Google is doing its best to give answers to all the queries of online users. It is giving real insights of the brands to their consumers. Most of us check online reviews, google reviews before buying any goods or availing any service. So, it becomes important for the brands to give tough competition to each other through unique marketing plans. The battle winning plans are not limited to brands only. School directors, principal or educators must understand the significance of school marketing and how it can increase the number of enrollments for the coming academic session.
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There are so many such approaches that will lead you towards your school goal, i.e. getting more admissions. ‘Buyer Persona” is the first and most important practice that gives you a clear idea about your target audience.
What Is Buyer Persona?
“Buyer” means your customer and “persona” means their character or personality.
Every business has its specific set of buyers or target audience on which they have to focus. And before you could say anything to your customer, you need to understand their character.
You need to check:
- What do they think?
- What they expect?
- What they need ?
- And what are their questions?
Instead of focusing on one-dimensional profile of your buyers, you need to map their complete buying journey. This will comprise of – their specific attitude, concerns and criteria that drive them to choose you, your competitor or the existing state of affairs.
A buyer persona is not merely a description of your buyers or target audiences, it is more than that. Because on simply profiling your buyer, you will come up with too many personas, which will not lead you towards correct marketing plan. When you will start understanding what your buyers think about doing business with you, then you will easily discover the knowledge you need to align in your marketing decisions. From positioning and pitching through content marketing and sales enablement, you will successfully fulfil your buyer’s expectations.
Creating buyer personas in 5 simple steps
Personas are something that are not made based on your instincts. If you really want to develop useful buyer personas, then it needs to be based on real-world information.
You must define your audience who would actually get their children admitted to your school. You should not divert your efforts towards parents who can’t afford your fees or outstation parents who will never prefer your school for their child’s admission.
Do thorough audience research:
Find out your real audience that is already your customer. Gather all the information about your existing customer base like age, location, language, income, buying behavior, interests and activities, and life stage. Supplement the existing information through email surveys, focus groups, online surveys,or even customer interviews.
Get help from Google and Social media analytics tools:
These tools can help you get an incredible amount of information. This information will be about the people who keep checking your school updates on the website or social platform. It might be possible that their children are not studying in your school, but it doesn’t matter at all.
Identify customer pain points:
What is the reason behind parents visiting your website or social handle again and again. What barriers do they face in reaching their goals? The best way to find out is to organize social media sentiment analysis. This will help you know what parents think about your school, its studies, its teachers and others. You can easily learn what is stopping them to enroll their kids to your school. What kind of doubts or misconceptions they have about your educational institute.
Identify customer goals:
These are the other side of pain points. These are the potential reasons behind their frequent visits or goals they want to achieve. What can help your customers and what is the solution to all their dilemma. It’s time for marketing team to come into action. Your marketing team can help you give insights on customer goals. They will talk to real people who are thinking about your school, and they have a deep understanding of what these people are actually looking for. They will come up with the key strategies that they can use to overcome parents’ objections.
It’s Time To Convert Your Research into buyer personas:
Gather all the data you have collected through your research and start finding common characteristics. As you categorize those characteristics together, you will have the foundation of your unique customer persona ready.
If you really think that you need help on this, you must hire a marketing agency. A good marketing agency can perform all research for buyer persona on your behalf and assist you in knowing who your target audience is and what they expect from you. They will also create a complete marketing plan on the basis of persona and perform all marketing tasks necessary for your school marketing.
How to use personas to conduct your marketing?
Once buyer persona is formed, then the next step is creating specific marketing messages that can speak to your real customers.
- For each buyer persona, create one key marketing message that answers the most important question – “How We Can Help?”
- How does your school can help this particular persona answer their questions and achieve their goals? Your persona template should reflect this in one clear sentence.
- Always think about your buyer personas every time you make a decision about your school and make any change in your school marketing strategy.
- Keep doing the right things based on the personas you have created and you will successfully build a bond with the parents, boosting enrolments while creating loyalty and trust.
To wrap it all, Digital marketing is an essential element that you need to add to your marketing efforts with the help of an experienced marketing company. To know more about it, checkout our training topic guidelines To Increase School Admissions For The Academic Year 2020-21 With Digital Marketing. You can understand the role of buyer persona and other similar components on school marketing.
