Now that school is around the corner, it’s time to refresh your digital marketing strategy for your school, academy, or university. From experiencing a pandemic to entirely transforming a new academic environment for students and staff, the marketing and communications strategies that used to work for your district “pre-covid” may not work in this ever-changing 2021 environment. It is now the time to be pro-active, adaptive, and present to meet the increasing expectations of today’s families. 

Practice #1: Start a School Blog 

A school blog is a wonderful way to display the activities that students participate in and around the school. It’s also a great place to distribute advice and share the community’s voice. The blog will give outsiders an inside look on the programs and events that the students participate in. Connecting with the school’s community will emphasize how much the directors care about the students and faculty, while promoting conversation. It will also let more people organically find your school when searching for their children’s next academic steps. Overall, creating a blog will strengthen your school’s brand identity.  

Practice #2: Enhance the School’s Website 

Times are changing, and so should your website! Making an inadequately designed website and not thinking about the user’s experience will produce site traffic and static action. Like the director of Front Porch Marketing, Julie Porter states, “create a clean, user-friendly website.” This will increase the school’s reputation and lead to more engagement. Just remember to keep it simple to navigate and creative. An easy way to accomplish this is to rebrand logos, create a color scheme that seamlessly translates throughout all pages, and habitually update the navigation tabs.  

Practice #3: Make Social Media Accounts 

Posting on social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, create opportunities for parents and guardians to find your school organically. People can easily share, like, or comment on your posts to help create more popularity quickly. As your account grows, the more recognition and traffic your school develops. You can achieve this by devoting time into capturing professional videos and photos of events and activities.

A great example of this is with one of our clients, Faith Family Academy. As Christine Finnegan, our media relations director states, “be consistent will all messaging throughout your platforms.”  In addition, you can connect with your audience by responding to their comments and other members can add reviews.

Practice #4: Begin an Email Drip Campaign 

Emails are increasing in popularity due to people relying on the digital-sphere to stay in the loop. This upward trend in email reliability is the result of them being tailored to user preferences and behaviors. This personalization helps users see information related to their interests rather that unfavored topics that are being pushed upon them through advertising.

By asking current families and interested families for contact information via a survey or sign-up sheet, users can subscribe to an email list and look at automated content daily or weekly. This proves to be an easy strategy for reminding and promoting members of future academic and recreational events. Email workflows truly provide a personal touch to electronically reach each community member. 

Practice #5: Promote School Events 

Events, such as an open house, are a great way for newcomers to meet the faculty and staff. It also helps families understand if their values align with the school’s and if the school fits their expectations. Parents and guardians will also be given the opportunity to explore the campus for the first time.  

Additionally, back-to-school kickoffs are a wonderful way to understand what people personally look for in a school and its curriculum. Having organized school events with informational pamphlets to give out aids prospective families to secure their decision of coming to your school. Whether you share the events via social media or on the website, the end result allows you to increase engagement and nurture relationships with newly inquiring families.   

Conclusion 

The expectations of parents are higher than ever. It’s crucial that your school’s digital marketing strategy adapt alongside them. As the fall semester comes right around the corner, use these best practices to ensure that your digital marketing strategy is future-proofed.  

While marketing is a dynamic and ever-changing field of study and profession, one major underlying tool marketers utilize is psychology. Innovative marketers have a true understanding of their target market’s actions, and use this expertise to shape their client’s approach. Understanding why a generation, society or any group of people acts the way they do is essential to connecting and communicating efficiently with them. 

However, there are other ways to apply psychology on the job to improve not only your career, but also your happiness and personal life. I had the pleasure of attending a guest lecture by Dr. Mark McKinney and Dr. Steve Fedorko in the Temerlin Advertising Institute at Southern Methodist University, where they spoke about this notion in depth. As psychologists who spent many years in the marketing and advertising world, they had an interesting perspective on how to succeed in business. Their book, My Client Is The Devil, is a “groundbreaking book to help client service professionals deal with stress on the job by learning simple techniques to become more psychologically hardy”. While I have not yet read the book, their presentation inspired me to take a step back and evaluate my perspective on life.

Client service fields are notorious for “burning out” their employees. Drs. McKinney and Fedorko attempt to alleviate the stress placed on these employees by emphasizing the importance of three competencies: control, commitment and challenge. Modern psychology has found that people who exhibit control in their personal and professional life, stay committed to their goals and readily accept challenge tend to be more resistant to stress and have a contagious effect on the people around them.

Everyone knows that positive people are more fun to be around, but sometimes people need a reminder to spread a little positivity. Drs. McKinney and Fedorko proposed a tool to help alter our perspective that may initially seem trivial, but has truly transformed my daily outlook in a positive manner. Rather than looking at a situation and making outward statements such as “why me?” or “this isn’t fair,” instead ask yourself what positive outcomes may come of this situation and assume that others are well-intended. The Drs. provided examples of how to apply this attitude that ranged from dealing with road rage to major work dilemmas. By practicing this attitude in smaller, every-day situations, it transforms into a habit.

Epictetus, a philosopher and teacher in Rome in the first century, said, “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.” While this idea has been around for thousands of years, in our modern world full of constant business and high expectations it is easy to forget how big of a role our attitude plays in our happiness and eventually our overall success. Taking a moment to think before we react truly puts the problem we are dealing with into perspective.