Marketing and Technology

You run a small private school. You're facing many challenges filling seats. You're concerned about how next year's intake will look. With all the unexpected expenses facing you during the pandemic, you can't afford to hire a marketing firm to promote your school. So, what to do? The answer to that question lies in your school's unique trove of photos, news, testimonials, awards, and other memorabilia. I'm presuming that you have all those materials saved somewhere on your school's computers. If they are spread about over several computers, save them all in one system that is backed up securely. Better yet, save them in the cloud. These materials are unique and priceless. Saving them securely in the cloud is an expense that you should consider as cheap insurance. (I'm not sure how your accountant will allocate that expense, but we'll let her decide.)

Where am I going with this? Well, take a moment to look at commercial websites or commercial Instagram accounts. The photos and the artwork grab your attention, don't they? They draw you into their story. They help deliver the message. That's all I'm suggesting that you do with your collection of digital photos. They're unique. They'll your story to a stranger who knows nothing about your school and how excellent its reputation and academics are. They're one of the first steps in generating contact by email or phone with your school. You know how to convince parents to send their children to your school. But

I was an early adopter of social media so I can tell you that the growth of the genre which I have witnessed has been remarkable. The instant communications and universal accessibility of social media have powered revolutions around the world as you and I both know. Sadly, social media has been manipulated and abused by governments and political movements that seek to undermine and destroy institutions.

For the purposes of this article, we shall set aside those negative aspects of social media and look at ways in which your small to medium-sized private school can use social media to make families past, present, and future aware of your school. If your school has the budget for professional social media curators and a fully-integrated marketing program, you are all set. However, if you have limited resources for marketing your school and are not certain how to proceed, I have written this article with your school in mind.

Before we look at some suggestions for using social media, I want you to set aside any misconceptions which you might have about social media. I run into people all the time who say "I don't use Facebook." "I can't be bothered with Twitter." "YouTube is a waste of time." Interestingly enough, they never seem to mention Instagram or LinkedIn which are popular with millennials and the business community respectively. Social media is essentially an electronic form of socializing. Years ago we sent postcards to our friends and family when

I am assuming that your school is well-known within your local community. But what about beyond that community? Are you visible to families looking for a school like yours? How will they know that your school fits their specific requirements? Well, there are several things you can do to reach that critical pool of families and potential students.

The Invisible Stuff

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a mystery to the uninitiated. It is one of those arcane sciences that webmasters everywhere must be aware of. Unfortunately, mentioning SEO for the rest of us prompts most of us to start reading emails and texting friends. It's all so technical. The truth is that good SEO can enhance your marketing efforts. It can make your school more visible to the audience which you are trying to reach. Weak or non-existent SEO will bury your site so that it is practically invisible. So, ignore SEO at your peril. At the least, get your arms around the basics so that you can supervise your web management and design team authoritatively.

This video explains what SEO is.

Some background

What is Search Engine Optimization? In its simplest terms, SEO is ensuring that your site's meta tags and content are optimized so parents and students can find your site easily when they type specific words into a search engine. For example, if you ask Google to show results

Summer is a good time for the marketing team to review the year-to-date and plan for the year ahead. Strictly speaking, summer doesn't begin in most private schools until school is out. That can be anytime between the middle of May and the middle of June, although some schools finish classes at the end of June. In any case, this is an excellent time to spend a couple of days reviewing your marketing initiatives. It is important to see what's working and what isn't working.

I like to think of marketing from the perspective of the homeowners I used to represent back in the 80s when I was a real estate broker in the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut. I would explain to them how important it was to view their home and surroundings just as a potential buyer would. Buyers see things that you are so accustomed to seeing that you don't see them. The things which you do not see objectively could well be deal-breakers. The same principle is true in marketing your school. Certain things which you take for granted or think are not important could be deal-breakers for potential families looking at your school.

Against that backdrop, let's take a look at each of your marketing tools as well as your overall campaign.

1. Your website

Think of your school's website as the front door to your school. The entrance to your school is warm and inviting, isn't it? Perhaps it is impressive, even imposing.

Marketing a private school is one of the tasks which can be daunting for school administrators of the small to medium-sized school. That is mainly because most heads of school have as their principal duty raising money. That responsibility is a full-time job by itself. Naturally, heads of school have a host of administrative duties as well. Moving down the organization chart, private school business managers have to keep the books balanced, manage the cash flow and deal with the overall management of the physical plant. Academic deans manage the teachers and what happens in the classroom. As a result, the admissions office ends up with the marketing brief, such as it is, in smaller schools. Most of the time marketing in the small school consists of making sure the website is updated, regular posts to the social media pages are done, and an admissions catalog is produced annually.

This state of affairs contrasts sharply with large private schools which can afford to hire the professional marketing staff needed to promote their schools effectively.

What is remarketing?

So, I can just imagine you reading this and thinking that you barely have time to market your school, much less remarket it. Anyway, what exactly is remarketing?

You and I are targets of companies' remarketing efforts every time we surf the web. For example, I was looking at bread machines the other day. After I left Amazon, I went to The Guardian to check the headlines and