Digital marketing is essential in today’s educational landscape, transforming how multi-academy trusts communicate and engage with their audiences. As more families turn to online resources to make educational decisions, having a robust digital presence is key.

This article will delve into seven critical digital marketing strategies tailored for multi-academy trusts. Each marketing strategy is designed to boost visibility and significantly enhance enrolment and community interaction.

Building an Engaging, User-Friendly Website

A website acts as the digital face of any multi-academy trust. A multi-academy trust website must be designed to be user-friendly and accessible on all devices, including smartphones. An intuitive, easy-to-navigate site ensures that parents, students, and staff can find the information they need quickly and effortlessly. This accessibility not only enhances the user experience but also supports better engagement with your trust’s educational offerings and community initiatives.

Implementing Effective SEO Strategies

For multi-academy trusts, implementing tailored SEO tactics is vital to enhance visibility in search engine results, making your institutions easily discoverable by prospective students and parents. Begin with thorough keyword research to understand your audience’s terms when searching for educational options. Incorporate these keywords naturally into high-quality content, titles, and meta descriptions to boost on-page optimisation.

Pay attention to the power of local SEO. Ensure that each academy within the trust optimises its listings for local searches. This includes accurate Google My Business entries, local keywords, and location-specific content, which can significantly increase each academy’s visibility in its respective community.

Leveraging Social Media to Build Community

Social media is a dynamic tool for multi-academy trusts, serving as a bridge to connect with students, parents, and local communities. These platforms offer a unique space for interactive engagement and real-time communication, enhancing the sense of community and belonging.

When selecting platforms, consider where your target audience is most active—whether it’s Facebook for parents or Instagram and Snapchat for students. Maintain a consistent posting schedule to keep your audience engaged and informed. 

Using interactive content such as polls, live videos, and Q&A sessions to encourage participation and foster a more connected community atmosphere is essential. This approach boosts engagement and strengthens the trust’s presence in the digital world.

Utilising Content Marketing to Showcase Expertise

Content marketing is crucial for multi-academy trusts looking to establish themselves as thought leaders in the education sector. You can demonstrate your expertise and commitment to educational excellence by sharing insightful and valuable content.

To effectively engage your target audiences, diversify your content types. Develop informative blogs that address common questions or concerns, send out newsletters highlighting successes and upcoming events, and create video tutorials offering educational support or showcasing day-to-day activities at your academies. Each piece should provide real value, aiming to inform, educate, or solve problems, reinforcing the trust’s reputation as a leader in the field.

Enhancing Engagement with Email Marketing

Email marketing remains a powerful tool for multi-academy trusts, allowing for direct and personalised communication with parents, students, and staff. It’s an efficient way to disseminate information, from academic updates to event notifications.

To maximise the effectiveness of your email campaigns, start by segmenting your mailing lists. This means organising your contacts into groups based on criteria like age, enrolment status, or specific interests, which ensures that recipients receive relevant content. Personalise your emails to create a connection; including the recipient’s name can increase engagement. 

Automation tools can also schedule emails for upcoming events or regular updates, ensuring consistent communication without constant manual input. These strategies help maintain an organised, impactful communication flow that resonates with each segment of your community.

Using Paid Advertising to Boost Enrolment

Paid advertising is an effective accelerator for boosting enrolment within multi-academy trusts. Leveraging PPC campaigns and targeted social media ads, you can directly reach those actively searching for educational opportunities.

To get the most out of your advertising budget:

1. Focus on targeting.
2. Use PPC ads in search engine results when prospective students and parents are looking for schools in your area.
3. For social media, customise your ads to appeal to specific demographics within geographical limits, ensuring your message reaches those most likely to enrol.

Carefully selecting your target audience and crafting compelling ads that speak to their needs and aspirations will help you increase the visibility and attractiveness of your academics.

Analysing and Adapting Strategies with Analytics

Data is the backbone of any successful digital marketing strategy. Analytics tools are invaluable as they provide insights into website traffic, user engagement, and conversion rates, enabling multi-academy trusts to understand what’s working and what isn’t.

To make the most of these tools:

1. Start by setting clear goals for what you want to track, such as increased website visits, longer engagement times, or higher numbers of applications.
2. Regularly review the data collected to see patterns and trends.
3. Use this information to refine your marketing approaches. For example, you could tweak your website layout or adjust your ad campaigns to better meet the needs of your target audience.

Continually analysing and adapting based on data can improve your ROI and ensure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

7 Marketing Tips for Multi-Academy Trusts

Adopting digital marketing strategies is essential for multi-academy trusts aiming to thrive in the competitive educational landscape. These strategies enable trusts to broaden their reach, engage more effectively with their communities, and directly impact enrolment and retention rates.

We encourage trusts to embrace a dynamic and data-driven approach to their marketing efforts. Leveraging the power of digital tools and analytics helps trusts make informed decisions that resonate with their target audiences.

In an increasingly digital world, Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) face a unique set of challenges. From attracting prospective students to engaging with parents and stakeholders, MATs must establish a compelling online presence. One highly effective way to achieve this is through the strategic use of Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In this article, we will explore the vital strategies and techniques that MATs can employ to enhance their online visibility and ensure they reach their target audience effectively.

Improving your MATS Online Presence With Organic SEO

As the digital landscape continues to evolve, organic SEO has emerged as a powerful tool for boosting online presence. Organic SEO focuses on optimizing a website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) without relying on paid advertisements. This is particularly important for MATs, as it can help them stand out in a competitive educational environment.

1.      The Role of Keywords

Effective keyword research is the foundation of a successful organic SEO strategy. MATs need to identify and target the keywords and phrases that potential students, parents, and stakeholders are likely to use in their online searches. This process not only improves the visibility of your MATs’ website but also ensures that it ranks for the right queries.

2.      Audience Research

This is a challenging task to do when you do not have an audience to ask questions. But if you have even a small loyal audience, you can ask them some key questions, such as:

• What do they like?
• What they do not like?
• What do they want to see more of?

Their answers should help you adapt your school website to those needs and create a better online presence.

3.      Quality Content Optimization

Content is king in the world of organic SEO. MATs should invest in creating high-quality, informative, and engaging content that caters to the needs of their target audience. This could include blog posts, articles, videos, and other educational resources that showcase the institution’s expertise and commitment to quality education.

Find new content that your audience will like and publish in creative ways that help your website be engaging, attractive, as well as current. Your audience research will help you with this task.

4.      Update And Optimize Current Content

If you have had a website for a while and an audience, then you may have older content that may be out of date. Refresh that content and bring it up to date. Remove or edit sales pitches that can turn many of your audience members off.

Other improvements can be to enlarge previously shorter posts to add new and important information. If you have lists on your website, make them longer and more comprehensive.

These changes should engage your audience more and keep them on your website longer.

5.      Do An Onsite SEO Audit

What this audit does is help you clean up your website making it easier for search engines and your audience to read. The audit helps find duplicate pages, improper direct or indirect chains, broken links, URL structure, and much more.

Once these problems are resolved, search engines can read your website and rank it properly. Also, you want to see how fast your web pages load. If they load up in 3 seconds or more, it is time to speed that loading time up.

6.      Technical SEO and On-Page Optimization

Technical SEO involves fine-tuning various elements of your website, such as meta descriptions, alt tags, and header tags, to enhance its visibility in search results. On-page optimization, on the other hand, involves optimizing individual pages for specific keywords, ensuring that search engines can easily index and understand your content.

7.      Link Building Strategies

Link building is another essential component of organic SEO. MATs can enhance their online presence by earning high-quality backlinks from reputable websites, educational organizations, and industry-related platforms. These backlinks signal to search engines that your website is a trusted source of information.

8.      Recreate Your Homepage And Navigational Tools

A user-friendly website is not only vital for retaining visitors but also for SEO. Google and other search engines reward websites with good user experiences. MATs should focus on mobile responsiveness, easy navigation, and quick loading times. A well-organized website with clear calls to action can significantly improve user engagement and satisfaction.

This should be done with your audience in mind. Making the home page more attractive, and easier to read helps deliver a stronger online presence. Plus when you make the navigation simpler to use, your visitors should find it easier to navigate and to explore your website.

When the homepage is unattractive and hard to use, then your audience will not like reading your website. Make these changes to get your audience to like them and you should see an improvement in your online presence.

9.      Investigate Your Competitors’ Websites And Strategies

Getting motivation from what other people are doing is a great way to update and upgrade your website. See what they have done and then try similar approaches to your website.

Plus, you can get motivation from those companies outside of the MATS sector. Every little bit of research can help you improve your MATS website and gain a bigger online presence. Here are some areas to research:

• Search result rankings
• Social media
• Paid ads
• Local directory profiles
• Email marketing campaigns

This investigative work will take some time but can be done quicker when you employ the proper SEO tools.

10.  Use Local Directories To Boost Your Online Presence

Even if your academy is not limited to your local area, these local directories can boost your online presence. Searchers can find information about your academy without going to your website.

Although you want them to come to your website, getting your information in front of people through a variety of methods is the best way to get known and build searches for your website. Plus, the local directory will have a link to your website to make that search easier.

It takes time for any and all SEO strategies to build your online presence. This is not something that will happen in a day or two. You need to trust your strategies for the long haul and give them time to work.

After a while, if they are not working, make your changes.

Some Final Words

If you are not ready to handle a MATS website design for your academy, or it is a bit over your skill set to do, contact our company. We have the experience to build a great-looking website that will be multi-academy trust website compliant along with building your online presence through organic SEO.

If you manage a school website, by now you will be aware of the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  SEO not only helps to improve the quantity of traffic to your school website but also the quality of your website.  People however seem to have a common misconception that school websites do not require SEO and it is more relevant for other institutions and organisations. However, if you look at the search data, you would easily disapprove of this fact. 

With 3.5 billion searches made everyday, it can be safely concluded that these search trends should not be ignored. But the question is — is it possible to constantly keep up with these search trends and frequently update your website? 

The simple answer is yes, if you intend not to hurt your organic traffic.  Search trends help you understand and deliver the most effective and user-friendly content for each of your queries. A robust SEO optimisation strategy takes time to show results and when it does, you will be able to reap its benefits for years to come. 

1. Utilise location-based search strategy

Google My Business (the listing on Google search that shows your location and contact details) was created with the intention of helping customers engage on Google for free. The primary objective was to help small and medium-scale businesses connect with their potential customers across Google Searches and Maps. 

For most schools, the common statement is, “Everyone knows my school, why do I need this?”

But the fact is optimising Google My Business shows your school name up on the search even when a user doesn’t know you exist. 

For example, a parent who is new in the area where your school is situated, might simply key in the phrase, ‘best high school + location in the search engine. For that parent to find your school, you need to be on the Page 1 search results. And we very well know from historical data that very few people visit the second page. Having an up-to-date Google My Business listing can assist with this.

Another significant point to be noted here — Google detects the searchers’ location from the IP address. Even if you don’t include your region in the search, it will automatically deliver them local results including Google My Business listings… 

2. Comprehend the search intent for educational institutions 

Most search engine users these days are impatient. If they want their search to include specific results, they will use the related long-tail keywords. Now the real challenge is understanding those keywords and search terms so you can optimise your school website accordingly. 

In other words, the more content you have on your website that is related to the search term, the better are your site’s chances of ranking higher in the search results. 

3. Optimise for different regions 

It’s not just enough that your GMB account and site pages include only results for the physical location where you are situated. 

Some parents who have not entered your location in their search will not be able to find your school and they may not even be aware that you are already pulling students from their areas. This holds true for most schools that are located outside main cities and towns. 

What you need here is a regional landing page strategy. 

The most common approach to creating regional landing pages are highlighted below: 

• Define the targeted area

You need to start by defining the area that you are targeting whether it is a specific region, city, county, etc. Then mention the key landmarks or work a bit into the history of the region. 

• Geo-specific keywords 

This is in fact the most important point to consider when you are creating a location-based landing page that will specifically give you the local hits you need from your local population. The formula is quite simple — mention [type of school] in [region or location] or [location] in the content you have on your website. 

For example, 

• Primary school in North London 
• North Yorkshire secondary school 

• Consistency 

Irrespective of whether you are creating one landing page or 10, the look and feel as well the style and tone of each page should be consistent. If you are a larger institution, it’s a good idea to come up with a style guide with specific branding colours and guidelines. 

4. On-page optimisation 

This is the process of doing everything on your website that could help to instruct Google to deliver you to page one. You should take on-page quite seriously if you want the search engines to reward you with the first page visibility. 

Let’s take a look at some of the best practises you may want to follow in your quest to rank on the first page:

• URLs: Google has very clearly stated that URLs help them understand what the page is all about. In order to optimise the URLs: 
  • Include the primary keyword in the URL
  • Place the keyword to the left side of the URL
  • Keep the words that define the URL as real as possible
  • Keep the text simple and sweet
  • Use hyphens between two words 

• Meta titles and descriptions:  Page titles are one of the most important on-page SEO factors. Both the meta title and description are important for the search engines to understand the purpose of the page. 
• Header tags: These tags serve an important function for the SEO of your page. They have a direct impact on your page by:
  • Making it easier and more enjoyable for your users to read the page
  • Providing keyword-rich context to the search engines for your content
• SEO writing: This typically implies that the content is written in a way that it is loved by both humans and the search engines. 
• Keyword cannibalisation: Targeting many pages for a specific keyword can cause keyword cannibalisation and that could have potentially disastrous results for your SEO efforts. If you have multiple pages on your website ranking for the same keyword, you’re actually competing with yourself and that’s not a good on-page strategy to follow. 
• Content audit: This is a vital mistake made by most content authors and editors. They keep on creating new content, but never bother to revisit or update their existing content. It’s absolutely essential to do content audits on a regular basis. 

5. Mobile page loading speed 

In the real world, speed kills but it is not the same in the digital world. If your page doesn’t load fast on your mobile, the internet will kill your rank. 

Waiting for a page to load in its own sweet time is a frustrating experience. There are quite a few ways to reverse this experience:

• Utilise the wide range of free marketing tools available to make quick fixes to your content. There are a few tools that can compress images to a fraction of their size. 
• Limit the amount of media you include in your posts and pages. To ensure optimal page load speed, you should maintain a ratio of 75:25 for text to images. 
• Make sure you have a prominent call to action (CTA) and the size of the CTA button should be at least a bit larger than your thumb. 

Final thoughts

SEO like anything else requires the right amount of knowledge, skills, patience, and consistency to produce the desired results. The opportunities are unlimited and as the search engine volumes grow, it will become more important than ever to keep working on your SEO efforts.