The main thing I remember from all of marketing classes in
college are that you have to market
during the good times, and you have to market during the slow times. For us
as communicators in education, it is crucial that we conduct our business
during the school year, but it is especially
important to concentrate our efforts during the summer months as well.
Why is this the best approach? Because most of us don’t do
it. By putting in the extra effort during the summer, you can beat your competition that is sleeping in and not working on
Fridays.
In this article you’ll get a quick guide to rock your
marketing during the summer off-season.
Here are six quick
tips to out-market the competition:
1. Interview 10
Parents at 30 Seconds Each
Your parent ambassadors our critical to win over other
families. What better way to broadcast the positive message about your district
to the masses then by recording quick videos?
Videos are playing a
big role in visual storytelling. Not only are they getting big views on
traditional video platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo, but they are also doing really well on Facebook. Native video has
taken Facebook by storm. Posted videos are in the top categories for user
engagement and do really well in their Edgerank
algorithm.
The key is to get
honest, positive experiences from your parents. In this day of cell phone videos, your
recordings don’t have to be anything fancy. Just have them tell their story. Film 10 Stories that you can post for each
of the ten weeks of summer vacation.
2. Fifty Dollars to
Target 15,000 Eyeballs
There is no better way to target a specific audience than
doing social media advertising. Facebook seems to be the best when it comes
to targeting specific cities or addresses. We have used this many times to
narrow our reach. We have found that most traditional advertising can’t be as
specific as Facebook and Twitter.
By boosting existing posts, or creating a specific Facebook
ad, all you need to do is spend $5 a
week to reach an estimated 1,500 people. Numbers will vary depending on the
addresses and demographics you choose, but tell me a better plan to target
specific groups with specific messages and I will make the switch. It’s a cheap way to reach who you want to
reach.
Make it a goal to
boost or buy a $5 ad each week during the summer. By targeting these groups
when most districts are on vacation, you will get great traction for converting
some parents to your school district from theirs.
3. Build a Landing
Page for a Specific Program You Want to Promote
Programs can be the life-blood to differentiating your
district from the competition. We all have special programs that make our
schools stand out. By having a webpage for specific programs, you
can create a central location to brag to potential parents.
In my district we created a stand-alone website for our STEM
programs and classes called CFBSTEM.com. The landing page offers a brief
introduction to STEM and STEM in our district, and then we offer links to our specific
STEM programs.
The key addition we
added to our website is the link for the parents to request additional
information about our programs. In the form we have them fill out their
name, child’s age, current school and what program they have an interest
in. By
having this form, we can create a database of interested parents. We can
then use that database to send them specific ads or content we have created
about our programs.
4. Content Marketing
Outside Your District
We are focusing on content marketing quite heavily in my
district. Our thinking is that if we
help our parents, they will look at us
as the experts in education. During the summer months, it is a good idea to
have a broad range of topics. Give your
parents some things to think about when they are home with their kids.
Our most popular blog post this summer is our write-up of
how to have a “staycation” in Dallas for under $50. Our parents loved it. It
drove traffic to our blog and our website.
In 24 hours we had over 15,000 impressions and 30 new people liked our
Facebook page. We got great numbers from a simple, fun article.
It worked because our
parents are thinking about more than education during the summer. They had a need to fill, and we helped them
fill it. Ten weeks is a long time to entertain kids. Hopefully we provided our parents with a week
of inexpensive activities to do with their kids.
5. Send a Phone Call
Home with a Checklist
Four weeks before school starts, send a phone call home reminding your parents or important dates and
information they need to start the school. Be excited when you record the
message. Get your families pumped up about coming back to school.
Some things you might
want to include in the message are forms they will need to start the school
year, dates and times of major district events, and a list of new procedures
that are in place for the new school year.
6. Study Your
Insights and Analytics
Always be checking your analytics. You need to determine what is working and what is not working.
Study them closely. Look for the trends that will help you develop a strategy
for the upcoming school year.
Do you have any other
tips or suggestions? Leave them in the comment section below.
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