School Marketing: Improving Your School as a Brand

Are you looking to create more interest in your school, but you are confused about how to start? Every successful marketing strategy starts with a well-built brand. Without the right branding, potential parents and applicants won’t be able to decide if your school is fit for their children.

Do you know what could be the worse? You might even be portraying your school to be what it is not, thereby giving off the wrong impression. With this in mind, read on about how you can build a successful marketing strategy by improving your brand.

1.   Sharpen your brand

Before you start any of your marketing campaigns, you need to ensure that your brand is in sync with your schools’ values and goals. Most schools tend to ignore those visual elements that represent their school – this is not about pictures and videos, but the logo. When it comes to building a good brand, you don’t have to start spending millions. Work with professionals that will create a logo using pictures that best represent your school.

Take a look at Coca-Cola for instance, their unique red color makes them stand out, and the same color is used on each of their prints. Likewise, the chosen colors should be the same that would be used across your website, social media platforms, and print materials.

2.   Improve your website

After working on the elements for your brand, the next step should be your website. In most cases when parents are searching for schools online, your website is the first place they go to. Imagine them visiting your website and seeing how disorganized it is, they will be of the impression that the school is like that.

Your social media accounts should also clearly show your website address within your bios so people will always know how to take the next step.

Here are what your website should do;

• Optimized website: Your website should be made easily accessible by every gadget – laptop, phone, tablet, and desktop.
• Fast: The faster your site loads, the lower the bounce rate. People have gotten used to fast loading speeds, delay in a loading web page might make people lose interest.
• Easy to Navigate: If a parent has to click multiple times before they can access relevant information, such a parent might get tired and move to the next school. Ensure your menus are made visible and easily accessible.
• Professional: If you don’t have a budget for a website designer, make use of online templates that will give your website an instant professional look. Then, customize the colors, font, and imagery to match the brand design for your school.

3.   Improve your SEO

Most schools just build the website and abandon them. They don’t update information or post anything. Google on the other hand works with an algorithm, it can’t give you what you do not have. Here are some ways to improve your websites SEO;

1. Create quality content like images and news of things happening in your school.
2. Ensure you are consistent in posting.

Quality content helps provide the solution to problems about your school It also advises and entertains them. A blog page on your website will be valuable in carrying out this task.

4.   Build your Online Community

Now that you have a well-designed, responsive website filled with quality content, you’ll want to build your social media presence to develop a sense of community. Facebook for example is a great choice because it allows you to connect with parents who would also give reviews on your page. You can also share links to your blogs on your Facebook page thereby creating more traffic to your schools’ website.

5.   Utilize Online Advertisement

Facebook has another benefit that goes beyond connecting with parents. Facebook allows you to reach your target audience with your ads. Compare the effectiveness of a roadside billboard to a Facebook ad that easily targets specific people using their demographics like age, location, occupation, and many more.  

To reach parents who are most interested in what your school has to offer, your branding needs to be able to relate to them in some ways.

In addition, your website and online presence need to be strong and consistent to stay at the top of people’s minds. The right marketing strategy takes time and effort, but it pays off with an established, engaged, and prolific student body.