Are you looking to get more student enrolments at your school?
Or maybe you’re planning for next year’s intake, but aren’t sure how to stand out from your competitors.
If so, then this article is written just for you.
Read on to discover how you can market your school in Malaysia effectively to parents today.
Planning A Digital Marketing Strategy for Your School
The Star Newspaper recorded over 287 international schools established in 2022 in Malaysia.
Fast forward to 2024, the number of international schools is expected to continue to grow rapidly.
Almost everyone calls themselves an international school these days. So, what makes you stand out from other schools?
Competition for your industry has never been fiercer.
To help you out, we’ve provided a step-by-step framework below to execute your marketing campaign.
Ready to get more enrolments and parent enquiries? Let’s dive in!
#1 – Define Your School’s Business Goals
First, you’ll need to know your business goals. This means knowing who your school’s target customer is.
This could refer to kindergarten students, primary or secondary school students.
If you’ve already figured that out, the next thing to look into is the strengths and weaknesses of your existing marketing team.
For example, your marketing team’s strength could lie in traditional marketing: producing brochures, attractive billboards, catchy radio ads and so on.
But maybe your team is lacking skills in the digital area.
So, you’ll need to begin thinking about how to establish a strong digital presence in the online world as well, if you already haven’t.
Lastly, consider the launch date of your marketing campaign.
Most international schools start their first term in September. As such, it’s best to plan your marketing strategy at least 6 – 8 months before that.
Always make sure to have weekly check-ins with your marketing team to ensure you’re all on the same page.
If this all sounds too much to execute, you can consider outsourcing your marketing campaign to an agency that offers digital marketing services in KL.
Alternatively, you can also consider purchasing online courses to upskill your team’s digital skills internally.
#2 – Understanding Your Target Audience
Earlier, we talked about knowing your target audience in Point 1.
But knowing them isn’t enough.
You’ll also need to understand them inside and out. This means understanding their:
- pain points
- behaviour
- location
- psychographic
- digital platforms they commonly use
By identifying the points in detail, you will be able to create a customer persona – i.e. your ideal target customer.
Example of A Customer Persona:
Let’s pretend you want to target people like Amy Lim, a mother in her mid to late 30s living near KLCC.
Amy is a parent with big dreams. She wants her son to become an engineer, and converses with him in Mandarin as their first language.
Applying the knowledge above, your customer persona of Amy would look like this:
- Pain Point: Amy’s biggest pain point is finding an international school that can help her son master English proficiently.
- Behaviour: She is likely aware of the trends in the education industry such as STEM, because she wants her son to become an engineer someday.
- Location: Amy lives near KLCC. There are lots of electronic billboards there. Maybe you can consider using it as a marketing tactic for your school.
- Commonly-used digital platforms: Parents like Amy are likely to use Facebook, Instagram and possibly TikTok (these are common platforms for parents in their late 30s).
Once you’ve created a customer persona, you’ll need to craft an irresistible USP to hook them in.
This brings us to our next point.
#3 – Attract Your Audience with An Irresistible USP
Your USP is what makes you stand out from the competition.
Price, location, high-quality education, or anything that can be easily copied by your competitors is not a USP.
Your USP has to be undeniably unique!
To help you out, here are some ideas to help you define your school’s USP:
- Is your school academically strong in STEM subjects?
- If your school is strong in such subjects, then you would stand a good chance of attracting parents like Amy.
- As mentioned earlier, Amy wants her son to become an engineer someday.
- As such, your school can create a marketing angle that explains how it benefits her son’s future career in engineering.
- Does your school have many foreign students who come from English-speaking countries?
- This could be your USP if your school has many students across the world such as the UK, Canada, USA, New Zealand or Singapore.
- Parents like Amy might be attracted to your school because you can market your USP to resolve her pain points.
- That is to help her son upskill his English skills much faster when surrounded by a large community of English-speaking students.
- Does your school have a consistent record of scoring straight As compared to other international schools?
- Parents like Amy who want their children to become engineers would need to score good grades in their exams.
- So, advertising your school’s straight As would attract a lot of parents like Amy who have high ambitions for their children.
- If your school has consistently achieved this, then advertise your results to parents like Amy who focus a lot on academic performance.
- What special facilities do you have that other schools don’t?
- These facilities could include advanced science laboratories, swimming pools, sports complexes, art theatres and more.
- Special facilities can position your school as a learning institution that supports a holistic educational environment, not just purely on academics alone.
- For example, many international schools in Malaysia don’t have a theatre specifically built for arts and drama.
- If your school has an art theatre, you can promote that in your offline or digital ads.
#4 – Decide What Digital Marketing Tactics to Focus On
Throughout the years, our agency, Xedea, has worked with over 20 schools, universities and educational institutions combined.
Below are some battle-tested digital marketing tactics that we used to make all our client’s campaigns a success:
SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
- Advertising your ad on Google helps you appear on the very 1st position of the results page, making your brand visible to all searchers.
- SEM is a very useful tactic to target parents who are still at the research stage, and are still shortlisting the best schools for their kids.
Paid Social (Ads)
- Millennial parents (1981 – 1996) are more tech-savvy than the older generation of parents.
- This younger generation of parents is more likely to use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and possibly TikTok as well.
- To increase brand awareness for your school, you can run YouTube video ads 5 – 7 months before the start of the intake to start your campaign.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
- SEO is sustainable (not costly) for schools to run their campaigns in the long-run.
- The reason is because you do not need to pay Google to advertise your ads, as you are earning visibility on the search results page organically.
- As such, the general cost of running this marketing tactic is affordable, yet effective for most schools in the long-run.
- Case Study: Within the first 3 months, we’ve helped our client, Mutiara International Grammar School (MIGS), achieve 50% of keywords ranked on the 1st page of Google.
- Curious to learn how we did it for them? Click here to contact us today, and our consultant will reach out to you with some free advice to grow your school today.
- We’re willing to advise, even if you decide not to come on-board with us. 😉
Organic Social Media
- Creating a collection of social media posts for your school helps to showcase your culture, philosophy and values to the parents.
- This will help to garner the parent’s interest in your school online, even if they do not visit your institution in person.
- Education is a very people-oriented business, and parents want to be able to see and learn as much about your institution as possible.
- You can also craft a monthly social calendar to promote any special offers or events at your school as well, such as Sports Day, World Book Day and more.
Once you’ve decided on a few digital marketing tactics above, it’s now time to start the execution process.
To take your marketing to the next level, consider elevating your branding with Kinetic, a leading creative branding and advertising agency in KL.
#5 – Consistently Benchmark Your Marketing Results with Your Competitors
After the marketing tactics have been executed, you can begin tracking your results on a monthly basis.
Tracking the results for a school is unlike regular businesses such as those in finance, law, accounting, etc.
This is because a school gains most of its profits during seasonal periods like: new intakes or student admissions.
That’s why it is worth saving a year-over-year report for your efforts in SEM, SEO and social media to compare the results with your competitors over time.
Get Excellent Digital Marketing Services Today!
At Xedea, our entire digital marketing team possesses over 16 years of experience in the education industry.
To date, we have implemented numerous extensive campaigns for our clients such as: international schools, kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools, and even universities!
If you’re interested in learning how we can help your school in Malaysia, you can reach us here to get a free consultation.
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