5 Ways to Get a Head Start on Your School Marketing this Summer
After a long and crazy year, we definitely deserve to enjoy the relative ‘down time’ that pervades during the school Summer holidays. But, if you're anything like me, you're constantly thinking ahead to the next 'big thing' and always the look out for inspiration to improve what you're already doing. Here are some things you can do to put you in good stead before the peak recruitment period kicks in. Before the madness of the school year starts ALLLL over again!
PLAN, PLAN, PLAN.
With the students at home, you might find you have a little more headpiece (and quiet!) to focus on planning for the recruitment yer ahead. Now is a great time to get out your September to September calendar, mark out all the peak recruitment periods, key fairs and school events throughout the year. This will make it easier to schedule your marketing and recruitment activity. You will feel so much better for having put pen to paper (or even mouse to screen), so that you don’t have to worry about what marketing and recruitment activity is coming up. No more fretting over what to do week by week, or worrying you’ve duplicated, not got enough budget left, or missed key events. It’s allllll ready to GO! Download our Marketing Plan Template to help get you started.
SCHEDULE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA.
There is charm in the on-the-day posts, but why not save those for the odd post, and schedule the rest. It’ll mean you’re not sat thinking about what to post every day, as you know that you’ve already planned, written and scheduled your posts in advance. Scheduling tools like Later, Hootsuite and Buffer allow you to create posts and schedule them for your chosen date and time. Let the scheduled posts do the hard work for you, getting your school’s brand out there and encouraging student applications. Freeing you up for other tasks! You can even check out my ultimate Instagram Content Planner to help organise your content before you post it!
SET-UP YOUR EMAIL MARKETING.
Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to spend hours individually emailing all your new enquirers after an event, trying to re-convince them why they should choose your school? Well, you have the power! Write and set-up an auto-responder email to automatically be sent to new enquirers as and when they make an enquiry. Email marketing tools like HubSpot, MailChimp and ActiveCampaign (affiliate link) offer the option to automate email campaigns while retaining a beautiful look and personal touch. HubSpot goes even further and allows you to create automated workflows to send to each individual customer profile. Imagine starting the year knowing all your enquiry follow-ups were already automatically taken care of, and your leads would be nurtured appropriately according their interests and actions? SO much of your time saved!
CREATE SOME CONTENT.
Videos, blogs, photos, you name it. While the school is quiet, there are no exams or lessons to work around, go and take some short videos of the facilities to use in your marketing materials next year. Video is a great way of showing the school to students who don’t live locally, many of whom won’t be able to visit the school in person. You could also check your most common parent enquiries and write a blog about them, that you can publish throughout the year. One better? Create an annual plan for your blog content, so that each month you know what subject you want to write about. This will help you plan in advance, rather than worry each month about finding a suitable topic for discussion. Don’t forget blogs can usually be scheduled in advance, just like emails and social media. Not only will your current and future parents find your blog useful, it will help raise the school’s profile, drive more visitors to your website, and help that all-important SEO. Sedburgh School’s Headmaster’s blog is a great example of how blogs can work for schools.
TIDY UP THE WEBSITE.
Website changes always seem to take so long, don’t they? Maybe you’ve got some old and now unused landing pages littering your CMS. Maybe some of the results and school information are a little out of date. Maybe you’ve created new a new school prospectus, international boarding information, agent information and list of upcoming events - now is a great time to update old files, tidy up your CMS and give the website a bit of a clear out. It’ll make it much easier to manage for the upcoming school year.
Getting all of these time-consuming tasks done over summer can mean that, when September hits, you’re already ahead of the competition and ready to hit the ground running! You can focus on attending fairs, generating enquiries and organising Open Days and deadline with applications, rather than all the (essential but laborious) background work.