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If you are opening an English school or if you are a freelance English teacher, one of the biggest challenges you will face is convincing potential students to trust you over your competitors in their journey towards reaching their English language learning goals.
Your online presence plays an integral role in this decision-making process.
If you have a well-established English school you may be wondering why you should bother improving the way you promote your English language business.
There will always be people who want to learn English, right? Students will always come back, right? Your school will always be the best and most recognisable school in your area, won’t it?
Wrong!
Nowadays, it’s not enough to have a visible ‘shop’ front, rely on English students returning year on year or simply pay a platform to send visitors to your school website. The customer has your competitors within reach and is able to compare your value proposition against others at the drop of a hat.
The success of your English school will depend on many different factors and variables. Nevertheless, picking up some practical digital marketing tips to promote your English school will certainly help. As educators, and not necessarily marketeers, you may be feeling out of your depth in this area.
These digital marketing tips will help you in a number of ways. Firstly, they will make your potential English students aware of your products or services (discover what courses you have to offer). Secondly, these tips will help you get their attention. And thirdly, they will help them decide to enrol in an English course with you instead of with a competitor.
Marketing is a huge area to cover and these digital marketing tips are meant to simply offer some practical ideas to help you or a colleague promote your English school or teacher training centre today. They will be of benefit even if you have no experience in marketing.
Whether you assume the responsibility of all the marketing tasks, or have a dedicated marketing person who can do this for you, the following ideas and tips will help you attract more students to your English school.
These are the my 10 ‘tried and tested’ digital marketing tips to promote your English school in 2023:
Fran Austin has been the Sales & Marketing Director for Oxford TEFL since 2014. Over the years, she has helped the company grow by applying her skills in areas as specific as copywriting, lead management and social media campaigns, and as broad as brand awareness, content management and stakeholder engagement.
In this blog post, she provides her top 10 ‘tried and tested’ digital marketing tips to help you promote your English school in 2023.
Storytelling in marketing is a combination of narrative and fact. Stories are easy to remember, unite your audience and inspire action. They can be told in many ways but must always have two things in common – impact and meaning. Telling a story which resonates with people can be much more memorable than a simple service description.
“Brand storytelling is the cohesive narrative that weaves together the facts and emotions that your brand evokes.” – Forbes
Examples that can be used to connect with your audience:
For more examples of types of storytelling, visit “Types of Stories Brands can tell: The Ultimate List”
To have the biggest impact, select the most meaningful stories and use empathy to connect with your audience. Emotional content will connect you to English student’s personal experiences and make the story more memorable.
“Show, don’t tell” the story. This allows the potential student to experience details of the story through sensory details, words, actions or the expression of emotions.
Think about the best way(s) to tell the story. This could be video, web page, social media posts, or all of them. Making a video? It can be professionally produced like the video from one of our graduates. Otherwise, it can be created in a more authentic, relatable way using simply a mobile phone and some basic editing skills!
With storytelling, you will be able to bring the customer into your world, and walk the journey together. Learn more about storytelling in this article from Hubspot.
Ask one of your students who has accomplished something special in English to appear in a video. In the video, get to the heart of the pain points they were experiencing with English. Then, ignite an emotional connection with them, and present the satisfying solution which your English school provided.
Write your English school’s story for your website. Include elements such as your real-life challenges and victories, an inside look at the lives of the people behind your company, how your English courses align to your mission, and how student’s lives are impacted because of what you do. Visit this article: “Brand Storytelling: What It Is and Why It Matters”, for some examples and case studies.
In marketing, social proof is a way for businesses to show their product or service is valuable by displaying data and feedback from the people who have bought it.
Whether we like it or not, we usually prefer to follow the crowd. And if that crowd is singing our praises, even better. Are your students and graduates happy with their English classes or teacher training course? Prove it – and shout it from the rooftops.
“We view a behaviour as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.” Robert Cialdini, Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University
Social proof can be done in a variety of ways, most of which are completely free:
A large group of English students endorse you or your school. This can be done by having thousands of students or followers on your social media profiles. Another way is to highlight high customer demand for an English course eg. announcing how many places are left on a course (as long as this is true). This creates a correlation between need and urgency. Uncertain English students will naturally find comfort in a greater collective.
This type of social proof is when people see their friends follow you on social media, or use your products or services. To do this well, you would want these friends to also share their experience with user generated content. Basically, when people see that other people they care about have already trusted you with their money, it will validate their own thinking too.
This can be achieved if you receive a stamp of approval from an authoritative organisation. In the ELT industry, this can be done by receiving accreditation from respectable organisations such as Cambridge Assessment English, Trinity College London, or the British Council, for example. Many of our graduates also use the Oxford TEFL name on their online profiles.
An authority or respected person in the ELT industry recommends your courses or publicly associates themselves with your brand. This could come in the form of a well-known tutor working on your courses and appearing on your website, for example.
Your current English students recommend your English language courses based on their experiences with you. For example, positive ratings on review sites such as Goabroad or hundreds of positive Facebook or Google reviews.
Keep reading…
At the end of an English course, invite some of your recent graduates to record a message / describe their experience for your social media. Ensure those who appear give prior written permission to comply with GDPR. They should also be in the right place/ time to do it calmly and naturally. For a good example, watch this video of some Oxford TEFL Online CELTA course graduates.
Use Typeform for gathering end-of-course feedback. At the end of the form ask the question “On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend this course to others?”. Include a conditional logic for those rating 9/10 to ask them for a Google review automatically, with a link to your Google Business Profile. This is free and available to ‘brick-and-mortar’ businesses as well as freelancers.
If your overall rating from all of your graduates is high, display this on your website, emails and any other relevant places. Read why Oxford TEFL has a graduate rating of 4.9.
The term ‘influencer’ may invoke some eye-rolling but hear me out. What does influencer marketing mean for you as an English language business? Using influencer marketing will help you to expand brand awareness and reassure potential students (from the influencer’s own audience) that your business is trustworthy.
“Influencer marketing really picked up steam in 2022, and we predict this trend will keep pace in 2023. Why? 89% of marketers who currently engage with influencer marketing will increase or maintain their investment next year. On top of that, 17% of marketers are planning to invest in it for the first time next year.” Hubspot
More than 56% of marketers who invest in influencer marketing work with “micro-influencers” (those with smaller audiences, typically thousands to tens of thousands of followers). Although they have a smaller following, the impact of micro-influencers can often be very effective due to the higher level of engagement or due to a niche within the industry.
As an English language school (and not a mega brand), it is most likely that you will work with micro-influencers or nano-influencers (which have anywhere from 100-10,000 followers). It’s important to note that this micro or nano-influencer must have followers who are your target audience (the people most likely to buy a course from you).
You would first need to research who your audience is and then pick a person who can help you reach them via their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog, Mailing list, or whichever other accounts they have a following on. We have found that this has worked particularly well with our Spanish teacher training courses.
The nano-influencers we have collaborated with so far are university professors with a strong Twitter following (who have tutored on our courses), YourTubers with a large number of subscribers (who have recorded exclusive online workshops for us), and authors of Spanish as a foreign language materials (who hav written a guest blog post for our website).
You can find influencers with the right image for your company by searching social media using hashtags, setting up Google search alerts, browsing the web using keywords and “blog”, and using LinkedIn tools that allow you to search by industry and position. You can check their Instagram follower numbers and engagement rates through an Instagram engagement calculator.
Find a micro- or nano-influencer who shares relevant / interesting / valuable information about your local town with your target audience and offer a free English class in return for a post / reel / mention / recommendation on their platforms.
Invite an influential trainer to design a course, record a workshop or write a blog post for you. As part of the agreement, they promote it via their own platforms.
Our goal is to connect with potential English students in a meaningful, helpful way. From the start of the sales funnel (the moment they become aware of your English school) to automating the end of the sales funnel (when they have decided to buy an English course) there are a multitude of touchpoints.
We want to find ways to make that journey towards enrolling them in one of your English courses as smooth as possible.
For many small businesses and English language schools, we simply do not have the time or resources to connect with people in the right way when it matters most; or track and analyse interactions. This is where an email automation platform like Mailchimp, Mailerlite or EmailOctopus can help.
In their own words:
“Mailchimp lets you dig a little deeper to segment users within your audience so you can send them personalized and targeted emails that help increase engagement, build trustful relationships and generate greater ROI.” Mailchimp.
With the assistance of an email automation platform such as the ones mentioned above, you will be able to send automated messages to potential (or current) English students without even lifting a finger (well, not much anyway). It can go hand-in-hand with regular, day-to-day email communications.
Depending on where the person is in the sales funnel, emails can include any (and more) of the following:
You don’t need to use the platform for all of the above. You would need to decide which would work best for your current set-up and goals and start from there. You can always try new things out later on, after you have measured the results of some of those above. In fact, you will be able to use the very user-friendly insights your automated email platform will provide for this.
If you have never used an email automation platform before, I recommend opening a free Mailchimp account and watching some free tutorials in the Mailchimp Academy. Here, you will gain access to a range of free resources and tutorials to help you get started with email marketing.
Set up an audience list within your email automation platform so that all applicants of a specific English course enter the list automatically. Create a customer journey so that the applicant receives a chain of informative, relevant, meaningful email(s) and a graduate discount on an additional, future English course (or another of your services).
Add a downloadable infopack or guide to your website. Create a customer journey so that those who enter their name and email to download the infopack or guide will enter the audience in your email automation platform automatically. They will then receive a chain of informative, relevant, meaningful email(s) and a link to schedule a call with you.
There are many other features that email automation platforms offer, but the suggestions above are a start.
You will most likely have wondered at some point how the Google ranking system works (and how on earth you can get your school to the first page!). There are five ways that Google measures how valuable your website is: Meaning of the search, Relevance of content, Quality of content, Usability of web pages and Context and Settings (such as location).
They say:
“To return relevant results, we first need to establish what you’re looking for – the intent behind your query. To do this, we build language models to try to decipher how the relatively few words that you enter into the search box match up to the most useful content available…Next, our systems analyse the content to assess whether it contains information that might be relevant to what you are looking for.” Google
You can see where I’m going here. Your English school’s website content is key to helping ensure it is optimised and that you can generate applications or enquiries about your English courses. And remember, the key with your content strategy is to always tailor it to the people you are trying to attract to your English courses.
Here are my top ten ways to help ensure that your content generates leads (enquiries and applications) for your English school:
Again, follow the AIDA framework mentioned above to ensure all bases and touchpoints are covered.
Decide on a core topic which is most searched for and relevant to your potential students (passing Cambridge exams for example). Create a topic cluster by writing six articles connected to the core topic (top 10 tips to pass the FCE Use of English test, FCE vs CAE exams etc), linking between each one within your website, to your course pages and even from emails.
Record a webinar which provides an overview of one of your English courses. Highlight the main benefits of taking this course with you and include factual information and statistics. These can be, for example, industry statistics, your pass rate or graduate recommendation rating. Then, at the end, add a limited time offer for the English course. Include an invitation to register to watch the recording in relevant places on your website or elsewhere.
Need help with this? Why not take the free Hubspot Academy Content Marketing certification course.
Short-form videos are usually 10 minutes or less, though many are even as short as 30 seconds! They are easy to make, shareable and create many opportunities for potential students to engage with your school and brand. Find out more in the Ultimate Guide to Short Form video.
“Stop thinking of ‘video marketing’ as this separate entity that is optional for your business. Video is an effective form of communication that needs to be integrated into each and every aspect of your existing marketing efforts.” James Wedmore, Host of the Mind Your Business Podcast
There are a variety of types of short form video, such as:
This is created by real customers (your English students) and posted on various social media platforms. UGC works very well as it shows genuine appreciation of your English student(s) for your language school and brand. This creates a feeling of credibility and reliability. Not only that, it’s usually quick and low-cost to produce. According to this report by Stackla, 80% of people say that they are more likely to purchase from a website if it has photos and videos from real customers and 79% say that UGC influences their purchase decisions. See an Oxford TEFL User Generated video example, where a graduate talks about how the CELTA course helped her to start her own business.
This type of short form video is used to promote products or services organically across platforms like Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, TikTok, and other social media platforms. These videos are a great way to generate some audience anticipation around an upcoming English course or service launch, for example. Read how to create a great teaser video in this article from vimeo: How to make a teaser video that leaves an impresion.
This will work wonders at building trust and humanising your English school. In particular, this will be interesting for potential English students who are curious to know who the English teachers or other staff members are, or those who want a sneak peek of your classrooms and facilities. Why not give them a peek into the day-to-day life of your school? See some ideas on how to create behind the scenes videos.
These are an excellent way to explain complicated concepts or processes to your potential English students. By creating short form videos that educate or solve student problems in a more engaging way, you can enhance the trust your customers have in you. Not only that, you will also be able to cut down on the time you spend explaining the same things via email or telephone. See an Oxford TEFL explainer video example where one of our teachers explains the Online Celta course.
Furthermore, according to multiple publishers, as many as 85% of video views happen with the sound off, so I recommend using soundless optimization (subtitles or on-screen instructions) on your short-form videos as well. This will make them more accessible to a larger audience who are not using sound on their device. Read about how to create highly watchable silent videos for social media.
Plan and record a behind-the-scenes short form video (maximum 1 minute). Follow one of your students as they arrive at the school, greet other members of the team or students before finally arriving in their classroom where they begin a lesson with a teacher. Focus on community, facilities and expertise in the video. You should also include on-screen text with short, simple phrases.
Plan and record an explainer video in which one of your English teachers explains what Cambridge examiners are looking for in candidates taking the FCE speaking exam. Grab the viewer’s attention by using graphics, on-screen text and music. Then, explain very briefly the challenges candidates are faced with and how your teacher / English school will help ensure they pass this part of the FCE exam (what you offer students to help them pass).
Social media offers a variety of ways to connect and interact with potential English students. If you are already using social media to do that, why not use it as a customer service tool too? Using social media as a customer service tool is a rapidly growing contact channel which you can use alongside your regular channels, such as email and telephone.
According to Hubspot’s Marketing Strategy and Trends report for 2023:
“More than a quarter of marketers use direct messages (DM’s) to offer customer support, and 15% of marketers plan to try it for the first time in 2023.” Hubspot
As many social media platforms — Instagram and Facebook mostly — are expanding their e-commerce capabilities, providing customer service on these platforms will become even more crucial. But how can you provide customer service via social media platforms?
Here are four ways you can provide customer service via social media:
People love to be heard! So, asking students what they think of your school or services is a great way to do this. You might be surprised at how useful this feedback can be. This can be done via a simple question which invites comments, or a poll, for example (read more about listening to customers in Tip 9).
It’s very easy to slip into the habit of bombarding potential English students with adverts and forgetting that what they really want to see on social media is useful, interesting, valuable content. Share content which is relevant and useful to them – not simply trying to sell.
It’s important that your English school is seen to be on standby, ready to help potential students when they need it. You may receive complaints as well as praise for your school, or just comments on your English courses, or teachers. Whatever the case, interact, listen and respond in a conversational way.
Although online interaction is very important, sometimes you need offline interaction, and vice versa. You may interact with a person online and pass them the contact details of a representative working in your school. You may use social media to invite guests to a face-to-face event in your English school, or the other way around. Your customer service provided via social media can go hand-in-hand with the service you provide from within your school.
According to Hubspot’s consumer trends report: “Consumers want to interact with brands via DMs – especially the millennial and Gen Z crowd…20% of Gen Z-ers and nearly 25% of Millennials have contacted a brand on social media for customer service in the last 3 months.” Yes, that’s your potential English students, right up to the age of 41 years old.
Check out these great examples of customer service via social media.
Log into your social media profiles and post a question, asking for input on a new idea you have for an English course or other service. For example: “Thinking about offering conversation classes on Thursday afternoons. What topics would you most want to talk about?”. Respond to any comments and suggestions in a personal way.
Set aside a few minutes every day to check interaction on your social media profiles and respond to any comments or questions. Try to make your responses personal and provide useful links to help resolve any problems. For example: Question: “How do I know if I’m ready for a Trinity DipTESOL course?”. Response: “Hi x, check out this article which includes a summary of the entry requirements and some case studies from recent graduates. If you still have doubts, contact Fran at [email protected] and she’ll be happy to help you 🙂 ”.
Before we dive into what metrics matter, we should first define what a metric is. Investopedia defines a metric as “measures of quantitative assessment commonly used for assessing, comparing, and tracking performance or production.” Simply put, metrics help you see if what you are doing is working. In other words, they help you to reach your sales and company goals.
The metrics you measure will depend on your goals. Why track how many people from Seville visit your website if you are a language school offering only face-to-face English classes in Barcelona? The metrics you measure should be integrated with your goals and business decisions. The most important ones are your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
“A KPI is an indicator of performance toward a specific, important — key — strategic goal, such as increasing sales by 20% quarter over quarter.” netsuite.com
As you can see, the start point should be your SMART goal. Then, work backwards from there until you have found the metric which will tell you what you need to know.
Once you have decided on which metrics matter most for your English school’s goals, you should do the following:
Visit datapine.com for more information and a full list of Key Performance Indicators that you could consider measuring for your English school.
Write five SMART goals for your English school. From there, work out which metrics will help you measure your performance. About 3 metrics for each goal should be enough. Then, share what you have prepared with a colleague(s). This could be a webmaster, marketing person, assistant, receptionist etc. Importantly, make sure that those involved can gather the information needed to measure your metrics effectively. If it’s just you in the company, this may also affect the metrics you choose to – or are able to – measure.
Set up Google Search Performance Report so that you receive the reports straight to your inbox every month. This report will tell you some of the main metrics to help you measure the performance of your school website. These include traffic, the search terms people use, and the highest performing pages. It’s completely free!
Nowadays, a company can live or die based on the quality of its reputation. So, what’s your English school’s reputation like?
As an English school owner or manager, you are most likely already gathering mid- or end-of-course feedback from your students. But which other ways are you listening to your English students? What are they saying about your school? And what about the student who ‘got away’? Are you doing any social listening?
“Social listening is key. I would rank it as one of the must-do tasks for any brand invested in the digital space” Kevin Kimatu, Digital Marketing Trainer
You will probably find there are gaps somewhere and that many business decisions are made on assumptions or inertia. The world, and the needs or expectations of our English students, are changing faster than ever. The main ways you can stay on top of what people are saying about your English school and the ELT industry as a whole are:
By listening to what your English students (or potential English students) say online, you will be able to keep your finger on the pulse of customer opinions. This in turn will allow you to respond with a quick and personalised reply. Not only that, you will also be able to anticipate demand for courses, get to know your audience better and grow your brand with your ear to the ground.
Send an online feedback survey to a group of your recently graduated English students. In the survey, include a question which will ask them to organise in order of importance why they chose your school over your competitors (price, location, reputation, etc). Include one more option for ‘other’ and a space for them to write their answer. You may be surprised at the result!
Start a free 30-day Hootsuite trial (or another social media listening tool). Use search terms such as your school’s name, terms related to the ELT industry, or words used by English students. Find out what is being said about you and the challenges student’s face in their English language learning.
Branding your English school well is non-negotiable and should play an integral role in your marketing efforts. To do it well, you need to understand why it matters.
“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another”. Seth Godin, Entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker.
Good company branding can explain some of life’s mysteries such as why people still choose a Costa Coffee when there are plenty of better alternatives. Or why people continue to buy L’Oréal products when you can find far better, cheaper, cruelty-free products elsewhere (because you’re worth it?).
To read more statistics, visit Oberlo: 10 Branding Statistics you need to know.
Your school brand is not just your logo and colours. Your branding is your entire identity, and it deserves some quality time with you. It relates to the full experience your English students will have with you from the moment they discover your services to the very last touchpoint on their journey with you. It can include elements such as the logo, email signatures, visual design, mission, values and tone of voice. If you can get this right, all your marketing efforts will work together cohesively and holistically.
The three main goals of branding your English school well are to:
Enlist the help of a designer to create a brand guide for your school. Ensure that everyone has a copy of this, understands the importance of using it, and follows it religiously. Audit and update existing online and offline materials to ensure they follow your brand guide.
Think about and create a plan of relevant content and events which reinforce your brand / school identity / values. These could include, for instance, storytelling campaigns, blog posts, press releases, specific imagery etc.
And there you have my top 10 digital marketing tips to help promote your English school in 2023!
If this is all new to you, and you feel you need to learn more about marketing to really give your school the best possible start in 2023, I can highly recommend taking some free courses provided by Hubspot Academy. You may also feel inspired to read more about The Top Marketing Trends of 2023 & How They’ve Changed Since 2022.
Whichever tips you choose to try out first, I hope that you find them useful! Let me know how you get on by connecting with me on LinkedIn.
We have some exciting news: in 2023 we will be launching more specialised development courses. If you would like to learn more about how to manage your language school and keep students coming back, stay tuned for more information.
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