How do School Marketers decide what to write on their advertising and collateral, such as billboards, flyers and magazine ads? So many school marketers struggle with copywriting that will appeal to parents. Today I’m going to give you four sources of inspiration so that you can get your copy right every time.
School Reviews
The first thing that you’ll want to do is look at your school’s reviews and your competitor’s schools on places like Google Maps and Facebook. When looking at these reviews, look at the emotive language parents use when describing how happy they are with a particular College. They will say things like “It’s such a caring environment”, “My child feels loved”, “My child loves going to school every day”, “They are inspired to learn”, and “They have developed a curiosity for learning.” Whatever language they use, is the language you should use in your copy. This helps you to speak to the needs of parents in their own words.
Parent Surveys
The next thing you can do to find out what are parents are looking for is to put together a survey for people that equired at your college but didn’t end up enroling. This is a complex survey to get out, and not everyone will reply, but it will provide you with key points to address on your tour bookings and sales copy.
Making this request for a survey quick with something like: “Thank you so much for your enquiry; we understand you’ve chosen another school. Do you mind just taking two minutes to answer a quick survey about your school choices?” In the survey, you can ask questions like “What are you looking for in a school?” or “What could we have done better as a school?” or “What are you looking for specifically in a school?”, and “What influenced your choice?”.
Online Forums
The next place to look at the language that parents are using is online forums. You can set up a Google Alert to tell you when a specific topic comes up as a new web page on Google. And you can set up an alert for your school name, or you can set up an alert for a specific topic. Find forums specifically where people are looking for recommendations of a school, and when you get parents that reply to those forums and say, “I’ve chosen school X, Y, Z, and this is why I feel it’s the best school for my child,” that will give you a lot of insight into why parents are choosing private schools and the type of language that you need to be using in your justification to select your school.
School Tours
Another great source of inspiration for copy is on school tours. If you are a marketing person in a school and you don’t do the school tours, I recommend that you take parents on a school tour every so often. Do one tour a month to keep your eyes on the ground so that you can know exactly what questions people are asking. It will keep you up to date and current with what’s going on.
Take note of the questions asked on a school tour, and address those questions in your marketing material and website. Many people will ask about your OP scores, subject areas, different classes that are offered and arrangements in the class. Please make a note of them, and address those questions on your website and collateral.
And remember.
When writing copy for flyers, brochures, and websites, do not write about your College all the time, but focus on your customer. Speak to the parents and children you’re going to be serving and let them know precisely how they will benefit from being in your college, and focus it on them instead of being a little bit stale and doing the typical, expected thing for the education sector.
Let me know if you have any questions on the Facebook group, Marketing Mastery for Schools; we’d love to have you in the group and actively participating and asking questions.
Questions regarding this article? Please email me at mara@robertsdigital.com.au
