Methods to attract students to your Language School

Written by Torleif V

The other day I was browsing the internet to find a language school to learn Japanese. When looking around I realized that it's very difficult to find an ideal institution for my needs. When picking a school we are looking at these three things:

• How is the teaching method?
• Will I learn the language fast?
• Is it a good community for students?

I think I'm not alone when trying to find the perfect school tailored to my needs. The number one priority for a language school is to satisfy the students needs. I'm not saying that the student is going to control the classroom or anything. I'm saying that in order to get a student to sign up for classes, he/she needs to be convinced that the school has filled all the latter questions mentioned above.

The worst thing a school can do is to overcomplicate things, or just make the students scratch their heads and think twice everytime they look at the offer. A good way to attract the students is to have convincing offers on the table in the form of either Google Ads, Facebook Ads or LinkedIn Campaigns.

1. Facebook Ads

When the students are looking at a Facebook Ad, they will use 1-3 seconds to decide if they will keep scrolling or have a closer look. But let's pause for a moment. Why do students actually read a Facebook Ad to begin with? This is a question every marketer have in mind when designing the advert. The potential students are made of 3 categories:

1. They are just looking around and haven't thought of learning a language.
2. The student has a dream of learning a language but has never taken an action before.
3. The student is actually looking for a language school and is ready to buy.

Let's have a look at the different key points:

1. If they are just looking around and don't have any plans for languages, then that's okay. We will still treat them as potential students. Even though they don't necessarily have any thoughts of learning a language right now, they could do so in the future. We can retarget them 5-10 times more and then let them think it through and take a decision later.

2. Students who have a dream of learning a language is definitely a good target to go against. A very good way to trigger their emotions is to give visuals:

The image above is of a happy woman from India. It has colours, it's engaging and it is obviously related to India in some way. Students who want to learn Hindu might have been to a festival in India, and find relation to this image. This is a great way to get to the head of students and give them a spark.

3. For students who are ready to buy now, we will treat no more different than other students. But we will keep in mind that these students are our main targets when making ads. We should always have ads that are aimed at getting people to buy the language course. If the description is magnetic, the image/video is authentic and colourful, then the students will 100% of the time buy right away, unless they are distracted etc.

But don't make the mistake of having a very fake ad with: "Buy Now" or "30% OFF" all the time, this will actually shake off all the latter potential students. Keep it simple and real, this is what all customers want.

2. Google Ads

When students are browsing for language schools it's common to actually search in Google search. They typically search for language school France/Italy/Sweden etc.. If they can't find anything there they will search something like: "Language course France/Italy/Sweden". And when they find something they want they will click.

The moment a student actually clicks on the Google Ad, they are expecting the actual course to show up. But some schools have the issue of sending the students directly to their home page. Here there is just the logo and then maybe an about section, and then a very unclear message like: "Apply for VISA here" or "20% off this month". This is something I see from time to time when looking for schools.

The problem with giving students messages like this is that they don't know what to do. They expected to just find a course for them and sign up, but instead they get all these distractions everywhere. When this happens students tend to leave the page and look for something else. In other words, the language school wasted €2 on nothing. Try to multiply €2 by 100 students and you get -€200. This money could instead be used for more traceable and consistent ads.

The solution to this issue is to send the traffic directly to a call to action page. Somewhere students can make a few clicks in 2 minutes and sign up right away. Plain and simple. Its no magic here. Its purely a demand which needs to be fulfilled.

3. LinkedIn Campaigns

LinkedIn is right now at the same level, if not better than Facebook when it comes to targeting customers. LinkedIn has 740 million users (2021) while Facebook has 2.8 billion users. Wait a second, Facebook has 4 times more users. Why not just use Facebook? Good question.

The advantage with LinkedIn is that it is easier to filter out specific targets. Let's say we are targeting people who want to learn German. First we obviously select German language as an interest. But then we can be more specific. Let's say there are a lot of young people from Spain who want a job in Germany. They need to learn German. Now we target young unemployed people in Spain who are interested in German. And to narrow it further, let's say they already have a BSc degree in economics. This is something we can't do in Facebook, but only in LinkedIn!

So if we see a pattern in students in our schools, if they're young or old. Educated or not, we can be more narrow and pick out the few diamonds we need from the rock. When we found a goldmine we have to keep digging, the gold is there and we will find it in the end.

Conclusion

Let's have a look at the main topics of today:

1. Facebooks Ads

One of the most effective if not the best marketing for enrolling students. It's personal, it's visual and it has an immense pool of customers. It's ideal for sparking emotions and to get all the people onboard, even though they are a cold audience. We can always retarget our market to reach out to each and every one.

2. Google Ads

All customers will at some point have a look in Google when looking for the language they want (myself included). We need to send the traffic to a good webpage with a call to action. The last thing I'm thinking of when signing up to a course is some VISA application or something.

3. LinkedIn Campaign

If we see a pattern in students coming to our language school, their profession, experience, age, interests etc., then we can apply a narrow targeting campaign to filter these students out, and maximize our expenses on people we know will buy our courses.

If you are eager to start advertisement today, and grow your language school right now then you should definitely consider booking a Strategy Session with me below right away. See you soon!