Come back strong after winter break with these quick school marketing plans
With the holidays this week, schools were recently released for winter break until January. While it’d be nice to take the entire break off, this is a great opportunity for you to revamp your private school website and marketing plan through some quick, painless projects that put you in a better, less stressful position next semester. Though small project ideas, they’ll make a huge impact on your digital marketing strategy for 2021. Below we’ve listed some short, easy projects that can be completed in just a few hours or less.
Build a social media content calendar
If you don’t have someone on your team directly running social media, you know by now that once the semester gets rolling, social media can take the back burner and the accounts become inactive. To avoid this, take some time to schedule out content on your social channels through platforms like Hootsuite, Coschedule or Publer; you can also use a DIY content scheduler and build your own calendar on an excel spreadsheet. Having a spreadsheet created and shared with your team will put you in a great position in 2021 to be organized, even better if you’re able to get some posts drafted and scheduled!
Re-structure your tuition page
Your tuition page is in the top three most-visited pages on your private school’s website. A good tuition page includes not only the financial facts and figures of your school, but should show the overall value of attending your school as well. It’s one thing to list out the different tuition costs, it’s another to engage with your audiences through explaining the costs.
In addition to stating your tuition costs on this page, plant some creative visuals to break up the text and keep the audience engaged like multimedia elements, infographics, testimonials, etc. This way parents won’t be overwhelmed trying to digest blocks of information and numbers, and they can understand a bit of your school’s personality and culture.
Create a parent advocacy group
If you don’t have one already, consider starting a parent advocacy group this winter. A parent advocacy group is a group of parents on a non-profit board who advocate for their students and the school as a whole. With the pandemic separating your school community physically, the more support for your school the better. The parents in this group are the parents who are involved in lots of school activities and happenings, and are comfortable speaking about and promoting your school online, as well as promoting school policies that support the success of their children. A parent advocacy group can be beneficial in your marketing efforts because they are the most involved parents, and they understand the value of your school firsthand. These parents will help your marketing by acting as ambassadors for the school both online and in-person by increasing enrollments and boosting social media engagements.
Stock up on blog posts as part of your school marketing plan
Winter break is a great time to hunker down and pump out some content for your school blog. This content can range from posts pertaining to specific events you know are on your school’s calendar, or they can be evergreen content – content that can be published at any time. Consider enlisting some staff and students to write a post over break about their school experience so far this year, or what they are looking forward to in 2021. Committing to regularly posting on a blog is a lot harder than most people realize because of the time commitment; if you have a few blog posts stockpiled and ready to go by the new 2021 semester, you won’t have to worry about writing too much content when you’re bogged down with the regular work you have during the semester.
Set website development goals for 2021
Unhappy with the current status of your school website but don’t know where to start? Take a few minutes and scan through your school website, listing the issues you think should take first priority in the new year. These can be as simple as revamping the school logo or installing a new donation form, to aiming for an entire website rebrand. I am currently offering free, personalized 15-minute AMA Zoom calls. Stuck with something not working on your site? Wondering if your website is mobile friendly or how it ranks in searches? I love problem-solving and looking under the hood of website functionality and SEO, and am happy to have a chat where we may even be able to make some improvements on the fly!
Though these projects are smaller than projects you’d normally complete over the course of longer school breaks, they are strong efforts to make and are impactful to your school’s marketing strategy. Does your small school need help kick starting some projects over break? Schedule a FREE, personalized website consultation to help improve your school marketing plan.