If you work in your school’s marketing and communications department, you’ve likely heard the phrase “Content is King.” This phrase doesn’t mean more content always results in more traffic or high search results. When you’re creating content for your school’s multi-channel marketing efforts, it’s important to evaluate and adjust your content based on data-driven decisions. Quality should always be prioritized over quantity.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a way for a school to track their performance and effectiveness online. Let’s explore the best KPIs for each online channel:
Website Content KPIs
If you track your website properly, your analytics will tell you the whole journey of your visitors - where they come from, what they saw and where they left off.
- Total Traffic: the total number of visitors to your website over a given period of time, regardless of traffic source.
- Traffic Sources: the total number of traffic categorized by the source in which they came to your website (i.e. direct, organic or referral traffic).
- Organic Keywords: the total number of organic keywords your website is ranking for within search engines like Google.
- New vs Returning Visitors: the number of new, unique individuals with at least one session on your site during a period of time, compared to returning sessions by the same user(s).
- Bounce Rate: the rate at which visitors who load a page on your website, then leave without interacting with the page. Interaction would include scrolling or clicking.
- Conversions: the number of total leads collected in a period of time. Each school will have their own standards for what they consider to be a head but regarding website leads, most consider website forms or tracked phone calls as online leads.
Tracking and monitoring these KPIs will help your school understand how your audience is finding you and what they want to see more of.
Email Content KPIs
Email marketing is all about grabbing attention in a short amount of characters. The recommended length for an email subject line is only 40 characters long. While the inboxes of your audience are constantly flooding, understanding these KPIs will help you stand out in the clutter:
- Open Rate: the percentage rate at which emails are opened.
- Unsubscribe Rate: number of email accounts that choose to no longer receive email communications from your school.
- Click-through Rate (CTR): the percentage of people who clicked on at least one link to your website in your email.
Social Media KPIs
There are a lot of metrics to analyze the effectiveness of your school’s social media channels but the best ones to pay attention to involve engagement.
- Page Followers: total number of platform users who choose to see your content on their personalized feed.
- Impressions: total number of times your content is displayed, regardless of clicks.
- Reach: total number of unique users who see your content.
- Post Engagement: total number of times users interact with your content. Interactions could include likes, shares and comments.
Video KPIs
Videos are an effective way to increase brand awareness with key demographics of your target audience. However, it takes a lot more effort (and budget) to film and edit a video than to write a blog. So how do you know if a video is worth the effort?
- Plays vs Unique Views: comparing the total number of video plays to unique views will provide insight on what brings people back to your videos time and time again.
- Average Duration: average length of time a viewer watches your video.
The tricky (but the best) part about video is that it’s not its own channel. Video should play an integral part of your 2023 communication planning. The next video you can produce can increase your engagement on social media, improve click-through rates within your emails or leave your website visitors on your webpages longer.
Key Takeaways
Digital content truly is king but it takes a lot of analytics to rule over search results. Monitoring trends within your content will highlight your strengths and expose your weaknesses with room to grow. Collecting data is the easy part, analyzing the changes necessary takes time and experimentation.
Blue Baden is the only marketing and consulting agency specifically designed to help boarding schools reach their potential. Contact Blue Baden today to get started.
