Video Marketing Strategies for Private Schools
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(Ad) The competition for K-12 private school admissions has gotten more and more competitive – and some schools are struggling to keep up. One key place to focus your digital marketing efforts is in video marketing – it’s so popular because it’s so effective.
This guide is here to help you create the effective private school video marketing strategy you need. Let’s get started!
According to the 2021 Vidyard Video in Business Report, the average education institution in 2020 created a stunning 433 videos – up 203% over 2019. And according to Cisco, video is anticipated to be 82% of all web traffic this year, up from 75% in 2017.
If your private school advertising strategy doesn’t include video at all, or it’s only a small fragment of your digital marketing plan, you’re probably falling behind. And with competition for students continuing to increase, your school can’t afford to ignore the power of school marketing videos.
Define the Goals of Your School’s Video Marketing Strategy
To begin building the right video marketing strategy for your private school, you need to define your goals clearly. Creating videos only because you see your competitors doing it will not be as effective as laying out what you want your videos to accomplish before you film and distribute them.
Some potential goals for your video marketing campaign could include:
- Increasing enrollment
- Increasing your conversion rate
- Building awareness of a new program or open house event
- Getting more engagement on your social media channels
- Building brand engagement through storytelling
Once you’ve defined your goal for the campaign, your messaging and content should all link back to that goal. Suppose you want to raise awareness of a new program, for example. In that case, your video content should focus on events about that program, and perhaps teachers discussing why it’s an exciting addition.
Targeting the Right Audience
The audience for your school marketing videos is also vital to determine before you begin creating them. Are you targeting the students who might be interested in attending your private school, or are you targeting their parents?
Parents are ultimately the ones who will invest in your private school – so target your content accordingly.
The messaging for each audience will be different, and where you distribute the videos may be as well, so you should determine it before you start creating videos.
Types of Videos for Your School
Once your goals are set, you can begin creating video content. Unsure where to start? These private school marketing video ideas might inspire you for your upcoming campaign.
Virtual Open Days
With open days and on-campus tours often canceled because of the pandemic and long-haul and international travel disrupted, creating compelling videos that replicate the open day experience is essential for schools.
Your school tour videos should be both engaging and informative. You can take students virtually into a classroom with a charismatic teacher, a popular student hangout, and around the school with a student guide, just as you would in-person.
Personalized Video Content
Creating one-size-fits-all videos isn’t always good enough to convert leads into enrollments these days – personalized videos are more effective and becoming the norm in digital marketing for schools. Personalized videos also have much higher open and click-through rates.
You can personalize videos for prospective parents and students based on your information about them. Some ideas for personalized school promotional videos include:
- Explainers about the application process
- Custom campus tours
- Explanations of the financial aid process
- Individual acceptance videos
Sample Course Content
Potential parents and students want to know what the courses they could take will look like before applying. Creating sample course videos that give them an idea of what a class will look like or what a semester will cover can be very appealing.
Livestream Events
One low-cost way to create more video content is to live-stream events you have already planned on your website and/or your social media channels. This strategy gives your events more exposure while showing potential students and their parents some of what they can expect to experience at your school if they are offered and accepted admission.
Student Alumni and Faculty Testimonials
Hearing from successful and proud alumni can help encourage your prospects to convert to enrollments, and the same applies to testimonials from long-time teachers and faculty at your school. What makes your school different and worth the price of admission? These testimonials can tell that story, as well as the testimonial video below.
Source: YouTube
The Importance of User-Generated Content
Out of those 433 videos the average education and public service institute created in 2020, 256 were user-generated. These videos are authentic and engaging, but they’re also low-cost and low-effort for your school to produce and share. Leveraging the videos your community is already creating can have a big pay-off.
Video Content Ideas for Private K-12 Schools
Many of the best school promotional videos come out of events or content you already have – it’s simply a matter of producing and strategically sharing them. Others you’ll need to purposefully create but will reap the rewards for your private school’s enrollment and engagement.
Overview of School
What should your prospects know about your school – the history, setting, courses, academic expectations, and more? Making a video that gives them an overview of what your school stands for and what sets you apart can increase your brand reputation and grow your enrollment funnel.
In the video below, The Gilbert School does a great job of giving viewers and prospective parents and students an overview of the school to increase awareness and, ultimately, enrollment.
Source: YouTube
Introduce Faculty, Staff, and Administrators
Getting to know the people who work at your school is another great use of school promotional videos. You can have interviews with faculty and staff who articulate the school’s values and administrators who can speak to the school’s mission and vision.
Classroom Updates
You can encourage retention and brand advocacy for current enrollees by sharing important and exciting classroom updates via video. They can also be a good way to show potential enrollees what life at your school looks like.
Field Trips
Making videos of field trips can give parents a sense of what life will look like for their kids on those special school days.
Extracurricular Events
The same goes for your extracurricular events, like competitions or sporting matches.
Behind the Scenes
Giving your viewers a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes at your school can make them feel more informed and connected.
School News Updates
What do parents and possible students want to know about what’s happening at your school? Share the news in a video instead of the regular newsletter.
Fundraisers
Do you hold fundraisers that are moving or exciting? Share the highlights from that event, like a speech, in video format on your social media channels or website.
A private high school in Texas did just that. They created a fundraiser video for their annual event.
Source: YouTube
Why Your School Shouldn’t Overlook Short Form Videos
While the average length of a video created by businesses in 2020 was six minutes, the majority (60%) of them were less than two minutes long.
Your viewers are more likely to make it to the end of the video if it’s shorter. It can also be shared on social media platforms like Instagram Reels and TikTok if it’s shorter, making short-form videos appealingly multi-purpose.
Marketing Your School’s Video Content
Marketing vs. Advertising Your Videos
Private school advertising and marketing are related but not identical – and your campaigns should reflect the difference.
Marketing is about identifying customer needs and meeting them, like posting video content on your website or as organic content on your social media platforms.
On the other hand, advertising is promoting your school through paid channels like social media or programmatic ads.
Website
Embedding videos on your website, like an open house day or campus tour, is key to your digital marketing plan. It helps visitors to your website, who are usually there looking for information, to learn more about what your school offers and what’s happening quickly.
Email Marketing
You can also enhance your marketing by embedding your videos into your email marketing, whether that’s an addition to your regular newsletters to parents or a nurture campaign for prospects.
Social Media
Everyone knows the power of social media by now. You can enhance your marketing by posting videos of behind-the-scenes life at school or your school overview as organic content.
And you can also pay for ads on social media sites to reach a wider audience, which is helpful if your goal is to increase brand awareness with a wider audience. The most popular social media platforms include:
YouTube
YouTube is a video search engine, meaning it’s a powerful way to increase your marketing and advertising reach. They offer multiple options for ads, including:
- In-stream ads: short ads that play before a video
- Discovery ads: ads that show up in search results or as a link at the bottom of a video
Programmatic Ads
Programmatic ads, which run on websites instead of social media platforms, can be highly targeted and have a lot of potential for private school advertising.
Video Marketing Tips Overview
Optimizing Your Videos
To ensure your videos are as successful as possible, be careful when creating them. You want them to look as good on the phone as on a desktop and to have captions and clear graphics so viewers can understand them even with the sound off.
Monitoring the Performance of Your Videos
And of course, once your video campaign is launched, monitor the results and make any needed adjustments, so they perform at their best.
Video Marketing Strategy for Schools: Key Takeaways
Video marketing should be a major component of any digital marketing strategy for private schools.
- Video is quickly overtaking other formats as a primary source of web traffic, and schools are creating lots of video content every day.
- Some of the best school promotional videos come from events or content you are already creating – be sure to share them as marketing or advertising campaigns to increase leverage.
- Knowing which platforms to use for your marketing and advertising efforts depends on the audience and goals for your campaign.
Want to know more about educational marketing and advertising?
Contact us to learn how Hearst Bay Area can help your school drive awareness or meet enrollment goals.
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