3 Ways to use social media to fill your schools’ admissions pipeline

Marketing independent schools is more challenging now than ever before. With parents feeling the pinch of rising costs of living and the highest interest rates since 2008, and schools facing higher operating costs and uncertainty around their VAT-exempt status, these are turbulent times.

Aside from the obvious economic factors, birth rates in the UK are steadily declining, so schools are now competing for students from a smaller pool. For your school to survive in this new and competitive landscape, you need a proactive, strategic and efficient way of marketing. Cue social media!

According to Smart Insights, 94.2% of internet users have at least one social media account. That’s a substantial slice of the population that you can reach in an unintrusive and low-cost way. It’s also easy to monitor your audience profile using social media, enabling you to adjust your strategy and maximise ROI.

But are you fully utilising social media marketing’s capabilities? Here are three ways to use social media to fill your admissions pipeline:

1.     Strategise your organic socials

As a marketer, you know the importance of identifying your target audience. Who’s following you on social media? Who do you want to follow you? What are their pain points and key values? Why would (or wouldn’t) they choose your school?

Ensure that everything you post is aligned with your school’s business strategy. Don’t just post to be ‘consistent’—post intentionally and strategically. To ensure your content supports your business strategy, define your key marketing themes and use these pillars to shape your content plan.

We know that most social media users’ attention spans are short, with platforms like Instagram and TikTok in particular prioritising punchy, bite-sized video content. Leverage these behaviours by ‘edu-taining’ your audience.

Finally, don’t forget a call to action which directs the consumer to your website or landing page, so you can feed them into your admissions pipeline, and make sure you’re monitoring your insights to track that socials-to-website journey.

2.     Make paid socials work for you

Resist the urge to pay to randomly boost an existing post! Before paying for an ad, consider exactly how best to use this part of your budget. Pinpoint a specific goal for your paid advertising and create this content accordingly.     

There are multiple approaches you can use here: you can opt for a consistent ‘always on’ brand campaign funnelling through to enquiries, centre around events, or focus on the recruitment year.

Whatever approach you take, ensure you have your target audience(s) in mind. You want the right people see your paid social and then make it easy for them to take the desired action.

Don’t forget to test, report and track to make sure your ads are paying their way and generating leads and admissions.

For advice on why your current ads might not be working, click here and for more guidance on how to use paid ads effectively for your school, check out our online course here. 

3.      Engage your community

HubSpot says ‘it's 6 to 7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing customer’. Statistics like that reinforce the importance of engagement, not only in social media marketing, but in retention marketing.

The ‘close friends’ list on stories is ideal for sharing content targeted to existing parents, and private parents-only Facebook groups are an easy way to share information and facilitate parent interaction.

Leverage the ‘social’ aspect of social media to its fullest and encourage engagement, not just between your school and parents, but between parents as well – urge them to ‘comment below’ or ‘wish the teams good luck’ to foster conversation and community within your parent following.

Need more help?

If you’re feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, don’t fret! Whether you need social media marketing training or done-for-you social media services, we are here to help. Get in touch today to start maximising your school’s social media marketing strategy.