t considered online admissions forms yet, then it is something that we would strongly advise. This is an area that we have dedicated a lot of time to over the last couple of years, having previously looked at what makes the ideal admissions experience. If you are a school that is one step ahead in this regard, then adopting clearer signposting to the admissions area is something to be considered, either through buttons or through pop-up messages.
• Admissions journey planner – Clarifying the admissions process for the different entry points your school has is a great way of adding a touch of personalisation to the website visitors’ experience. We’ve seen first hand on client projects how simplifying the experience leads to increased conversions, allowing the school admissions team to focus on key tasks like interviews and tours.
• Staff video messages – We all know the familiar adage ‘seeing is believe’. Well, when it comes to hearing updates from key members of the school staff, people will certainly value hearing and seeing over reading a message. It doesn’t necessarily need to be too fancy or over-complicated (iMovie is a fantastic free video editing app if you have access to an Apple device).

Lasting thoughts

Regardless of whether or not schools are going to remain closed for the foreseeable future, the importance of having a well-considered digital marketing and communications plan has never been so significant.

Focusing your efforts on key digital activities and having your website positioned to truly showcase your school, may prove critical in setting your school up for the new academic year.

Whilst it is true that we are all facing a tough and uncertain time, your school has been presented with the opportunity to adjust and possibly try something new, which may prove to place your school in a better position when this has all blown over.