3 common digital marketing mistakes schools make

As a school owner, no doubt you would have invested a lot of resources in the development of high-quality educational programmes and services. However, you may have neglected the marketing aspect of it, or you may have devoted an equal amount of effort on promoting them to parents, but the enrolment numbers are not translating. Where could your marketing efforts have gone wrong? Did you implement the wrong strategy, used an ineffective tactic or targeted the wrong audience altogether?

We have identified the top 3 most common marketing mistakes schools make, so you can reevaluate your marketing strategies to improve the effectiveness of your efforts.

1. Not clearly identifying your target audience

When it comes to marketing, you can’t just cast wide net thinking that it will catch more “fish” because if you target everyone, you are actually targeting no one. And targeting is crucial to success. It matters to figure out your target audience and define their characteristics to be as detailed as possible. For instance, if you are offering an authentic Montessori curriculum and you try to reach everyone, that would include parents who are seeking other learning outcomes like academic achievements, then it would be a waste of time and effort. Once you know your audience, you can perform keyword research correctly, and create the best marketing message that will drive prospective families to respond positively and enrol at your school.

2. Poor website strategy

A website with great visuals and valuable content can set you apart from other schools, and increase parent engagement as well as student enrolment. The website has to be user-friendly, and most importantly, mobile-friendly – a large majority of Kiddy123 users access our content using a mobile device. So, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you could lose valuable visitors.

Plus, it’s essential to optimise your website for search engines. You need to incorporate the most effective search engine optimisation (SEO) practices for families who are a good fit to be able to find your school online at the top of Google’s first page.

On top of that, most families are active on social media, therefore, your school should be too.

3. Overwhelmed by too many tasks

More often than not, school owners try to get everything done with limited resources, especially when it comes to digital marketing. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the relentless pressure of competing priorities, plus, most might find it complicated to actually optimise digital marketing strategies in order to see the results. Take some time to determine whether you need to delegate, readjust current efforts or outsource so that you can accomplish much more than you have planned.