There is a lot of talk surrounding the latest marketing trends for 2017; There are numerous blog and news articles whirling around on the web, predicting what will be big for the coming year and they provide a fantastic insight in to the areas you should be focusing on to ensure your brand keeps up to date with the latest marketing initiatives. However, it can sometimes be challenging to work out how these can translate for you and your brand, especially when your brand is a school.
We’re going to take you through some of the most popular predicated marketing trends for 2017 and discuss the ways we’ve been helping our clients to utilise these for their schools and academies.
Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality is a form of technology that has been around for a few years now but only really became well known with the emergence of the popular AR game Pokémon Go.
Essentially, augmented reality is a combination of the real world and virtual reality. Taking a real world environment and overlaying virtual reality to create an augmented view. AR is a fantastic concept and with correct use can really help a brand stand out in an increasingly competitive market.
How can this work for your school?
Augmented reality has been used by a number of schools who have incorporated it in to their printed marketing materials such as their prospectus brochure.
Images within their prospectus brochures, when scanned with a Smartphone, come to life! Whether that is a photograph of the Headteacher which suddenly becomes a 3D video as if he were there in the room, or blueprints to a new school building which then become a 3D Model of how it will look – the possibilities are endless.
Video Content
They say a picture is worth a thousand words – It is no surprise then that a video has the ability to convey a message that could only be relayed in a short novel! Video content is everywhere right now; you’ll see video clips all over Facebook and Twitter, being shared by millions of users.
Videos stand out in a digital world full of content and they’re a fantastic way to get your message across quickly, requiring minimal effort from the user. Recent statistics show that if you have video content on your website, on average, users will remain on your website for around 2 minutes longer than normal.
How can this work for your school?
There are various ways that your school can embrace video content! See our school video options here.
Take Kings Langley School for example; they incorporated a short video featuring a welcome from the Headteacher. Visitors to their website are much more likely to listen and take in the message, than reading the content to the right.
Another example is Barking Abbey School – The bottom of their website homepage shows a clip of video content which can be made full screen. The full video provides a great insight in to the school, the learning environment, the ethos and happy students – things which prospective parents wouldn’t usually see.
Interactive Content
Simply put, interactive content is just content that the reader can (you guessed it!)...interact with! Studies have shown that interactive content attracts more readers and has a higher engagement rate than readable content. This interactive content is deemed a more effective way of informing and entertaining readers and this is because as consumers we like to feel immersed; sharing inputs, views and opinions. Interactive content has many forms, but some common types include quizzes, opinion polls, questionnaires and info-graphics.
How can this work for your school?
The notion of content as a form of marketing has been on the rise over the last 3 years - this strategy pretty much rules the digital marketing world and isn’t set to change anytime soon. As a school, creating and sharing content to be read by both your current parents and prospective parents is a fantastic way of keeping them up to date on all the activities, school trips and latest news going on in the school. Parents feel included and more confident in the school – and by having this content on your website and social channels means it is easily accessible to them, even when they’re on the move! By creating pieces of interactive content, you can aim to create a higher parent readership and keep them engaged. Here are some of our suggestions:
Next time you release information on attendance figures or exam results, why not include them in a fun info graphic which has clickable areas to reveal outstanding figures.
When posting an article about the success of your latest parents evening, try including a gallery that parents could scroll through.
Writing up about the Y9 school trip? Why not add a survey or questionnaire for parents to fill in with feedback from their children?
You’ll not only engage the parents you’ll obtain some useful feedback.
Native Advertising
Native advertising is set to replace traditional print and digital advertising for 2017. Although this is a paid for marketing strategy, native advertising resembles editorial content and is written with a view to inform, help and entertain – allowing the “advertiser” to subliminally sell their business and their expertise. This form of advertising is much better for engagement than digital banner ads or print artwork.
How can this work for your school?
Print and digital advertising is extremely popular for Sixth Forms and Colleges who are looking to recruit more students and typically in the past they have been brightly coloured, heavily branded with a short sharp message. For 2017 we’re advising our schools to think about native advertising – focusing on topics of interest to both prospective pupils and parents. Well written content will highlight the schools strengths, showcase your school as experts and encourage students to pick your school for the right reasons.
At FSE Design we can help your school stay up to date with the latest marketing trends. Whether that is by offering advice on your plans for 2017 or by helping you create campaigns that will help you to stand out – give us a call on 01933 303520 to speak to one of the team.