In today’s fast-paced educational landscape, marketing plays a pivotal role in shaping the success of any school. If you’re seeking ways to boost enrolment and engage with your audience, your search stops here.

Our track record speaks for itself; we specialise in increasing enrolment and driving engagement for schools. With the right strategies and a passionate team, we’ve consistently achieved remarkable results in the educational sector.

But how can Creativeworld help take your school to the next level? Let’s explore the possibilities together.

The Creativeworld Advantage

1. Enrolment Growth

We understand that the enrolment numbers are a key indicator of your school’s success. Creativeworld has a proven history of increasing enrolment rates in various educational institutions. Through tailored marketing strategies and innovative campaigns, we can help your school reach it’s full potential.

2. Enhanced Engagement

Engaging with your target audience is crucial in building a strong school community. At Creativeworld, we’ve mastered the art of creating content and campaigns that captivate and connect. Whether it’s prospective students, parents, or alumni, our approach ensures your school’s message is heard and embraced.

3. Tailored Solutions

No two schools are the same, and we understand that your institution has unique goals and challenges. Our team will work closely with you to develop tailored marketing solutions that align with your school’s vision and mission.

Our Services: 

Strategic Marketing:

We provide comprehensive strategic marketing services, helping educational institutions develop long-term marketing plans, set clear objectives, and align their marketing efforts with their broader business strategies.

Branding:

We specialise in crafting unique and compelling brand identities for educational institutions. Our branding services help you establish a strong and memorable presence in the education sector.

Here is an example of the branding we did for Education Partnership Trust.

Design & Print:

Our team of creative professionals design visually appealing marketing materials, from brochures to banners. We also offer high-quality printing services, ensuring your materials look stunning in both digital and physical formats.

Here is an example of the prospectus design we did for De La Salle School.

Website & Apps:

We develop and design user-friendly, responsive websites and mobile applications tailored to the needs of educational organisations. These digital platforms enhance your online presence and engage your audience effectively.

Here is an example of the website design we did for Ribblesdale High School.

Here is an example of the app we developed for Student Castle.

Digital Marketing:

We employ a range of digital marketing strategies, including SEO, content marketing, and social media management, to promote your educational services and reach a wider audience online. Our expertise drives growth and engagement.

Display Materials:

We create eye-catching display materials, such as signage, posters, and trade show exhibits, to make a lasting impression at events and at your school. These materials help convey your message and capture attention.

Video & Photography:

Our skilled videographers and photographers capture the essence of your educational institution. Whether for promotional videos or photoshoots, we produce visual content that showcases your unique qualities and tells your story effectively.

Check out our Creativeworld Education Spotlight

Contact Us Today

Ready to embark on a journey of educational transformation? Contact us, and let’s discuss how Creativeworld can make a difference for your school.

📞 Phone: 01282 858200

✉️ Email: info@creativeworld.co.uk

Back To School Content Marketing 2022 2023

Back to school! The summer holidays are officially over and it’s time to think about marketing for the academic school year ahead. So, one of the first considerations when approaching your marketing strategy should be getting your content calendar together. In this blog we’ve put together a few tips for getting started with your marketing calendar.

Audience:

The most crucial element of your marketing strategy is ultimately who you are aiming your content at. It’s worth sitting down and really considering what your audience is invested in learning and most importantly why they would want to engage with your school. A great way to do this is to develop several ‘personas’ which will help you identify the kind of content you should be sharing.

A persona is a portrait of your ideal audience that connects with them as real people with real interests and real daily pressures.

When creating your personas consider the demographics, behaviours, motivations and their goals. The more detailed these are, the better understanding you will get about your audience so you can tailor content towards them. Learn more about your audience by investing time to uncover what you may not know about them; this can include 1:1 interviews, social listening, online surveys and open conversations which will really help you to understand your audience’s environment and the best method of communicating with them.

Key events and dates:

There will be countless opportunities to create content and produce marketing collateral around key events and dates which occur throughout the year. However, with your personas in shape, this will help add more detail. When mapping out key events and dates in your 2022/2023 content calendar, don’t just stop at your school dates, consider other popular hashtag holidays or events that your audience may engage with. For example, #thankateacherday, #randomactsofkindnessday. There are loads of online tools which can help you highlight key dates across the year.

Story framework

With your audience in shape and key dates mapped out, you’re ready to set the framework out to tell your school’s story over the next year. This framework will give direction to all your content and ultimately tell the story that your school wants to tell. It will echo your schools’ values which are unique to your school and set you apart from the competition.

Need some more advice on your school’s marketing for the year ahead? Get in touch with our Education experts.

The why, what and how of virtual open days for schools and colleges…

WHY…

Do you have a plan to showcase your school to the potential future students and parents who can’t make your on-site open event due to other commitments, or need to stay at home for COVID related reasons on that date? If not, then keep reading so you don’t miss any untapped opportunities…

Your school or college open day is one of the most important elements of your education recruitment strategy, due to its major influence on the decision making process for prospective students and parents.

As well as the social restrictions COVID-19 has posed, we live in a fast-paced, digital world where ease of accessibility is expected as the norm. Everyone is busy and wants to get answers, information and experiences instantly via a few clicks online.

This is particularly prevalent amongst the upcoming generation and following almost a year of ‘staying at home’, their parents have also adapted and prefer to operate remotely. Your primary school, secondary school, academy, sixth form or college needs to adapt in line with this too.

The solution? A virtual open day.

WHAT…

What is a virtual open day?

An online open day experience for your prospective students and stakeholders to replicate an on-site open day, providing an immersive insight to your school via tailored digital content; including features such as video footage, imagery, website interactivity and 360 tours – accessible from any type of device.

To ensure you capture your whole target audience and enable full accessibility for all, a virtual open day is the perfect complimentary tool to your on-site open event. It will also provide a reminder to the on-site open day attendees who want to recap on what your school has to offer and help them to make that final important decision.

What should be included in a virtual open day?

From our many years of experience helping secondary schools, academies, sixth forms and colleges with student recruitment, here are our top, virtual open day tips on what makes a great one!

• Start with an inspiring welcome message from your head teacher followed by your main school video or footage, illustrating an overview of your school and its key specialisms and offerings
• Consider a walk through tour of your school or college, as well as drone footage to take user experience to the next level; creating a realistic feel of your location, outside sports facilities, student social areas and life beyond the classroom
• An interactive 360 tour of your school is another immersive element, allowing your audience to really explore the school, inside and out, piquing their interest through an engaging online experience
• Another impactful idea for video content is a meet and greet student feature in the form of interviews, so future students and parents can hear about current pupils’ experiences and thoughts first-hand
• It can also be beneficial to provide an overview video of lesson taster sessions in different departments; particularly helpful for students moving up to sixth form and college who have specific subject interests
• Powerful photography can effectively capture the ethos and culture of your school, which you can also showcase from image galleries within your virtual open event
• An FAQs feature will be helpful for many and you can do this through interactive links to your website, as well as providing access to other useful documents via links to an e-prospectus, application forms and contact pages, providing that vital call to action at the end of the virtual open day experience.

HOW…

Creativeworld can help

How do I make a virtual open day? How do I plan a virtual open day?

If you’ve got this far, we know these will likely be your main questions! This is where we come in. Creativeworld can help you plan, create, develop, produce and get the most out of a virtual open day – watch one of our educational marketing experts below discussing how Creativeworld can support your school with virtual open day production.

To give you some inspiration, here are some short school videos we’ve created previously that could be used as part of a virtual open day:

De La Salle School

KD Grammar School for Boys

Contact our expert education marketing team for more information about our virtual open day and video production offering for secondary schools, academies, primary schools, sixth forms and colleges, by calling 01282 858200 or dropping us an email here

So, how does your audience perceive your website? The main focal point for any school’s marketing presence is their website. It’s essential that you are representing your institution to the highest standard possible. It’s not just a school website, this is your brand identity and displays what you, as a school are about. Ultimately, your school website is a hub to keep current students and parents updated and informed as well as drawing in the future students.

So, what factors do I need to consider?

• Simple Navigation- Can your target audience find the information they need without difficulty? Do they know who to get in touch with about their queries? You have a very small time slot to keep someone on your website and if it’s hard to navigate, they probably won’t spend more than 30 seconds there and they’ll look elsewhere. It’s the times we live in; we want everything within seconds, therefore you need to be able to deliver with ease.
• Modern- Your site needs to look slick as you have a very small window to draw someone to browse your website, there’s nothing more off-putting than it being an outdated, garish site. Keep updating and keep it fresh.
• Responsive- This is essential, your site needs to be ‘mobile friendly’. We live in the mobile age, everyone is on their phones constantly, so it’s highly likely that your audience will be looking for your site on their phone or iPad.
• Main Focal Point- Every site needs this as you need to have a clear vision as to what you want to achieve. Do you want to share regular updates on activities within the school? Display exam timetables? Or show how your school works? Not to forget the essential demands from Ofsted! It’s important to be ready and prepared.
• Engaging Content- This is important for keeping people interest in the School website. There are many ways to do this such as through pictures, videos or even gamification. There are many possibilities, however, what needs to be considered is how short the user’s attention span is and how you are going to convince them that your institution is as good as you think it is.

Case Study

Ribblesdale High School appointed Creativeworld to redevelop their online presence, to include their Main School website, Parents website and Transition website for Year 7 students.

In addition, we created a Ribblesdale ‘EdTech’ website to host virtual learning events for other schools.

Our services to the educational sector encompass all forms of marketing, design and print services, and can be viewed on our site at www.creativeworld.co.uk/education

Before you start having a new school website developed or college prospectus designed, take a step back from the tactical areas and reassess your school’s course of action from a strategic perspective, to ensure maximum success and return from your marketing spend.

If you are not 100% sure what your objectives are, or indeed what success really looks like for your school, then it’s important to determine these areas so you can be assured you’re investing in the most effective marketing tools to fulfil your needs.

If this sounds a little overwhelming, we can help! At Creativeworld, we are more than just a website and prospectus design agency – we have a team of education marketing experts and strategists to support your school and provide a full, 360 strategic consultancy service to develop a bespoke marketing strategy and make sure you take the right pathway to success. With over 30 years’ experience in the education sector, the Creativeworld Education team are ready to solve your education marketing strategy challenges!

5 reasons why your school or college needs a marketing strategy…

1. Competitive advantage

A strong marketing strategy will enable your school to identify its unique offerings and features that set you apart from your competitors and clearly position your school in the local area, as well as to your target student demographic.

Creating a distinctive school identity in your area will ensure your marketing activity is consistent and aligned with highlighting what makes you different and preferable to alternative competitor schools.

2. Clear direction to success

Reviewing your current position as a school, determining where you want to be, understanding your target audience, setting measurable and realistic objectives and developing a comprehensive plan of how you’re going to get to your desired position, enables focus and accountability.

You can invest in the most effective marketing and promotion tools which have been selected strategically in line with your goals, so you know your money is well spent and you are not just frittering your marketing budget away randomly in the hope that it ‘might’ solve your marketing challenges, without having any surety that it will.

3. Reputation

Developing a marketing strategy will allow your school to really understand its key target audiences and market niche; from prospective students and parents to existing staff, potential staff and existing students, including their wants and needs, as well as pain points and concerns. Subsequently, you can tailor your school communications consistently across all marketing channels to state how you will fulfil and address these through your unique school offerings and benefits.

Building a positive brand reputation alongside recognition is all about showing your target audience what benefit they will get from your school or college, so understanding their needs and proving how you can meet them is essential to create a strong and favourable brand reputation.

4. Marketing budget management

A sound marketing strategy ensures that every pound you spend on promotional activities counts! We know that a marketing budget can be a limiting factor for many schools and colleges, so developing an effective strategy is essential to get optimal value from your allocated funds. You will avoid making mistakes involving spending money on marketing tools and promotional activities that have low return on investments and don’t support achievement of your school’s marketing objectives.

5. Creative edge

Finally, working with a dedicated agency to develop your school marketing strategy goes hand in hand with gaining distinctive, stand-out, creative themes and ideas for marketing your school or college brand and making you stand out from the crowd. A specialist school marketing agency like Creativeworld, understand your marketing goals and target audience so they can generate new, exciting ideas and recommendations as part of your overall strategy, placing your school in the best position to achieve success!

View some of our education strategic work

Manchester Islamic Educational Trust

Creativeworld Education Spotlight

Why Creativeworld? Our strategic offering for schools and colleges…

Our team and partnerships of education marketing experts have supported over 400 clients throughout the UK and globally; our extensive knowledge and understanding of individual clients’ needs means we can offer…

• Marketing audits to advise direction and focus new marketing activity where it is needed
• Internal and external market research to design the right approach
• Brand co-creation and key message development workshops
• Marketing plan development, monitor success and offer recommendations
• Storytelling and content planning
• Working together to support the delivery and implementation of marketing and branding strategies.

Contact our expert education marketing team for more information about our strategic consultancy offering for schools and colleges, by calling 01282 858200 or dropping us an email here.

Social media, the main source of news?

When first looking at developing social media content for your school, it’s best to start looking at why people are on there in the first place. The answer is simple, they’re there for engaging content. Social media has now become the main source of news for many, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter or even Snapchat. Either way, it’s clear that social media has students and parents (as much as they’d hate to admit it) captivated, so if your school is ignoring it, you may be missing a vital part of your communications strategy.

It’s a part of us

Like it or not, social media has integrated into many people’s daily lives, some argue it has even become an addiction. For example, 75% of university students admit to being on Twitter “all the time” (Source: TopUniversities.com) and are even using the micro-blogging site as a forum to share content, encourage debate and answer queries, with some teachers even setting up hashtags for individual courses to create online discussion communities for their students.

How can you develop social media content for your school?

There are so many ways in which your institution can use social media. However, social media is never a ‘quick fix’. It takes time and effort to develop a social media strategy. Parents and students will go on social media for engaging content, and with our short attention spans forever dwindling, your strategy definitely needs to evoke some kind of reaction. Really think about why students come to your school/college and use it. Gone are the days of boring newsletters which are in reality, thrown in the bin once they arrive at home. It’s time to try and be more engaging with your audience.

Here are a few things you can do:

• Start incorporating videos of events, open days or assembly themes.
• Update news in real time (aided by visuals) on Facebook and Twitter
• Event planning way in advance to get the word out
• Update about urgent alerts, for example, snow days – usually easier than updating the website
• Sharing student successes such as sporting/academic achievements
• Be active, have a few admins on the page so you can be responsive in real time – this looks great to parents and encourages interaction
• Get involved with discussions such as awareness days or national days which are being celebrated – this will show how passionate your school is and give the teachers a chance to shine in their areas.

So, there we have it. A few tips about getting involved in the world of social media. However, if you’re feeling that you need some support, get in touch with our friendly social media team at education@creativeworld.co.uk

It’s no secret that both school spending and teacher’s pay are bones of contention amidst an ongoing political debate in the UK Education sector. Just ask any Headteacher or Leadership team, managing school budgets to attract and maintain high standards of learning is no easy feat.

What makes you so special?

How can you create both a learning environment and workplace which invites students and teachers to really belong? Our experience has found this usually starts with the school ‘Brand’ and everything this stands for. It is very easy for a brand to be disregarded or deemed superficial if it creates no real sense of what it represents or values.

Your School or Sixth form brand may already have a striking appearance on the surface, but when exploring deeper themes and the varying communications these can be filtered through – is your message reaching the right candidates?

The answer is a difficult one to substantiate, especially without hearing from those directly invested in the ongoing and future success of your institution. Schools are now taking the time to listen and learn from the community, parents, students and teachers about their strengths and weaknesses; recognising this as a vital step forward in developing a longer-term strategy.

Understanding what can be improved

Understanding what can be improved and clearly identifying what your unique successes are can invoke a sense of pride in developing values which personify who you are and what you can offer. Although often the case in schools, developing a brand identity and personality can at times lack appropriate investment, this tends to be particularly true among Sixth Forms as they are typically viewed as an ‘extension’ of the School.

Taking the time to learn

If you feel your messages are being misunderstood or perhaps not showcasing the school to the very best of its potential, why not take the time to listen to those closest? One small step forward could bring about big improvements in the short and long term. Developing your brand comes first, how can these messages then be effectively promoted to your audience to drive Word of Mouth. Simon Hepburn at Marketing Advice for Schools provides some great advice on this subject, see his article on 6 ways marketing can drive ‘word of mouth’ about your school to read more. Not sure where to start? Get in touch with one of our specialists for a chat about taking the next step. Or, you may already be spot on the money, in which case good for you!

Whilst you’re here, why not take a look at the branding work we did for Heckmondwike Grammar School and Sixth Form.

Do you need some assistance in redeveloping your brand personality? Get in touch with our experts at education@creativeworld.co.uk

This means knowing the parents, the students and the teachers and what your school represents. So when it comes to your marketing campaigns, it’s vital that you get to know your audience beforehand. Otherwise, how do you know that your message is going to reach the right people? And more importantly, how do you know that it’s going to resonate?

Understanding the bigger picture

Recently we partnered with an Education Trust to execute a full rebrand. The goal was to reposition the organisation’s strategy to maintain their reputation in the sector. Initially, we were approached to provide Digital Marketing, SEO and Social Media support, but when we analysed their current situation, we realised that what they needed went much deeper.

What does your audience think?

In order to understand the Trust’s audience better, we needed to do what some Schools, Trust’s and Academies don’t consider. We engaged with the people who matter to them; staff, parents, students, alumni and decision makers. Our process included creating dedicated focus groups, one to ones, written feedback and participation for all stakeholder groups within each of the Schools.

We looked to ensure each session was held in a comfortable environment and each person was offered time to air their views and opinions in a constructive way. The feedback was then presented to the Board of Trustees with a detailed report, highlighting several outcomes from the research. With the results in mind, we created a marketing and communications strategy in which we created a new, clear brand for the Trust. Many participants felt this was a positive start to the progression of the Education Trust to reinforce their market position.

The Outcome

As part of the research recommendations, the Trust has identified four key values that enable the Schools to thrive in their sector. These will be developed into key messages to outline the benefits of selecting their Schools as a place to learn. Furthermore, the board of Trustees have acted on the feedback and the new marketing collateral (including signage, prospectus design, website development and digital marketing) which was used in the recent school intake.

Are looking to understand your audience, progress your School’s marketing plans, or even increase engagement? If so, we would be happy to discuss and help assess your needs. Get in touch on 01282 858200 or education@creativeworld.co.uk

So, you’ve been told time and time again that your school should be on social media, but with school budgets being tight, being understaffed and overstretched it can be quite the task to remain consistent and keep on top of your social media strategy. Which is why we’ve decided to write this blog to give you a few pointers to help you with your strategy.

Using Facebook groups

Facebook’s algorithms have changed quite a lot within the past couple of years. It’s becoming harder and harder to get your organic content out there to your desired audience. This is where Facebook groups can come in handy. You can create groups for a specific audience, for example; parents. The benefit of this is every time a message is posted in a group, everyone in that group receives a notification (if they haven’t opted out) – it also gives a closer sense of a relationship between school and parents and can make them feel more involved, it’s like creating a community.  It’s best for keeping everyone in the loop. You can invite people to join via email with a message as to why you’ve invited them.

Combatting negative Reviews

This is something we get asked about a lot. Can you delete negative reviews on Facebook? The answer is no, you can’t. What’s the best way around this? Be a step ahead of the game and flood out the negative with the positive. Build up your community and the hard work should pay off, encourage parents and students to leave reviews, don’t do a mass callout though, build on the individual relationships and ask in person. Another way to tackle a negative review is to try and resolve the issue offline. Get in contact, set up a meeting and deal with the grievance. Once the issue is resolved, ask the user politely to remove the review. It’s always best to resolve these matters offline as you want to avoid a social media war where possible.

How can I use Paid social?

Paid social media, especially on Facebook is a great way to reach local parents and potential students. As we mentioned earlier, it’s getting harder to reach a new audience organically, so sponsoring posts can be a great way to generate exposure for your school.

How can we keep our content engaging?  

To avoid content getting stale, it’s a good idea to try and engage with your audience in creative ways such as with caption competitions, asking students about their favourite lessons/memories at the school. Another consideration is staff/student takeovers of certain social media accounts for specific school events, these can be really easy to organise and can be a good way to keep content fresh and give a good feel of what your school is like.

Whatever you’re posting, try and make it as visually engaging as you can.

Check out our blog about developing a social media strategy for your school here.

For more about our education services click here.