Digital Marketing Checklist for Schools (K-12)
Evaluating the “Back to school” readiness of primary and secondary schools from a digital marketing standpoint.
August is “back to school” time in Switzerland and all private and public schools start preparing for the students' return after the summer holidays.
School teams are buzzing with excitement all the while spinning plates to take all the needed preparatory measures. School maintenance and cleaning is getting done, reentrance and orientation events are being finalized, timetables are getting set and all facilities are getting that “fresh paint” look. The schools are getting ready to welcome (back) its students, faculty members and all the rest of the school staff.
So isn’t it a good time for a digital marketing audit too? The last couple of years, throughout the pandemic, have been strenuous for the schools - and that is an understatement for the educational institutions who relied heavily on non digitized operations. The digital and marketing strategy overall - and everything else in between, needed to level up, adapt and make the transition to the new normal for schools.
Drawn from our own experience in digital, combined with the extended professional engagement within the education industry, we put together a comprehensive digital marketing checklist. Going through each point, one by one, will help your school (elementary, middle and/or high school) navigate through the ins and outs of digital marketing and make sure all the right foundations are in place.
Digital Marketing Checklist for schools and education institutions
(The checklist can be downloaded as pdf below.)
☐ Our school website is designed mobile-first, it loads fast and navigating through is intuitive.
☐ The content on our school’s website highlights and illustrates our school’s culture - browsing through the website, both parents and students can get a real glimpse and taste of the “student life” on campus.
☐ All relevant school information is present on the website and organized in a way that prioritizes clear and efficient communication with the parents.
☐ Coherence and alignment are the overarching principles across all school’s online (and offline) presence. Content, messaging and branding are consistent across the board: website, social media profiles, school listing on various other websites, advertising, print materials, school brochures, etc.
☐ We know our audience - we have also done a brand persona exercise. We know “who” they are and what is their online behavior hence we know what channels we need to be present on to reach them.
☐ We have defined our marketing budget (with an integrated approach across online and offline) and we have allocated for online a portion aligned to the expectations we have from it (these have been clearly defined and translated into objectives).
☐ Our content strategy, placing families and their needs at its core, is supporting our digital marketing objectives We cover a wide range of channels and formats aiming to inspire parents while informing and supporting them along the enrollment journey.
☐ When people are looking for schools via the main search engines (inserting search queries that are relevant for our school, for the programs it offers, for its location), our school is well represented across the search engine results pages. The organic (SEO) and paid search engine marketing strategies are working in sync.
☐ Our school’s social media strategy has been defined and aligned with the overall marketing strategy, therefore the editorial plan and the social media advertising campaigns are optimized towards reaching clear objectives and constantly evaluated against meaningful KPIs.
☐ We collect, connect, enrich and leverage data to get valuable insights (that we act also upon!) and to make better informed decisions and forecasts. From website analytics, campaign tracking and lead engagement all the way to securing a first payment, our teams can rely on and access all the rich data we have in order to maintain a value adding and meaningful conversation with the families.
☐ Our school’s digital presence opens several communication channels for parents: website forms, material downloads, phone numbers and chatting options. We want to make it very easy for families to reach out to our school for inquiries. We do not ask in advance for more information than what we need to know.
☐ Our extended team has recently mapped out a family’s journey with our school from the 1st contact all the way to the moment we welcome the child on campus. The user experience overall is as smooth as possible and we know our pain points while we have identified opportunities for improvement along every stage of the recruitment and enrollment process.
☐ Our marketing and sales team has focused its resources - human capital and technology stack, based on the user journey. Our admission consultants and enrollment coordinators are focused around the key moments that require human and face to face interactions while the rest of the processes are designed with families in mind but empowered by technology via automated but personalized processes.
☐ We do have a digitalized feedback form and a family satisfaction questionnaire in place. We run such surveys at least once per year and we take the results seriously, using the input received to improve our school’s digital and offline operations, to reduce student churn and to keep the retention rates high.
☐ We do have a value adding loyalty/referral program for our enrolled families and we do employ marketing automation for its execution. Marketing automation - is not foreign to us.
☐ We do have comprehensive and insightful reporting that monitors all relevant marketing and sales KPIs for our school, from those specific to lead generation and recruitment, to enrollment and lifetime value indicators. Our team and all school stakeholders understand clearly such reports and we are all planning ahead keeping our numbers in mind.
☐ Our digital marketing planning is dynamic - we forecast, plan and allocate resources and budgets dynamically and based on results. Nothing is set in stone but rather modular and in constant adaptation and continuous improvement.
Having been part of them ourselves, we know how busy admissions and marketing teams can get - family prospecting, applications and enrollment are the top priorities for the school team year round. Higher education institutions have embraced digital practices and employed technology in their day to day flows quite early on, but not the same can be said about most primary and secondary schools. Naturally keener on personal contact, face to face meetings and actual school visits, the international K-12 schools have made less progress in terms of digitalization.
All the while, digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving and keeping up with the latest channels, algorithm updates and the ever growing insights made available can be overwhelming even for schools which have placed digital at the core of their strategy earlier on.
So, going through this checklist list and digging deeper into each point will help schools and education institutions direct their digital marketing efforts, develop further their digital presence and digital capabilities and roll out a more efficient and effective digital strategy. While quite comprehensive, the digital marketing checklist for schools that we propose in this article is surely not exhaustive but…
Is the answer to all (or to most) of the points on the list a resounding yes / confirmed / done? Then you are well off on your digital (marketing) journey. Give your digital team a pat on the back and keep it up!
There’s a lot of no / nope / no idea? Or do you feel you might be a bit out of shape and out of date from a digital standpoint? It is then time to level up and we would be glad to help via our digital marketing for schools offering, tailored for the education sector.
About Journee - Digital at Ease
Founded by two digital marketing professionals with extensive international experience, Journee GmbH is a female owned digital marketing and technology boutique consultancy.
Education is a darling among all industries in which the founders have worked and accumulated vast international experience across all facets of digital marketing and digital technology.