School Tour Videos: Why Footage Alone Isn’t Enough

COVID-19 has forced schools to adapt in many different ways. One of the most considerable changes is how schools will attract admissions.

Without being able to hold open days and visits, your school may have been considering making a school tour video. This is often an expensive endeavour, and you need to make sure the results are worth the cost.

In this article, we explain the questions you should be asking yourself if you want to make sure your school tour video actually has the impact you desire.

No Communication Should Stand Alone

The success of a communication can be measured on two fronts: reach and impact. Reach is how many people in your target audience see the communication. Impact is how effective the communication is in making viewers take the desired action; in this case, applying for a place.

A well-made school tour video has the potential to make a huge impact and draw in the applications. But, to maximise its impact, you also need to generate considerable reach. To engage as many potential applicants as possible, it’s essential that the video is shared on channels where an audience has been built.

Consequently, your school tour video shouldn’t be seen as a solution in itself, but as one part of a wider marketing plan.

Video + Marketing = Success

So, you’re in agreement that a video isn’t the only consideration when marketing your open days to prospective parents and students. Here are some questions you should ask yourself to understand which aspects of your marketing plan need to be developed.

1) Do You Have an Audience?

This may sound like a stupid question; the audience is, of course, the parents of prospective pupils in the local area. However, if no one is engaged with the communication channels you use to promote your new school video, it isn’t going to have an impact.

Consequently, the success of a good school tour video depends on the size of the engaged following you have built on your school’s website and social media platforms. Building this audience requires consistently high-quality content to be published over a sustained period, which we’d be happy to help you with.

2) Do You Use Consistent Branding?

To make your school’s media presence more memorable, and to come across as professional and competent, uniform branding is essential.

If your school video isn’t produced in compliance with the same brand guidelines as the rest of your communications, its impact will suffer.

At Eduprise, we work with schools to provide them with brand guidelines and templates. This means that when it comes to creating one-off content, they are well equipped to ensure their style and design will fit the brand of the school.

3) Can You Produce a Follow-Up Campaign?

If you don’t tell anyone about your fantastic school tour video, no one is going to see it. It may seem obvious, but for a school tour video to have the desired impact, an accompanying comms campaign is essential.

Depending on your requirements, this could involve:

• A series of social media posts on different channels.
• A paid social media campaign to get the video out to a broader audience in the local area.
• An email campaign to prospective parents and the school community.
• A blog post on the school news page to introduce or give more context to the video.

4) Do You Have a Long-Term Plan for How to Use Your New Video?

Having invested so much in making the video in the first place, you should be using it in future campaigns to maximise its value to your school. For example, have you considered how the video could be implemented in future admissions or recruitment campaigns? Could the video be used as a centrepiece to draw attention to paid campaigns?

Without a strategy for how your investment can help boost admissions, your school is neglecting perhaps the most important function of the video.

At Eduprise, we specialise in producing coordinated campaigns for every good news story, update, or school video that warrants it. If you’d like to know more about how we can help your school maximise the reach and impact of its marketing content, contact us today.