As the enrollment time begins. Ads for Schools becomes a hot topic among school administration. All the schools rush to get the best out of all the advertising channels.
But if you really need results, not every channel will provide you high ROI. You have to make a systematic advertising strategy in that case.
Hello! I am your Ads Consultant!
I am here to help you guide what will be the best strategy for you as a school to choose to get more enrollments. What channels to use and how? All packed in this article for you.
Let me answer your first question which is –
How Can I Promote My School?
To promote your school you can use diverse channels for marketing. Every channel has its pros and cons. Most of them will be high on cost whereas some will not have the right audience to whom you want to target.
This is why I will tell you about different channels and how they will be beneficial for you to bring more enrollments. So first let me clear you out one thing. If you are searching for advertising on Google. You shouldn’t use any offline source for your promotions. Like yeah, billboards have an impact but do they have the ROI you are looking for?
With the digital age, advertising is also digital and more measurable. You can know which channel was profitable and which wasn’t. To start we will learn about the channel with the least investment.
SEO for School Website
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is curating the website for targeted keywords. These optimizations will help the search engine to rank us above when searched for any education-related keyword.
A website can be helpful for your school administration purpose as well as it will help you to rank on top of the search results. This will help you to market your school for longer periods of time. To start with SEO you need –
Keyword Research
Brainstorm the keywords which you think parents must be typing to search for schools. Now use Google’s Autocomplete feature or Related Searches to know what keywords are used. This will help you have keywords to target your audience.
Optimize Title Tags, Meta Descriptions and Images
This will help Google to learn about the keywords present on your site. You have to optimize your homepage with the keywords you researched. You have to use a title with these keywords and Meta descriptions with the summary of your web page. If you upload a picture make sure it is optimized with Alt Tags and is of high quality.
User friendly
A fast-loading webpage and compatibility with mobile devices make the experience of your webpage user-friendly. This helps you get more website visits along with more converting clients.
Google My Business
Claiming your school’s profile on Google My Business will help you pop in the searches when someone types “schools near me”. Providing all the information required and replying to the reviews will help you get seen. This also helps you get your website to rank higher in the search results.
List in school directories
You can list yourself in the school directories of your state or even nation directories. Parents search these as they have more information and it becomes easy for them. Make sure they link back to your website which helps you to rank higher.
School Advertising Ideas
Advertising ideas can be the two most popular places where everyone will be looking for you. Let us know about these advertising platforms –
Google Ads for Schools
SEO can take a long and is very time-consuming for a school to use as an advertising platform. So you can use Google Ads to show your results to people searching with the intent of getting their kids enrolled with your school.
Let us know more about Google Ads for Schools!
Cheaper
These are cheaper than billboard advertising. You can show your ads to the parents who are searching for “best schools near me” and save your costs by not targeting parents searching for “schools in [Your City]”. This saves you both cost and time.
Keywords
The keywords you must rank for can be costly as of their click-through rates. This is because parents look for many schools before choosing the best one. The keyword cost per click can lie in 10-15 dollars per click. Here are some of the education related keywords and their cost per clicks –
- private school – $6.00 / click
- boarding school – $4.50 / click
- computer science summer programs for high school students – $6.00 / click
- preparatory high schools – $3.50 / click
- private school for nursing – $40.00 / click
High ROI
You might be thinking that you are spending too much money on keywoprds but when you see the ROI you will be shocked. Investing 200$/month on Google Ads if brings you 10-20 leads. These leads then enroll with you and the fees they pay is 10x more than what you sped on your advertising.
Landing Page
When parents click on your ad. They are redirected to a landing page. Make sure it is not your website. This landing page should contain similar information as the ad copy. Make sure you ask for their details to target them later.
Location Based Taregteing
Google shows your ads to the parent searching for the keyword on the basis of their location. You can also use it to target people of a certain location where your school is located. Radius-based targeting the audience lying within the 5-10 miles radius. You can also use Zip Code-based targeting.
Best Google Ads for Schools
These are the Google Ads which can be inspiration for your Google Ad to enroll more students.
Facebook Ads for Schools
Facebook Ads can be helpful for advertising s everyone uses Facebook for recipes to even kids admissions. An average user spent 18 minutes on Facebook. this data can be really crucial for you as a school to use this platform and target parents.
This platform will be helpful in brand awareness of your school. What else it will help you in let us learn.
Cost Effective
Facebook Ads is the most cost-effective advertising platform. You can target the audience based on the details you want. This gives you to save your dollars by not showing ads to the audience not right for you.
Enticing Visuals Catch Attention
As Google Ads only provides text-based ads. Facebook on the other hand provides enticing visual or image-based ads. This makes your audience stop there scrolling and look for your ad. This is an amazing way to capture the interest of your target audience.
Easy to Target Your “Right” Audience
You can target your audience on the basis of location, age, gender, demographics, interets and behaviors. With this detailed targeting it becomes easy to reach the right audience and get more enrolments for you school.
Lead Forms
If you run lead generation ads. Instead of redirecting them to a landing page. you can use Lead forms which will be a 2-3 minutes form filling experience where you and the audience both in a win-win situation. They don’t have to leave the Facebook App and you get the information pre-filled s Facebook has all their data.
Boost Posts
Boost Posts with existing interesting informative posts to get high engagement and more followers. This will help you share your knowledge and get the enrollments based on that. More people will connect with your Facebook Page.
A/B Test Ads
Run two different versions of the ads. You have the option to test the different types of ads if you don’t know how they work. You can leverage this feature. This will help you get more clicks on one ad than other. Then you can kill the other ad. This will also help you in the future to know what kind of Ad Copies work.
Best Facebook Ads for Schools
Here is some Facebook Ads copy that has worked and brought results for schools. You can take inspiration from these and use them in your ads.
Private School Advertising
Budget
Digital advertising is the new medium for marketing but it needs to be justified by your return on investment. You can no longer rely on many traditional channels. More and more schools are going digital and their budgets exceed print or direct mail.
You can track almost any digital marketing campaign and really check your return on investment and use the data to decide if it is worth it. You can ask questions like “Is digital marketing a good return on investment for your school?”.
SEO for low budget schools
For a school that does not urgently need to increase enrollment, I would say that search engine optimization is the best starting point. As people evaluate you naturally, intentionally, or unintentionally.
Spending time on SEO can drive you forward in search and improve the image of your school over time. I would recommend SEO and SEM as your first and second priorities.
Suppose you need five new students next month, and people will not go to Facebook or Instagram to find or hope for school announcements. They go to Google. You write “private school” or “private school near me”. They will not extend beyond the first or second page. If you want to be discovered and need instant phone calls, emails, and forms, you need to focus entirely on search engine marketing.
Social Media Marketing
Using Social media can help you build brand awareness, but if you want to attract more students, it may not be the most effective way to promote your school.
It is a great way to build your brand in the eyes of parents, and they can wait a year or two for your school. It can help you attract attention. However, while platforms like Facebook are great for building brand awareness, people don’t go to Facebook to find private schools.
Words about your school should start with the target audience and promote certain parts of your plan or school.
Assign a Goal
Always start with the final goal. Ask yourself “When you close your eyes, what will your last group be? Who are the students in the class? What do you do? How do you work?”.
You may not be able to say exactly how many girls or boys you want, or how many students you are looking for. But you can identify the key character or person you might miss as the principal violinist of the school orchestra. You can post an advertisement to attract a family and someone to take a place in your orchestra. You can do more when you assign a goal than just let students fill vacancies.
Wrap-up for Ads for Schools
This is it! This is how your systematic advertising strategy is completed.
CTA (If you feel it is difficult to incorporate them. Don’t you worry? I am your ads consultant and I will run them for you. Drop down your email below and I will contact you and discuss how to get you more enrollments this session.)
I hope you liked the post. Make sure you take away these points and run your Ads and get more enrollments.
That is it from my side!