What is omnichannel marketing and why does it matter for your school?
Introduction
If you’ve ever worked in marketing, it’s likely you would’ve heard the word ‘omnichannel’ thrown around the office before. In the world of corporate marketing and advertising, with big budgets and even bigger personalities, the concept of omnichannel marketing is absolutely sacrosanct, however in school and education marketing, in our experience we’ve found that it is a totally under-appreciated and under-utilised tool.
In this article, we wanted to bring our many years of experience in marketing and education to give a context-relevant explanation of omnichannel marketing, and give you an insight on how you can best utilise this for your school marketing and admissions efforts.
What is omnichannel marketing?
Omnichannel marketing is a foundation of modern marketing, bridging the gap between online and offline customer touch points. Where previously, us marketers would separate our online and physical marketing efforts, omnichannel marketing suggests mixing both together in a holistic strategy. Its primary focus is on creating a seamless brand experience for customers across all of your channels, from social media posts, to digital apps and physical merchandising.
This all-encompassing method means understanding the full customer journey, and in our case, this entails understanding every touchpoint that a prospective parent goes through when encountering your school. From the first click onto your school website, to the moment their child first steps into the campus, every moment they interact with your school must be keenly understood.
This can be a lot of work, particularly for small in-house marketing and admissions teams in schools. Because of this, we offer to many of our partners our expertise in marketing consulting, building long-term omnichannel strategies and helping them to generate online and offline content to support this.
How can schools use omnichannel marketing?
So, to be specific, how can you use omnichannel marketing for your school? Well, it begins and ends with creating a content ecosystem. Every touchpoint, be it through your website, or a virtual tour, or a physical visit to the school, but seamlessly blend together. This means that each channel supports one-another, creating a smooth journey for prospective parents. All of your content on these channels must be fully branded, and have the same distinct style that is unique to your school, so there is no difference across channels.
When we work with schools on omnichannel campaigns and content production, we always build content that complements each other, with the same style, feel and branding, no matter what the platform or channel. This is the key to a seamless experience for prospective families.
For example, a virtual tour of your school campus is powerful on its own, but it is only one single step in a series of prospective family touchpoints that need to work in conjunction. Many of our school partners opt to utilise their newsletters and website to funnel prospective families into their virtual campus tour, and place our videography within their tour, creating a call to action to visit the school in person. In this way, we bridge videography and virtual tour content seamlessly, and from this we can encourage physical interaction with the school.
Our virtual tours can also be experienced in VR, either at your school or in a prospective families’ home, and for this we provide VR goggles that are branded to your school, maintaining the same style and consistency that allows for a seamless experience. Physical branding then interacts with virtual experiences and videography all at once, giving prospective families total immersion into your school brand - quite impressive! Many of our partner schools tell us that moments like these turn curious families into enthusiastic enrolments, and that’s all thanks to the power of omnichannel marketing!
The key to omnichannel marketing for private schools
If you can take one thing from this blog, and bring it into your school marketing team, it’s to never think of your prospective admissions touchpoints in isolation. Whether online or offline, every channel should complement and support each other, creating an ecosystem that immerses prospective students in your school, guiding them from one platform to the next, until they are physically in your school with a full backpack and a grin on their face.
Omnichannel marketing can be a powerful tool for your school, and we are very experienced in applying it for many of our partner schools all over the world. If you’d like to learn more about omnichannel marketing, and how it can benefit your school, then please don’t hesitate to reach out! Our school marketing experts are always available, so you can contact us anytime using our website contact form, or calling us on +44 20 34 55 22 41.
