When we look at Social Media in Education it is clear that Facebook is number 1 when it comes to active users and in terms of how customers can be targeted through adverts. It would therefore make sense, based on the data to focus in on Facebook when creating a digital marketing strategy for the school. More and more parents are using word-of-mouth for identifying schools, and what word-of-mouth in the present day means, is social media.
Developing a Local Team:
A culture needs to be cultivated within the team that encourages pushback against questionable ideas, and that enables people to be direct when a concept needs to be shot down.
Building the Brand in Country:
In many countries a strong nationalistic reflex kicks in when it is perceived that a company is working against the public interest. There’s a strong enough social media scene to fan these fires once they’re lit. Yet, smart companies see this more as an opportunity than a challenge, and develop corporate social responsibility programs to benefit the local community and country.
Understand the Risk and Opportunity
In all new businesses the risks are high, but the opportunities are as well. Marketing reflects this perfectly. Many consumers in developing countries are young, un-jaded, and open minded in their brand loyalties.
7 Key Factors:
- Set Actionable Social & Digital Marketing Goals
- Build brand awareness
- Gather valuable leads
- Create a loyal fanbase
- Drive traffic to website
- S.M.A.R.T Goals: Specific | Measurable | Attainable | Relevant | Time-bound
- Research Your Audience
- Don’t make assumptions on the market.
- Create an audience persona.
- Gather demographic data from reliable sources (see below).
- Establish Your Most Important Metrics
- Reach: The number of unique users viewing the post.
- Clicks: The number of clicks on your content.
- Engagement: The number of social interactions divided by the number of impressions.
- Organic and paid Likes: More than just standard Likes
- Sentiment: Generally how was it received. Use ‘Likes’ (emoji) data.
- Analyse Your Competition
- Identify what the competition does.
- Tailor a strategy based on what is identified in your rivals digital marketing strategy (pros and cons).
- Create & Curate Engaging Content
- Video content consistently performs best over all platforms.
- Authentic content: Parents in particular want to feel ‘part of the family’.
- Engage with the audience in the correct manner (reply to comments, like comments, etc).
- Use a social media calendar to to create a posting schedule, but allow for spontaneity too.
- Make Timeliness a Top Priority
- Post at the best times for engagement.
- Enable Social Media Managers to respond at times during the day.
- Big brands are expected to respond within 4 hours, schools need to be much faster.
- Assess Your Results & Optimise
- Continually assess the data.
- Make relevant changes to strategies throughout the year.
- Don’t be afraid of trial and error.
Website:
A further key aspect to any digital marketing strategy is a high quality website. The website must be slick, responsive and give the user all the key information they need to make an informed decision. A website is often the first impression that a customer will have with a business and therefore it is imperative that a good early impression is made. Some other advantages for a high quality website are;
- Online presence 24/7
- Increased credibility
- Market expansion
- Consumer insights through analytics
- Advertising to a target market.
- Help to employee quality staff
- Extra communication channel with consumer
The Benefits of Google Ads:
- Adwords gets to work faster than general SEO’s
- You can focus on multiple keywords at a time.
- You can turn a campaign on or off whenever you like.
- Ads which appear on the top of the page get immediate visibility.
- Simply put. ads give you instant visibility at an instant cost, whereas SEO would give you long term success, depending on the effort you put on the quality of your content.
- Increase Brand Awareness
- A relatively simple and obvious point, but true as there is a rise.
- in exposure online. The more you pay, the more you gain.
- Reconnect with visitors to your website
- Re-marketing on display network.
- Re-marketing on search network.
- Measure Performance Consistently
- Who clicked on your ad.
- How many leads have been generated.
- How much traffic have you got from AdWords to your website.
- Which keywords generated the most traffic and leads.
- How much is the cost per lead?
- Explore more using Ads with the help of Google Analytics
- How long a visitor stayed on a page.
- How many pages have been visited.
- Bounce rate of your landing page.
- Details about new visitors and returning visitors and much more.
- Tackle your Competition Better
- With the transparency of Google Ads you are able to keep an eye on the competition and be a step ahead of the game.
For further details about how GSE partners with schools contact us soon.
GSE’s core business is to set up, manage and improve schools throughout all regions of the world.
Our extensive team is well recognised as being “education experts” who know how to operate schools in unique and varied contexts.
Contact us to explore ways that we can support, improve and accelerate your school’s performance.
To understand more about how we set up schools read more here.
Global Services in Education set up and operate schools in all parts of the world. Governed by a philosophy of global citizenship, every member of the GSE team shares a passion to help shape international education and student achievement through inspiration and collaboration.
Our goal is to meet the highest objectives of every school, teacher, student and parent, with an unwavering dedication to quality education, shared ideals and intercultural perspectives.
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