What language schools can learn from canned food
Good marketing is everything. No matter how good your language school is, if your marketing sucks, you will likely to end up likely like canned food. You will be likely forgotten on a shelf and pushed out of sight as you seem to have a long expiration date.
Don\’t get me wrong here, if your marketing is good and the quality of your school sucks, that is not much good either.
But many businesses and language schools especially think they will get customers and new students \”just by sitting there\”. They think that it is enough to have a website that looks nice.
Like a nicely designed can of food. Decorative, helpful and reliable: with a long, long expiration date.
Actually here is the biggest problem when it comes to language school websites and what separates the successful ones from the ones that are forgotten fast.
It is the \”expiration date\” of their language school offers.
Most average websites are static and won\’t change much. They are actually \”good like canned food\”, meaning: they are designed to have only static generic valid information about a language school and won\’t need any additional work to be updated.
Which is a big, big mistake.
Good websites – and there is no difference for language school websites here – are those that actually have a very short \”expiration date\”.
Websites that are updated frequently need more manpower and hours or work to be put into, but they are the successful websites for many different reasons.
- Regularly updated websites are ranked higher in the search engines
- Potential customers trust websites more that had been recently updated (and yes that even includes that your footer really shows THIS year as a copyright reference!)
- Only websites that have up-to-date expiring (!) offers actually animate potential customers to act on your offers.
Think about canned food again. If you buy food and some food has a close expiration date and other food items are good for several weeks or even months – which one of the food items are more likely to be forgotten?
Most people before making a buying decision of any sort will come back to your website multiple times before they decide to buy your services.
If you have only generic information and generic offers without any urgency to book with your language school other language school offers will beat your offers.
A language school website that will emphasize that a specific language class is going to close registration within a few weeks is more likely to attract customers ready to book and pay because they might have a specific date to travel to your school in mind or feel they would lose out on a special offer.
Be aware though that \”fake offers\” and \”fake discounts\” are spotted easily as well. As we mentioned people usually come back multiple times to your school website and if they find the very same \”countdown counters\” (there are several tricks to put those on your website) then you will lose your credibility as well.
The trick is to really offer \”fresh food that will expire soon\” styled offers. A believable way to do this is to offer classes with a limited number of students. Or a special language classed themed to a seasonal event like a music festival in your area or important holidays that only happen once a year.
You don\’t need to appear to offer discounted classes all the time either. Websites that only think that they can compete based on pricing are not the most successful.
The key is to communicate real value and make your website interesting and informative enough to make people come back several times for the right reasons: because you offer interesting and mind-stimulating changing offers that appear to be fresh and up-to-date.
The complete opposite of canned food actually.