Data-Driven Marketing for Schools: Maximising Analytics Insights

Data-driven marketing is a technique which utilises data to inform marketing decisions. The data from your current students is a very important tool that can shape your next marketing strategy, without it, you may find yourself up the creek without a paddle. Using data collected from your students ensures that the student is always your main priority when making informed marketing decisions, this is a key element to ensure growth in your school brand awareness and recruitment.

Executing Data-Driven Marketing

The best way to inform your data-driven marketing is to get to know your students, the more accurate the data the better. It is of great importance that you converse with your students and gather research so you can build a seamless strategy. Creating buyer/marketing personas, focus groups and talking to your current students are useful methods which will give you valuable information you can later weave into your data-driven marketing strategy.

One of the main methods of data collection is customer satisfaction surveys. Providing your students with a survey tells you their thoughts and gives you feedback on your current strategies. Feedback can reveal points of weakness in your strategy that you may not have realised were there, you essentially see your marketing through the student’s eyes. These methods ensure that your data is refined and as accurate as it can be and, of course, is student oriented.

It is important to note that you cannot invade the privacy of your students. You must abide by laws and remain respectful throughout the data gathering process. Laws such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) should not be seen as a hinderance, keeping within the guidelines of these laws makes your marketing strategy more transparent and less intrusive.

Utilising Data in Marketing Strategies

The aim of your marketing strategy should be to engage and delight your prospective students, therefore, it is important to acknowledge that not every student is the same, by segmenting your audience, you can personalise your marketing towards specific groups. Targeted content is a strategy which ensures that each group finds exactly what they need and is provided with the correct help, this is far more likely to engage students than if you sent the same marketing to them all. Not only may your students have different interests and criteria, they may also be in different stages of the buyer journey and therefore have different needs.

Data can also inform the content you put out, blog posts, emails, advertising, etc. should all be created with the customer in mind. Data offers a vital insight into the minds of your leads, you can see any questions they have, what they’re interested in and what they’ve been searching for, by creating content around this data, you can target exactly what the student needs and provide it for them.

Getting to know your students and their needs through data analysis is the best way to engage them and to ensure that they know exactly what you offer and how you can help them come to a final decision.