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Social media for marketing: Here’s how to make it work for your school

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Sabrina Martinez

The days when reputation management consisted of press conferences are long gone.

These days, anyone can report on what companies are doing. They can take to any number of social media platforms or review forums to express their views, good or bad. In some ways, this has leveled the playing field for everyone, putting small companies on the same footing as big ones. This means it’s more important than ever to be proactively involved in online reputation management.

Reputation management refers to the practice of influencing how prospective students and parents perceive your school. In the fast-paced media environment in which we find ourselves in 2020, the main way this is done is by influencing the information people can find about your school online.

Online reputation management is especially important and fast-changing for schools because your students are so immersed in documenting their lives online. They will be filming your school, inside and out, at all times. This means that if you can influence the perception of current students, they will pass that on to potential new students who are watching social media.

Of course, there are other things you can do directly on social media to put content out that reflects the school as you want it to be seen. Read on to learn more.

Want help with online reputation management? Schedule a free consultation.

DIY marketing for private schools

The goal of social media marketing is essentially to promote positive stories about your school. While doing this, it’s also important to effectively manage negative feedback. (Often, a well-reasoned and polite response to a negative review or comment reflects better than a 5-star review!)

There are four main elements to include in a marketing strategy to create and promote positive content about your school. We recommend a model called PESO, which stands for:

  1. Paid Media – Pay-per-click advertising such as Facebook or Google Ads.
  2. Earned Media – This refers to publicity gained through promotional efforts, organic media and word of mouth. Basically, this means publicity you don’t pay for or own.
  3. Social Media – We’ll focus our attention here in this blog.
  4. Owned Properties – Your digital assets, which includes your website and your content. You can read more about web design and blogging on our website.

All of these elements pay an important role in bolstering your school’s reputation.

So how can you best use social media to your advantage?

Reputation management for private schools

1. Establish your school’s reputation

When trying to assess what your current online reputation is, it’s usually a good idea to start with your offline reputation. Asking competitors, current students, current parents, and associated schools can really help to find out how the community perceives your institution. If you then look online and look through the comments you get on your school’s social media channels, and compare these to those of your competitors, you can get a good idea of how your private school is perceived.

We would then recommend that you hold a meeting with your staff and discuss what you want your reputation to look like. This should include looking at what you want to be known for, whether it’s science programs, sports, community service or other extracurriculars, to name a few.

2. Draft a social media policy

Having determined what your reputation is, it’s important to protect it! We recommend creating a policy document to make sure your staff keep consistent and regular with posts – for example, you can create rules such as “never publish personal student information without consent.”

Use your policy document to set the professional tone for your staff. It’s also important that you include on your social media that your private school reserves the right to edit or delete any content that could be harmful to your reputation and you delegate a person to be in charge.

3. Create your marketing strategy

The first step in developing a strategy is to identify your goals. Once you’ve done that, you can create a road map to achieving them. This will include topics and subjects you’ll focus on, important themes, keywords, as well as platforms and media types you’ll use. The goal with this is to provide a clear, foundational document that can be referred to regularly. In addition, it’s a good idea to include in this document the person or people responsible for posting and responding to comments.

Regular posting is vital to a successful social media campaign. We recommend at least 3-4 times per week. It’s also worth watching the competition! Looking for techniques that work well for competitors can provide useful inspiration. A great tool that Facebook Insights provides is called “Pages to Watch,” which can help you identify your main competitors (if you’re not already sure).

For example, at Beacon Media + Marketing, these are our main competitors:

Not sure how to develop a marketing strategy? Our social media experts can help.

In your strategy, include the types of posts that encourage your followers to engage positively, such as questions, quizzes, and calls-to-action, like, “Book now, for our upcoming open day!” Also, include posts that highlight the positive things about your private school. The reason you are publishing content is to proactively create a positive perception about your school that pushes any negative perceptions that prospective students and parents may have out the door.

4. Engage with followers

Responding to, and having dialogue with, the people who engage with your content is a vital aspect of online reputation management! It shows that you are active and listening, but also allows you to show that you care about your students, parents, and the community.

It helps to think of social media as an extension of your current communication systems. If your private school never answered the phone or replied to emails and letters it wouldn’t reflect well. The same applies to social media. One survey found that, on social media, 32% of followers expect a response within 30 minutes and 42% within 60 minutes.

Therefore, your social media guidelines should include regular checks on your private school’s social media platforms throughout the day and prompt response to comments and messages as they come. Make sure your responses are as friendly, transparent, and human as possible.

5. Optimize your profiles

A really easy way to look credible on social media to be consistent. If all your accounts all have the same look and feel and match your wider branding, it gives a sense of professionalism and quality.

It’s also important to have all the elements in place, make sure you have a profile photo, a cover photo, an up-to-date bio and about section, and contact info.

6. Monitor and adapt

Remember that all plans are subject to change. Even if you think you’ve developed the perfect social media strategy for your private school, you still need to monitor it and adapt as necessary.

Tastes and fashions change quickly, especially on social media, so you need to make sure you keep abreast of current best practices. Social media platforms also provide loads of analytics support for businesses, so you can easily track what resonates with your audience and what doesn’t, allowing you to refine your tactics and increase your engagements along the way.

There are a couple of really effective tools you can use to monitor your online reputation in addition to the tools available on your social media platforms. You can set up Google Alerts to tell you when anyone is publishing content about your business, your competitors, or your industry. Meanwhile, social media management tools like Hootsuite allow you to view posts, comments, and messages that mention you or use keywords or hashtags about your practice on all of your platforms.

A Note on the Negative

No private school is going to be able to avoid negative feedback, and although it can be upsetting to deal with, it can also be used as an opportunity to generate a positive outcome.

After years of working in the social media space, we have learned a few things about how to respond to negative reviews, posts, and comments. Here are some pieces of advice:

  • Don’t take it personally. This can be particularly difficult, especially because more than likely you had the best of intentions.  However, many people treat social media messaging as an opportunity to go direct to the “organization” in general, and don’t appreciate that they’re talking to a real person.
  • Use the 20-minute rule. Leaving a post for 20 minutes if it is particularly upsetting can allow you to make a reasoned response. Keeping your private school’s reputation intact is very important!
  • It’s okay to hide, delete, and report. In some cases, especially where vulgarities and disparaging language are being used or the commenter is trolling your page, you should absolutely hide that comment from your wall and possibly report it. Use your best judgment.
  • Be willing to improve. If the negative feedback being given touches on the truth and is a real service issue that you need to take care of, be willing to make changes to your practice and demonstrate that you are taking feedback to heart on social media! This is also important for those reading comments, as a good response to a negative comment can really make a good impression.
  • Focus on the positive. Be kind and friendly and look for opportunities to turn negative feedback into a positive interaction.

If your private school would like to work with an expert partner on your social media, give us a call!

Why is corporate branding important? (VIDEO)

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Adrienne Wilkerson

Originally published on November 21, 2017. Updated on April 21, 2020.

What is a corporate brand?

It doesn’t matter if your company operates on an international, national, regional, state, city, or neighborhood level; no matter the size, you have a brand. It really doesn’t matter if you have invested millions or nothing at all in your brand, it still exists. Your brand is the heart of your company; it is what comes to the minds and hearts of consumers and employees when they think of your business.

Every time anyone interacts with anything that has to do with your company it is reinforcing an idea about your business. Your brand is much, much more complex than just your logo and the colors you choose to put on your website. Your brand is so much larger, and it impacts your business on every level.

When companies are first starting up, it’s common for them to skip the branding conversation. After all, there are product lines to develop, services to perfect, and sales to be made. However, every company should start by answering two questions: who are we, and why are we doing this?

This is the core of your brand, and it will set the stage for everything else.

Want to talk corporate branding? Schedule a free consultation.

Designing a corporate brand

Part of a strong brand is knowing what sets you apart from your competition. This should become a cornerstone in your company’s messaging, both externally through marketing and also internally. Your employees should be just as aware of what makes their business different and be able to take pride in what they do every day.

Consumers and staff alike have access to more information than ever before. They have more choices, so it becomes even more critical that your company knows that it knows that it knows why it is different. We’ll give you a tip here: in our current marketing economy, it is not about the “best” product or service.

It’s about the experience. The relationship.

Take Apple for example. It has built such a strong brand around its products that fans will stand in line and even camp out overnight to get their new devices. There is a culture that has evolved around Apple fans to the point that people become Apple fanatics. They will pay more for Apple products just because they are Apple products. Apple carefully cultivated this brand and developed the fan base the followed the brand.

Read more: Developing a strong brand for a private school.

Economic value of a brand

When you’re looking at the value of your business, you must always consider both tangible and intangible assets. Successful organizations know that their brand is one of their most valuable intangible assets. Every year, Interbrand ranks the best brands around the world on their value. How do some of our favorites rank?

The Lego brand comes in 67th with a brand name value of almost $6.7 million. Nike ranks 18th with a brand value at $25 million. Disney’s brand name is worth almost $39 million dollars. Amazon ranks 8th but has the fastest growing brand name value at $50.3 million and 33% growth in 2016. Who were the top three?

Coca-Cola took home the 3rd place spot with a value of $73.1 million; Google captured the second-place spot, their brand is considered to be worth $133,252 million dollars. And drum roll please… Apple stands alone in the first-place spot with a brand name value of $178,119 million dollars.

Now, if you’re running a small to medium-sized business, you might wonder what all of these big names have to do with you. These are some pretty impressive numbers. They illustrate on a brand scale what a brand name can be worth when a company invested in developing the brand. The same principle applies to any business.

For example, the difference in the value of the brand between known competitors Coca-Cola and Pepsi is staggering. Coca-Cola’s $73.1 million is more than three times what Pepsi’s brand name is worth at $20.3 million. The companies both started in the 1890’s a mere five years apart, and yet in the last 120 plus years, Coca-Cola has consistently had a stronger brand. Why? They invested heavily in their company brand.

Read more: It’s time to launch a national brand. Here’s what to do.

Brands reinforce values

One of the reasons why brands like Coca-Cola and Apple consistently beat their competition is because they understand the brand guides their company. Their brand answers the question why. Why does the company exist? Why do employees want to work there? Why should consumers buy a Coke versus a Pepsi?

Every company, no matter the size, should be able to answer the why questions on a deeper level than just “because we’re better.” Anyone can say that. You have to go deeper, you have to understand why you are coming to work every day, why your employees should (beyond the paycheck), and why your clients keep coming back.

Salim Ismail, lately of Singular University, writes in his book Exponential Organizations about the importance of a Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP). The MTP is the “higher, aspirational purpose of the organization,” he says. It doesn’t try to describe what the business does, but what it’s aspiring to accomplish. This is the heart of your brand – not the colors or even the logo, but the why. It’s the purpose of the company!

Read more: Why is a strong brand so important?

Corporate brands attract loyalty

Your brand makes promises to customers, fans, and prospects. In every way your company interacts with and communicates with the public, you are either reinforcing that promise or weakening, maybe even breaking it. When that promise is reinforced, time and time again, your customers know what to expect.

That builds loyalty. Let’s take Coca-Cola, for example. Its brand consistency is legendary, while it has updated parts of its messaging, it has never ventured from reinforcing their core message:

  • To refresh the world…
  • To inspire moments of optimism and happiness…
  • To create value and make a difference.

This is its mission, it’s MTP. Time and time again, Coca-Cola has proved it can connect emotionally with its customer base. It’s been in business since 1892, which means its appeal spans generations. That’s some serious longevity.

Ready to get started? Schedule a free consultation today.

6 must-read tips to rocking your online reviews

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Jennifer Christensen

Originally published on July 5, 2018. Updated on April 15, 2020.

We’ve all heard, at some point in our lives, someone tell us: “Words can’t hurt you!” Oh, but they absolutely can, my friend. Words can implode relationships, ruin careers, and even destroy a business.

There have been far too many stories online about the person who tweeted an insensitive joke and suddenly lost their whole career after a massive public outcry, or a business owner who responded to a negative Yelp review with angry curses and insults and soon found themselves without any customers.

Words DO matter, and in an online world you never know who is watching and reading. Just as words can break you down, they can also build you up and help you soar – okay, we’re getting a little too excited here.

Want to skip to the part where we help you? Schedule a free consultation today.

How to deal with bad online reviews

We know that many consumers read online reviews when they’re making a decision on what and where to buy. It can be easy for you, the business owner, to feel like you must do everything you can think of to keep customers from ever seeing negative reviews of your business, but don’t let that fear bring you down! Negative reviews may be scary or disheartening, but they don’t have to be the Mark of Death. I’ll tell you why in a minute.

Truthfully, if someone is looking up your business online and they see no negative reviews whatsoever, their first thought is likely going to be, “Ooooh I get it, they’re just deleting all the negative ones.” Modern consumers are smart and cynical, and they’ll absolutely judge you like a gang of junior high mean girls.

If they see a negative review and see that you’ve responded with name-calling, cursing, customer shaming, or outright out-of-control rage, it gets even worse. They will instantly want no part of whatever you’re selling. They’ll gladly take their business elsewhere to someone who has shown their ability to remain professional.

The truth is it’s possible to use bad reviews to your advantage.

How? We’re so glad you asked.

Read more: The evolution of marketing.

Make your online reviews work for you

1: Pay attention to social media.

Social media can be both good and bad. Don’t just focus on comments let on Yelp, Google and Facebook. Think of it like high school – if you only pay attention to the rumors they write on your locker, you’re going to miss out on all the great rumors they’re starting about you in the lunch room at that table where the cool kids sit.

If you’re not sure where else to look, we highly recommend using tools like Google Alert to find out when your business is being talked about online. This will send you emails when a news site, a blog, or any public page mentions your product and service. You can gain so much valuable information by keeping an eye on all of the online spaces where your business might be a topic of discussion. It might even give you new ideas!

2: Remember that it isn’t personal.

We’ll say it louder for the people in the back: THIS IS NOT PERSONAL. PEOPLE LIKE YOU. YOU ARE GREAT. YOU ARE A FIRECRACKER AND NO ONE CAN DOUSE YOUR MAJESTIC FLAMING – okay, sorry, we’re getting too excited again. Ahem. Seriously, people are going to talk about businesses, about products, about the service they received, the thing they ordered, and so on.

Yes, sometimes what they say will be negative. Sometimes it’ll be angry, or disappointed, or insulting. Yes, those words can hurt like a knife in the heart. A knife covered in lemon juice. That is also on fire. We feel you. We’ve all been there, we all understand that flaming lemon-knife in the heart. But please, whatever you do, don’t react in anger. Don’t let emotion write your words, because you can’t take them back.

Read more: Why it’s important for CEOs to connect on social.

3: Respond promptly, personally, and calmly.

When you’re calm, remember that many times customers can and do have a very legitimate complaint. Take your time to read the comment and think about what’s been said before you reply. Have a cup of tea. Put on some sitar music. There, feel better? Also, always keep in mind that Facebook will track business response times and display that as a badge on your page, so try to respond within an hour if you are able. This is your chance to do two things:

First, respond personally and start by acknowledging the person and their complaint (instead of a copy-and-paste canned response, which is like a neon sign saying “THIS BUSINESS REALLY DOESN’T CARE AND JUST WANTS YOU TO GO AWAY”). This will show your customers, and potential customers, that you listen and pay attention to their needs. Don’t build a fort out of sofa cushions and pretend you didn’t read it.

Second, make sure your response is calm and clear. Showing everyone online that you’re cool, professional, and respectful under tough circumstances can drive customer confidence through the roof. Your words on a public page are showing the customers who you are as a business owner, which builds trust. Figure out what the issue is and decide what you, or an appropriate employee, can do to resolve it. Let the customer know this, and give them an estimate of how long it will take to resolve it or to hear back from you.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: In some cases, it is okay to hide or delete a complaint, such as when the complainer is using vulgarities or the complaint is not based on a product or service but is instead an attack against you or your business. On Facebook, it is easy to remove complaints. On Yelp, there are certain rules for which complaints you can remove and which you cannot. If you’re not sure, contact the platform to ask for help.

4: Show the customer that you care.

If the complaint arose because of a mistake, acknowledge it. Sometimes, mistakes just happen – and by honestly addressing the issue, you will raise people’s respect for you. Do not fall into the trap of arguing in public, because it will do nothing but reflect badly on you. If it turns out that the customer was wrong, that can be addressed in private messages. In public, show the world your most professional, concerned, and responsible face. It’s not always easy, but it will benefit you in the long run. Also, we strongly recommend against using free products to try to make the customer go away, because this habit absolutely will be abused.

Read more: Rise of the idealistic marketer.

5: Get the conversation away from the public eye.

Once you’ve publicly acknowledged the customer, offer to private message them, or talk about the resolution via email or by phone. In today’s world, the longer you try to converse in a public forum the more time there will be for trolls and troublemakers to jump in and try to start conflict. Let the customer know you heard their concern, publicly acknowledge that you are aware and working on a resolution, and then get it out of the public eye ASAP.

6: Follow through.

Responding and acknowledging is great, but that alone won’t solve the initial customer issue. It’s like staring intently at a pile of laundry on a chair, hoping it will become clean (oh man, it would be great if that actually worked!). You need to follow up with the customer to be sure that their issue was resolved satisfactorily. This assures the customer that your concern is sincere and that you value their business, and it also gives you an opportunity to get feedback that can help you develop your products or services in the future.

Of course, we can’t make everybody happy all of the time, but you and your business will only benefit if you take the time to make your customers feel heard, valued, and important. The more professionally you handle issues like negative reviews, the more you can demonstrate your caring, the more likely a customer is to return to you in the future, and recommend you to friends and associates. Word of mouth is still the best advertising you can ever hope to have, and a little effort on your part to protect your relationships with customers is priceless.

Want to turn your online reviews around? Schedule a free consultation today.

What are buyer personas & how can they convert leads? (VIDEO)

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Adrienne Wilkerson

Originally published on March 30, 2015. Updated on April 14, 2020.

Most of us have been asked at one point or another to describe our target market. Usually, we rattle off a series of demographics, casting some wide nets in the hope of landing a good catch. “Middle-aged women,” we say. “Men aged 40-50 with kids,” we guess. “High-income homeowners in this ZIP code,” we tell our marketing agencies.

Historically, these demographics shaped the way marketers constructed their message to potential buyers. However, the advent of social media has significantly changed the way we market, because now we can deliver extremely targeted messaging directly into the pockets of those most likely to buy from our clients.

This dynamic shift requires that we go deeper than just identifying our target market. We need to find out who is buying from us and why. Thankfully, there are many tools at our disposal. We can ask our customers why they chose us. We can find out what search terms are trending on Google. We can find out what are the most popular kinds of tutorial videos. We can see what’s popular on social media and analyze the strategies of our competitors to see what works.

Once we’ve done that, we can create a buyer persona.

Want to skip ahead? Schedule a free consultation today.

What are buyer personas?

According to leading inbound marketing company HubSpot, they are “semi-fictional representations of your ideal customer based on real data and some select educated speculation about customer demographics behavior patterns, motivations, and goals.” In short, they are who you are trying to reach.

Look at it this way: instead of trying to attract and engage some 3 billion people on the internet, focus on those most likely to become the type of clients that excitedly promote you to their connections.

Dave, for example, could be a 45-year-old man who owns his own home and has a wife, two kids and a hairy pet dog. He probably needs his ducts cleaned. Great! How can your HVAC business connect with him?

Or take Jessica, a 42-year-old who works part-time in an office job, who has one child in kindergarten and one in elementary school. She needs to go to the dentist and figures she’ll bring the kids along for their first check-ups. Awesome! What’s going to make her choose your clinic over a competitor?

They’re both about the same age, living in the same area, with young families, but they have different needs so they’ll respond to different messaging. That’s why it’s so important do to your research. The more you know about your ideal customer, the better you can find out how you can best add value to their lives.

Dave, for example, might want to know exactly what a duct cleaning entails and what nasties are lurking in his air vents. Jessica might want a dentist that specializes in kids. Once you’ve identified their need, you can create a marketing campaign to cater to their interests and help solve their problems.

Read more: Is marketing the new sales?

How to create a buyer persona

The most effective buyer personas are always centered on the question of “why?” Why will someone need to buy your products or enlist your services? Focusing on their motives will help you create a marketing campaign centered around the content they’re likely to search for and consume before making a decision to purchase.

Alternatively, you can think of it this way: What is their problem? How will you solve it?

“When you intimately know your player personas and communicate to them in a personal way, you skyrocket your changes of turning them from just a contact in your database into a lifelong customer,” Hatchbuck Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Jonathan Herrick, explained in an interview with Inc. Magazine.

Personas will help your business become more competitive, so it’s important to give them some thought and make sure they’re well-crafted. They will help you focus on sending the right message to the right customer, which will lead to more leads and a higher conversion rate. Ultimately, it’s about boosting your bottom line and making your marketing budget go as far as possible.

Read more: 10 tips for optimizing your social presence

Focusing your sales funnel

Modern customers are very well-informed. Social media and search engines mean they can find exactly what they need, when they need it. Inbound marketing is a philosophy centered around the idea of making yourself as easy-t0-find as possible. In the communication age, when people are hungry for content, you need to be searchable. You need to provide people with the value you’re looking for and make the path to purchase smooth.

The first step is awareness. Unless you have the right content, people will not stick around long enough to engage with your company, your products and services. Personas are key because they help you create the right content, which will attract visitors. Find out what your customers like to consume, what questions they need answered and what information they’re looking for. Use that as a starting point and create content accordingly.

Once the customer has landed in your digital eco-system, provide what they need, and do it quickly. Don’t play games or waste their time. It’s important that your website is up-to-date, well-organized and fast-loading with strong calls to action that encourage the website visitor to take the next step, whether that’s scheduling a free quote or booking an appointment. Education is critical in this phase – make it clear why they should choose you.

As soon as the customer engages with you, respond in kind. If they ask for more information, call them within 24 hours. If they reply so a post on social media, give a positive response. If they schedule an appointment, send an auto-generated email thanking them for their booking and confirming the details. Engage, engage, engage.

The final step is conversion. When you sell the product or deliver the service, ensure the customer’s needs are fully met. Seamless and high-quality service will significantly increase the chance of them becoming a repeat customer – and better yet, recommending you to their friends, family, and neighbors.

After all, word of mouth is still the most powerful tool in any marketing plan.

Ready to optimize your marketing strategy? Schedule a free consultation today.

Google My Business is the perfect tool for tourism marketing

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Sabrina Martinez

How to get your tourism business on Google My Business

You’ve probably seen the business panel on the right-hand side of your Google search results, this is Google My Business. It gives searchers and customers many options for interacting with your tourism business.

Here we’ll go through the process of how you can set up your Google My Business for best results, all the way from claiming your listing to interacting with reviewers. We’ll also consider some of the potential pitfalls.

If you’re not sure about whether Google My Business is for you, consider this: your Google My Business listing already exists. You need to claim yours and maintain it, otherwise, someone else could claim it and cause damage to your tourism business by providing incorrect information.

Claiming your listing on Google My Business

The first step to making the most of Google My Business for tourism marketing is to claim your listing. If you are an established business, it likely already exists and you just need to claim it.

You can do this by heading to https://www.google.com/business/ and following the instructions there.

If your business is new, you may need to create a listing yourself, but Google makes it easy for businesses to get online, as it adds value to their search engine.

Once you’ve claimed your listing, this isn’t the end of the process, in fact, it’s only the beginning!

You then need to provide all the information requested by Google, and it is important that this is as exhaustive as possible, as everything you provide will be used by Google to work out what your company does. This information allows them to more accurately suggest your business to customers.

Getting your tourism business on Google Maps

Getting on Google Maps is a simple as claiming your Google My Business listing! Literally, you just claim your listing and add your address and Google automatically adds you to Maps.

It is important to be consistent with your address across the internet, so decide whether you’re using abbreviations, like St., or the whole word, Street. This helps Google understand that Google My Business, your website, mentions on other websites, etc. are all actually the same business.

It should be no surprise that being on Google Maps is vital to running a successful tourism business. Many people use Google Maps, rather than Google Search to find places to eat, or activities to take part in. Google Maps has a function that allows users to search for, for example, “ski rental” in the area immediately around them. They are then presented with all the businesses nearby that provide that service, along with their business hours, links to services and prices, time to get there, directions, and reviews!

If all this is available to customers, why would they use, and trust, a tourism business that either doesn’t show up at all or has a poorly maintained listing?

Many consumers, especially young people, will be put off by the appearance of a business not being tech-savvy.

Posting on Google My Business

Posts on Google My Business are somewhere between ads and social media posts. They will show up in the Google My Business listing on Google search, as well as in Google Maps.

You can have a lot of fun with posts on Google My Business! They can be used to post information about events, images, a call-to-action, or you can use it to link to another site.

For example, if you run a restaurant you could use your Google My Business posts to talk about an upcoming happy hour, to encourage people looking for your type of food to come in!

If you were to post an hour or two before it starts, then people who are looking for somewhere to eat that night might be convinced.

Alternatively, if you run a rental business for outdoor sports and you have a new product in, you could use your Google My Business posts to advertise that!

Posting is even more significant to mobile searchers as it shows more prominently on the screen. In fact, Google My Business listings can fill the whole screen of a Google Search results page on mobile! Compare this with the box on the right-hand side of your results page on a browser and it’s clearly more noticeable for customers.

Of course, it’s important to make sure your postings are regular, otherwise, your business will look unprofessional and possibly lazy. If the most recent post is about a months-old special, it will reflect badly.

Bookings on Google My Business

A great asset to your customers is being able to see the relevant information at a glance, as well as being able to take any actions they want, all in one place.

The most common things people look for on Google are hours, directions, and in the case of restaurants, menus. If you display all this on Google My Business and then provide a quick booking form for people to book a table at your restaurant, a tour with your company, or a day renting your equipment, it makes it much easier to do business with you!

Connecting with customers on Google My Business

One of the more surprising features of Google My Business is the ability to have people send you text messages!

This allows you to directly connect with customers, allowing for a better experience for them. It also gives your reputation with Google a boost, as they love community engagement.

The messaging feature allows you to receive these messages as texts on your phone, or to have them sent to Google’s own app, Allo, so you can keep personal and professional messages separate.

Reviews on Google My Business

It may be no surprise that reviews are important!

If you regularly use Google to look up businesses when comparing who to use, you’ll know how disconcerting a low star rating or prevalence of reviews can be.

Equally, the number of reviews is important as well. If a business has lots of reviews it suggests that they have a good number of customers, whereas businesses with fewer reviews may be struggling to find custom.

Reviews and star ratings are highly visible on Google My Business, making them a useful distinguisher between competitors.

There are some fascinating statistics out there about the usefulness of reviews.

BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2018 found that:

  • 86% of consumers read reviews for local businesses (including 95% of 18-34 year-olds)
  • Consumers read an average of 10 online reviews before being able to trust a local business
  • 40% of consumers only take into account reviews written in the past 2 weeks
  • 57% of consumers will only use a business of it has 4+ stars
  • 80% of 18-34 year-olds have written online reviews – compared to just 41% of consumers over 55
  • 91% of 18-34 year-old consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
  • 89% of consumers read businesses’ responses to reviews

This clearly demonstrates the importance young people place on reviews, and this importance will only grow as these people, and even younger consumers, grow older and make up a larger share of the population.

Particularly relevant for business owners is the statistic about responses to reviews. It’s not enough merely to provide good service, you should thank people when they give good reviews and also make sure to write a good response to bad reviews.

A response to a bad review that addresses the concerns of the reviewer and explains how those issues are being improved can count as much as a good review in deciding whether to trust a business.

Services and menus for tourism businesses

If you run a restaurant, many times people are looking you up online to find your menu. It is therefore really useful to have your menu as easily accessible as possible.

This also applies to lists of services that you might want to advertise if you run a rental business, for example! Do you rent out bicycles or kayaks? Have multiple offers with different pricing options? Having your price list on google my business makes it easier than ever for customers to decide that they want to use you, rather than your competitors.

Things to be aware of with Google My Business

Hopefully, this insight has persuaded you that Google My Business is an invaluable tool for your tourism business. However, it is important to bear some things in mind when managing your listing.

  • If you don’t claim your listing, someone else can.
  • Suggest an Edit button – anyone can “suggest” an edit, but often these “suggestions” go live without notifying you, so people could use this to cause harm to your business
  • Know this place? Answer quick questions button – Google uses this to gain extra info about businesses, but it is potentially open to exploitation as anyone can use it to give false information about your business.

Therefore, it is important to make sure you not only claim the listing yourself but also maintain it and regularly check to make sure the info is still correct.

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If you’re convinced of the benefits of having a well-maintained Google My Business listing but want to make sure it’s well crafted and receives regular checks, schedule a free consultation with us today!

We at Beacon Media and Marketing have extensive expertise in running online marketing for tourism businesses, including Google My Business!

Education marketing: Create a strong brand for your private school

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Sabrina Martinez

Every year, as your school is recruiting the next incoming cohort of students, you’re competing with many other schools to attract the best and brightest. It’s important to have a strong online presence.

The key factor which links both your online and physical marketing is your brand.

At Beacon Media + Marketing, we’ve been creating strong brands for our clients for years. We’re going to show you our 5-step process, so you can start working on branding your private school.

Step 1: Understanding what branding a private school means

Before you start out creating a brand, it’s vital to understand what a brand is and what you want it to do. Your brand is your identity given a visual form – it is what comes to mind when people think about your private school. For that reason, it should accurately reflect your reputation and be consistent with what people think of you.

We recommend three main things that you should aim to do with your brand:

  • Capture: If you already have a good reputation, it’s important to capture that and build upon it. Write down your school’s strengths and use this to focus your brand.
  • Discover: If you aren’t sure how people perceive you, you should aim to find out and build around that. The easiest way to do this is simply to start asking the school community!
  • Pivot: If you’ve had some reputational struggles, then it may be possible to use a rebrand as an opportunity to present your private school in a new light

In the following sections, we’ll show how you can make use of branding to influence how prospective students, and their parents, perceive your private school.

Step 2: The brand discovery process for private schools

Brand discovery is a fundamental foundation on which the success of the rest of the process depends. We recommend you have a meeting with your whole team and get creative working out what your brand means within the education sector.

When doing this with our clients we like to guide them with a series of questions:

  • Describe your business in two sentences or less. What is your “elevator pitch?”
  • A brand is a promise. What are you going to deliver to your students?
  • What is the current perception of your school? What do you want it to be?
  • How do you want to position yourself in the marketplace? Are you thought leaders? Providing value? An innovative experience? The highest quality? A “tried and true” method?
  • What is your big-picture mission? What do you want to look like in five years?

One of the main goals of this part of the process needs to be identifying your competition and how you can differentiate your private school from the others. You also want to identify prospective students and what they’re looking for so you can work out how best to appeal to them.

Step 3: Choosing the right name for your private school

Naming

For many private schools, a name is a legacy. However, if you’re opening a new school or considering a rebrand, choosing the right name is very important. Sometimes naming can come naturally, but other times it can be the hardest part of the process, so here’s the process we recommend:

  • Take a look at what your competitors and private schools out-of-state are naming themselves. Obviously, don’t copy but use these names as a starting place for your own, unique thoughts.
  • Consider using the name(s) of your owner(s) or founders.
  • Decide if you want to use your location (city, region, state) in your name.
  • Think about any nouns or adjectives that struck a chord with who you are when you had your discovery meeting.

Sometimes even using a thesaurus can help! Search some of the top words from your discovery meeting, and see where that takes you and which words inspire you most.

Tagline

A tagline is an opportunity to communicate more about your private school than just what comes across in the name. Often the name is the result of narrowing down a longer concept. This concept can form the basis for creating a catchy tagline. Alternatively, work up from your name and expand into a message that fits with the culture of your private school!

The tagline is important as it is going to pull together all the messaging of your brand. Everything else you write should tie back into this. It should be short, simple and inspiring.

Step 4: Choosing iconography, colors and fonts that represent your school

Using visual means to communicate ideas can be challenging for those without training in art or design. In this section, we’ll try to give a few hints, so you can get started with thinking in the right way. A lot of what works here is due to human psychology and how we perceive objects, both emotionally and mentally.

Iconography

The icon is the part of your brand that most people think of when they talk about the “brand” or the “logo” of your private school. It is the part of your brand where you can get your creative juices flowing and use form, rather than text, to communicate your brand.

It can be used to represent the name, location, and mission of your private school in a quick and easily accessible manner. A strong example of this is the icon we designed for our client, Juneau Youth Services. This is a company that aims to inspire hope and freedom in young people, for the present and the future.

5 Steps to Build a Strong Brand for Your Arctic Tourism Business

We used the mountains to communicate their location and the bald eagle to represent their message of freedom.

Icons are of course more versatile than the full logo and can be used on promotions, watermarks, and more. When creating an icon, you might find it helpful look at those used by other private schools and education providers for reference and ideas.

Colors

Color is a vital aspect of branding, which we have covered in more detail here.

As you learn more about color associations, it becomes clear that some are more appropriate for associating with private schools and education than others. Some, in fact, are totally inappropriate.

  • Red – Red comes in a variety of shades, each with their own distinct meaning! Red could say “temptation,” “stop and pay attention,” “warning” or “danger,” “celebration,” “love,” or “femininity.”
  • Orange – Mmm, orange. We often associate this color with tasty food! A gentler version of red, orange can also communicate qualities like “light” and “life.”
  • Yellow – Just like orange, yellow can mean light and warmth. Like red, it can catch attention too. Yellow in the form of gold represents wealth, luxury, and rank. In other shades, yellow can mean joy, optimism, or comfort.
  • Brown – Brown portrays earth, wholesomeness, the outdoors, organic products, and all-natural ingredients.
  • Blue – No, blue does not just mean “sad.” Blue tells our emotional minds to be at peace, reminding us of tranquillity, mystery, depth, and strength. It is also frequently used in the health and wellness industry to evoke a sense of being calm.
  • Green – Green can be a hard color to get right. It comes in the most shades of any color in the world and it has a wide range of emotional associations! Green can mean anything from new beginnings to relaxation, depending on which hue you choose.
  • Purple – A mix of red and blue, purple can take on the attributes of both! If it leans in the direction of red, purple communicates energy and intensity. If it leans blue, purple takes on a calmer and loftier feel.

If you’d like to delve into this a little bit further, Adobe has a great tool for identifying complementary colors, which you can use to ensure a consistent look across your branding.

Typography

The typeface of your brand is an important component of a brand which most people don’t really think about until they have to make decisions about it. However, it is important to make a choice that conveys the feeling you want to inspire in prospective students and their parents who see the brand of your private school.

Contrast the font used to advertise a horror movie with one used in an online publication.

The first is probably scratchy, broken, and sharp-looking. The second is probably clean, neat, and professional-looking. This is important to remember, as you want to choose a font that portrays your school in the way you want to be seen.

The font should also be matched to the other elements of your logo and tie in with the overall theme of education, and specifically private schooling. Google has a useful font tool you can use to explore different typefaces a further here.

Step 5: Manage your private school brand

Once you’ve determined what the brand for your private school is, that isn’t the end of the process. It is vital to maintain and protect that brand! A well-managed brand is a symbol of authority which earns and respects the trust of its target audience. A mismanaged brand, on the other hand, can become messy and inconsistent, which dilutes its effectiveness.

At Beacon, we provide clients with a style guide that informs staff of what logo, colors, and fonts to use and how to use them. Hopefully this article will be a useful guide while you’re first starting out! Are you ready to give it a go? You can schedule a free consultation here.

School website design: Great websites are vital for education providers

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Sabrina Martinez

Regularly redesigning your website is important for a successful online presence.

Why? Experts recommend a redesign every 2-3 years because things like products, staff, fashions, and best practices all change so rapidly in business and online.

We’re going to take you through the process we use, here at Beacon Media + Marketing. We have 20 years of experience in the marketing industry and a proven process for web design. Hopefully, when we’re done, you’ll feel confident trying it out for your private school.

Let’s get into our 5-step process for beautiful website design.

Step 1: Meet with your private school team

The very first thing you should do before you even start on the design, is to understand what you want to create. This includes what you want to say about your school, what your goals are, and how you want to present your private school.

We recommend gathering all the key people at your school into one room and asking yourselves questions so that you can understand what you want your website to achieve. We recommend looking at competitors’ websites to determine what aspects of their website you like, and what you don’t.

Here are some sample questions we ask our clients when looking for what they want to create:

  • What are the primary and secondary purposes of your website? What do you expect your website to accomplish?
  • What information do you want potential students to find quickly on your website? What are the most important things?
  • Of the website designs that you like the look and feel of, which features do you like most and why?

Step 2: Map-out your private school website design

Now that you have an idea of what you want your website to look like, and you have some concrete features you’ll need, you can create an outline.

At Beacon, we produce two documents for our clients which provide a guide for the website: a site map and a wireframe.

A site map is really simple. It is just a fancy name for a flowchart or bullet list of all the pages on your website and the order in which they link to one another.

The site map then provides the basis for the wireframe. The wireframe for your private school’s website is a set of images in which you show the elements you want on each page.

Despite the technical name, a wireframe is just a rough sketch of what you want your website to look like and where you want the elements to be.

Beautiful Website Design Can Boost Your Private School
Source: SmartDraw

A good wireframe includes the location of each image, header, content paragraph, buttons, or form field on each page. There are great tools available such as MockFlow which you can use to create your own professional looking wireframe.

Step 3: Write the content for your school’s new website

Once you’ve created your wireframe, and determined where you want your written content to go, now you need to start writing. We recommend three best practices for content writing, which will allow you to produce attention-grabbing and engaging content.

1. Keywords

The design of your website is important, but if no one actually sees it, it’s all wasted effort. So, how to make sure people see it?

The best way to be seen is to rank at the top of people’s search results on Google. This is because most search engine users use Google, and almost nobody ever looks at the second page.

Here at Beacon Media + Marketing, we’re experts on SEO optimization. We’re going to let you in on a secret: keywords. This is essential to helping all our clients to rank on Google.

Every time you search something online, search engines trawl the internet for matching keywords. Using the right keywords for private schools in your local area will help people find you. Importantly, you should also make sure you use keywords in your headings and sub-headings.

2. Headings

Writing your headings is also an important part of the content writing phase for your private school’s website. It’s common for people to skim over text and read only the headings, looking for content they’re interested in. Catchy headings are critical if you want people to slow down and read all the great content you’ve been publishing.

As you may have noticed in this blog (hey, we practice what we preach!), it’s really useful to put your keywords in the headings as well. This helps Google to identify what your webpages are about and helps your website to rank on Google.

3. Quality

Obviously, users will appreciate good content, but you may be surprised at how much Google likes quality content too. The reason for Google’s insistence on well-written content is that they want to remain the most popular search engine in the world, and they can do this by keeping up their reputation.

People will continue reading and pay attention to what you’re saying about your private school when your content is well written, and this helps your website to rank on Google. Google will reduce the ranking of pages with a high bounce rate, i.e. people who click on your website and quickly leave again.

As you can tell from reading this post, it’s effective to address the reader in the second person, as “you!” It’s also useful to put yourself in the reader’s shoes so you can write in a way that makes it clear why your private school will be a good fit for their child.

In marketing, we always say the best sell is to make it clear how your products add value to someone’s life. It is no different when you’re trying to recruit new students to your private school, show how you can provide a valuable education to prospective students.

We recommend that at the end of each web page, you include a “call-to-action.” This is a request for the user to take action on what they have just read, for example: “Call (123) 456-7890 now for a free inquiry!”

Step 4: Develop your private school website

The final step in designing a new website for your private school is development. This is the culmination of all your hard work, where the site map, wireframe, and content are all tied together.

The first step in developing your website is deciding which software to use to build it. At Beacon, we use WordPress for all of our education provider clients. WordPress has packages at multiple tiers that you can choose from, so you can purchase a cheap package when you start, and add functionality as necessary. (You can read why we recommend it here.)

You should choose a package that best fits your needs, taking into consideration your site map, wireframe, content, and the list of concrete features and specifications that you came up with during your initial meeting. WordPress has really intuitive software so you should easily be able to build your site once you’ve chosen your package and created your account.

When building your website, be sure to stick to your brand guidelines! A well-managed, and cohesive brand is vital for a good-looking website. You can learn more about branding here.

Step 5: Go live!

When you’ve finished developing your website, it’s time to set it live.

But first, you need to make sure you’re ready. We have a checklist we go through with all our private school clients, here are some examples from that list:

  • Page-by-page, go through the entire website clicking all links to make sure they send users to the correct locations.
  • If you have a contact form, submit a “test” entry to make sure it sends to the correct email address.
  • Enter the URL for your website in all the popular browsers including Chrome, Firefox, and Safari to make sure it looks good.
  • Visit your website on mobile to make sure it is properly mobile optimized.

With WordPress, you can point the domain name from your old website to your brand new one. At that point, your private school’s new website is ready for visitors!

Is your private school ready for a new website?

We hope that you’ve found this glimpse into our work helpful, but if you feel like you want to hire us to take care of the whole process for you, you can book a free consultation. Alternatively, you can read more of our blogs, in which we discuss all aspects of digital marketing, here.

Alaska business owner’s #1 marketing tip for the new norm (VIDEO)

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Sabrina Martinez

Jen Motyka has a unique perspective when it comes to running a business during a crisis. She has two of them, and she says they’ve responded very differently to the lockdown.

She owns Blitz Promotions, an event planning and business consulting service that aims to empower local businesses in Anchorage, Alaska. She’s been running it for about three and a half years and says the transition to an event-free world has been very challenging.

She’s also a founding stylist at Color Street, a beauty brand that specializes in colorful nail art, which she does from home. She says things with this business have been “really easy.”

The difference, she says, comes down to one simple thing.

Marketing 101: Solve problems

“Right now, finding really innovative ways to still connect with your customer base, obviously while following social distancing guidelines and being safe, is the key,” she says.

“My home-based business hasn’t had a glitch. If anything, it’s really taken off because it’s nail polish. A lot of people are having to grow-out their nails, they can’t go to the salon right now so they’ve been [looking for alternatives]. I think with any business, it’s about problem-solving. That’s Marketing 101. You want to provide a solution for your customers, so how are you going to do that?”

She already had a website in place, which means she’s able to continue operating without having to leave her home to do any deliveries or expose herself to any health risks.

Things with the event-planning business, on the other hand, have been “very difficult.”

The lack of physical events means Jen has been looking for ways to pivot and find new ways to connect with people. She says it’s amazing how creative the industry has been, from organizing virtual events to drive-ins, where everyone attends while staying in their cars, a safe distance from one another.

“We’re finding better ways to connect. A positive to come out of this, if we can find them – and I think it’s important that we do – is really nurturing those personal connections. We’re not sending mass texts anymore, it’s ‘How are you doing? How’s your family doing? How can I help you?’ It’s really reinforcing and nurturing those relationships.”

Looking for a way to help your business pivot? Have questions about digital marketing in a crisis? Simply need a sounding board for new ideas? Join our Facebook group.

Nurture connections with others

One of the most interesting things to come out of this period, Jen says, is the stories.

“Stories are such an authentic way to connect with other people and say, ‘Hey, it’s OK to be scared – I’m also scared. It’s OK to be overwhelmed – I’m also overwhelmed. Here’s how I’m helping, here’s what I can do, here’s something to make you feel a little bit better about where you’re at,’” she says.

“Connections keep us safe, keep us healthy, keep us occupied. I think those have been the key, for me, to help me keep moving forward because it’s really easy to just get complacent.”

It’s important to be patient with yourself, and allow yourself a little grace, while you’re figuring out the next step. She notes it’s equally important not to be afraid to ask for help.

“I suggest looking up YouTube Tutorials, reaching out to other businesses – if you have a friend you know does a lot of videos on Facebook, for example, you can ask them for help. Even now, when I see my face on the screen, I’m like “Oh!” even though I’ve done tons of videos. It doesn’t matter how many you do, there’s always that sort of stage fright – I don’t want to say the wrong thing or touch my face! It’s about having a little grace,” she says.

“Mistakes are going to happen and that’s OK. We’re all in this together. You’re not alone in not knowing or being scared.”

Allowing yourself some grace

It would be impossible to count the number of times we’ve heard the word “unprecedented” in recent weeks. None of us have experienced this before, so cut yourself some slack.

Jen says in her experience, the little things have made a big difference – no matter how silly they may seem. She laughs as she cites her conversation with us as an example, explaining she actually really enjoyed the chance to let out her “mom bun” and do her hair.

“Women are trying to figure out how to home school and run our businesses and cook three meals a day and it’s this long laundry list. Our personal self-care goes out the window, because we have all these other things to do. How do we find a little happiness? It might be superficial, but if you look good, you do feel good. Even today, I put on some mascara and I was like, ‘Oh yes, that’s right!’”

With this in mind, she’s currently working on a series called In Between Beauty, which she hopes to release in coming weeks. It will feature a range of different people giving home beauty tips to tide them over until they can resume supporting local business and return to their favorite salons.

“It will be tips to keep you going in that in-between time, because that’s what this really is. It’s an in-between time that we’re stuck in. People need to remember that. There was a time before coronavirus and there will be an after.”

For more stories about businesses finding ways to pivot, as well as crisis communication tips, digital marketing advice and a sounding board for ideas, join our Facebook group.

Sales expert’s advice for maintaining relationships during a crisis (VIDEO)

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Sabrina Martinez

It’s a tough time to be in business. We know it. You know it. Your customers know it.

Many sectors are going through a period of uncertainty as the latest public health advice requires them to fundamentally change the way they trade. Businesses all around the United States are scrambling to adapt and find new ways to secure their revenue streams.

With the right digital marketing strategy, however, it could be a real opportunity for growth.

The secret to success? Simply stop selling.

Tip 1: Shift your focus

“Wait a second,” we hear you thinking. “What did you just say? Aren’t you a digital marketing company? Isn’t the whole point of marketing to convert sales?”

Yes it is. You’re not wrong, but bear with us for a moment.

Ken Okonek is the Director of Sales and Marketing at Beacon Media + Marketing. He says current circumstances are perfect for building genuine and lasting connections within your local community. The trick is putting your sales initiatives on hold and shifting your focus to the people around you.

“We need to come from a place that is empathetic and grateful. We can’t just capitalize and try to get every dollar that we can, because that comes through in the wrong way,” he says.

“Right now, you should not be trying to sell anything. You should be branding your vision of where you want to be and what you want to do. Dollars will eventually come, but they will stem from a relationship. That’s what you want to have with your people, a long-term connected relationship.”

Anchorage businesswoman Lorie Hardin, who runs Birch Dispute Resolution, is one example. She provides certified divorce coaching, mediation and parenting services. In recent weeks, however, she has found herself leading a group of 3,300 sewers from all around Alaska who are donating a lot of time to stitching surgical-style masks to assist healthcare providers.

Looking for a way to help your business pivot? Have questions about digital marketing in a crisis? Simply need a sounding board for new ideas? Join our new Facebook group.

Tip 2: Stay relevant

Many businesses are facing tough times, there’s no doubt about it. However, Ken says shifting your focus from the short-term to the long-term can help you build the momentum to push through.

He says the key to long-term success from a digital marketing perspective is simply to make sure you’re relevant.

“This thing that we’re dealing with is a short-term time frame. The long-term is so much more important. Knowing how to speak to an audience, create content that has value, build your brand, build your awareness, building engagement within your community is so important right now.”

Businesses everywhere are keeping tabs on what their local communities need and springing into action to help. ServiceMaster of Alaska is one example. It’s a home restoration business that typically assists clients with things like water removal, fire damage, mold damage and odors.

Right now, however, a dedicated crew has stepped up to help local businesses disinfect their premises in a bid to keep their workers safe and slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Tip 3: Get creative

There has never been a better time to think outside the box and start trying new things.

In some ways, the fact that it’s a tough time for businesses across the board presents a perfect opportunity to take some risks. Ken explains that revising your digital marketing strategy and reassessing your strengths and weaknesses now may help your business become more solid than ever.

“Right now, you have an opportunity to maybe diversity or spread out your [streams] of income. That way, when we do get into this new normal where we can all get outside and engage with people again, you might have a different revenue stream, or a couple of revenue streams, that you didn’t have before,” he explains.

“We have a unique opportunity right now because of the market to be able to pivot, to shift some perspective in the way we’re helping people in the marketplace. This could be a huge opportunity, not just for you to be able to get through these tough times – because believe me, we all understand that there is tough time we’re dealing with right now as a country.”

Tip 4: Help others

Once incredibly positive thing us that we’re all going through this together. We all have something in common and it’s in everyone’s best interests that our businesses survive.

Jennifer Christensen is a co-founder and the Vice President of Marketing at Beacon Media + Marketing. She says it’s critical that we help each other transition into the “new norm.”

“I talked to somebody recently who is working with their competitors for the first time because they recognize that hey, if we can all work together and help each other get through this, we’re all going to end up being better off at the end,” she explains.

“We want to help everybody rise up. If we can all be successful – well, successful right now means something different. It means helping people through it,” she explains.

Beacon Media + Marketing is a digital marketing agency with top-tier remote working capabilities and a passion for helping businesses grow. This is definitely one of those areas where you really have to walk the talk, which means we always take our own advice.

We’re offering three giveaways to help you adapt to working from home:

  1. FREE Chatbox installation. The first 10 businesses to respond will receive a chatbox installation on their website. A chatbox is the easiest way for customers to reach out to you with questions and concerns and it will make staying on top of enquiries a breeze.
  2. FREE Zoom training. Zoom is a video conferencing tool that will make it easy to touch base with your team and run staff meetings as normal. Not only does this make sure your business can run as normal, but regular contact can ensure everyone copes with the change.
  3. FREE Livestream training. Facebook livestreams are a great way to connect with your customers to keep them informed of what’s happening and make sure you’re still responding to their needs. Our videographer can answer all your questions.

Contact us at [email protected] and we’ll help you get started.

For more stories about businesses finding ways to pivot, as well as crisis communication tips, digital marketing advice and a sounding board for ideas, join our Facebook group.

Google Ads can help schools find new students. Here’s how.

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Sabrina Martinez

For a lot of people, advertising on Google seems like a no-brainer, but many people may wonder how effective it really is. In this blog, we’ll show you that Google Ads really are effective. It’s a very powerful tool to help your school reach new students.

If you don’t already believe that Google advertising is can help, consider this: Google users account for 77% of all search engine usage. That’s more than 1 billion people!

It’s also important to remember that most people will never look at the second page of their Google results. Many won’t even scroll to the bottom of the first page. This is why Google Ads are so effective, it puts your business right in people’s eye-line at the top of their search results.

How should private schools set up Google Ads?

Google Ads come in two types: search ads and display ads. You’re probably familiar with both types as they are anyone who uses Google search will have seen both kinds.

Search ads are the paid search results that appear right at the top of the results list. Usually, one or two ads appear here, but for competitive industries this section can be as much as half the results page. Search ads can be distinguished from “organic” results by the presence of the word “ad” in a green box next to the URL.

Display ads allow a lot more creative freedom. These are the ads that appear on websites, and typically come as a banner on the side of the webpage, or across the top or bottom of a page. They provide an opportunity to draw people in using both graphics and text.

Pay-per-click

Google advertising uses a payment model called pay-per-click (PPC). This means that you’re only charged when someone clicks on the ad. The amount you are charged each time someone clicks is called the cost-per-click. The cost is determined by the following equation:

Next Highest Ad Rank / Quality Score + $0.01 = CPC*

As you can see, this means that the higher your quality score, the lower your cost will be. This is because Google has its own financial incentive to provide users with good quality content.

Navigating the Google Ads algorithm

The word algorithm has started to enter common language much more in recent years as people become aware of the ways in which their content is delivered to them.

In terms of Google Ads, the algorithm used to determine the rank of your ad is actually very simple. This rank then determines who sees your ad, and how effective it will be. We’ll discuss the algorithm itself in a bit, but first let’s talk about how Google uses it.

In the moments between you hitting the search button and Google providing your results, a huge amount happens. In that split second, Google takes an inventory of all the ad accounts that contain the keywords or phrases used in the search.

For example, perhaps your private school is trying to rank for the keywords “Best high school for college acceptance.” When someone searches “What schools in my area have the best college acceptance rates?” your advertising account will be included in Google’s inventory.

In order to tell Google what keywords and phrases to rank your website against, you bid a monetary amount that you would be willing to pay if someone clicked on your ad, hence the name pay-per-click.

This process works a bit like an auction, with the winner determined by two factors:

  • The maximum bid you have set for your keyword
  • The quality score of your advertisement

The second point here we’ve already touched on. Google is here to make money, and the best way to do that is to be the search engine with the biggest user base. The main reason that Google has such a massive market share is because it has a reputation for providing the most relevant results.

Therefore, it is more likely to show your ad, and your content, if it’s of good quality and relevant to its users. Therefore, you should take special care to remember this when creating your ads.

The quality score of your advertisement is itself determined by two factors:

  • Past performance of your ad, ad group, and your account in general
  • The relevance of your chosen keyword, ad (title, URL, and description), and landing page to the search and to each other

Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with the terms “ad group” and “landing page.”

An ad group is a group of keywords that you are trying to rank your ad for, and your landing page is the webpage that your ad sends people to when they click on it. Both the ad itself and the landing page should be relevant to each other, use the same keywords, and be well-made and fast-loading.

All these factors add up to a single equation that determines the rank of your ad:

CPC Bid x Quality Score = Ad Rank

For display ads, the process is slightly different. Instead of bidding on keywords, you bid on ad groups. There is also the option to bid on impressions rather than clicks. Impression in this context just refers to when your ad is displayed to someone on a webpage, every time it is “seen.”

For this reason, it’s called “cost-per-impression” or “CPM” bidding.

Can Google Ads really help private schools?

Yes, they can!

However, there are factors which mean that this can never be a guarantee.

One of the most significant of these factors is competition. This varies by area and high competition will mean your ads have a lower chance of winning the “auction” we talked about earlier. Competition also varies by industry. For example, the legal industry in Anchorage, Alaska (where we are based), has seen costs-per-click as high as $50!

This is obviously not going to be the case for all industries, but it does mean that Google advertising could be a poor choice as without high profit-margins you could make a loss overall. This is especially true when you consider that not all clicks convert to new clients/income.

We can determine the level of competition in an industry using industry benchmarks.

Source: WordStream (8/27/2019)

As you can see, education (in grey) has a relatively low cost-per-click compared to other industries, indicating a lower level of competition. Obviously, this isn’t taking location into account, but as a general category you will be competing with fewer schools.

This doesn’t mean that what we said about quality can be disregarded however! You should still aim to create quality ads to ensure you are ranking highly.

Our Google Ads specialists at Beacon Media + Marketing are regularly able to achieve below-average cost-per-click for our clients, saving them lots of money.

How do we do it?

  • For every service we want to advertise, we use a budget of at least $300 per month, usually more. This translates to our minimum recommended cost-per-click budget on each keyword in 1-3 ad groups.
  • We always find some way to find a niche for the services we are advertising, using nuanced keywords. We do this so that we can use keywords that are low competition but capture the internet users who search for them. For example, we market for a holistic dentist in Anchorage. When we create her Google Ads, we do not target “family dentistry,” but rather, “holistic dentistry,” because there is lower competition around this keyword, which makes the market easier to capture. We have seen incredible results for this client.
  • Our team makes it a priority to create quality, relevant ads and landing pages. There are few things better for boosting the success of your Google advertising campaign than this. Write clear, concise, compelling ads that point people to the pages that they would expect with the right keywords.

We hope this post will be helpful for you getting started with your own Google advertising!

If you want to learn more about digital marketing, you can read more of our blogs, here. Alternatively, if you’re interested in working with us, you can schedule a free consultation.

Education marketing: Best practices for starting a private school blog

Picture of Sabrina Martinez

Sabrina Martinez

Consistency. 

If there is one word that encapsulates the secret to education marketing, it’s consistency. 

We at Beacon Media + Marketing recommend that a weekly blogging strategy is best, but many of our clients have seen success with a minimal schedule of one blog per month! Although you can see results with this more minimal strategy, it will probably take longer for you to start ranking on Google, which, as we’ll explain, is one of the main goals of blogging. Here, we’ll explain some of the education marketing strategies we use to drive traffic to our clients’ website and ensure their blogs rank on Google.

Prefer to chat to a real person? Give us a call today.

What education marketing strategies will help my blogs rank on Google?

When we talk about ranking on Google, what we mean is the position of your website or post in people’s search results. There is extensive research that shows that most people don’t ever click on the second page of Google, and many won’t even scroll down the first page. One study found that only 0.78% of searchers clicked on something on the second page of Google. Clearly, it’s necessary to get on that first page, and ideally at the top of it. But how?

The answer is simple: a comprehensive, and well-researched, education marketing plan. Here are some of the methods our expert marketers use to get our clients on the top of the Google search rankings. 

Case study: Beacon blogs

Let us take the time to discuss a couple of case studies that show our success with this strategy. Obviously, we’re a digital marketing agency, but these principles are universal, and they’ll definitely work for education marketing.

Two years ago, we decided we wanted to move into the functional medicine sector. Our first steps in this direction were to start blogging about it. We wrote blogs about each of the services we offer, targeting the keyword “functional medicine”. Within a few months, we had our blog posts ranking at both #1 and #2 on Google for the search “marketing for functional medicine”, and we’re still there today.

Education Marketing

So, how did we do it? 

We used a few simple tricks of the trade that you can also use for education marketing.

  1. First, we ensured that the blogs we wrote were of the specific length that works best for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This changes every so often, depending on updates to Google’s algorithm, so make sure you research it now and then so you’re up-to-date.
  2. Second, we had a focused keyword strategy. This involves writing certain keywords that you want to target in your text and headings. For the functional medicine blogs, these included “functional medicine,” “marketing,” and “inbound marketing.”  
  3. Finally, we ensured our posts are well optimized, work on mobile, are fast-loading, and have correctly set metadata. Metadata just means the information you provide Google about the contents of your blog, so they can determine how relevant it is to searchers. 

Although we ranked these two blog posts at the top of Google, that was only part of our goal. The main objective of this was to generate leads. By having these blogs at the top of Google, we generate more leads to our website which converts into more sales. These two blogs now constitute a key part of our sales funnel! As you can see, these strategies are super simple and effective, so make sure you include them in your education marketing plan.

Case study: Mandanas Dental blogs

We don’t just keep our secrets to ourselves, either! We’ve also used these strategies to help our clients find success. One of our longest-standing clients, Dr. Owen Mandanas, decided a few years ago that she wanted to shift her focus to include integrative dentistry. Naturally, we started blogging on the subject!

Using the same techniques as for Beacon, we managed to rank Dr. Mandanas on the first page of Google. We’re so happy to have been able to achieve this for such a valued client. This approach to blog writing uses the inbound marketing philosophy, which will form the backbone of your education marketing strategy.

We’ll discuss in the next section. 

Education Marketing

 

Have we persuaded you? Let’s talk strategy.

Proven methods of education marketing

Okay, by now you’ve got a sense of the power of blogs and the impact they can make on your education marketing strategy. Next, we’re going to discuss some proven methods for writing successful blogs, including the inbound philosophy, question answering, and the waterfall method. These are all techniques you can use when writing your own blogs – whether you’re marketing a private school, a home school, or a specialty program.

Inbound philosophy of education marketing

The inbound marketing philosophy is a simple concept. People are online all day, every day, which means putting quality content in front of them is easier than ever. The core of the inbound education marketing philosophy is that if you consistently provide useful content to people, they will remember you and seek you out when they need your services. Imagine your customers are a cat. If you chase the cat it will run away from you, but if you have what the cat wants, it will come to you! So, how do you go about enticing the cat?

The first step to developing your education marketing plan is to researching what your customers are interested in. There are tools available to help you find out what searches people are making on Google (we use one called keywordtool.io). Once you’ve identified what people are researching, you can write blogs on it. People typically ask questions on Google, so answering these can be an effective way to provide quality content. 

Use education marketing to answer questions

We’ve established that people use Google to ask questions, and that answering them is a highly effective method of providing quality content through your education marketing plan. If your blog is what people are relying on when they want to know something, they’ll remember you when they want to buy something.  

Remember: Be there for them when they want to know something, and they’ll be there for you when they want to enrol in something.

Here’s a quick rundown of our process for blog writing: 

  • Keyword planning – We use Google’s keyword planner to find out what the most searched topics are, and what kind of competition there is for answering those questions. 
  • Finding questions – Next, we use Keywordtool.io to identify what questions people are asking about those topics. 
  • Writing – The next step is the most obvious, write a blog answering that question! When doing this it is important to include your keywords frequently, while flowing naturally. 
  • Setting the metadata – We’ve mentioned this before; basically, it’s the process of setting the title, description, and keywords in a format that Google can use to populate your result. 
  • Schedule – It’s important to be consistent if you want the best results. We recommend to our clients that they blog at least 1-2 times per week, but even with a minimal strategy, you can expect to see results in 6-9 months. 

Want to apply this to your marketing plan? Our team can help.

Waterfall blogging is perfect for education marketing

The waterfall method of blogging is a highly successful method of getting your posts to rank on Google. One important thing to factor into your strategy is the inclusion of backlinks. Backlinks are links to your website from other credible websites. Google highly rates backlinks, so we can set up links to other posts in our own blog posts. This is a great way to organize posts, which you can use successfully for your education marketing strategy.

Here’s an example of a waterfall we created for some recent mental health blogs: 

As you can see, this looks a bit like a descending waterfall, with multiple layers all linked to one another (and to this blog too!). You can use this to discuss your programs, teaching style, student services, and more.

Link between SEO and education marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of using tools to help blogs your produce as part of your education marketing strategy rank on Google. This involves setting the keywords that we have chosen to target, and which we have used throughout the blog. We make sure to use them in the text, in the headers, and in the URL. We also set a featured image, as this boosts Google ranking, and write a custom excerpt which is displayed on the results page, this ensures that the text is displayed fully, and doesn’t end with an ellipsis. 

In addition, we chose a title of the length that is shown to be most effective in catching people’s attention and using certain power words that have been shown to gain clicks. We hope that this has been a useful insight into some of the tips and tricks that we use to drive engagement with our blogs. If you’d like to learn more you can check out other posts we’ve published on digital marketing. 

Ready to talk to the experts? Schedule a free consultation today.

How to market Lake Tahoe tourism businesses best

Picture of Sara Jokela

Sara Jokela

Lake Tahoe is a popular tourist destination, with over 2.7 million visitors per year. If you’re a small business owner in the Lake Tahoe area you may be wondering how you can capitalize on the ever-growing tourist industry.

It has a great variety of tourist attractions, from the stunning natural beauty and hiking trails, such as Eagle Rock, to winter sports, including some of America’s best skiing. If you prefer a more laid-back approach to vacation, there are stunning beaches as well as high-end shopping and dining along the north shore.  Alongside these are historic sites aplenty, including Tallac Historic Site and the Ed Z’berg Sugar Pine Point.

Lake Tahoe is so stunningly beautiful you don’t have to convince people to visit.

However, the local tourism industry is well-established and highly-competitive, a lot of competition, with activities, beaches, and sight-seeing destinations all vying to catch the attention of visitors. An effective marketing strategy will distinguish your business from others and make sure customers find you first!

Beacon Media + Marketing has an office in downtown Reno, but our story started in Anchorage, Alaska. We have plenty of experience in developing and executing successful marketing stratgies for the competitive outdoor tourism sector. Here, we’ll summarize some of our most successful tricks of the trade, giving you an insider’s view into the world of tourism marketing.

Small business marketing

We mentioned before that we are well-placed for providing insight into marketing for the tourist industry in an area of outstanding natural beauty, which also includes historic sites and plenty for the outdoor sports enthusiast.

Here we’ll summarize some of our tips that are applicable for Lake Tahoe tourism companies, from a series of blogs on marketing for tourism and related businesses that we’ve written.

Blogging

You may have heard that blogging is important to growing your business, and it is. There are a few tricks to effective blogging. The primary thing to remember is that consistency is key! You need to be publishing regularly to get the results you want. Here are some proven methods of blog marketing:

  1. The inbound marketing philosophy is a simple concept. People are online all day, every day – this means that putting quality content in front of them is easier than ever. The core tenet of the inbound philosophy is that if you consistently provide useful content to people, they will remember you and seek you out when they need your services.
  2. People use Google to ask questions, so it’s super effective to answer them. If you’re the one people can rely on when they want to know something, they’ll remember you when they want to buy something.
  3. The waterfall method of blogging is a highly successful, and slightly sneaky, trick for getting your posts to rank on Google! Google highly rates backlinks: that is, other credible websites linking to your blog. Links of this kind act a bit like a referral, but it can be difficult to get links from other websites. So, we do what is called backlinking. This involves using your own website to provide links! A common way of organizing this, which you can use successfully for your Lake Tahoe tourism business, is called the waterfall method.

To see an example of one of our blog waterfalls, and to read more about our blogging strategy, read our blog on blogging for arctic tourism here.

Google Ads

There are two types of Google ads: display ads and search ads. Display ads pop up on websites, they are usually a graphic or image and can be identified by grey “advertisement” text above them. Search ads appear at the top of your search results page, very effective for putting you in your customers’ eye-line.

Google uses an algorithm to determine which ads you see when you search. In the fraction of a second after you press search, it takes an inventory of all the ad accounts that contain keywords or phrases used in your search.

If you want to read about google ads in more detail, including how the algorithm works, and how they can help tourism-related businesses, head over to another blog we wrote here.

Branding

We at Beacon Media + Marketing have a 5-step process for developing a strong brand.

Here is a quick overview:

  1. Understand what branding is. Your brand is your visual identity, it’s what people will think of you
  2. Brand discovery. Your primary focus in this part of the process should be focused on identifying your competition and how you can differentiate yourself from them. You also want to identify your target customers and work out how you can appeal to them.
  3. Naming. Sometimes naming can come naturally, but other times it can be the hardest part of the process, so we offer some advice:
    1. Look at competitors
    2. Consider using names of founders
    3. Consider using your location
    4. Alongside a name, you should come up with a tagline
  1. Choosing iconography, color, and font. The icon is the part of your brand that most people think of when they talk about the “brand” or the “logo”. It is the part of your brand where you can use form, rather than text to communicate your brand. It can be used to represent name, location, and mission in a quick and easily accessible manner.
  2. Management. A mismanaged brand can become messy and inconsistent, which dilutes the effectiveness of your brand. At Beacon Media + Marketing, we provide clients with a style guide that informs staff of what logo, colors, and fonts to use and how to use them.

If you’d like to learn more about branding, you can delve into it in more detail in a blog we wrote, here.

Web Design

Experts recommend that you redesign your website every 2-3 years. Why? Because product changes, staff changes, fashion, and best practices all change rapidly in business and online.

However, we appreciate that this can be a daunting task. We at Beacon Media + Marketing have 20 years of experience in the marketing industry, and a proven process for website design.

You can read about our process in more detail, here.

Meet with your team

Before you get started on your website design, it’s vital to get a handle on what exactly you want to create, what you want to say about your tourism business, and what your goals are.

We recommend gathering all the key people in your business into one room and asking yourselves questions to determine this. It is often helpful to look at some of your competitors and determine what aspects of their website you like, and what you don’t like, to help you generate some ideas .

Map out your design

Now that you have an idea of what your website should look like, and you have some concrete features you’ll need, you can create an outline.

For our clients, we create two documents to provide a guide for the website: a site map and a wireframe.

The site map is simply a flowchart or bullet list of all the pages on your website and the order in which they will derive from one another.

This then provides the foundation for the wireframe, which is a set of images in which you show the elements you want on each page and how they relate to each other.

Despite the technical name, a wireframe is just a rough sketch of what you want your website to look like and where you want the elements to be.

Write the content

Having created the wireframe and left spaces for paragraphs, it is now time to write the content that goes into those boxes. We recommend three best practices for content writing, which will allow you to produce attention-grabbing and engaging content:

  1. Keywords
    • Choosing keywords that people are searching on google, and ensuring you use them throughout your writing, is a good way o rank on Google
  2. Headers
    • Including your keywords in your headers helps Google know what your content is about. Writing catchy headers also helps draw in readers, often people just skim over the text looking for their interests; you want to catch them and keep them interested.
  3. Quality
    • Google can tell if your content is low-quality as people will quickly leave a page if it doesn’t have what they’re looking for or isn’t nice to read. If lots of people do this, Google takes it as a sign that your content is low quality and will be less likely to recommend it.

Develop your website

The site map, wireframe, and content are all going to come together in the final web design. The first step in developing your website is deciding which software to use to build it. We typically recommend WordPress, which is an industry-standard solution that is completely customizable.

When building your website, be sure to stick to your brand guidelines. A well-managed, and cohesive brand is vital for a good-looking website. (Remember, we talked about this earlier!)

Go Live

Once your website is ready to go, it’s time to publish and set it live.

If you’ve found this insight helpful, and want to learn more, be sure to check out our other blogs that go into more detail on each of these topics. Alternatively, if we’ve convinced you that your business could benefit from our expertise, you can schedule a free consultation.

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