Digital Marketing for Schools:
10 Strategies Every Education Marketer Should Know

Create Engaging Social Media Campaigns

Organic social content

Social media platforms are the pulse of communication, with the average person using 6.7 social networks a month. Digital marketing for schools is no exception. Prospective parents and carers are looking for an authentic glimpse into what school life is really like behind the scenes. For private schools, creating engaging content can significantly enhance visibility and brand awareness.

Share meaningful stories, student achievements, and behind-the-scenes glimpses to build a strong online community. Consider platforms like Instagram and Facebook, where visual content thrives. Use stories, reels, and live sessions to engage students and parents alike!

Social media management tools

Whether you're starting out with social media marketing or already have a strong presence, it's important to stay organised. Maintaining a regular cadence on your channels shows users and algorithms alike, that the content is fresh and current.

Using a social planning tool such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social can help streamline things. They can help by planning out your social calendar, centralizing community management, and pushing content across multiple channels.

Try and use engaging reels and video content where possible. If you're struggling to produce more content, take some time to engage the wider community: 

• Speak to faculty leads and get the academic staff involved in providing insights.
• Involve current pupils in your social media marketing strategy. This is especially relevant when attracting 6th form pupils, as they'll often be more involved in the decision-making process.
• Consider inviting current pupils to produce UGC (user-generated content) in competitions. Earned media like this will help build trust and authenticity, and is playing an increasingly important role in AI search results.

Paid Social Media Advertising

Besides being a great tool for authentic brand storytelling, social media is a great place to run ads. Arguably, paid social advertising is such a robust tactic, that should form a part of almost any school's marketing strategy.

Whether you're looking to target fresh demographics or boost attendance at your upcoming open day, social ads typically represent a more cost-effective ad spend. Whilst search ads have the advantage of user intent (i.e., capturing attention when someone is specifically searching for you), social ads have a much lower cost-per-click.

They also have unique advantages in audience targeting, and allow you to serve ads where the user spends most of their time! 

Here are some useful hacks if you're not sure where to start: 

• If you've never run ads and are short on time, a quick way to win visibility is to take your top-performing posts and boost them. It allows you to repurpose your already engaging content and amplify its reach. 
• If you have a little more time on your hands, then aim for video ads, particularly in portrait formats, which perform best on Meta and other platforms. 
• Take a little time to set up your conversion tracking so you can effectively track and test your results. Utilize the Meta pixel for more accurate reporting and to leverage remarketing audiences.

If you need advice or support running the social media marketing campaigns for your school, reach out to our friendly team, who would be happy to help. 

Level Up Your Email Marketing

Email marketing remains one of the most effective communication strategies for schools. But it's important to personalize your emails for the best results.

Segment your audience, breaking it down into at least the three major segments (i.e., parents, students, and alumni). If you can, break it down into further meaningful personas, too. 

Next, use an email marketing tool to create email workflows. Email workflows are automations that get triggered by specific actions. For example, you might use a prospectus request on your website as a trigger, which then initiates a follow-up email a few days later, inviting a prospective parent to a personal tour. 

These email worflows (also referred to as email drip campaigns) can save you a huge amount of time whilst improving your schools touchpoints with prospective and existing communities alike. Use your email drip campaigns for various initiatives like: 

• Nurturing prospective inquiries to increase student enrollment
• Promoting and sending reminders for an upcoming event
• Onboarding newly enrolled families

Once you find your feet with email marketing, start optimizing your campaigns by testing things like subject lines and personalizations. Emails with personalized subject lines have a 26% higher chance of being opened.

There are plenty of inexpensive tools to get you started with email marketing. Here are some of our favourites:

• Mailchimp
• Campaign Monitor
• Hubspot

For tech-savvy schools who want even more personalization options and data on prospective families, a tool like AMAIS allows for advanced features. 

Audit Your School Website

Your school website is the digital front door to your institution. And a core component of the digital marketing strategy for any private school.

Conduct a thorough audit to ensure its user experience is seamless.

The site should be:

• Fully responsive, paying particular attention to mobile-friendliness
• Content should be up to date, incorporating rich media where possible
• The site should have a clear and intuitive navigation
• Check if your site performance adheres to core web vitals standards. If not, you can explore whether your images are compressed, are using a CDN (content delivery network), and are caching content as appropriate.

If you don't already closely monitor traffic to your website, consider leveraging tools like Google Analytics to track your website's performance and make data-driven improvements.

To conduct a technical and SEO audit, either consult an SEO specialist agency or use specialist tools.  SEMRush and Screaming Frog are great tools to crawl your website with, and can help identify key issues for you. 

If your website needs a complete overhaul, be sure to find a provider who:

• Leverages the latest technologies
• Allows you to seamlessly personalize content
• Offers useful integrations to complement your tech stack
• Produce an engaging, responsive design, unique to your school

Learn more about UBIQ websites

Digital Advertising Campaigns

Digital advertising enables schools to reach prospective students and parents beyond their immediate communities. By leveraging pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns and display ads, schools can promote programs, highlight events, and drive targeted traffic to their websites.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC platforms, such as Google Ads, allow schools to appear at the top of search results when families search for relevant educational terms. With PPC, you only pay when someone clicks your ad, making it a cost-effective way to attract interested families. Paid search ads typically allow you to reach BOF (bottom of funnel) users who are ready to take action. 

If you're new to ads, and are thinking about tackling campaigns in-house, here are some top tips to get you started:

1. Choose keywords that reflect your school’s unique offerings.
2. Set clear goals—such as increasing open house registrations or inquiries.
3. Monitor and adjust bids to maximize your return on investment.
4. It's fine to start out with broad match keywords while you gather data. But be sure to refine your campaigns over time, with a combination of phrase and exact match. 
5. As your campaigns gain traction, apply negative keywords to keep relevancy high and avoid wasted adspend.

Display Advertising for Broader Reach

Display ads use images and banners to capture attention on websites, apps, and YouTube. Complementing your search campaigns with display ads is a great way to extend your reach. Not only will you likely see an improved CPC and impression share for your campaigns, but they're also an opportunity for brand storytelling.

These ads are perfect for raising awareness for school events, new programs, or enrollment deadlines. Here are our top tips to get started

• Use eye-catching visuals and concise messaging tailored to parents and students.
• Target ads geographically to reach families in your area.
• Experiment with retargeting to re-engage visitors who have previously explored your school’s website.
• Use various ad formats and creative assets.
• Don't forget to track your campaigns closely. a/b test where possible and keep pivoting.

Measuring Success and Optimizing Campaigns

Regularly review ad performance metrics—such as click-through rates and conversions—to identify what’s working. Adjust ad copy, visuals, and targeting settings to improve results and ensure your advertising budget delivers maximum impact.

Are you curious about how to optimize campaigns? Check out how we've propelled The Walker School's enrollments by 14% through strategic ad optimizations. 

Book a free PPC consultation

Influencer Marketing & Alumni Success Stories

Influencer marketing is a powerful digital marketing tool in the commercial world. But it is also a powerful tactic for attracting prospective families. 

User-generated authentic content from micro-influencers can be a powerful way to extend that brand story. UGC is also becoming increasingly important for visibility in AI results.

To get started, you'll need to build a little black book of your school's biggest advocates. Creating a matrix of potential partners is a great place to start. Think about various criteria such as: 

• Notability: Do they have large social followings or fame/influence 
• Experience of the school: Do you need a breadth of pupils who are, say, boarders/non-boarders, or have a focus on athletics? Existing pupils vs Alumni etc.,

Once you reach out to some potential candidates, it's a great idea to understand what level of support they're willing to provide. This will help you map out the types of content you want to produce. Som successful use cases include: 

Alumni success stories

Videos, webpages, and guest posts on their experience at the school as well as what they've gone on to achieve. If your alumni are also willing ambassadors for the school, check if they're open to a more committed partnership. Perhaps they're willing to act as micro-influencers for your school, sharing posts on social media with stories or video snippets.

Testimonials

Short testimonials sprinkled through various assets are a great social proof of your school's values and outcomes. Highlighting testimonials from graduates who achieved significant milestones and can demonstrate the quality of education and opportunities your school offers.  Often these can be repurposed from review sites like Niche.com (see more about reviews in the next section). 

POV video content & UGC

'Day in the life of' or other user-generated content pieces as part of a series can be a really powerful boost on social media, creating shareable, viral-worthy content that extends your reach. It's also the perfect way to drive demand from prospective pupils themselves. 

Whatever approach you take, try to remember to track your efforts with UTMs and Pixels. And use Call to actions to keep user journey's going. It also shares your school values in niches that are otherwise hard to reach. 

Content Marketing: Write and Maintain a Blog

Content marketing is a crucial pillar in successful digital marketing for schools. Maintaining your websites blog is an excellent way to:

• showcase expertise,
• educate the top and middle of funnel users,
• and enhance your SEO efforts.

When your content aligns with your keyword strategy and matches your user intent, you'll see incredible results.

Write insightful blog posts on educational trends, parenting tips, and school updates. Engage guest writers, such as teachers and alumni, to add diverse perspectives.

Before starting, it's important to plan out your strategic approach. Here are some helpful prompts:

• What publishing cadence can you maintain?
• What sort of articles will be produced?
• Who are they targeting? 
• Who will be writing them?
• What will the editing process look like?

Once you have a comprehensive piece of content - don't forget to naturally weave in relevant keywords, and complete your on-page optimisations before publishing. 

Bonus: Review Your Brand Messaging

Your school’s brand messaging is at the heart of how families perceive and remember you.

First impressions count, and it’s not enough to simply have a logo or a catchy slogan. Your messaging should consistently communicate your school’s values, vision, and unique strengths across every touchpoint, including online experiences.

Tone of voice

Of course, naming conventions need to be uniform across all platforms. But besides that, take the time to review your brand messaging across websites, social media profiles, newsletters, and admissions materials. Is your tone of voice clear, modern, and reflective of what makes your school distinct? If not, it may be time for a content audit. 

Visual identity

Your brand identity needs to align with the values of your school. Images and graphics should represent a strong brand message that builds recognition, and fosters trust and emotional connection with your audience.

Audit your current communications for consistency in tone, language, and visual identity. If your messaging feels outdated or disconnected from your school’s current direction, consider a refresh that better resonates with today’s families.

Remember, effective brand messaging helps prospective parents and students quickly understand what your school stands for—and why it’s the right choice for them.