Admission season is here. Nursery admissions in Delhi are already under way, and over the next few weeks a lot of schools will open registrations for other classes for the session starting in April. Many school managements now ask us the same question: should we run Facebook ads, and how do we make sure the money is not wasted?
Facebook can work well for schools, because it is one of the few places where you can reach parents in a specific area, at a specific stage of life, without paying for a newspaper insert that goes to everyone. But school admission Facebook ads are also very easy to get wrong. Here is how we approach them.
Be clear about who you are trying to reach
Your audience is not “everyone in Delhi”. It is parents of children of a certain age, living within a distance they would realistically travel every day.
Start with the map. Look at where your current students come from and where your school buses already go. That gives you the real catchment area. For most neighbourhood schools this is a few kilometres. For a well-known senior secondary school with good transport it might be wider, but rarely the whole city.
Then think about the parents. For nursery and primary classes, most parents are in their late twenties to early forties. For senior classes, they are older. Facebook lets you choose age, location and interests, and in some cases lets you target people it understands to be parents. Use these options together, then check the estimated audience size Facebook shows you. If it is in the millions for a local school, your targeting is too loose.
One thing to avoid: do not aim ads at the children. Facebook does not allow users under 13, and in any case it is the parents who decide.
Location targeting matters more than anything else
In Facebook’s ad tools you can target specific localities and pin codes, or a city with a radius around it. Facebook has also started offering ads aimed at people living near a particular business address, which suits schools well if it is available in your account.
Be strict here. An ad that reaches a family in Dwarka for a school in Mayur Vihar is money spent on someone who will never apply. It is better to reach fewer of the right parents several times than many of the wrong ones once.
Keep the creative simple and true
The best school ads we have seen are not the most designed. They look like the school. A few things that tend to work:
- A real photo of your campus, classrooms or activities, taken in good light. Not a stock photo of children who obviously are not your students.
- A clear headline: “Admissions open for Nursery to Class 9, session 2015-16.”
- One or two facts parents care about, such as transport routes or the school’s location.
- A button such as “Learn More” or “Sign Up” that leads somewhere useful.
Keep text on the image short. Facebook limits how much of an ad image can be covered with text, and images packed with words are often not approved. Put the details in the ad copy and on the landing page instead.
Be careful with claims. Avoid “best school in Delhi” or comparisons with other schools. Parents see through them, and you do not need them.
The landing page does the real work
This is where most school campaigns lose parents. The ad gets a click, and the parent lands on the home page with a slider, a principal’s message and a news ticker. They cannot find what they came for and they leave.
Make one simple admission page for the campaign. On a phone, it should answer the questions parents actually ask:
- Which classes have seats, and what are the age criteria?
- What are the important dates: form availability, last date, interaction or test dates?
- What are the fees? A clear fee structure, or at least a range, saves everyone time.
- Which areas does the school transport cover?
- What documents are needed?
- How can they contact the admission office, and when is it open?
Put a tappable phone number at the top, a map, and a short enquiry form with only a few fields: parent’s name, phone number, child’s class and area. If you add twenty fields, parents on phones will give up.
Many schools hesitate to put fees online. We understand why, but parents will find out anyway, and a parent who knows the fee before calling is a much better lead than one who calls, hears the fee and drops off.
Budget and timing
You do not need a large budget for a local school. A modest daily budget, run steadily through the weeks when forms are available, usually makes more sense than a big burst for two days. Start small, look at what happens after the first week, and then decide whether to increase it.
Time the campaign around your actual dates. Start a little before forms open, so parents know they are coming, and keep running until a few days before the last date. Stop as soon as seats are filled. It sounds obvious, but we have seen ads keep running well after admissions closed.
Measure enquiries, not likes
Likes and comments on an admission ad are nice, but they are not the goal. What you want to know is how many parents filled the form, called the office or walked in because of the ad.
Ask the admission office to note how every enquiry heard about the school. Add Facebook’s conversion tracking to the thank-you page of the enquiry form. Use a separate phone number for the campaign if you can. None of this is complicated, and it lets you judge the campaign on real numbers next year.
Answer quickly
Finally, make sure someone responds. Parents who send a message on your Facebook page or fill a form expect a call back the same day. If enquiries sit in an inbox until Monday, many of those families will already have visited two other schools.
If you are planning admissions for the coming session and want help setting up targeting, a simple admission page and tracking, talk to us. We would rather help you spend a small amount well than a large amount on the wrong parents.
