FLVS: Staying Ahead of the Curve in Education Digital Marketing

Recently, our team dedicated a blog to the new marketing approaches that educational institutions need to start implementing to connect with their current and potential students. Today, we bring the successful story of Florida Virtual School (FLVS), an online school for students in kindergarten through 12th grade that has known how to stay ahead of the curve in the education industry, adapting, and evolving their digital marketing strategies according to the times. Established in 1997 with headquarters in Orlando, FLVS recently decided to move forward with a rebrand and redesign based on customer’s feedback and some valuable insights from their analytics data.

With one in 10 prospective students now searching exclusively online for classes and programs, FLVS decided to optimize their presence online and start reaching students in the right channels. Mobile has redrawn the way students research for new tools and resources that can help them with their education on a daily basis. According to Think With Google, 62%

of smartphone users are more likely to take action right away toward solving an unexpected problem or new task because they have a smartphone. Students move seamlessly between devices, and this is something that FLVS has kept in mind with their new web design. From responsive to personalized options in place, students can now easily access their website from any device and find what they need right away.

With the objective of effectively reaching their target demographic through advertising, FLVS decided to dedicate budget to developing both offline and online ads campaigns. For the last couple of weeks, if you live in the Central Florida area, you’ve probably seen their billboards out and about, and most likely you have also encountered their TV or radio ads. These offline strategies, combined with their Google Adwords campaign, have created the perfect formula to bring awareness about their new image and to reinforce their brand online and offline.

Social media marketing is probably one of the most important  parts of their new branding process. With almost 111,000 Facebook followers, FLVS’s strategy is to use this social media platform as a tool to nurture and educate their audience. Tips for parents and students, useful links, school news and updates, team pictures, and student’s stories are just some of the main topics that define their weekly social media editorial calendar. Through the use of hashtags like #successatflvs, they feature and highlight successful student stories that call for the interaction of other students. By providing their students with such a great combination of fun stories and useful resources that they can actually apply on a daily basis to their education, FLVS is getting their valuable student’s attention and engagement in return.

But there’s one more key ingredient that FLVS has incorporated to infuse their Orlando digital marketing campaign: a content marketing strategy. Keeping their student’s needs as their main focus, their blog, called Virtual Voice, serves as a great content hub to educate their audience about a great variety of topics, useful for students and parents.

With an increase in semester completions from 339,461 in the 2011-12 school year to 448,9620 in 2014-15, technology has transformed the way people study nowadays. Digital has forever changed the traditional way of learning and researching for institutions and courses. The sooner marketers realize this and start facing this new era, the bigger the chances they’ll have to tap digital opportunities.

By having a cross device marketing strategy in place and by taking full advantage of digital tools to tailor their message, FLVS has stepped out of the digital marketing game, leaving behind other educational institutions that haven’t been able to adapt to it yet. If your institution needs some help, our team has got you covered. See how we improved the increase the student enrollments by 14.29% for one of our clients through content marketing.