Inbound marketing
As an architectural messenger, Swoop Studios serves as an integrated Digital Marketing Specialist for Independent Schools. We build businesses out of schools by working with their head person and leaders to raise communication and branding awareness.
Our 12-month Inbound Marketing programme is built to help independent schools turn their visitors into potential parents who become a part of the school’s community and who in turn, promote the school to others. This is an effective way of marketing your school as a brand because, Inbound marketing help schools become more visible and easier to find by potential families (parents & students) who may be seeking the services they offer. Our strategy focuses mainly on helping schools attract the ‘specific type’ of clients/customers they are looking for, converting them into a ‘Lead’ and ultimately, delivering them to you when they are ready to do business (Enrolment)
What does “converting visitors into potential parents” mean? Well, it is pretty much obvious that times have changed and continues to do so. The internet is now the number one source for referencing on just about anything at all. According to the UK Online Measurement company (UKOM), last year, the average UK surfer spends 22 hours and 15 minutes on the net each month, with the majority of that time spent on social networks or blogs. With these findings, you begin to see that it is time to change the way your school operates in the market place. This is the perfect time to create quality content for your school site, to help it get found in online searches and attract the right audience. Publishing content that intelligently aligns itself with the needs of prospective parents and students will attract inbound traffic to your school, traffic that you can then convert into actual clients.
The inbound Marketing Experience with Swoop Studios.
Building and managing an entire Inbound Marketing Program is indeed a very difficult and sometimes intimidating task. It can be complex and for the most part, largely technical, but this is where our years of expertise comes in. Our team at Swoop Studios are experienced in Inbound Marketing and Branding, and have deep insight into the rise and power of education in the digital world. Our goal therefore, is to make the whole process as simple as possible for schools and the level of perfection we aim to achieve for schools, mean that we are particularly meticulous about the processes we go through with you. We phase each stage from the minute beginning details through to full development before continuing on to the next. Below are what to expect from us at each phase.
Phase 1. Framework Planning.
Prior to embarking on your school’s inbound marketing program, we first of all, work together with your school to plan the framework. This generally involves a series of workshops between the key team members of your institution and Swoop Studios experts. It includes a four, one hour sessions to discuss key areas, including;
-Buyer Persona Development,
-Goal setting and Planning,
-Content and event calendar Development.
Phase one is where we encourage your school to tell us what their aspirations and expected outcomes are. This is how we piece together, the skeleton of the body of your Marketing Program. Nothing is too much or too insignificant. Our job here is to listen and help bring your vision to life.
Phase 2. Framework Building
Phase two is where we set up your building blocks. Framework building involves creating customised content that will attract the right type of audience to your website. This is done through circulation of newsletters, white paper, eBooks, podcasts and webinars.
These are reasons why phase one is very important, to help us help you create a specific marketing plan with quality contents that will work especially for you.
Phase 3. Replicate
Now that we have your building blocks set in place, we begin to use contents that have been ‘specifically’ designed for you, to appeal to prospective parents and staff members. This will attract and ultimately, keep them coming back for more. We also work on the premise that once we impress your prospects and keep them, it is most likely that they in turn, will do a word-of-mouth-advertisement for your school by telling others about their positive experiences, thereby replicating the usefulness and impact of your content upon new prospects, over and over.
Here are TEN ways Inbound Marketing program can BENEFIT your school.
- Inbound Marketing is a very clear and measurable tool. As a program driven by a results incentive, it provides the best direction for your school’s future.
- At Swoop Studios, our Inbound Marketing program is customised to suit each individual parent or visitor to your school’s site.
- Inbound Marketing is an overall integrated system that seamlessly combines social media, marketing automation, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), email marketing and many more.
- It also provides Analytics to help make smart marketing investments.
- With the way our services work, our Inbound Marketing Program means that your client /customers searching days are over, because the clients will come to you instead. The program cuts down (and in most cases, eliminate) traditional stumbling blocks like time and availability of resources.
- By using the Inbound Marketing tool, you get to decide who you wish to attract by the quality, relevance and specific target of your content.
- The above shows you that Inbound Marketing offers a better way to target and attract prospective parents.
- It costs less than Outbound Marketing. (See Hubspot for report)
- Inbound Marketing is an investment, not an on-going expense.
- Last but by no means least benefit to you is; the fact that we at Swoop Studios have a very deep insight into education in the digital space means that we understand how to predict and plan for the future of your school and its long term success.
The BIG Question: IS INBOUND MARKETING FOR YOU?
If you are still wondering if inbound marketing is for you (or your school), see the summarised pointers below.
First of all, it is important to remember that Inbound Marketing can achieve a lot more with a lot less money, by allowing you to lower your cost per lead. (According to Hubspot report, this can be up to a whopping 62%). This means better results for less money and it focuses on three main elements to help attract your audience:
1. High Quality Content
2. Search Engine Optimisation
3. Social Media.
Implementing an inbound marketing campaign with Swoop Studios will;
1. Make you more accessible and easily found in online searches by the right kind of visitors.
2. Show you how to convert more visitors into leads.
3. Give you tools and the aid you need to close those leads efficiently.
4. Help you make smart marketing investments by providing Analytics.
Then there are the 3 specific and fail safe ways that inbound marketing offers a distinct advantage over outbound marketing:
1. It Cost less than outbound Marketing.
2. It offers better targeting of prospective parents.
By focusing on branding the core values of your school, so that it can target and monitor prospective parents with tools that tells you how well your marketing efforts are performing.
3. It is not an on-going expense, but an investment.
Once you take that leap and invest in an inbound marketing campaign, the rewards become immeasurable over time. You do not need to keep spending.
From attracting visitors to closing customers, you can see that with all of the above, the experts at Swoop Studios make your work life less of a stress, give you more control as well as a tailor-made inbound marketing strategy that actually works for you!
To discover if an Inbound Marketing Program is right for your school, contact Swoop Studios on +44 (0) 20 77009999 for a free 20 minute consultation or visit www.swoopstudios.co.uk/schools
*information Source: Hubspot 2011
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