I recently spoke with the communications coordinator at one of our wonderful public school districts on the East Coast. She mentioned that, in her busy district, the district leaders seem to have four main concerns throughout the year: starting in August, the district focuses on making sure everyone transitions smoothly back to school; next, the focus shifts to what needs to be accomplished over the course of the year; as soon as March rolls around, the district spends their time and energy in budget mode; and finally, just like that, it’s the end of the year, and the district is making sure everything is wrapped up for summer vacation.
Does that sound familiar? At times, it seems like we move from one focus to the next quickly, and with hardly a backwards glance.
Imagine it this way: every school year you work on constructing little outbuildings. You start your back-to-school building and once you finish, you move on to the next. You might have a website building, a parent-teacher conference building, an athletics building, etc. And by the end of the year, you’ve completed several little, separate structures that have served your purpose at different times over the course of the year.
Most schools operate this way, undertaking one project at a time. The problem with this approach is it leaves your outbuildings disconnected from the main house (your brand). So, what if your school was able to keep all your efforts throughout the year focused under one roof? This is what schools that successfully market themselves do—they build mansions.
They build these mansions every year, focused on their brand, by bringing together three main pillars—the school website, social media, and strategic communications. While most schools build these up as separate outbuildings, in fact, they should be providing the foundational structure for everything you build. Under one roof, these elements carry out your school marketing, strengthen your brand, and improve your public relations even as your focus switches to working on different rooms of your mansion throughout the year.
We’ve talked before about why school marketing is important, and we hope you’re already on board with the concept. Remember, marketing is the process we undertake to get our audiences to know, like, and trust us. So let’s take a look at why these three elements are so vital to your school or district’s foundation and how they can keep your marketing on track throughout the year regardless of your main focus.
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School Website
Let’s start with your school website—it is the cornerstone of your marketing; meaning, your website is the most important feature of your branding (what makes your school unique) and communications (your school stories). Websites are the main source of information about an organization, and that includes schools. As soon as someone accesses your website, you have a captive audience and an opportunity to share your school mission, culture, and, most importantly, your stories. Parents and the community will turn to your website to learn about your services, your programs, and your team. And once their student is enrolled, the website becomes a connection for home-school communications. So not only is your school website the center of your online presence, it is your main communications hub.
How does this apply as your main focuses shift over the course of the year? The rule of thumb is this: if it’s important, it needs to be on your website. Parents should be able to access everything from school policies to the lunch menu. If you’re in back-to-school mode, all relatable information should be accessible on the website, including class supply lists, pickup/drop off policies, office hours, meet-the-teacher night information, etc. If you’re creating buzz about the school budget and encouraging your audience to get out and support it, then your school website should be the main reference for the community.
Something you should already be focusing on each month is a newsletter. If you’re not distributing an electronic newsletter, we highly recommend you consider it. Papers rarely make it into the hands of parents, and, when they do, they don’t usually arrest a parent’s attention long enough to convey all the information you hope to. Distributing an electronic newsletter drives traffic to your website. Highlight the projects your school is focusing on in the upcoming month. Post news and stories as they happen throughout the month on your news page. Then in your newsletter, feature a section of “things you may have missed last month.”
By creating a system of posting news, stories, announcements, and events to your website and then using other methods of communication to drive traffic to it on your school website, you bolster your marketing efforts year-round. Not only is your website filled with useful information that makes your school look amazing, but you create an invaluable online presence that is an always-available resource for parents and the community; this is a big step in gaining your audience’s trust. Not only that, but your parents and community will appreciate having 24/7 access to information that is important to them.
In fact, because access to your school website is so important, your audience should be able to view it on any device. If your school website was built correctly, it is mobile-responsive. If it’s not mobile-responsive, it needs to be.
As administrators, you spend a lot of time on desktop computers or laptops, but parents are more likely to pull out their smartphones to access and check information. A 2016 study of how people use mobile devices, showed 83% of smartphone and tablet users use browser apps to access the Internet (source). Parents need to be able to verify information with the tools that are available to them. If a parent forgets what day early dismissal is, and they pull out their smartphone to check your school calendar but can’t see the calendar because your website isn’t set up to be responsive, they will be frustrated. And if the information they were searching for is need-to-know-now, their next step will be an irritated call to your front office. Your school marketing depends on your school website, so be sure you can reach your audience wherever they are.
Not only is a mobile-responsive site good for your public relationships, but a fully optimized mobile-responsive website is ranked higher by search engines. Why is that important to your school marketing? Well, the opposite is also true, if your school website isn’t responsive, you lose ranking. Higher ranking equals greater visibility. Google says 61% of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing—that means more phone calls to your front office.