10 Digital Marketing Resolutions to Keep in 2024

Whether you’re a ‘new year, new me’ kind of person or not, we could all use this time of year to hit refresh on some of our marketing plans and tactics. We asked some of our Metric team members about the top marketing resolutions they’d recommend for 2024 to keep up with trends, learnings, and opportunities for your private or independent school.

1. Invest in strategic video content 

Over the last few years, we’ve seen video performing so well for our school clients – so it absolutely had to make this list. High quality video content can be complicated to plan and relatively expensive to produce, so we recommend starting with a solid plan. 

Here are a few ways to help get the ball rolling on some great video for your school this year.

• Plan all the places where you’ll use the content and look for ways to maximize the ROI. For example, you might be able to re-cut one well-planned longer video to work on multiple digital platforms, to create a series of videos to use on your social media, to post on your website, etc.

• Create ROI by investing in a great concept so the video content will last - and look for ways to make it evergreen.

• Share the cost - and the work - with other teams at your school. Think about partnering with your buddies in admissions or advancement to share the budget between teams.

• Get creative! We said that video can be complicated and expensive - but it doesn’t necessarily need to be. We’ve helped with some really strong concepts that were designed to be achievable.

Video is a piece of the digital marketing puzzle that we often see schools postponing - and that’s okay - but don’t wait too long to get in the game (and start seeing the results). 2024 is your year.

Lindsay Wright, Creative Director

2. Use data to justify (and increase) your digital media budget 

In 2021, 97% of school marketers who responded to our 2021 State of Independent School Marketing Survey said they conducted digital marketing campaigns in the preceding year. However, of these, just 39% said their efforts were “very effective.” The key to managing your digital media budget is knowing if it's directly contributing to your school's goals. We optimize digital campaigns based on mutually agreed upon KPIs in our measurement plans to stay focused on clear, measurable goals. For example, when we can confidently say your digital campaigns drove a 25% increase in Open House signups (with the data to prove it!), it's easy to justify an increase in media spend. 

Dinaz Mahudawala, Digital Advertising Director

3. Customize your GA4 dashboard 

GA4 officially took over for the long-established Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023. GA4 is a powerful new tool for marketers – but the changes are very real, and it requires a more hands-on approach to set up reporting that is useful at a glance. Taking the time to customize a dashboard through the GA4 Reports Library, Explorations, or external tools like Looker Studio will result in a critical tool for gathering key insights on how your audience interacts with your digital presence, and making data-driven decisions in 2024.

Matt Gemmell, Digital Analytics Manager

4. Automate your email follow-ups 

You've invested a lot of time and effort into getting prospective families to your events on campus. Here's an easy way to keep track of families in attendance and follow up with them automatically after an event: have families scan a QR code pointing to a short sign-in form as they arrive at your event. After your event, plug your list of event attendees into a "thanks for coming" email drip series encouraging them to apply. If you have families that registered but no-showed, reconcile your list of registrants with attendees and plug your list of no-shows into a "sorry we missed you" email drip series inviting them to your next event, or encouraging them to apply. 

Automating these follow-ups helps usually-understaffed admissions teams win by communicating with families promptly and focusing their energy on more personal, longer-term connections and questions.

Meghan Tooley, Digital Marketing Director

5. Make a plan to gather feedback

Chances are good that parts (if not all) of your brand, messaging, and marketing strategies have been operating unquestioned for a handful of years. But the truth is, the last few years have seen some drastic changes in how people seek and absorb information, what they value, and how they make decisions. A quick survey of your internal stakeholders and external audiences can help identify opportunities for your brand and marketing to adjust for relevance and impact (and may even challenge your assumptions about your own strengths, weaknesses, and audience). Plus, opening a channel for communication shows people that you're listening, you care about their values, and gives you a bonus touchpoint to stay top of mind. 

The best time to start a benchmark survey was last year. The second best time is now.

Veronica Rosin, Brand Strategy Manager

6. Add SMS into your open house plan  

Adding SMS or text marketing to your communications mix in 2024 will allow your organization to own the mindshare of a prospective customer at a great capacity during their buying journey. We’re seeing schools use SMS as a powerful way to automate reminders and follow-ups after admissions events – in a way that catches busy parents’ attention and meets them where they are (their mobile devices).

Dan Yorsh, Strategic Innovation Manager

7. Keep your board engaged with marketing data 

We know you *intend* to bring more data to your board to show marketing's impact, prove the value of your work, attribute conversions, justify budget increases... but let's make 2024 the year you actually present it in a way that you're proud of. Engaging your board with the right data is powerful. Preparing in advance for ways to collect and present this data is critical so you can maintain this touchpoint through your busiest seasons.

Kevin MacNeil, CAO & Partner

8. Update your brand guide 

A cohesive brand guide helps keep everyone on the same page when working with your brand, governing everything from brand messaging and key audiences to typography rules and color palette. This ensures your brand feels unified and memorable in the eyes of the public. 

If you don’t have a comprehensive brand guide, you’re giving permission to other teams to fill in the blanks for themselves – creating either a fractured brand image or a lot more work for your marketing team that’s trying to keep their eyes on everything. Investing up front pays off, every time.

Ryan Story, Art Director

9. Improve your website’s user experience

Here are four quick ways you can make changes that will improve the user experience on your existing website (without undertaking a whole new website project).

• Focus on one main audience. This involves optimizing the website structure, navigation, and messaging to help your primary audience achieve their goals.

• Take advantage of a clear website architecture. A well-defined website architecture (or navigation structure) allows users to find the information they are looking for in the places they expect to find it.

• Ensure your website is inclusive. Accessibility shouldn't be treated as a checklist of requirements but as a core UX design principle. Accessible websites have a larger reach, achieve better search results, are SEO-friendly, load faster, and are better coded.

• Evaluate your microcopy and contextual text. Considering that websites are typically scanned rather than read, review your headlines, subheadlines, contextual text, action-oriented calls-to-action, and website microcopy for clarity and guidance to create a positive user experience.

Kyle Radford, Web & UX Strategy Manager

10. Test your success on new digital platforms 

Make this the year you test that digital or social platform you’ve been considering! By planning in advance and doing lots of testing and measurement, you can reduce the risk - and you might even discover an effective new way to reach new audiences.

Set your business goals and identify your audience before selecting any new digital platform to test. By setting up your goals in advance, you will be able to select the platforms that work best to attain your business goals - whether they are increasing brand awareness, driving more traffic to your site, or generating more conversions. By identifying your target audience's demographic and psychographic traits, you will be able to determine the platforms they are actively using and strategically reach them with your message. 

Pro Tip: Periodically measure results for each new platform based on your goals and optimize as needed.

Carolina Reyes, Digital Advertising Manager

At Metric Marketing, we develop measurable and practical strategies to help private and independent schools like yours to make the most of your marketing efforts. We'd love to discuss your private school's marketing requirements with you. Contact us today to speak with our marketing professionals or use the form below to sign up and receive more marketing tips in your inbox.