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Back-to-School Marketing Strategies

July 18, 2023
Updated:
August 2, 2023

Back-to-School Marketing Strategies

Dakota Morgan

As competition among universities and schools grows, a strong enrollment and a well-designed school marketing strategy are vital. The key to an effective marketing strategy is to showcase what sets your school apart from others—highlighting specialized programs, faculty accomplishments, a unique curriculum, and any mantras that convey institutional goals and expectations. To accomplish this, Red Shark Digital, the leading digital marketing agency Greenville NC, utilizes the power of key digital outlets and tactics—social media advertising, email campaigns, user-friendly web design, and more—to assist institutions in reaching potential students and their families.

Why Is Digital Marketing Important for Back-to-School Season?

A digital marketing strategy for schools should employ a wide range of techniques to boost an institution’s visibility and online presence. By leveraging these digital channels, educational institutions deliver targeted messages to potential students, driving traffic to school websites and landing pages. Red Shark Digital’s expertise in utilizing various platforms ensures that marketing efforts are focused, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates.

Effective Marketing Strategies for Schools

Download Your Back-to-School Guide

Enhancing Online Visibility for Schools

In today's digital landscape, online visibility is crucial for institutions seeking to attract students.  Our digital marketing agency Greenville NC brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table, helping institutions optimize their online presence. Through strategic SEO principles, email designs, and social content, agencies can improve an institution's website ranking on search engine results pages, increasing organic traffic and boosting overall engagement.

Digital Marketing Strategy Tactics for Schools

Capturing the attention of potential students requires compelling and engaging content. Digital marketing experts at Red Shark Digital excel in content creation, developing visually appealing graphics, videos, blog posts, and other forms of content that resonate with the target audience. An agency must understand the importance of storytelling and leverage it to create narratives that align with an institution's brand identity and values.

SEO Strategy for School Website

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for school websites because it helps improve online visibility and ranking in search engine results. Investing in visibility efforts makes it easier for potential students and their families to find the school and learn more. By conducting on-page optimization of website content (blog posts, pillar pages, photos, interactive media, etc.) for search engines, schools can attract more traffic to their site and increase the chances of converting that traffic into enrolled students.

Reap the benefits of Google Maps through a Google Business Profile for your educational institution. SEO agency specialists at Red Shark Digital remain up-to-date on Google’s best practices for brick-and-mortar businesses across an extensive range of industries.

Utilizing Google’s local SEO tools allow schools the following abilities:

  • Broadcast county-wide updates regarding weather updates, community events, volunteer opportunities, and more.
  • Provide important location details such as your school’s name and address, contact information, website domain, optimized descriptions, school holiday hours, service areas, and additional information about the institution.
  • Answer questions from community members to promote brand awareness and reputation management.
  • Upload images of the school grounds to represent your institution and enhance access for interested searchers.
  • Respond to reviews to enhance institutional credibility and foster trust within the community and beyond.

Social Media Content for Schools

Our digital marketing agency Greenville NC can assist institutions in building a strong social media presence. They create compelling content and conduct follower engagement with target audiences across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This active social media presence enables institutions to communicate effectively, showcase their strengths, and foster a positive brand image among prospective students and parents.

An iPhone mockup displays a social media marketing client's Instagram feed.

Additionally, social media Greenville NC agencies can help institutions develop and maintain a consistent content calendar, ensuring a steady stream of relevant and engaging material. Our team utilized this tactic for Axiom Elite, a company that sells and operates data integration software for universities to seamlessly transfer student information between platforms. This regular content production helped to attract prospective clients for the company, building a pool of future institutional partnerships that helped build Axiom’s credibility and leadership within the education sector.

Back-to-School Email Marketing

Emails are an important component of enrollment and marketing strategies for private schools and universities as it allows institutions to deliver targeted messages directly to potential students and their families.

By creating compelling email designs and content that showcase the school's unique strengths, institutions can build relationships with their target audience and generate leads for enrollment or registration. Effective lead nurture email marketing campaigns should be personalized, visually appealing, and optimized for mobile devices to ensure they reach the widest possible audience.

Digital Advertising for Schools

Another effective way to attract potential students is through digital advertising. School marketing strategies, can use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media advertising, and even CTV advertising to reach their target audience.

PPC for Schools

PPC advertising is a type of digital advertising where advertisers pay a fee each time a user clicks their ad. Search engine advertising, such as Google Ads, often uses this model. Advertisers bid on keywords and phrases relevant to their target audience, displaying their ads to users who search for those terms.

An iMac mockup displays the website for a paid advertising marketing client with Red Shark Digital.

Our ad campaign for Coastal Carolina Community College utilized this strategy, helping soon-to-be high school graduates and community program coordinators easily access information about the college.

CTV Back-to-School Marketing

Connected TV (CTV) advertising is effective because it targets users who are watching TV through internet-connected devices such as smart TVs, streaming devices, and gaming consoles. This form is an effective marketing strategy for schools because it allows institutions to:

  • Target specific demographics or geographic locations.
  • Reach a large audience at once.
  • Utilize a cost-effective option for advertising compared to traditional television ads.

School-related ads on social media

School-related ads on social media are advertisements that target users who are interested in education, teaching, or related topics. These ads work to promote specific schools or educational programs, as well as to generate leads for enrollment or registration.

Social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn—offer advanced targeting options that allow advertisers to reach highly specific audiences based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. This makes it possible for our digital advertising agency Greenville NC to deliver highly relevant and effective ads to prospective students.

Website Design for Educational Institutions

A responsive website is crucial for any school marketing to new students and families. An effective website design for schools can showcase a school's strengths, provide valuable information for prospective families, and serve as a hub for online enrollment and registration.

An iMac mockup displays a Webflow website design for a education marketing client at Red Shark Digital.

NERSBA Early College chooses Webflow to provide users with a comprehensive presentation of their mission to provide a one-of-a-kind agriscience and biotechnology learning experience to students across North Carolina. As a professional Webflow Agency, our developers are experts in web solutions for institutional websites—ensuring the website is mobile-responsive, optimized for search engines, and reaches the widest audience possible.

Ensure Correct Hreflang Tag on Website

Ensuring the website’s hreflang tags are applicable to the target audience is an important element of successful web design for educational institutions. This crucial step helps search engines understand which language and geographic region the website is targeted towards, improving the website's visibility and ranking in search engine results for users in the targeted language and region. This step will also improve the user experience for those users by serving them the appropriate version of the website.

Multilingual Education

Educational institution websites should highlight the availability of multilingual education and the opportunity of benefit for students and families. Ensure your school website design attracts and retains students with limited access to these resources elsewhere. An effective UX strategy from our web design Greenville NC experts accelerates schools' ability to showcase their commitment to multilingual education and demonstrate the institution's values and priorities, resonating with broader audiences.

What can you do with Webflow?

Present your school spirit in a responsive, beautifully-designed site with Webflow. Webflow’s no-code platform offers tools to enhance site performance, including:

  1. Intuitive Visual Editor: Webflow's user-friendly visual editor empowers educational institutions to design and customize stunning websites with no coding expertise necessary. Administrators and board members can easily collaborate with designers to create an appealing online presence for their institution.
  2. Responsive Design for Mobile-Friendly Experience: With Webflow's emphasis on responsive web design, your institution's website will effortlessly adapt to various screen sizes, ensuring a seamless and engaging experience for students, parents, and prospective applicants across desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
  3. Effortless Content Management: Webflow's built-in content management system (CMS) simplifies content management and update processes. Within the Webflow CMS, administrators can easily add, edit, and organize dynamic content such as news, events, and blog posts, ensuring the website remains up-to-date and relevant.
  4. Engaging Interactions and Animations: Webflow empowers educational websites to captivate their audience with interactive elements and animations. Attention-grabbing animations create engaging storytelling experiences, showcase achievements, or highlight core aspects of your institution's programs and initiatives.
  5. Hassle-Free Hosting and Publishing: Webflow's hosting services provide a reliable and secure platform for your school website. With easy publishing options, you can seamlessly launch your website and ensure it is accessible to students, parents, and the wider community. Choose between a Webflow subdomain or seamlessly connect your custom domain.
  6. Integration Capabilities: Webflow promotes seamless integrations with industry-leading third-party services and tools, enabling your educational institution to connect with existing workflows and leverage powerful tools such as email marketing platforms, analytics systems, and customer relationship management (CRM) software. Webflow's integration-friendly platform allows you to streamline processes and enhance communication with students, parents, and alumni.

Our expert Webflow Agency streamlines your educational institution's website development project, harnessing Webflow’s user-friendly interface, mobile-responsive design, content management capabilities, engaging animations, hassle-free hosting, and integrations to create a compelling online presence that reflects the excellence and innovation of your institution.

Data-Driven Insight Analysis

One of the most significant advantages of partnering with a digital marketing agency is access to data-driven insights. Agencies employ various tools and technologies to analyze user behavior, engagement metrics, and conversion rates. Utilizing this data enables institutions to make informed marketing decisions and optimize their strategies.

For instance, agencies can track the performance of different marketing channels, identifying which ones are generating the highest return on investment (ROI). This information allows institutions to allocate their marketing budget more effectively, focusing on channels that yield the best results. These beneficial analytics allow strategists to make timely campaign adjustments. Insight analysis tactics ensure your school marketing campaign focus remains aligned with the target audience's preferences.

Trust Red Shark Digital for Back-to-School Marketing Strategies

As educational institutions prepare for the back-to-school season, partnering with a digital marketing agency Greenville, NC, can be a game-changer. Through their expertise in audience targeting, online visibility optimization, measurable results, and creative content development, agencies such as Red Shark Digital empower institutions to craft effective school marketing strategies and drive desired outcomes for institutions. By embracing the digital landscape and leveraging the benefits of working with a full-service digital marketing agency, educational institutions can achieve exponential growth in enrollment rates, online exposure, and brand awareness. Contact Red Shark Digital’s dedicated sales team to launch your school’s Webflow website development project today.

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