STEP THREE | BASICS OF VIDEO MARKETING IN INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS

STEP THREE OF THREE -

School Video Distribution Strategy

Strategy! Now you have a film so you can put it on your website homepage and sit back and relax - wait for the onslaught, surely your phone will be ringing off the hook with congratulations and requests for registration forms, right? No, incorrect, the job is only partly done.

You need a strategy to release it. Who did you want it to reach? What do you want it to do? (Refer back to Step One, as these are crucial questions you need to have determined the answers to a long time ago!). Everyone’s release strategy will be different to meet these objectives, but this article should cover some of the things you should consider as part of it.

First, let’s start with some best practice advice.  Your internal community (parents of pupils and your staff and pupils themselves) are, by far, the MOST important people with whom to share this film. They must be told why the film was made, what its purpose is and why ‘sharing’ it is important to the school.  Distribution starts from within.  Engaging the internal community will fuel external engagement.  Treat film distribution like a ripple…

There are 3 mediums to consider for launching your film, Digital, Social and Live.

Digital -

Covers the obvious ones you’re probably aware of already. It’s launching on your website, backlinking from a video hosting facility (YouTube or Vimeo), online PR, and broadcasting. Put the film there and tell people it’s there! Ideally, you’d start your initial launch campaign by tracking the views through one channel only….which leads me to Social.

Social -

Starts with your internal PR with people directed to one single social channel to start. For schools, it will depend on the school and their strength in social media marketing prior to the film (I’ll come back to that!!) but we’d almost always recommend funnelling all your traffic through the school’s Facebook account.  Yes, they’ll like and share it from there to Facebook and then off to other channels, but at least you can easily track views and engagement and comments at its source to keep the analytic’s side of things tidy.  You’ll still also launch on YouTube/Vimeo and other social channels, we’re just diverting all traffic for the first week or so.  Student-based distribution is key, as their own social networks tend to be a long list of the school’s target market, so use your BEST storytellers to share it! One last element of the social medium is influencer marketing - who do you ‘know’? Alumni, ex-staff or any other influencers in your community that might champion what you do at the school and would be quite helpful in simply ‘liking and sharing’ your film.  That’s a fantastic 3rd party endorsement that prospective parents will sink their teeth into.  It also gets you more traction outside the ‘school bubble’, which can dispel myths, change or enhance perceptions and just simply put your school into the conversation at the dinner table.

Live -

Launch events are my favourite. The reason being is I get to see the look on 100’s of faces all at once. It also means you get quick and exponential results. Invite staff, pupils, parents, alumni to a large event, always launch around ‘something, give people a reason to see the film other than ‘watch our film’.  Choosing a date and event is key. Make it an Open Day event, an all-school end of year assembly, speech day, the school’s birthday, or whatever. Again, explain why they are to attend, why it’s important to you, the school and them! Show it, watch it, like it and share it. It’s amazing watching the result. Other forms of Live launch might be TV advertising, cinema advertising, and future live sessions where you have a passive audience at an Open Morning.

Let me quickly touch on schools’ social media presence. There is a vast array of styles and usage out there. It’s up to each individual school to determine its own strategy, tone, and posting rate which suits the school’s ethos. What I will now say is if you have 10 Facebook ‘friends’ of the school account, please don't expect to (hate this term) ‘go viral’. You need to create fertile ground before planting the seed and expecting it to grow. So, a key action point to consider is to grow your social media accounts BEFORE launching a film, as in months before, if possible and if appropriate and in line with your school’s strategy.

What is the result? What does ‘success’ in a distribution strategy look like?

It can be ‘measured’ in views, likes, shares, retweets, and comments. But then it can be further measured as to what it accomplished in more real and yet, sometimes, less measurable terms. I’ve heard things like, “we didn't know what that school was until we saw the film, we’re now considering it an option for our daughter" and “we’ve seen a massive increase in Alumni engagement and even alumni now considering this school for their own children, and the former wasn’t even part of our objective!” right down to “sent a shiver down my spine….miss this place!”

Secondary and tertiary effects may be increased admissions numbers, more donation money, more community support; but no matter what the effect is, the film is only bringing the horse to water….it’s the school itself that affects change.

Check out Step One and Step TWO in our Blog to get the whole picture! You can also email Miles directly to discuss your Schools video strategy. miles@affixxius.com

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