mlsMEDIA

Environmental pressure and the high cost of printing and postage are seeing schools reconsider their options when it comes to printing glossy Prospectuses & School Magazines. Have you noticed how more and more schools are not offering a printed prospectus anymore on their website? It is fast becoming the standard for independent school websites to offer their prospective families an online version of their Prospectus because it enables end users to view it instantly as opposed to waiting for the post. But unlike PDF versions of your Prospectus which are slow to download or static page turning prospectuses, the new interactive digital Prospectuses from mlsMEDIA offer you a whole lot more.

Peter Anwyl, President of the Association of Marketing and Development in Independent Schools, representing over 400 members throughout the UK, has no doubts about the significance of this exciting new breakthrough: ‘Once I had seen the mlsMEDIA interactive digital Prospectus at work, I needed no convincing that this was the way forward for those schools who wanted to communicate with their parents and alumni/ae in a modern and immediate way. It should be high on the ‘to do ‘ list of any school and is undoubtedly the way forward. ‘

* More engaging and immediate than print. Don’t have your clients just read your prospectus or school magazine – have them experience it. The mlsMEDIA digital interactive page turning prospectuses, school and alumni magazines read like the printed equivalent but enable you to have interchangeable video, audio, animation, online forms and 3D images of the school to really engage your readers.

* Economical – Printing and posting 10,000 prospectuses could cost a school £20,000 or more, and if there are significant changes to the school staff or infrastructure they all have to be printed again! The mlsMEDIA interactive digital magazines cut your printing and distribution costs down to zero and allow your readers to view it instantly rather than wait for the post. When changes happen you can update it immediately, making your digital prospectus or school magazine more current and relevant than a printed document ever can.

* Save Resources & Energy – A growing imperative for every school is to reduce their carbon footprint.  As schools start to add footnotes to their  emails to say “Do not print out this email message unless entirely necessary”, the traditional paper Prospectus and School Magazine give the wrong message.  E publications save trees, eliminate superflous printing, eliminate packaging and eliminate transportation. All around, it reduces energy consumption and CO2 emissions and gives out a positive PR message about your School’s environmental policies. Eliminating your huge paper consumption from printing expensive Prospectuses and School Magazines will be a big step towards your carbon reduction.

* Know what actually interests your audience. Unlike your printed material, with the mlsMEDIA digital magazines you get detailed insights about your readers’ behaviour, ranging from simple statistics such as readership to detailed analytics and heat maps to show you which content is the most popular and which is not, enabling you to continually refine your content ensuring that it is more relevant and more interesting. 

See for yourself

In order to experience a school prospectus digital interactive magazine for yourself, go to www.mlsmedia.com/prospectuses . Bloxham School in Oxfordshire is the first UK independent School to launch a totally interactive online Prospectus. Nick Irvine, Director of Marketing at Bloxham says the school are delighted with the response they are getting from prospective families. Do give us a call if you would like to learn more.

In the UK, 6,500 more people search online for “cheap flights” than “low fares”. “Low fares” is what the airline industry like to say: “cheap flights” is customer language. Customer language is equally important on school websites. Did you know that more people search for “Private Schools” than “Independent Schools”? And yet most schools do not use the term “Private” in their web copy!

Daily Keyword Searches in the last month on Google in the UK:

• Private Schools – 3,616
• Independent Schools – 2,975
• Private School – 2,433
• Independent School – 1,627

And while I’m on the subject of customer language, it is a fact that your visitors are more interested in what you write than any other aspect of the page, including the design! The problem is that most web writing is dreadfully boring and oddly self-gratifying. If you would like tips on how to write better web copy, please email me (Jeanette@mlsmedia.com) and I will send you our complimentary White Paper on creating better web copy!

There is no doubt that Marketing has changed forever because of the digital revolution. In 2010 your customers will be going online even more often through the continually cheaper availability of laptops, smartphones and internet-enabled TV, meaning your digital strategy must be at the centre of your marketing campaigns, rather than merely an equal to anything you do offline.

In the current economy where families are looking more closely at the cost of sending their children to independent schools, they are not as trusting of glossy prospectuses but are rather seeking out real people reviews on the information superhighway where views good or bad about your school can spread in a matter of hours, (witness the undoing of Tiger Woods’ perfect character very recently.) So your customers of 2010 may be more sceptical and criticising and who are now not only happy to pass their opinions along to other parents at the school gate but also just as happy to share their opinions with friends, “followers” and the search engines.  The fact that negative opinions about your school could spread globally in hours means you must have a plan in place for monitoring what’s being said and have the tools to respond and be part of the conversation. At the very least, you should make sure you have Google Alerts set up for your school name for example so that you are emailed when your school name is mentioned on the net.

According to the latest twice-yearly Nielson Global Online Consumer Survey of over 25,000 Internet consumers from 50 countries, recommendations by personal acquaintances and opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising globally. The Nielsen survey, the largest of its kind, shows that nine in every ten internet consumers worldwide (90 percent) trust recommendations from people they know, while seven in every ten (70 percent) trust consumer opinions posted online. What does this mean for you? Make sure you get those current pupil and parent testimonials on a prominent spot onto your website…

Social networking influence will continue to rise. Witness the current great example of how Skype, Twitter and Facebook helped the British Red Cross “ An appeal to help victims of the Haiti earthquake is breaking all records, fuelled by the power of social media…. In less than 48 hours, the American Red Cross had received more than $35m in donations – including $8m directly from texts.” BBC News Jan 15th 2010.   However some predict that social networking will become more fragmented as for example teenagers abandon Facebook to stop snooping parents and others from knowing too much about their personal lives and people will start forming private social networks to keep their personal lives just that – private!

Do you know it is really easy and fun to have online meetings and web events with parents, prospective pupils and parents and your overseas alumni group?

Give prospective parents and students a live virtual presentation of the school with FAQ session; conduct parent orientation sessions over the Internet; and with the threat of school closures for snowy or bird flu or H1N1 flu related conditions, teachers can use this for class delivery. You and your attendees can join meetings in seconds, without having to set up complicated video feeds or Webcams. Your viewers can see your desktop and whatever application you choose to show such as Powerpoint or videos etc. You can even record the meeting with audio for future review and reuse. Post recordings on your Web site or email them for on-demand viewing. Your attendees don’t even have to register for an account. For the best performance, we recommend GoToMeeting. For the link to their website, click here. They even have a free 30 day trial!

Google continues to dominate as the search engine of choice for over 80% of the population. So the bottom line is, you can’t ignore it! Many people will see your school by area and you might miss many visitors if your website is not listed in Google Maps.

If your website is listed in the local results, it will be listed above the regular results on that page and people will also see the exact location of your School. You can submit your website to Google Maps through Google’s Local Business Centre. Login to your Google account or follow the simple instructions to create one if you don’t have one, and click “Add New Listing” to enter your School information.

There are several things that you can do to get a better listing on Google Maps or to make your listing stand out. You can enter your business information in Google Maps for free but to be listed at the top of the list, you have to optimize your entry.

• Enter as much information as possible about your school. Include important keywords in your description and choose the best possible category for your website.
• If possible, include images and videos to help your listing stand out. The more information you provide, the better.
• If your school’s location is in the center of the town, it is more likely that it will appear at the top of the list.
• Submit your website to other local directories. Google Maps compiles its local results by crawling and parsing data from other online directories and databases. A good position in online yellow pages can cause your listing to be placed higher on the list.
• Optimize your web pages for local content. Add your nearest town and county name in your web page title.
• Get positive reviews. Encourage a few parents to write positive reviews about your school on Google Maps. More stars can mean a higher position.