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

In the past few years there has been a rise in the demand for online resources within the health sector, even more so over the last year! The same can be said for most industries as cutting costs and enhancing performance of employees has become increasingly more desirable. Going online has massively transformed the healthcare industry, especially when it comes to dealing with patients and managing staff. It’s widely recognised that training staff is essential, but a persistent challenge is finding a cost-effective solution to be able to provide that. Luckily, the rise in eLearning has meant that this is now more viable.

The benefits 

Face to face training is effective but a costly and time-consuming exercise which can ultimately prove to be impractical given the already stretched resources within care organisations. eLearning is the perfect solution to this problem due to the fact that it’s accessible which means employees can receive their training to fit around their schedule. The other benefits of eLearning are vast; not only is it time efficient, eLearning can be provided in a way which is engaging and makes the learning process much easier for the those taking the courses.

The possibilities

eLearning can be accessed in a variety of formats such as through webinars, interactive video, multiple choice and so much more. The possibilities of this technology are truly endless which is why more and more health organisations both in the public and private sectors are getting involved. At Creativeworld, we have been approached by a number of health organisations looking to build a platform from which they can provide crucial eLearning courses to their staff, subscribers and customers. Our long-standing client All4Maternity had a bespoke online eLearning platform created for them by our team, which offers interactive and multi-media eLearning modules to prepare for practice, examinations, revalidation and important CPD development. We strongly believe that eLearning will become crucial to health organisations and we are excited to share with you even more of our work within this field.

We are also in the process of developing a learning portal for a number of clients, and with our experience and expertise in this sector we can offer practical support, advice and direction to our clients to enable them to deliver a system that will support and develop staff throughout their careers.

Is your organisation looking to develop an eLearning platform? Get in touch with the healthcare experts at Creativeworld

Phone: 01282 858200

Email: info@creativeworld.co.uk

They needed an agency to assist them in enhancing their profile across various communication channels. After an initial situation analysis we recommended a full service marketing strategy for the next 18-24 months. We were commissioned to deliver various pieces of collateral to showcase the true values of the School.

Delivering the Message

The school was keen to re-inforce the fantastic levels of Personal Development, Progressiveness, Welfare and the opportunity for students to flourish at the school. Our delivery for the 2018 intake was to create an Informative, value led Prospectus, with clean imagery throughout reflecting the environment De La Salle School has to offer. To complement this, we partnered the school to create an engaging video that was used on their open days. The video relays several aspects of life at De La Salle and it reflects the opportunities for students both academically and extra curricular.

Ongoing marketing

As we continue our partnership with De La Salle, we are looking to develop their profile with the local community, existing and future students, staff and potential parents. We consider ourselves to be an extended support function to their team, working together to deliver success for the school.

De La Salle Prospectus

Business Manager, Carolyn Warburton added, “ It’s been great to work with Dave and the team at Creativeworld. They helped us with all our marketing needs, including Social Media, Video, Design and Print through to Display materials.”

We offer a full support package at Creativeworld, including our new social media “selector” tool! https://www.creativeworld.co.uk/services/social-media-solutions/

What’s it going to be?

The answer is Video. Use video in your marketing strategy. There, blog done. No, there’s a bit more to it than that. But in short, the answer is still video. It’s clear that some companies are starting to ramp up their game by being a bit more active on social media and banging out the odd blog, but in a highly competitive environment, where everyone is trying to generate traffic over to their website and sell their product, what is going to make them stand out from all the noise?

As we’ve mentioned in one of our blogs earlier this year, According to Cisco, by 2018 video will account for almost 82% of internet traffic. So, it’s not a question of IF you’re going to incorporate video, it’s WHEN. Do you want to be ahead of the game or playing catch-up?

The shift

 With an audience out there still looking to be stimulated in the currently very overcrowded environment, it’s going to become harder to grab them. So, you’re going to need to be smart and by smart, I mean get your camera out and start recording. It can be scary getting shoved in front of a camera and having to do a bit of talking, but if done well and evokes some kind of emotion or reaction, you’ll get the hits! Yes, we get you may not have a huge ‘allocated video budget’ but your video content doesn’t have to be a feature length production or the next ‘Making a Murderer’.

A Face to the brand  

By putting someone from your company in a video or even having some live action in there, it’s a different kind of validity for your customer. By this I mean it’s a personal touch which will help create more trust and more importantly add more value to your content which is what companies will aim for.

Ultimately, with the populations attention spans dwindling, the audiences of 2018 will want something gripping to stop your adverts from being one thumb scroll away from not being seen again, which is why video should be a priority when it comes to content creation in 2018.

Want a no obligation, free chat about your marketing strategy for 2018? Get in touch with our friendly marketing team to see if we can help

info@creativeworld.co.uk

We as humans, are like magpies to silver, when it comes to visual content on social media. Having said this though, our attention spans are incredibly short. We seek visual stimuli and if we don’t like it, you’ll loose us immediately. With that in mind, it’s now essential for you to know that if your content isn’t visually compelling or stimulating, it’s going to be ignored. It could be the greatest written content around, but if your article or website is being promoted with a terrible image or even worse, no image, then no one is going to be paying any attention. It’s said that you have approximately 8 seconds to draw attention to your article. This is because, with the advancements in technology, our standards for being visually stimulated are getting higher and higher. So this means when promoting your service, you need to be paying more attention to making your social media marketing strategy visual.

Imagery

Imagery is crucial for attracting people to click through to your site. If you don’t have the resources or time to create a video, then an image is absolutely essential. People scrolling through their newsfeed are less likely to click on a link which isn’t accompanied by an image unless the hook line is really gripping. In case you’re not quite convinced, here are a few stats:

• Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images (article)
• In an analysis of over 1 million articles, BuzzSumo found that articles with an image once every 75-100 words received double the social media shares as articles with fewer images
• Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than those without images (article)
• Eye-tracking studies show internet readers pay close attention to information-carrying images. When the images are relevant, readers spend more time looking at the images than they do reading text on the page (article)

Video

According to Cisco, by 2018 video will account for almost 82% of Internet traffic 

It’s the natural progression. Social Media is constantly adapting and so is the way that companies are reaching out to their audience. It’s becoming essential that companies and organisations start incorporating video as part of their online marketing strategy. Facebook is changing its algorithms to ensure that videos reach the wider audiences therefore giving them more exposure. Furthermore, it’s far more engaging and direct, it adds a human element to it and boosts the customers trust in your brand. This can also be linked to the rise in influencer marketing, those who are pushing their own personal brand in order to inspire people and come down to their level which makes them likeable and more relatable and ultimately making the viewer more likely to buy into their brand. But it’s also about value, brands can’t simply post about their product anymore. Customers expect value from content, it needs to elicit some kind of emotional response whether it be anger, happiness or humour.

Here’s a few stats about the effect of video on social media:

• Facebook users watch 8 billion videos per day (article)
• Facebook video receives, on average, 135 percent more organic reach than a Facebook photo (article)
• Videos up to 2 minutes long get the most engagement (article)
• Organic Facebook engagement is highest on posts with videos with 13.9% and photos with 13.7% (article)

Live 

You may have noticed a surge in social networks adding live video applications to their services. Obviously, video is the king of content on social media now it’s so easily accessible from our phones. The average adult consumes up to five hours a day of video content, one hour of which is online. The reason for the rise in this kind of content is simply because it’s real. It completely squashes the stigma that videos are heavily edited and produced, in order to make as much money as possible. Live video is raw, anything goes and that’s what’s so fascinating about it. The big social media corporations such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have all jumped on the live streaming bandwagon. It’s a new and more easily accessible way for people to broadcast their lives. So when it comes to your marketing strategy it may be worth considering live video. Whether it is showing the customer reaction to your product, reviewing it or showing an inside preview into your business/institution.

With a wealth of expertise and experience in marketing, get in touch with us and see how we can help with your social media strategy.

New ‘REVO’ Brand Identity

Lancashire based creative agency, Creativeworld, was officially appointed to design and develop a new brand identity and marketing collateral for leading foam experts Vitafoam, as they looked to deliver their new 4th generation sleep technology to the market.

As with any new product launch, Vitafoam needed to decide on a unique product name and brand identity. With over 30 years of corporate identity design and development experience, the team was perfectly positioned to work hand in hand with Vitafoam to create something that was both original and on brand.

As marketing trends and techniques continue to evolve, the art of developing a unique brand identity has become ever more important for brands who are looking to stand out from the crowd.

The exciting new 4th generation foam technology developed by Vitafoam was christened ‘REVO’, and has been specifically developed as a Revolutionary Cool Sleep Concept which is set to provide ‘the perfect night’s sleep’.

Vitafoam corporate website

As part of Vitafoam’s global REVO launch, the Creativeworld digital team also conceived and developed a fully animated bespoke CGI video which incorporated a professional voiceover. To complement the video, the team also designed a range of printed literature and branded memory sticks for use at dedicated events and pitches.

On the recent collaboration, Creativeworld’s David Bates commented,

“Working closely with the Vitafoam team was a pleasure as always, especially as they had a clear direction and message that they wished to convey to their target audience.

New and Innovative product development keeps Vitafoam at the forefront of their industry and this time ReVo looks set to revolutionise mattress construction for years to come by offering a ‘Cool’ nights sleep.”

You can visit the new Vitafoam website by Creativeworld at Vitafoam.co.uk and watch the full video for yourself.

Following on from the plethora of high profile Irish appointments received in 2014, we are delighted to announce our latest collaboration with joint agencies JLL and CBRE on the largest investment to come out of Ireland in recent times, the TARA Collection.

The portfolio of high end commercial properties will offer potential investors an unrivalled opportunity to gain exposure to the strongly growing Dublin CBD office market, whilst developing core rental income with value added opportunities through new lettings, re-gearing lettings, refurbishment and redevelopment.

Creativeworld North West HQ

Commenting on the recent appointment, Creativeworld MD Clive Wood added “The Irish property market in particular is one that we have seen really develop and grow over the last 12 months at Creativeworld. As a leading marketing agency, we have a responsibility to develop and offer our clients the very latest designs, concepts and finishes in commercial property marketing and we are confident that with the TARA Collection we can do exactly that.”

The jewel in the crown of this one off investment comes in the shape of 4 and 5 Grand Canal Square. Designed by renowned international architect Daniel Libeskind, this is quite simply the highest quality office building in Dublin and brings with it a tenant to match, Facebook.

“The whole team is excited to be involved in a project as high profile as this. It isn’t every day you get the opportunity to work on something linked so closely with one of the largest businesses in the world. This has the potential to be one of the finest property projects we’ve produced in thirty years of business.” Clive added.

Team Creative will be given the task of creating a newly developed brand identity for the TARA Collection, along with a unique marketing strategy to promote the investment internationally. This strategy is set to include a range of unique printed literature, press adverts, location photography along with a website and secure property data room.