The arrival of September comes hand in hand with the famous return to routine and back to school, there are many parents who every year look for the ideal school for their children, which is a great opportunity for marketing and advertising agencies but… what influence does digital advertising really have when it comes to choosing a school?
The educational landscape has changed significantly in recent years, while a few years ago it was common to see long queues at the doors of private and state-subsidised schools to get a place, the trend has changed and now it is the schools that have to make an effort to capture the attention of their potential students to position themselves as the best educational option.
It is because of this change in trend that advertising for schools and colleges is becoming more and more important and, taking into account the daily use of digital platforms, digital advertising is becoming more and more important when it comes to publicising and selecting a school.
Advertising strategies for the education sector
Before starting to develop an advertising strategy for the education sector, it should be noted that the sales funnel for this type of product is a little different than usual. Before the final purchase, it is very common to carry out an exhaustive analysis of the centre, to look for contrasted information so that, once the purchase decision has been made, it has been carefully studied and meditated. For this reason, the usual advertising strategies do not fit and we must propose alternatives that adapt to the usual purchasing pattern.
When developing a correct digital plan, we must bear in mind that we are targeting two different audiences equally, on the one hand, parents and on the other, pupils, so we must develop messages that are in line but adapted to each of the profiles.
As we have explained, the choice of study centre involves a process of analysis and research, so it is advisable that the advertising actions we carry out are focused on providing this information, or at least, to redirect correctly to it.
In this highly saturated educational market, differentiation is key to success against competitors: capturing the happiness of students, community spirit and all the elements that help us to create a digital storytelling capable of capturing the attention of the target audience.
Another of the key points for this type of product is loyalty, we must ensure that the whole experience is satisfactory enough to repeat the following year and, above all, to recommend the study centre, as word of mouth continues to be a key part of educational marketing.
As we can see, this type of strategy is out of the usual advertising patterns, which implies new challenges that agencies must take on if they want to have a niche in the education sector.
