It has happened to me countless times, private school marketers and administrators obsess over the school’s home page. While this is somewhat justifiable, you must realize that most searchers are unlikely to see your private school’s homepage. The reason is that the search engines will serve the page most likely to match the searcher’s intent. Therefore, you need to consider your website and each page of it as more like the books, chapters, and pages of the Bible. When you pick up the Bible to read, you typically don’t start in Genesis and read it straight through to Revelation. You jump in and around, and your website is no different. This is where landing pages come into play.
In this post, I will give you a basic understanding of what a landing page is, the different types, and how they can be used for your private school digital marketing campaigns.
What is a Landing Page?
A landing page is any web page that a searcher, in this case, a parent or caregiver, can land on. However, for the purpose of private school marketing, it’s usually a standalone page that is different from your homepage or any other page and serves a single and focused purpose.
A landing page serves as a follow-up to any promises made in your content or blog. Essentially, it is the next stage in the process of a prospective student becoming a student.
Types of Landing Pages
When it comes to landing pages you need to think about seven main types:
- Homepage Versus Landing Page
- Lead Generation Landing Page
- Inquiry Landing Page
- Chatbot Landing Page
- Marketing Landing Page
- Search Engine Optimized (SEO) Landing Pages
- Geographic or Local Landing Pages
1. Homepage Versus Landing Page
As I mentioned before, your homepage is somewhat of a type of landing page. However, it also has to serve as much more than that. Therefore, it is less likely to convert a prospective parent into a viable lead.
To elaborate, your private school’s homepage is crammed with information and provides access to your primary navigation and other clickable items. If a prospective parent lands on your homepage, they will likely want to look around. While this is ultimately what they want, if they click through to a dedicated landing page with just a singular objective, then they are much more likely to take the action being offered.
2. Lead Generation Landing Page
In the digital world, your contact information is like Monopoly Money. You can use this to buy or trade for a special offer, a piece of information, an ebook, a planning guide, etc. With a lead-generation or lead-capture page, you are doing just that.
These pages are primarily intended to collect your prospective students’ parents’ contact information by means of a form. These pages are versatile, but they are most often used in the middle of the funnel when parents analyze your school’s offerings and are on the verge of deciding whether to reach out for a tour or walk away.
Going back to the use of Monopoly Money, if I offer you Boardwalk for half price, the value of it is worth much more than what you’re paying for it. Your content needs to be perceived as similar to a parent who will only pay for what they determine your offer’s value.
3. Inquiry or Tour Landing Page
When a prospective parent visits your inquiry or tour page, you can bet they are close to making a decision.
This page should have the following:
- One singular focus and that is to get them to book a tour as easily and quickly as possible
- One call to action which should be worded differently as you go down the page
- It should have a very specific layout, more on this in a bit.
This page shouldn’t have any sort of navigation, menus, or social media (unless it’s tucked away at the bottom). Again your focus is to get them to fill out your form, not check out your social media profile and forget why they came.
Lastly, the form needs to be as bare bones as possible and only require what is 100% necessary. Typically this is going to be:
- First and Last Name
- Email Address
- Phone Number
- Grades of Interest
- Number of Children
Alternatively, to this type of form, you could use a calendar scheduling feature so that prospective parents can book a tour when your staff is available. You can still collect the above information as well.
4. Chatbot Landing Page
You may be asking yourself, why would I want to use a chatbot on my private school website, and why do I need a landing page for it? While chatbots appear impersonal, we often prefer just to ignore them. However, if done well, it can be more engaging and provide a more “human” touch than a typical form. You set up a chatbot landing page as a conversation. By sending your chatbot to a landing page, you can get the following:
- Higher user engagement
- Better mobile usage
- A feeling of familiarity to most users
5. Marketing Landing Page
A marketing landing page will be used in conjunction with some type of campaign. These will usually be an internet marketing campaign, such as email, social media, social media ads, pay-per-click ads, or display ads. The page exists to help track and capture the traffic from these sources.
6. Search Engine Optimized (SEO) Landing Pages
As the name implies, SEO landing pages are highly optimized for search engines and user intent. Google strives to serve the most relevant content to what a searcher is searching for, and an SEO landing page can help with that.
7. Geographic or Local Landing Pages
A geographic landing page, geo-targeted landing page, or local landing page, as they are sometimes called, are all variations of an SEO landing page. Where an SEO landing page will focus on one keyword or keyword phrase, the geographical, as the name implies, will include a geographical location. They are designed for local search or when a user searches for the keyword or phrase in combination with the "near me," "city," or zip code determined by Google.
Important Elements to Include
When it comes to landing pages, there are many options and opinions on how they should be designed. At Cube Creative, we use a modified version of the Building A Storybrand framework. It goes something like this:
- A large, clear statement of what your client wants or the pain point
- A brief explanation or description of what you do or how you solve said paint point
- A call to action button should drop the parent to the bottom of the page for a contact form and contact information.
- You also need an image to help illustrate your point.
- Talk about why they shouldn't do the topic of the page.
- Talk about why they should seek help or why they need to apply.
- Why choose you
- Why do they need to call you now? Including a sense of urgency or limit, such as limited space available.
- Talk about the area, including landmarks, parks, national parks, state parks, etc. Essentially anything that can help Google understand where you are talking about.
- Include testimonials for the social proof aspect
- Include pricing
- How do they get in touch with you?
- Images should be geotagged if possible. Even if it's a cell phone snapshot, it's better than a stock photo that doesn't represent the area or your school.
Other things you should consider are:
- Your landing page's design affects its effectiveness, so keep it simple.
- Make sure it is optimized for mobile and desktop devices
- Optimize the page for the search engines by making sure you include target keywords
- Add internal links to other pages on your site as appropriate
Final Thoughts
The bottom line is that, as a private school marketer, you need to consider using landing pages as part of a more sophisticated approach to your digital marketing. If you want more information or need help developing them, reach out. I and all of us at Cube Creative Design would be happy to help you and your school!
