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0:00 Hello to everyone who’s already joined us today it’s been a fantastic turnout so we’re just waiting for a few more people to join the webinar.
0:16 I know this will be a busy period for a lot of you preparing for the the new term. The webinar is going to last an hour today and hopefully we’ll have some time at the end for for Q&A.
0:50 So today’s webinar is going to be about maximising admissions through different types of content for schools.
0:56 and how the content fits into your marketing. Some of you we can see have attended previous webinars and some of you are new to what we do here so we’re going to give a quick introduction about Small Films and talk very very briefly about my background and George’s personal background and then we’re going to get straight into the webinar and talk about why content is
1:20 more important than ever and the environment that all of you marketers and admissions people are operating in
1:27 right now we’re going to talk about the marketing funnel in quite some depth
1:32 and how different types of content fit into different stages within the funnel and then we’re going to look
1:38 specifically at six types of content that here at Small Films we are experts in so we can give you some actionable tips and some advice that you
1:49 can take away and Implement into your content strategy right away we do have
1:54 an offer for youat the end and like I said hopefully we’ll have time for a Q&A too
2:00 thank you George. So a little bit about us. So we are Small Films
2:09 My personal background is I’ve worked in the industry for over 20 years but a vast majority of that in education
2:16 marketing so I’ve worked with over 50 universities and 20 Independent Schools producing films, TV adverts, cinema
2:24 commercials, multipart series.
I’ll talk about George very briefly as well. George is the founder of Small Films and set the company up roughly eight years ago I
2:52 think after 20 years experience making broadcast television for all of
2:58 the major broadcasters including BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery.
3:04 George has personally worked on at least 30 Independent Schools probably more than that now
3:11 and has also worked with a range of brands too. He’s also the bestselling Amazon author of his book resonance Unleash Your Brands Potential with Video. Signed copies are
3:23 available on request. So a little bit about Small Films like I said we are a full service agency so we work with clients from the very beginning of campaigns. That’s looking at objectives and video strategies and campaign
3:41 positioning right through to all the production stages, the pre-production filming, photography and then finally to the
3:48 editing, but we also help out with clients at the final stage in terms of distribution making sure any content we
3:55 produce finds its audience or is discovered easily by its audience online
4:00 You can see we’ve worked with again a wide mix of schools, brands and
4:08 agencies. Thank you George so this is just what I was talking about now. So we are a full service agency, we’re not just
4:13 a camera crew for hire. We work with clients right from the very start coming up with ideas helping them
4:20 determine their video marketing strategy through all of those stages of production that I just mentioned and
4:26 then finally activation and I say that might involve helping clients
4:31 distribute their content online through various methods but it also may
4:36 involve helping helping clients ensure that their content and their videos are
4:41 well optimised for search and perform very very well in Google search engines. Thank you George and like I said
4:48 we are specialists in Independent Schools we’ve been doing this for for quite some time now we’ve worked with
4:55 big schools, small schools, boy schools, girls schools and you can see there we’ve we’ve worked with some of the
5:02 the leading independent schools in the country including Wellington College and Marlborough. Thank you George, I promised that we wouldn’t take too long so hopefully we got plenty of time now to to get into
5:15 the good stuff. So I’m going to hand over to George now he’s going to talk to you for a little bit about why content is
5:21 so important for Independent Schools right now.
5:26 Tt’s also worth mentioning that
5:32 we are a video agency first and foremost but we do produce other types of content for our clients so
5:37 things like podcasts and 360 tours and things like things where video is a component we we support with
5:44 that that’s why we felt like it would be a good idea to a webinar all about the different types of content you can
5:50 produce so let’s get into the sort of meat of this so you know why does
5:55 content matter for Independent Schools and I think it’s really important to sort of look at the
6:02 climate right now. In my view content’s never really been more important than it is now you’ve got
6:09 a looming looming recession and cost of living.
6:14 Times are tough for people ad you couple that with the the 20% VAT issue coming in in January which everyone obviously
6:21 hates and parents are of course naturally questioning themselves over
6:26 whether or not it is a good idea to invest in private school education so it’s all the more important to showcase
6:33 what you do and to communicate why you offer great value
6:38 Even though you do command quite high fees, that’s where content comes in
6:43 beyond that you know you’ve also got a changing demographic of parents. Parents now coming through
6:50 are digital natives who grew up with social media. They spend a lot of
6:56 their time online and they do a lot of their research online. In fact a couple of years ago The Times
7:04 educational supplement did a survey and found that 63% of parents use online
7:10 resources including websites and social media to inform their decision- making when
7:15 they choose a school. I also like to talk about the covid effect which is that we sort of know now
7:22 that parents don’t want to get out of bed until they’ve had a really good look at a school online and
7:29 they sort of know everything about you before they actually come for an Open Day. Tt’s this thing about
7:36 wanting to do stuff from home. Obviously this is not exclusive for every single parent but it’s just a trend that’s
7:41 moving in that direction.
7:47 fierce competition from everything from other Independent Schools to grammars and trusts and international schools
7:54 opening who might be more attractive to the international student components you’re going after and then
8:01 finally this sort of element of the quality of content now is very high the affordability and
8:08 accessibility of content creation means that lots of
8:14 schools have good content. It’s not like you can’t just have an average looking website and
8:20 a sort of half half done video, you’ve got to really work hard to
8:26 stand out beyond that within the school sector there’s a wider thing going on.
8:32 There’s a massive problem with trust across the
8:38 advertising and marketing landscape, Edelman who do their trust barometer
8:44 every year in last year’s one found that trust in traditional
8:49 advertising is at an all-time low, only 30% of people trust advertising now
8:56 and 56% say they distrust brand brand messaging. In general I think that’s a
9:01 really big number 56% basically don’t trust what brands are saying of course
9:07 with schools we’re all trying to do a similar thing, we’re trying to reach the same audience there is a
9:13 problem with content saturation going on so there’s just so much content out there we’ve been bombarded by
9:19 advertising everywhere we go you’re being you know reached 24/7 on your
9:25 smartphones. HubSpot did a survey last year and found that 60% of marketers say
9:32 their biggest challenge is creating content that stands out. That’s not that
9:37 surprising then that there’s a move towards sort of personalisation of content you know the more
9:43 personalised you can get the more directly you’re speaking to the audience, the more they going to resonate with
9:49 your message and the more likely you’re going to cut through that noise that’s out there. Again I’ve got lot of facts for you
9:54 here, but I think it sort of helps bring the message across. Accenture did a study where they found that 91% of consumers
10:01 are more likely to shop with brands that provide personalised offers and recommendations and then of course
10:08 finally we’ve got the rise of AI. I’m sure many of you saw the the Willy Wonka experience where they’d sold
10:14 the dream on these phenomenal photos generated through AI imagery and
10:21 let’s just say did not live up to expectations. There were lots of crying children and it got an amazing amount of
10:28 press so people are worried about AI 2024. Forbes survey found that 76% of
10:37 consumers said they’re worried about AI misinformation so this
10:42 whole package, it sets the scene for needing to create real content that
10:48 shows real things that really resonates with your audience.
10:54 And that’s the way you’re going to continue to get cut through to the parents you want to
11:01 reach. So what is content, well parents are shopping online
11:08 for schools, they shop in the same way actually as they shop for anything else whether it’s a holiday abroad, a car,
11:17 clothes, an independent school. It is probably one of the biggest choices they’ll make and it
11:24 comes very loaded of course. But really they’re buying with their head and their heart. There’s the information they’re
11:30 gathering and the logical side of their brain and then there’s obviously the the emotional side of their brain so it’s very important that we don’t just
11:36 provide them with factual information, that we also create an emotional connection for them so they really feel
11:43 invested in your school and of course that classic marketing funnel is so important when it comes to content
11:50 creation, because you are trying to take all parents on this journey through awareness. They don’t know you yet
11:56
and you’re just trying to get their attention to consideration. They’re now thinking about your school and they
12:02 might want to actually send their child there. There’s content that you can use for that, there’s the
12:09 conversion part which is when they actually make that decision to apply but also when they actually go through and decide to choose your school at that point as well so there content that you
12:21 can create for that, and then of course once they are parents once they’re pupils once they’re former
12:27 alumni that sort of part which you get them invested in the school, in
12:33 the brand of the school, and then they become advocates and they start talking about you. So what do we mean by content. Well
12:41 content is anything that parents can see consume. Ultimately it’s writing, imagery, film, 360 degree tours, podcasts, infographics, print prospectus it’s you going to events and putting up your stands and having videos there. Tt’s advertising, it’s social channels of course, it’s all those things. we’re going to focus
13:05 more on the audio visual part of this because that’s that’s the part that we know about and frankly we’ need about
13:10 three hours to go through it all, so I’m going to hand over to Christiaan in a minute but before I do that I just
13:17 want to say that it can be quite overwhelming to think
13:22 there are so many types of content I can create for my schools like where do I even start but you mustn’t be
13:28 overwhelmed by it because you don’t need to do everything and you know you probably can’t do everything to be
13:34 honest with you. Unless you’ve got unlimited time and resources, so it’s really important to drill down into
13:39 specific channels to reach your parents and specific types of content that can
13:45 help you to achieve your objectives. Every school we meet has different needs and it’s really
13:51 important to ask yourself that question of what is my objective right now, because it can be all sorts of
13:59 things. Yes it can be more admissions, that’s just the main focus but it might be better admissions, it might be
14:05 international admissions, it might be you need more scholars, it might be about retention of existing pupils at a certain juncture, maybe at sixth form. It
14:18 could be about changing perceptions about your school. At best you’re seen as a sporty school and you want to be an academic school, at worst it might be a reputational issue, like you had a bad Ofsted rating.
14:31 you can’t shake that off, or an old Head that people didn’t like and and they don’t realise the new head started and
14:37 it’s all changed. And it actually might be something as simple as you’re an all boy school or an all girl school and you
14:44 really want people to understand the benefits of that over co-ed education. So ask yourself that objective and that will help to inform all of the content that you create and have that kind of North
Star for what you’re doing. So let me hand over to
15:02 Christiaan now and he’s going to go through this in a little bit more detail. Great thank you George and your
15:07 timing is impeccable I think we’re absolutely on schedule which is great. Just following on from
15:14 what George says, setting your objectives is incredibly
15:20 important at the outset before you create or commission any type of content
15:25 What I would also add to that is when you do set your objectives, whatever they may be, wherever possible try to find a
15:34 way to measure and quantify them. Tt’s not always possible but nine times out of 10 it’s absolutely possible to come up with a measurable goal that you can
15:45 then track over time to see if your marketing efforts have been successful or not. What that also does, having
15:52 those measurable goals and tracking them over time also allows you to deviate and change course depending on
16:00 what’s working and what isn’t. It’s very important to learn along the way and not
16:05 just stick your head in the sand if things aren’t working properly if you know they’re not you can obviously think
16:12 about a change of tax, so absolutely set your objectives and try to track
16:17 and measure them wherever you can. So what I’m going to talk about here is
16:23 as George said we’re going to focus here on audio visual content because that is our area of expertise
16:29 we’ve often partnered with other agencies on school projects who do things that we don’t such as print
16:36 prospectuses or blog writing, but today we’re going to talk about audiovisual content and how this fits
16:43 into your schools marketing funnel. Now I hope this doesn’t feel like marketing 101 to a lot of you because we are going to go back to basics a little bit and review a marketing funnel which would
16:56 apply to to any type of organisation but we’re going to look specifically how content for independent schools can fit in with the various stages.
17:09 You have seen the image on the right or something very similar which demonstrates how the marketing funnel works effectively
17:22 You’re casting the net pretty wide even though you are going for specific target audience and then gradually parents move along the funnel. You’re wanting to move them from awareness all the way through to loyalty and advocacy. So let’s look at the awareness stage first and what type of content is going to fit into that. So the awareness stage, this is aimed at parents and and pupils
17:48 as well those who may have never ever heard of your school before they might not be from the area and they’re doing their
17:54 research remotely to try and find the right school for their children. They may have heard of the school but
18:02 have absolutely no emotional connection, don’t know anything about it beyond the fact that they’re aware it’s
18:08 in a particular area. So any content produced for the awareness stage must be attention grabbing, it must be eye-catching because the number one aim of it, is to to draw parents in get
18:22 parents excited and wanting to find out more about your school so they’ve got an appetite to then take the next step which is typically heading towards your website to find out more. With the
18:34 awareness stage, not always but usually these are paid campaigns and they’re heavily promoted, by which I mean whatever type of content you produce will typically have a paid advertising spend behind it, so it can be distributed so you can get it in front of the right people. Very rarely is any content at this stage passive that you’re hoping prospective parents to stumble along. This is about being
19:04 proactive and outgoing and make sure you get it in front of people so here are types of content you can see which fit very neatly into the awareness stage.
19:17 Some of you may have never even considered TV advertising for your school but it is becoming increasingly
19:24 accessible and increasingly affordable and is absolutely an option for the vast
19:29 majority of schools, which I’m going to go on to talk about a little bit later in more detail but that would
19:35 obviously raise awareness if you can get it in front of parents who have never never heard of your school. Exactly
19:41 the same applies to cinema commercials. We’ve worked on several campaigns recently for schools where they they’ve
19:48 used their film either as a TV advert and or a cinema commercial. Again
19:53 it’s a much more accessible platform than it used to be and that you might imagine so in terms of the
20:00 stage it fits into absolutely it’s awareness you’re you’re trying to raise awareness of your school to a brand new
20:06
audience. Other types of content that fits into the awareness campaigns are out-of-home advertising, typically
20:13 that takes the form of digital display so anything from a huge
20:19 billboard on a on a main street through to digital display screens
20:25 that you see going up the escalator if you live in London but you also find them in all sorts of other places
20:31 My mother is long retired and is a member of David Lloyd. She saw an advert for a school that we work with at her David Lloyd
20:38
Fitness Center on a digital display screen so there are lots of opportunities for out of home
20:45 YouTube can be used on multiple
20:51 stages, but in terms of the awareness stage it can absolutely be used with
20:57 paid advertising spend behind it we’re also going to Google pay per click and display again that’s an
21:03 example of something we don’t offer inhouse but if you want to get in front of new parents Google pay per click will
21:09 boost your school right to the top of the rankings and you don’t have to worry about your organic search results. And
21:15 then similarly on social media, which I’ll come on to later there are lots of opportunities to create content for the
21:21 awareness stage here too and then print and radio and SEO are all really good forms of content but we’re not going
21:28 to go into too much detail about them. So you’ve got
21:42 the parents attention, you’ve produced some great eye catching content and you’ve drawn them in, you’ve got them excited
21:48 they’ve now got an appetite to find out more about your school, so
21:53 it’s aimed at those parents who have already made the decision to find out more. Typically 99% of the time
22:00 they’re heading towards your homepage or maybe your social media channels but typically it’s the homepage, which is your school’s shop window. What they’re doing there is they’re looking for more information about the school.
22:14 So from that homepage there’s lots of different content which you should be linking to which will form part of
22:21 this consideration stage. You’re really looking to bombard them in the nicest
22:26 possible way with information, because hopefully you’ve already made that emotional connection with your awareness
22:32 content. Prospectuses are still incredibly popular.We’ve seen fewer and fewer print prospectuses but digital
22:39 prospectuses, the vast majority of schools have them. I’ve seen some fantastic ones recently which are
22:45 heavily personalised, so you add in your details and you’ll be sent a hyper-personalised prospectus just giving you the information that you want stripping out anything that’s that’s not
22:58 relevant. I would definitely recommend video content on the homepage
23:04 looping silent wallpaper is very very effective as long as the production values are high enough and the
23:11 shots are good enough and then a homepage video. You may not want
23:17
to use the video you used in the awareness stage but it might be an extended version of
23:22 that or an alternative edit of the content you’ve used to create that initial connection. Some good photography
23:30 is absolutely essential to to every school’s website and if you are
23:35 looking at doing or already hosting a podcast and a blog make
23:40 sure this is linked really prominently from your homepage because that’s what parents will be looking for.
23:46 And then finally 360 degree tours and aerial maps now they’ve been around for
23:52 some time and actually technically they’ve evolved quite significantly over the last few years and again when you
23:59 you look at Behaviour analytics on the school website these sorts of tours are very very popular for parents who are at
24:06 the consideration stage and want to have a look around the campus potentially physically from their point of view
24:12 without actually having to get off their seat or they can do in their lunch break and then make a
24:19 decision if they actually want to to come and visit so provide lots of information here at this consideration
24:26 stage because the parents are going to have a really strong appetite for it.
24:34 So conversion stage you’ve drawn parents in, you’ve informed them they’re
24:40 at that point where they’re ready to to take some kind of action and it’s up to you to provide even more content to tip
24:49 them over from consideration to conversion. Now when it comes to
24:54 conversion, the ultimate conversion for any school is of course for the parents not just to make an application but
25:01 also to accept your school’s offer. However there are other types of conversions that you should be aiming
25:08 for and you should be tracking and you should be measuring if a parent downloads a prospectus – that counts
25:16 as a conversion if they sign up to a mailing list and give you their email and permissions to communicate
25:23 them in the future again that’s a great conversion or perhaps you’ve
25:28 got an enquiry form that a parent would submit and finally maybe there’s a
25:33 link where they can book for an open day all four of those things should be considered a conversion from
25:40 consideration to decision making and obviously the ultimate
25:45 conversion is of course the acceptance of an offer. So at this stage in terms of the types of content you should be
25:51 producing you can get really niche and really detailed about their specific
25:57 interest, so much longer form reports and articles either in written or video form
26:04 You can create those conversions through departmental videos and photography and
26:09 case studies and blogs which really drill down into specific aspects of your school. Perhaps it’s boarding, perhaps
26:16 it’s sports, perhaps it’s music perhaps it’s the clubs that you have to offer you can get very
26:24 detailed here because at that point that’s what parents will be looking for. And then finally I mentioned that
26:32 conversion from application to offer. What we’ve seen recently and we’re
26:37 seeing a lot are schools when they send out their offers to parents they’re
26:43 not sending a standard template letter which just changes the the parents name and the child’s name
26:49 they’re often sending out much more heavily personalised letters and emails
26:54 and even videos. So we’ve been working on a series of videos for clients where they
27:00 send a personalised offer out on video from the head to the parent inviting
27:06their child to to take a place. Typically what that will mean is 80% of the video will be the same but we
27:14 will record or sometimes the school would record internally a personalised video
27:20 at the start and the end so it’s directed right at the parents and as George said , 91% respond to personalised content and a video directly aimed at you
27:38 is the ultimate form of personalised content so that’s definitely something I would think about.
So finally loyalty and
27:57 advocacy. Parents have accepted the offer to send their children to your school and they’re having a really fantastic time, but it’s
28:02 really really important that the content that you produce does not stop here
28:08 you’ve got to make sure you turn your parents and the pupils into really active advocates for your school they’re
28:15 going to give you great reviews either formally in terms of a written review or informally they’re going to
28:21 proactively refer to their friends and family without being asked and that really is the most powerful kind
28:28 of marketing, word of mouth. And that doesn’t happen by accident. Yes you’ve
28:34 got to have a a great school which pupils enjoy and parents are
28:40 very happy that they sent their kids to, but there’s lots of content that you can produce which will help and enable them
28:47 to talk about your school after they’ve accepted the offer. This type of content I suggest would be
28:55 celebratory. It’s a constant reminder of all the amazing things that
29:01 your school’s doing so they’ve got something to talk about again. That can take the form of videos,
29:07 day to day activities of the school, whether it’s speech days, school plays, sports matches, alumni profiles, general
29:14 news updates and that is often a mix of in-house teams and professional
29:19 production companies like ours working together producing different types of content because it is important here
29:26 that the content is produced consistently regularly and whatever you
29:31 plan here that you stick to it so parents are constantly reminded of all the amazing things that you’re doing. The
29:38 same applies to social media where you can obviously upload videos
29:43 behind the scene photos, infographics and shoot things specifically for different platforms
29:49 like Instagram stories and then podcasts which George is going to talk about in more detail later. But
29:55 a regular podcast discussing issues specifically affecting your school and perhaps exploring issues
30:03 that affect the broader Independent School sector all of these things should be produced on a regular basis
30:10 whether it’s monthly, fortnightly, weekly constantly reminding
30:15 parents of how great you are and then they will become loyal advocates for your school. That’s the end of the marketing funnel. What we’re going to do now is
30:29 have a bit more of a deep dive into six specific areas of audio visual
30:34 content that you can produce.
30:41 Like I said we’re looking at TV advertising, Cinema, YouTube social media, podcasting and 360 tours. So we’re not going to
30:47 look at print and newsletters and radio like I said that’s not our over expertise but we do know lots of great
30:53 companies who we partner with who do this stuff. TV advertising now as I said there
31:02 might be some of you out there who’ve never even considered TV advertising because it’s always seemed out of reach, too expensive, not something that schools do, but we are seeing more and more schools and a number of our clients
31:15 use TV advertising to to promote their school. The reason they’re able to do
31:20 this are twofold really. The cost of producing television quality adverts has
31:27 dropped and dropped so it’s much more accessible but also the advertising spends, the money you
31:33 need to pay the broadcasters to get your advert on TV, is so much cheaper. Not very
31:39 long ago if you wanted to broadcast an advert you either had to do it nationally or you had to do it
31:45 regionally. Now if you’re an independent school that’s not going to work for you, you’re either recruiting from a
31:51 specific catchment area, or if you’re a day school or you’re looking for International or boarding students, just
31:58 casting the net that widely is not going to give you a good return on investment and it would have cost you tens of
32:05 thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds to run campaigns on BBC, ITV in the past. Now you can run highly targeted TV ad campaigns which means
32:16 serving different adverts to different households at the same time using Sky admart and Virgin admart. They have
32:24 lots of data on their uses, so you can target your adverts at particular
32:30 addresses, particular post codes, to particular families who have particular incomes and and children at school age
32:37 as well. So it can be very very hyper-targeted which also means that
32:42 they’ve been able to reduce the cost very significantly. For as little as £3,000 you can run campaigns on both
32:49 of those platforms. Say that’s live TV so I could be watching Sky,
32:56 George could be watching Sky, we can be watching the same programme and we will get served different adverts depending
33:01 on our preferences so it’s a really really effective way to advertise, I would say particularly for day schools
33:08 who recruit from a 10 mile catchment area for their pupils. Video
33:15 on demand, it’s very similar slightly different it’s not live TV if you ever download if you ever watch any
33:20 program on demand vi4 or it VX you can also serve your adverts within those programmes as well and then
33:28 Clearcast if you haven’t come across it before this is a free- to use body which clears your TV adverts for broadcast.
33:36 because the rules are slightly different. Any claims you make need to be
33:42 approved and substantiated so if you’ve got a film on your website you don’t need to do that, if you want to
33:49 repurpose it as a TV advert you do so going to show you a short advert
33:56 which was repurposed from a longer brand film, so George if you do the next slide
34:01 please play that through and grab some water it’s also worth mentioning just about you know thinking about when
34:08 you’re doing these these films and creating a TV advert the
34:14 typical rule of thumb is about 10 to 30% of of the total budget to be spent on the
34:19 advert itself, so you can kind of use that as a rule of thumb for how you’re actually
34:24 going about doing an advertising campaign. You set your budget and then you’re working out from there and
34:30 actually that clearcast process, it’s a pain you can do it yourself but it
34:35 doesn’t take that long, it’s not that expensive. We do that for our clients because partly you have to work
34:42 out does the script pass advertising standards, is the technical spec, but
34:48 it’s actually surprisingly easy to do they’re very good at helping you out.
35:28 So like I said that was a longer film and it was repurposed
35:33 as a TV advert. So if we go to the next stage,
35:39 Cinema commercials it’s the same film has already been repurposed as a
35:45 cinema commercial. It’s a day school, they
35:50 recruit locally so a fantastic campaign they ran with that film it was screened
35:56 in local cinemas over a period of 6 months so I would highly recommend
36:03 looking into this as an option you’ve obviously got the big multiplexes
36:09 View and and odion but and cine world as well but I’d also explore some of the
36:14 smaller art housee groups of Cinemas picture house Everyman and keron those three in particular are often found in
36:22 quite affluent areas you know catchment areas of lots of you know leading Independent Schools so I would
36:30 100% look at these as options to get your brand film out there as an advert
36:37 and raise awareness in this case you don’t go via click you go via the cinema
36:42 advertising Association for the exactly the same reasons you have to make sure that it meets their technical specification and you’re not making any
36:49 unsubstantiated claims you also have to have it certified like a film so a
36:55 film is 18 15 PG obviously with school advertising there’s never any issues
37:01 around this so it usually gets the the lowest rating and can be screened
37:07 around suitable content so yeah 100% looking into it more and more scores are doing this all the time next slide
37:13 please judge so video obviously we are we are a video agency and we produce
37:19 all sorts of different um content so I just want to talk about sort of how video um fits in and and what’s what’s
37:28 popular typically there’s those three ways of promoting any video produced either hosted on your website they’re on
37:35 your social media channels or the on on YouTube but hosting on the website there’s lots of options out there for
37:41 video players which enable you to
37:46 capture data they have lots of different marketing functions I’ve talked about those at length on other webinars so
37:52 you’ll be able to find them there or drop me an email I’m very happy to make some some recommendations the other option is
37:58 of course using them you know on your YouTube channels we did some research recently looking at independent schools
38:05 around the UK and in terms of just the number of views which I wouldn’t count as a conversion but it’s a really
38:11 important metric these were by far the most popular types of videos right across the board the whole school
38:17 overview from the Air Day the life heads welcome and then three films going into specific elements of the school boarding
38:24 Sports showcase and also what it’s like to start at particular years as well now
38:30 if you skip to the next slide please George here what I’m talking about specifically are organic campaigns
38:36 and organic by what by that I mean the films have been uploaded to YouTube but there’s no paid advertising spend
38:44 behind them just click Jaws there’s a thank you very much so there’s a good example here of an organic YouTube
38:50 campaign by tetan Hall College that’s a series of eight videos all deling into
38:55 specific areas of the school they look great they’ve got good thumbnails and they’re really well optimized
39:01 because if you’re not going to put any spend behind it this stage becomes even more more important you’ve absolutely
39:08 got to optimise your content for the search results so pick your titles
39:13 really carefully make sure they include keywords throughout that and also throughout the description label your
39:19 video file appropriately and make sure you select the Right video category when you upload it make sure you customize
39:26 your thumbnails like you see here from from tetan Hall college and then also add subtitles captions annotations and
39:33 end screens to make sure that they they are fully optimized for Discovery
39:40 and these types of campaigns would typically fit in the awareness stage but
39:45 it’s a little less black and white you’ll also this content also feeds really nicely into the consideration
39:52 stage once a parent has decided to look at your website or the the YouTube channel as as well so yeah thank you
40:00 George that’s organic campaigns and then I’m going to talk very briefly about paid campaigns so YouTube offers
40:08 multiple different formats for paid advertising campaigns which are
40:14 constantly evolving I’m sure you all be familiar with it because unless you
40:19 sign up for a YouTube premium account with no advertising you’re watching Youtube and you’ll find adverts served
40:25 to you either before for or during any content you w you watch now those
40:31 adverts tend to either fall into one of two categories either they’re skippable video ads or they’re not skippable video
40:38 ads you know that’s self-explanatory and normally the formats for the different ads are 6 seconds 15 seconds and 30
40:47 seconds there are other types of format but not really time to go into it
40:52 here there’s probably enough there for an entire webinar about campaigns
40:58 but if you Google it or drop me an email I can send you a link you can find all
41:03 the different types of paid YouTube formats which would typically fit in to
41:09 the awareness stage because you’re trying to get those ads in front of people who you haven’t heard of your school thank you
41:17 George we’ve got 17 minutes to go here George so I’m just gonna rush through this one to give us time to to to to
41:23 finish it off so with social media again there’s two types of post you can make social media organic paid organic is
41:29 free when you can upload images upload videos post copy that is fine and
41:35 you should be doing it but it’s going to fall very quickly down users timelines where as paid or sponsored
41:42 content you can make sure appears in their timelines for weeks months even years years to come it works right
41:48 across the marketing funnel so content you post to social media can be everything from awareness right through
41:55 to advocacy and videos if you are uploading them organically make sure you do it natively
42:02 and what I mean by that is don’t just post a YouTube link because social media
42:07 platforms will do everything to keep you on their platform that link will disappear very very quickly down the
42:12 timeline because they don’t want you to watch on YouTube upload natively to the platforms and you know again set
42:20 those measurable goals decide what your aims are for each of these platforms and
42:25 then track and measure as you go you can analyze and adapt and you can make really good datadriven decisions about
42:32 where you want to focus your marketing activity and your time and your budgets yeah I was going to say on this as well
42:39 you know many of you probably thinking about Tik Tok and if you’re not already you know trying to master that
42:46 platform and it can be a little bit intimidating of you know trying to grow a Tik Tok Channel and who manages it and
42:51 what do we put on there and all that sort of thing but of course you can advertise on Tik Tok so rather than having to build up in you can just
42:58 get a company like ours to actually make adverts and then it’s pretty easy to get those up there and reach the sort
43:04 of audience you’re trying to get to is something worth worth thinking about I would say right I’m taking over now on
43:11 I think thank you Geor over to you now George cool so yeah podcasting so want
43:17 to talk a bit about this so with podcasting you know it’s it’s
43:22 a great thing to do first of all I’d say for many reasons you know it’s
43:28 quite easy to do it yourself you don’t need necessarily any professional help to get a podcast up and running
43:35 but even if you do get a company to do it like we can do podcasts for people it’s quite affordable in the grand
43:41 scheme of things because there’s not too much to do the editing part of it is mainly the the sort of the the pain
43:47 and it’s quite quick for a professional company to do that it’s uh a really good thing for engaging people at sort
43:54 of any stage of the funnel so for parents that are are looking at you there’s a couple of ways that they might
44:00 engage with that podcast first of all you might advertise on other people’s podcasts that’s one option if your
44:06 podcast is well optimized for search they might find it so that’s good and
44:12 then obviously through the rest of the funnel the really great part about podcast you’re s showing the other side
44:17 of school life it’s the less polished side of things you know it’s kind of like a little bit behind the scenes
44:24 which means you can really communicate the personality of your school know sort of warts and all maybe a little bit
44:31 but I think it’s important when you’re trying to think about doing a podcast is to again ask yourself that question who
44:37 why are we doing it and who is it aimed at you know are you looking for new parents and to try and engage them or
44:44 is it about engaging existing parents or something else um few tips here which I’m going to Rattle through so when you
44:50 get to the next slide as well but very important to have a good concept at the heart of it so think about what your
44:56 theme is and what you’re actually trying to do and who’s going to be hosting it and that sort of thing that normally will then feed into creating a good
45:02 title you know you could have the blah blast School podcast but it’s nice to have something a bit more um
45:08 aspirational engaging make sure you have a really nice thumbnail um that you create that looks optimized like those
45:15 YouTube ones and make sure you have a Content plan of what you’re going to be doing here is it going to be weekly is
45:21 it going to be monthly when are we going to run it how many are we going to do um you know
45:27 think about it in terms of series it can be quite intimidating to start a podcast but you don’t need to do a 100 episodes
45:33 you could just do a minseries you know three episodes just s of try out see how you find it is it easy do you enjoy it
45:40 um and then certainly you can do it in series one two and three so if the first series there’s some learnings from it
45:46 you can incorporate those into series two and you can build and get it better and better um a few things to kind of
45:52 lift it and to make it feel a bit more professional is have a you know get a nice jingle m by somebody um again we
45:58 can do that um just a simple jingle at the beginning and a consistent intro you know welcome to the so Ando podcast uh
46:05 where we do such and such we’re going to be talking about X and Y and how blah blah blah yada yada yada you know you’ve
46:12 heard them if you listen to any podcast they typically have those and it’s also great to have a little bit of tease up
46:17 front you know on today’s show you know we’re meeting so and so to talk about such and such and that person is going
46:24 to share all these amazing bits of wisdom um and you know that will get people excited and hook them in um you
46:31 want to make sure that you’re promoting um your your podcast in the right way so
46:36 make sure you have a good landing page so that it can be found for SEO search
46:42 Eng optimization so people are searching on Google they might find your podcast um filming the Pod is a very good idea
46:48 you know if you’re just got a couple of iPhones and just get some footage um that enables you to put it up on YouTube
46:55 so then you got another platform that that people can access it on and you can drive them from YouTube over to your
47:01 podcast um make sure when you’re uploading it to um your platform of choice typically you upload it to one
47:07 platform and then that distributes it to I apple and Spotify and everywhere else
47:13 um make sure you have a good description that kind of hooks people in a good title um that kind of kind of says what
47:20 what it what is what’s in the podcast and um then finally make sure you try and promote it um as much as you can so
47:27 create as many deliverables as you can off that podcast for example you can
47:32 chop out little sections maybe like 30 seconds long um and you can um turn
47:38 those in little audiograms we call them so they basically just have like a little a little video with a little wave
47:43 form and a title saying who the person is and the podcast branding and then you just hear a snippet of that podcast just
47:50 you know post that on social media you can even run adverts for it on place like LinkedIn or or social help drive
47:56 people to the podcast um create you know you can create transcripts from the podcast you can create blogs from the
48:01 podcast um there’s all sorts of things you can do with it and again you know showing The Human Side of um school life
48:08 I think that’s what this is about you know a good place to start is getting the head um to appear on your podcast
48:15 and talk about um what they think about things and what they really think and what gets them out of bed in the morning
48:21 um just a really good way to engage um parents at different parts of the funnel
48:26 so I definitely recommend it and it’s fun we we’ve got a podcast I mean it’s been um it’s been a while since we recorded an episode I’m I’m afraid to
48:33 say but um it’s it was a lot of fun to do um and it did get us a lot of um
48:39 awareness let me just get to the next slide so there we go cool so I want to talk
48:45 about school tours I’m I’m broadly saying School tours because there’s different types of School tours I’m G to have to Rattle through this a bit
48:51 because of time many of you kind of aware of like 360 tours
48:57 um which is essentially you know done with bit of software mat port or or something like that where it’s like an
49:03 estate agent walk through you know the parent is watching and they’re dragging themselves around using their Mouse and
49:10 um looking around the school at empty school that can be like a dollhouse where it sort of shows you a whole view
49:15 of the school and you can zoom in or you can have an interface where you interact with it um they can be quite cold and
49:22 they can be quite sort of um a missed opportunity I say really want to think about how you integrate other types of
49:28 media into those um School tours so you can have clickable buttons which would
49:34 bring out bits of text you can have a voice over um feeding through it so the
49:39 head talking to you about the school you can have clickable videos that would play so maybe you’re on the sports field
49:46 and it’s empty on the tour but actually you click on a button it would show a sports match playing or if you look at
49:51 this example um that’s playing at the bottom you can actually um place uh
49:56 people into scenes so someone would say click onto the reception area and up Pops a stud and says welcome to
50:03 reception let me show you you know around and tell you what you know we do here um quite advanced stuff I don’t
50:10 haven’t seen any schools doing that um university is certainly doing it um and even you can place uh videos onto
50:18 surfaces so um for example you could walk into the school hall and out on the
50:24 far wall you could have a video playing on there automatically all sorts of things you can do there um other types
50:31 of sort of tour you can have um an interactive map so rather than a a 360
50:36 walk through it’s more of a an aerial map of the school with placeholders or even like an illustration you click on
50:43 each button and up Pops a video up Pops a bit of text I find those are quite good because they’re quick for a parent
50:50 to get into they can just kind of decide what they want to look at and have a quick look um there’s a interactive 360
50:57 videos uh where you can sort of pick your path um I’ll go to that very
51:02 quickly but basically it’s a 360 video of someone walking through your school
51:09 um so you put that on YouTube and then when you reach certain juncture points um the parent can choose which way to go
51:15 do you want to go to you know the science lab or do you want to go to the art building um quite good uh bit sort
51:23 of more fun and a bit more sort of engaging um and you can even sort of use a Google cardboard headset where people
51:30 put their phones in and then they can basically watch it in 3D like this um a
51:35 couple of other options are um guided tour videos we’ve done quite a few of
51:40 those for school so imagine that’s like a location location location uh but rather than Kirsty walking you around a
51:45 house it’s the head walk or people walking you through the school and talking to you I find those very engaging really good for open days um a
51:52 virtual open days you can show parts of that video online uh aerial films like this one on the top
51:59 right which is more for locating um the school and showing you where everything
52:04 is like we did this one for MRA where we put up little um placeholders to show where everything is um you can also do
52:11 that using an fpv drone where you kind of would get these are the tiny little drones about this size and people
52:17 operate them using like um a VR headset and basically they can get in everywhere
52:22 so you can have them out then they come in through the doorway and they go in through the build building and you can
52:27 actually do those where um students are actually there in in the school um that’s very very
52:33 exciting again that’s something we do and then finally just to think about it is augmented reality which I think is
52:39 something that schools will start to embrace a little bit um this would be if you imagine you had an open day that was
52:46 not um in term time and the school was completely empty and parents could wander around with an iPad um and on
52:53 that screen they’re seeing through it but they’re also seeing augmented reality elements so it could be like
52:58 little videos they click on or um buttons to press that they can sort of bring the school to life something to
53:04 consider um I a lot of universities Do It um again it’s sort of maybe it’s a
53:10 new thing for the school market so yeah lots of things you can do there they are really really good these I think you do need to think about where
53:16 they fit within your funnel are you trying to um you know help uh students
53:21 from abroad who can’t come and visit the school to actually walk around the school or are you using it more of sales
53:27 piece if it’s more of a sales piece I would consider U maybe not doing the full 360 kind of wats and all version
53:33 because you really are showing every single aspect of the school um whereas if you do something like a sort of a guided tour film or maybe an interactive
53:41 map where you you jump into videos you can be a bit more selective about what you’re showing um and so that can be a
53:48 bit more of an aid for parents which is are likely to actually come and have a look around at some
53:53 point so I’m just going to finish this with sort of how to Implement your content strategy um and you know it’s
54:00 not rocket science um but I think it’s worth just saying out loud which is you do need to think about your
54:07 priorities like I said at the very beginning you know what’s our objective here and what we trying to do and then
54:14 put that first and foremost and then decide the type of content you’re going to focus on
54:19 first build out a Content calendar um this is really really important because
54:24 you you know with a lot of content creation be it podcast video anything else the calendar and and the release
54:31 dates are critical so you don’t want to be releasing a podcast on the same day that you’re also trying to you know put
54:36 out a new school film or something like that so everything’s got to complement each other it’s got to nothing should sit in isolation it’s all got to tie
54:43 together um in terms of like calendar time and and theme um obviously
54:50 allocating budgets each activity is important um making sure that you you
54:55 have if you are deciding to do something new like a podcast that you’re giving it enough budget to have a good run at it
55:01 um and that you don’t sort of do do three and then not have an opportunity to do anymore um so that’s really
55:07 important try to be as personalized as possible wherever you can I think everything from sort of what Christian
55:14 was saying about personalized offer letters 32 to be honest with you just thinking about what your parents are
55:19 interested by drilling down into the specifics of what their um child is
55:25 interested in music sport Academia whatever it is you know the more content you can create around those individual
55:31 elements the better and um with all this in mind you know it becomes really really important with content creation
55:38 to to do that exercise of having your your customer Avatar you know
55:43 understanding who is your parent um I’m sure all of you have done this at some point or another you know trying to
55:51 really understand what content will resonate with those parents um because
55:56 the more specific you get the better it’s going to be um so yeah think about that um I
56:04 mentioned earlier but reuse reversion all content where possible for maximum return on investment split out one video
56:11 into multiple videos turn a video into a Blog turn a Blog into a video uh to turn
56:18 podcasts into um different formats that you can use like try to get maximum value out of what you’re doing uh and
56:26 publish it in all different channels so you can kind of Drive awareness for the core content you’re creating and then
56:31 finally it is you know start small be consistent and build don’t have to do
56:37 everything all at once you know just test and learn you know it’s trial and error some things will work better for
56:43 you than others um some things you’ll be able to do yourself some things you might struggle to don’t be overwhelmed
56:49 just just start with the things that are most important first so I think we’ve done all right on
56:55 time here hopefully she be we’ve got one minute to go and it would um yeah we just wanted to to highlight you know
57:01 this is not the first webinar these are three of our most recent ones um they’re
57:07 all available um if you drop me an email I can send you a link to uh the video
57:13 recording and I can send you a link to the presentation as well and I think George maybe it would be interesting to
57:19 hear from everyone what you’d like us to cover next you know we’re very very open
57:26 to um very open to ideas anything at all you’d like us to cover just just drop us an email um we’re doing one of these
57:33 once a Tom that we’re looking at at the moment um so yeah that would be that’ be really helpful um that we’re on the hour
57:41 George anything else you want to go through let me just quickly say we um we are looking for um Independent School
57:48 marketers who would be interested in um doing a little survey with us it’s just an online
57:54 Anonymous um it would be a a zoom call basically where we’re just going to ask you a few questions about sort of your
58:00 priorities how you make decisions about um your marketing how you make decision about suppliers all that sort of stuff
58:07 um and it’s worth 25 um Amazon gift voucher if you are interested by that um
58:12 definitely uh definitely kind of drop Christian an email um and that’s it really we did run out a little bit out
58:18 of time for Q&A but um we’re happy to stay on here um for another 10 minutes if anyone does have a burning questions
58:26 please uh drop it in the chat um so yeah we’ll hang out but otherwise if if no
58:32 one’s got any questions at this point then then we’ll we’ll jump off you can always um of course email us and we’re
58:38 happy to answer questions thank you so much for everyone’s time today really appreciate how busy everyone is and you really
58:44 appreciate taking the time to spend an hour with us today yeah let me just have a look we’ve got oh just lots of thank
58:51 you dropping into the Q&A I don’t think we’ve got any questions coming in last chance if you got anything you want to
58:56 ask us then drop in um otherwise we’ll say we’ll sign off cool all right thanks very much
59:04 everyone thank everyone have a nice day
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