How you can benefit from these school digital marketing trends

With advances in technology, digital marketing is always changing. Make sure that your school doesn't get left behind, here are some of the top new trends and how your education marketing can benefit.

In a world where artificial intelligence, influencer marketing, and SEO is dominating the digital sphere, schools have can have a difficult task standing out from the crowd online. By being educated in the latest trends in marketing, you can be prepared for the inevitable shifts that new technologies bring.

Here are a few of our favourite trends for 2020 and how your school can benefit:

It's time to ditch the funnel

The old funnel approach to marketing and admissions is out of date and may be the reason that your enquiries are not converting into enrolments. HubSpot introduced the concept of Flywheel marketing to take into account the importance of the customer journey in the marketing process.

It's about using anyone who is customer-facing in your admissions journey to interact and provide value at every step. The funnel approach was focused on attracting new customers, but the flywheel goes the step further and stresses the importance of continuing to delight once they have signed on the dotted line. For schools, this is all about keeping your current students and parents happy and recognising the power they have through recommendations, reviews and their own networks to promote your school and bring in new enquiries.

Personalisation

Connecting with your customers on a personal level has never been so important and in the age of digital interactions, your parents and students still want to interact with, and relate to, real people.

In 2020, blanket emails with the same content for hundreds of contacts just doesn't cut it. Segmentation of your enquiries is your key to success in schools marketing; tailored content depending on the interests of your students will give much better results and thanks to clever automation, this has never been easier.

You need to make your contacts feel like individuals, so emails with personalisation tokens pulled straight from your CRM, sent specifically to those that have shown an interest in the subject matter before, will drive engagement and conversions. It's time to make sure your marketing efforts are embracing the inbound methodology to put your customer first.

Content is still king

Content marketing has been around for a while and is still the best way to encourage your contacts to engage with your brand regularly. Marketing predictions show that quality will be winning over quantity in 2020 and diverse content will make the difference between engaged and disengaged contacts.

That means embracing video, infographics, podcasting, quizzes... whatever is the most effective way to get your content across in the most efficient and convenient way to your audience. Don't forget about blogging and other longer forms of written content though, these are key to driving visibility of your website and strong SEO.

As with all of your marketing efforts, it needs to be about your customer. When you are producing your content, remember your audience and think about what it is that they want to hear and when in their journey the information you are sharing will be most useful to them.

For schools, with loads of exciting and emotive things taking place every single day, content is gold. It shows your prospective parents who you are and where your values lie. Remember to cover all aspects of the customer journey; so some news updates about the exciting things taking place, some expert content from teachers to establish your institution as 'thought leaders', some general advice (exam revision tips are an obvious choice!). Here are some more content ideas for your school marketing.

As marketing and technology continues to evolve faster than ever, make sure to stay up to date with the latest news and updates on how changes will impact education marketing and admissions teams. Subscribe to our blog and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

There has never been a better time to set your school apart from the competition. Contact us to find out more about how HubGem can drive your marketing efforts forward.