Now that school is around the corner, it’s time to refresh your digital marketing strategy for your school, academy, or university. From experiencing a pandemic to entirely transforming a new academic environment for students and staff, the marketing and communications strategies that used to work for your district “pre-covid” may not work in this ever-changing 2021 environment. It is now the time to be pro-active, adaptive, and present to meet the increasing expectations of today’s families. 

Practice #1: Start a School Blog 

A school blog is a wonderful way to display the activities that students participate in and around the school. It’s also a great place to distribute advice and share the community’s voice. The blog will give outsiders an inside look on the programs and events that the students participate in. Connecting with the school’s community will emphasize how much the directors care about the students and faculty, while promoting conversation. It will also let more people organically find your school when searching for their children’s next academic steps. Overall, creating a blog will strengthen your school’s brand identity.  

Practice #2: Enhance the School’s Website 

Times are changing, and so should your website! Making an inadequately designed website and not thinking about the user’s experience will produce site traffic and static action. Like the director of Front Porch Marketing, Julie Porter states, “create a clean, user-friendly website.” This will increase the school’s reputation and lead to more engagement. Just remember to keep it simple to navigate and creative. An easy way to accomplish this is to rebrand logos, create a color scheme that seamlessly translates throughout all pages, and habitually update the navigation tabs.  

Practice #3: Make Social Media Accounts 

Posting on social media platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, create opportunities for parents and guardians to find your school organically. People can easily share, like, or comment on your posts to help create more popularity quickly. As your account grows, the more recognition and traffic your school develops. You can achieve this by devoting time into capturing professional videos and photos of events and activities.

A great example of this is with one of our clients, Faith Family Academy. As Christine Finnegan, our media relations director states, “be consistent will all messaging throughout your platforms.”  In addition, you can connect with your audience by responding to their comments and other members can add reviews.

Practice #4: Begin an Email Drip Campaign 

Emails are increasing in popularity due to people relying on the digital-sphere to stay in the loop. This upward trend in email reliability is the result of them being tailored to user preferences and behaviors. This personalization helps users see information related to their interests rather that unfavored topics that are being pushed upon them through advertising.

By asking current families and interested families for contact information via a survey or sign-up sheet, users can subscribe to an email list and look at automated content daily or weekly. This proves to be an easy strategy for reminding and promoting members of future academic and recreational events. Email workflows truly provide a personal touch to electronically reach each community member. 

Practice #5: Promote School Events 

Events, such as an open house, are a great way for newcomers to meet the faculty and staff. It also helps families understand if their values align with the school’s and if the school fits their expectations. Parents and guardians will also be given the opportunity to explore the campus for the first time.  

Additionally, back-to-school kickoffs are a wonderful way to understand what people personally look for in a school and its curriculum. Having organized school events with informational pamphlets to give out aids prospective families to secure their decision of coming to your school. Whether you share the events via social media or on the website, the end result allows you to increase engagement and nurture relationships with newly inquiring families.   

Conclusion 

The expectations of parents are higher than ever. It’s crucial that your school’s digital marketing strategy adapt alongside them. As the fall semester comes right around the corner, use these best practices to ensure that your digital marketing strategy is future-proofed.  

Trade show marketing rocks. I sometimes forget how much until we get in the throes of one with a client, which is happening for us at the pace of about four to five a year.

This is something I have been honored to do since I was right out college, and I have definitely learned a lesson or two along the way. Thankfully, however, we at Front Porch Marketing have a team of people who can do trade show marketing better than me.

And, a few things have changed over a few, okay, over the (cough cough) years. There’s now an app for this and a portable device for that, all of which enhance trade show marketing, sales initiatives, and the visitor experience, which is fab.

Typically, we have months to plan and execute on our clients’ trade show marketing fun … but recently we may have just pulled off a holiday marketing miracle on The Porch over the last seven days (hence the bags under my eyes). Story about the 2016 POWER-GEN International in Orlando, Florida, happening now, is for another bloggity-blog day.

Key Trade Show Marketing Takeaways

So, what can you learn from our Flashdance that has happened over the last week? Here are four things:

Market early and often. The earlier you can develop your strategy, plan and campaigns and start rockin’ and rollin’, the better. There are many other exhibitors, etc., vying for the attention of the speakers and attendees.

If you can’t market early, it can still happen. We have proved almost anything can happen with a rockin’ marketing partner alongside you, but getting there isn’t the prettiest and sure isn’t the cheapest.

Use multiple channels. Send emails. Advertise. Maximize the show’s online and traditional opportunities. Develop a micro-site, website banners and collateral materials. Write blogs. Develop press releases and put them on the wire. Send MORE emails.

Keep it light. Keep it bright. Especially during this time of year and on this of all years, keep it light and bright. Inside and out. We all want a break from seriousness. Holidays can be a stressful time, and moving at light speed may cause a few, tiny bumps along the way.

If you need to get your trade show marketing or any other branding or marketing on the go, holla! We are here and happy to get your strategies, plans and campaigns into high gear and pay attention to how your target responds.

Asta pastas! Going to check in with the folks in the Sunshine state on today’s POWER-GEN International happs.

That’s all she wrote.

We were excited to meet with a prospective client partner and learn more about their branding and marketing needs. The company is in the B2B space.

Well into the conversation, my pulse began to race, my leg started to shake and my voice rose an octave.

You see, they have been meeting with several potential marketing partners and being very thorough about their due diligence in selecting the right one. One agency told them that they could … wait for it … manage and execute all their email marketing for the entire year for an annual fee if they handed over all the email content in one meeting.

Whoa! Really?!?!

It sounded good to the prospective client. This was:

• Very cost effective
• Low effort on their part
• Efficient with their time
• Worry-free. They wouldn’t have to think about their email marketing for an entire year.

Yes, friends, but this is wrong in so. many. ways. Hence, me physically reacting to this idea.

Effective email marketing campaigns are, among other things:

• Useful. If you are sending content to your audience that is several months old, you are missing the boat. “We try to include something useful in every email,” says Ben Chestnut of MailChimp. “If the announcement was totally useless, let’s at least give the recipient a case study, or something educational (even if it points to some other resource).”
• Fresh. Our world is changing daily. What is relevant or newsworthy today is not going to be tonight or tomorrow, never mind months from now.
• Personal and relevant. Your current and potential customers’ needs and businesses are constantly evolving. What they want and is the crisis du jour changes hourly. You may learn something in a meeting or on a call with them that you have never thought of before that could be a new product or service offering for your company or a nugget of wisdom for your next company email. Sorry, too late, you can only submit your content once a year … Ugh …

The reality is email marketing takes experience, work and expertise. The good news is we’re here to make it easy, effective and right for your brand.