Why Social Media Marketing
Is Essential For Schools In 2024 And Beyond?
With the world of social media marketing changing at a rapid pace, many schools are now choosing to utilise the power of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. For schools hoping to increase their admissions for the new term or gain traction for the latest experience day, social media marketing is one of the most valuable tools.
Appealing directly to prospective parents, you have the opportunity to showcase why your school is the best choice for children in your local community. Whether you have an open afternoon, or careers evening, looking for new members of the team or have a brand new technology lab that you want to advertise, you can be sure that school social media marketing is essential.
In this blog, we will be guiding you through why social media marketing is essential for schools in 2024 and beyond, including:
4 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing Is Essential
Knowing that you can start utilising platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to grow the community of your school, why wouldn’t you commence with your campaign now?
In case you are a little unsure of why social media marketing is essential for your school, we have put together the top 4 reasons why you must consider school social media marketing now!
#1 Increase Awareness In Your Local Community
One of the biggest perks of social media marketing for your school is that you can increase brand awareness within the local community. New families who have just recently moved into the area will be actively looking for the best-performing school in their area, so being a market-leading school on social media is always a great place to start!
By engaging with your audience through regular static and video posts, you can almost guarantee that current and prospective parents will get involved by liking, commenting and sharing your posts. Plus, when you start running a paid social media campaign you can improve the visibility of your school and ultimately start achieving your goals.
#2 Get Ofsted Approval
Much like with any type of school marketing, Ofsted inspectors will check your online and offline marketing collateral which includes your social media channels. When you showcase the achievements of your children and the school itself, Ofsted and even prospective parents can see that you are a forward-thinking, market-leading school in the local area and mark you accordingly.
It is a positive way to celebrate achievement in schools and create that warmth within your local community!
#3 Reach A Wider Audience
If you are struggling to get ‘bums on seats’ for this year’s admissions or in search of an excellent team member to join as Head of Science, then paid social media marketing is your way forward.
Running a paid social media campaign can help you to reach a wider audience than you have ever reached before and with successful targeting you can be sure that you will be happy with the results of your campaign.
#4 Target Your Audience Successfully Online
When it comes to online marketing you can get the tangible results you need to measure the success of your campaign. Compared to more traditional marketing methods such as flyers, banners and magazine articles, social media marketing allows you to easily quantify results, gain long-term exposure and invest in a strategy that delivers a more tangible return on investment!
4 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing Is Essential
Knowing that you can start utilising platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to grow the community of your school, why wouldn’t you commence with your campaign now?
In case you are a little unsure of why social media marketing is essential for your school, we have put together our top 4 reasons why you must consider social media marketing now!
#1 Increase Awareness In Your Local Community
One of the biggest perks of social media marketing for your school is that you can increase brand awareness within the local community. New families who have just recently moved into the area will be actively looking for the best-performing school in their area, so being a market-leading school on social media is always a great place to start!
By engaging with your audience through regular posts on platforms such as Facebook, you can almost guarantee that current and prospective parents will get involved by liking, commenting and sharing your posts. Plus, when you start running a paid social media campaign you can improve the visibility of your school and ultimately start achieving your goals.
#2 Get the Ofsted Approval
Much like with any type of school marketing, Ofsted inspectors will check your online and offline marketing collateral which includes your social media channels. When you showcase the achievements of your children and the school itself, Ofsted and even prospective parents can see that you are a forward-thinking, market-leading school in the local area and mark you accordingly.
It is a positive way to celebrate achievement in schools and create that warmth within your local community!
#3 Reach A Wider Audience
If you are struggling to get ‘bums on seats’ for this year’s admissions or in search for an excellent team member to join as Head of Science, then paid social media marketing is your way forward. Running a paid social media campaign can help you to reach a wider audience than you have ever reached before and with successful targeting you can be sure that you will be happy with the results of your campaign.
#4 Target Your Audience Successfully Online
When it comes to online marketing you can get the tangible results you need to measure the success of your campaign. Compared to more traditional marketing methods such as flyers, banners and magazine articles, social media marketing allows you to easily quantify results, gain long-term exposure and invest in a strategy that delivers a more tangible return on investment!
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What Can Social Media Marketing Be Used For?
Alongside connecting with your audience, increasing brand awareness and driving website traffic, you may also be wondering what social media marketing can be used for.
For many schools, social media marketing campaigns are created to help increase pupil numbers and so forth a relevant campaign is created surrounding this. But that isn’t the only thing you can utilise social media for, we often run campaigns surrounding:
- Increasing numbers for open days and open afternoon events
- Advertising of staff vacancies or new roles within your school
- The launch of a new project or incentive at your school
- The completion of a new building such as a technology block or gymnasium
- Increasing the number of followers of your social media page
- Increasing the percentage of traffic on your school website
#1 Facebook…
Facebook is the leading platform for social media campaigns, allowing you to specifically target your chosen audience across both desktop and mobile devices. Most commonly used by adults and parents of all ages, with the correct set-up Facebook (Meta) will specifically target only the most relevant people for your campaign and ensure your budget isn’t wasted on users who aren’t interested.
#2 Instagram
As part of Meta (Facebook) Instagram is now the third most popular social media platform used by millions worldwide. With the same audience targetting system, your school’s social media adverts can be promoted directly in front of your desired audience, no matter the age range, location or interests.
#3 YouTube
Often underutilised as a school marketing platform, YouTube is visited by 46% of internet users at least once a month, which includes countless people in your local area. Allowing you to share long and short-form video content with ease the platform is perfect for advertising your school online.
Whether you internally create shorts to be uploaded daily or invest in a school promotional video, YouTube can become a hub for your school’s online presence with videos being shared every day.
What Social Media Platforms Can You Use?
As you may already be aware, there are so many social media platforms you could utilise for paid social media campaigns. But the important thing to consider is where your audience will be the most active. In most cases, the best platforms to choose include…
#1 Facebook…
Facebook is the leading platform for social media campaigns, allowing you to specifically target your chosen audience across both desktop and mobile devices. Most commonly used by adults and parents of all ages, with the correct set-up Facebook (Meta) will specifically target only the most relevant people for your campaign and ensure your budget isn’t wasted on users who aren’t interested.
#2 Instagram
As part of Meta (Facebook) Instagram is now the third most popular social media platform used by millions worldwide. With the same audience targeting system, your school’s social media adverts can be promoted directly in front of your desired audience, no matter the age range, location or interests.
#3 YouTube
Often underutilised as a school marketing platform, YouTube is visited by 46% of internet users at least once a month, which includes countless people in your local area. Allowing you to share long and short-form video content with ease the platform is perfect for advertising your school online.
Whether you internally create shorts to be uploaded daily or invest in a school promotional video, YouTube can become a hub for your school’s online presence with videos being shared every day.
How To Run A Successful Social Media Marketing Campaign
According to Smart Insights, more than 3.8 billion people use at least one social media platform globally which is why social media marketing is so essential for schools in 2024 and beyond. Once you have selected the most appropriate social media platforms for your marketing campaign you need to consider the key objectives to follow to run a successful social media campaign including…
Establishing Your Goals…
One of the very first things you need to do when looking to run a successful social media marketing campaign is to set your goals and objectives. By establishing your goals, you can ensure that your ads do exactly what you need them to do, getting you maximum results!
Your goals should be focused on internal and external factors. For example, it is important that you set objectives for your school such as if an enquiry comes in from an advert, your team should nurture this and provide the best service possible. You also need to consider the goals of the campaign, ask yourself the following:
- What are you promoting?
- Who are you targeting?
- What will your main call to action be?
- What does success look like to you?
Whatever your objectives are, make sure these are set in stone before creating your advert.
Presenting A Clear Message
In order to run a successful social media marketing campaign you also need to consider the message you are projecting to your audience. This includes the caption, key call to actions we mentioned above, the post graphic and the final destination for the user. To help you out, we have broken each point into its own section below…
Eye-Catching Captions
Creating unique and snappy captions is an important part of any marketing campaign, not just on social media. They entice a reader in and catch the eye of your audience to stop scrolling and read what you have to say.
A top tip is to start with a question or call to action, it will make the first part of your caption super engaging so that your audience feels compelled to read more.
Clear Call To Action
If you are starting your caption with a question, be sure to end your caption with a clear call to action. Depending on what type of campaign you are running, your call to action may change but typical call to actions include:
- Sign up/secure your place/book now
- Subscribe/join/refer
- Download/claim
- Buy/shop/reserve
- Learn more/visit/check out
Paired with phrases that will provoke an emotional response such as “Limited Time Offer”, you can get the desired effect from your audience.
With Every Caption, A Graphic Is Needed
When you have determined your objectives and captions, you can move onto creating your graphics. These graphics can include static images or video content, we would recommend investing in a mixture of both so that you can run tests on what works best for your campaign.
Variable Testing
In an ideal scenario, you will have a selection of ads running at any one time so that you can test the successes of each one, as mentioned above. In most cases, video content works more consistently in driving engagement and achieving results but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t include a static image as another variable.
A successful campaign includes the time to analyse the data and review any changes you need to make to get the best ROI.
Achieving The Conversion
If your objective is to get prospective parents to sign up to your open day, then you need to ensure that the final stage of the customer journey is to the highest quality and consistent with the rest of the campaign. A bespoke landing page is the perfect way to funnel your traffic and drive higher conversion rates to complete the customer journey. When designing a bespoke website landing page for clients the aim is to convert a prospective customer into a customer through a sign up page or enrolment form.
The design of the bespoke landing page is super important, the flow, wording and design of the page needs to be very carefully considered to ensure you don’t lose potential customers on the last hurdle.
How To Run A Successful Social Media Marketing Campaign
According to Smart Insights, more than 3.8 billion people use at least one social media platform globally which is why social media marketing is so essential for schools in 2022 and beyond. Once you have selected the most appropriate social media platforms for your marketing campaign you need to consider the key objectives to follow to run a successful social media campaign including…
Establishing Your Goals…
One of the very first things you need to do when looking to run a successful social media marketing campaign is to set your goals and objectives. By establishing your goals, you can ensure that your ads do exactly what you need them to do, getting you maximum results!
Your goals should be focused on internal and external factors. For example, it is important that you set objectives for your school such as if an enquiry comes in from an advert, your team should nurture this and provide the best service possible. You also need to consider the goals of the campaign, ask yourself the following:
- What are you promoting?
- Who are you targeting?
- What will your main call to action be?
- What does success look like to you?
Whatever your objectives are, make sure these are set in stone before creating your advert.
Presenting A Clear Message
In order to run a successful social media marketing campaign you also need to consider the message you are projecting to your audience. This includes the caption, key call to actions we mentioned above, the post graphic and the final destination for the user. To help you out, we have broken each point into its own section below…
Snappy Captions
Creating unique and snappy captions is an important part of any marketing campaign, not just on social media. They entice a reader in and catch the eye of your audience to stop scrolling and read what you have to say.
A top tip is to start with a question or call to action, it will make the first part of your caption super engaging so that your audience feels compelled to read more.
Clear Call To Action
If you are starting your caption with a question, be sure to end your caption with a clear call to action. Depending on what type of campaign you are running, your call to action may change but typical call to actions include:
- Sign up/secure your place/book now
- Subscribe/join/refer
- Download/claim
- Buy/shop/reserve
- Learn more/visit/check out
Paired with phrases that will provoke an emotional response such as “Limited Time Offer”, you can get the desired effect from your audience.
With Every Caption, A Graphic Is Needed
When you have determined your objectives and captions, you can move onto creating your graphics. These graphics can include static images or video content, we would recommend investing in a mixture of both so that you can run tests on what works best for your campaign.
Variable Testing
In an ideal scenario, you will have a selection of ads running at any one time so that you can test the successes of each one, as mentioned above. In most cases, video content works more consistently in driving engagement and achieving results but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t include a static image as another variable.
A successful campaign includes the time to analyse the data and review any changes you need to make to get the best ROI.
Achieving The Conversion
If your objective is to get prospective parents to sign up to your open day, then you need to ensure that the final stage of the customer journey is to the highest quality and consistent with the rest of the campaign. A bespoke landing page is the perfect way to funnel your traffic and drive higher conversion rates to complete the customer journey. When designing a bespoke website landing page for clients the aim is to convert a prospective customer into a customer through a sign up page or enrolment form.
The design of the bespoke landing page is super important, the flow, wording and design of the page needs to be very carefully considered to ensure you don’t lose potential customers on the last hurdle.
I Want Help From A School Social Media Marketing Agency!
If you are looking for help from a school social media marketing agency then you have come to the right place! We work with a variety of schools, colleges, universities and training environments across the UK to provide winning social media campaigns that deliver real results.
Read our case study below to find out more about how Design Office can help you get the most out of your social media campaigns and ultimately achieve your goals.
To book a free consultation, simply get in touch with our team today! Call us on 01270 252 106 or email us on sales@designoffice.co.uk and we will look forward to helping you with your enquiry!
What Social Media Platforms Can You Use?
As you may already be aware, there are so many social media platforms you could utilise for paid social media campaigns. But the important thing to consider is where your audience will be the most active. In most cases, the best platforms to choose include…