Digital Marketing Campaigns for Schools

Top 10 Tips for School Digital Marketing Campaigns.

More and more schools are investing in digital marketing campaigns to reach prospective new families, often via Facebook targeting. There are many reasons why this is a sound approach, which we outline HERE.

When a school uses digital marketing there are several elements that we believe will generate a great result. Ideally you want to achieve:

  1. High awareness – so high views of your ad
  2. High conversions – either to an event sign up, to a scholarship campaign, or enquiries
  3. Low CPC (Cost per click) ratio for your spend – so ideally the lowest cost per click possible for an effective return on investment
  4. Engagement on the ad if possible (likes, shares and comments)
  5. Brand awareness – which you can measure over time

Due to Covid-19 there has been a marked increase in the use of social media as people look for information, social connection, distraction, and entertainment.

The landscape is more crowded and competitive. A static advertisement will rarely cut through given people are now used to live streaming and videos. Covid-19 saw a rapid rise in the creation of videos and there is much that we can learn and apply from recent trends.

How do you create a sense of excitement and moving pictures on a limited budget?

CAROUSEL CREATIVE — images and text that play like a video.

And while Facebook is a key channel, Google Adwords and Remarketing are vital elements to ensure you are being seen.

Digital marketing campaigns – what success looks like

Redeemer Lutheran College recently ran a Twilight Tour campaign across Google Adwords, Social Media (Facebook and Instagram) and Remarketing.

The campaign ran for approximately 3 weeks and generated a total of 276 people registered to attend their school on a tour. The school opted for highly personalised and flexible tours, resulting in 69 groups of people attending tours at the school. This was a highly effective result.

Key Campaign Metrics were:

  • An average CPC across the campaigns of $0.67c
  • Over half a million qualified families saw the ads
  • Over 3,000 Clicks in a 30 Day Duration
  • 276 Registrations from a 30 day campaign

Redeemer worked with us to create a clever animated GIF as the creative as well as strong messaging that correlated to the actual event delivery.

Top 10 tips for a school digital marketing campaigns:

  1. Establish campaign goals and key content at least 2-4 weeks before you need to activate the campaign.
  2. Create a campaign theme/headline that is extended across all channels
  3. Develop a campaign plan that is targeted to the right audience, geographic catchment and given the right click budget. (This involves using a social media marketing expert.)
  4. Use animation or video in your creative (ideally with great imagery)
  5. Employ a graphic designer to produce your artwork so it’s professional and on brand.
  6. Write Facebook copy that gets to the point of your campaign message
  7. Set- up your advertisement so that it leads to a landing page on your website which ‘converts’ through sharp copy and database capture facility
  8. Install a Facebook pixel so you can track the campaign view, click throughs etc.
  9. Monitor of the campaign as it goes live and in early days/week of campaign to tweak as necessary and then monitor ongoing. If you have a target number of registrations, then you may find you hit your target before the end of your campaign period or spend. In this event you can halt the campaign and reserve your ad spend for a future campaign.
  10. Review analytics of the campaign to ascertain ROI.

Your campaign doesn’t necessarily need to be for an event (Open Day), promotion or Scholarships. It can be just as successful if promoting something unique about your school or even just a clever idea.

Digital Marketing Campaign Experts

At Look Education we have the branding, marketing, creative and digital skills (and experience) to implement highly effective digital marketing campaigns for educational clients. Get in touch today.