Trade schools are becoming a more and more reasonable alternative for people who are hesitant to invest in universities. Luckily, for those people, there are over 7,200 trade schools in the United States to choose from. 

However, if you own or manage a trade school, this could make it tougher for your trade school to stand out amongst the crowd. To help with this, you need some good trade school marketing. 

Social media content pillars are one way to do this successfully. 

What should you use for your trade school? This guide goes over some of the biggest factors. 

Local SEO 

One of the biggest things that you can do for your trade school is to use local SEO to your advantage. Assuming that you have a brick and mortar school, this can be a great way to target the audience that is in your local area.

Not only that but the people searching for your trade school are likely in the local area anyway. That is because 46% of all Google searches are for local information. 

Let’s say that you have a trade school in New Jersey. You can use something like “trade schools in New Jersey” or “trade schools in (insert city in New Jersey)” for keywords to help narrow the field a little.

The point is that you should embrace your location and use it to your advantage with SEO. That is likely where the majority of your students are going to be coming from anyway. 

Emphasize Your Trade

The next thing you need to do is emphasize what trade your school can help a student get an education and a degree in. 

Why is this so important? Because people need to know what you can offer as well as what makes you stand out. 

Let’s say that your trade school specializes in electricians. In your trade school ad campaign, you are going to want to emphasize this and make it clear that you can specifically help people who want to become electricians. 

Then, you can talk about what makes your trade school stand out when it comes to your trade. Also, you can talk about how people can use that trade to their advantage in their future careers. 

Emphasizing a specific trade will help give your trade school a clear identity. That will help more students recognize your brand and make those who are interested in your trade want to learn more about your programs. 

Know Your Target Audience 

If you want to succeed with trade school Facebook ads, you had better make sure that you are talking to the right target audience. It is important to identify who your target is and determine how to effectively communicate with them before you begin this marketing campaign. 

Some people may falsely assume that you are automatically targeting people who just graduated high school and do not know what they want to do next. The truth is that it can be a lot more complicated than that. 

First of all, you have to narrow this down by specific trade. Are you trying to target electricians? How about welders? Carpenters? Plumbers? Mechanics? 

The list goes on and on. The point is that all of the trades mentioned above are going to appeal to different types of people. Your goal is to identify the main trade that you offer and figure out the best target audience for it. 

Part of this may come down to your specific area. You may have more older people in your area who may be willing to go back to school and learn a specific trade. 

Every type of demographic has to be accounted for when trying to determine a target audience. This includes age, gender, race, nationality, and more. 

Once you identify your target audience, take the time to learn their interests and see what they are most likely to respond positively to. Then, attempt to engage them from there and offer something that appeals to them. 

Additional Keyword Research 

While local SEO can be a good start, you may have to conduct additional keyword research. The reason why this is so important is that without the proper keyword research, your target audience may have a difficult time even finding your ads. 

The key here is to research terms that you think your target audience is most likely to look up. 

Let’s say that you want to try to get more women to be plumbers at your trade school. One keyword phrase you may want to try to use here is “plumbing for women.” Or, you could take this a step further and go with “best trade schools for women.” 

The exact keywords are going to come down to what your audience is more likely to respond to and search for themselves. That is why it is so important to take the time to do this right. 

With the right keywords, you can help guide people to your trade school subconsciously. 

Creating Scenarios 

Part of a good social media content pillar campaign is to have scenarios that tie your message together. In your case, you are likely going for educational content that stands out. With the trades that you can potentially work with, this may not be as difficult as you may think. 

You can tie all of your ads together for one central theme. That theme is where people began and why your trade school is beneficial for them. In other words, you can go for humble beginnings to drive the point home. 

Let’s use auto mechanics as an example. A good idea for a content pillar would be to come up with scenarios where people could either really use a mechanic or the skills of one. 

One idea you can use is to have someone trapped on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with a faulty car. You can go one of two ways with this to drive your point across. 

The first option you have is to let the driver be the mechanic. They can step out to check on the car and use the skills they used in your trade school to fix the car and get it back on the road.

Or, you can make the mechanic the hero that comes in to save the day. In this situation, you can have the driver call the mechanic to come to that area and fix the car for the driver promptly. 

With both scenarios, you can end the ad by mentioning that the mechanic learned how to maximize those skills in your trade school. 

Creating a Content Schedule 

If you are going to attempt a marketing campaign, you must have a content schedule before you go too far into this. 

What this does is it gets you more organized and it allows you to come up with a concrete plan to share that content. It also gives you a better idea of just how much content you need to create. 

From there, you can start figuring out how long it is going to take to create each piece of content. Once you have that information and dedicate some extra time in case something comes up, you can start to get to work. 

There will be a few factors that determine your content schedule. The first is what type of content you are putting out there and the second is what your marketing budget is. 

You want to make sure that you have something new ready for your target audience as soon as possible. That is because people do not have very long attention spans and they will eventually move on to the next new hotness. The average person has a shorter attention span than a goldfish! 

Being aware of this information, you need to create a content schedule that allows you to get new content out there as soon as possible. If you have a content schedule in place, you can start to plan your social media accounts around that content and go from there. 

Type of Content 

One thing you will have to consider is what type of content you want to focus on. 

Are you trying to build up a blog on your school’s website? Do you want to create videos to use as advertisements? How about a simple picture and a caption? 

No matter which option you decide to go with, the important thing is to remain consistent with your message. At the end of the day, content pillars are about tying all of your content together for a central message. So, no matter what type of content you decide to go with, you need to make sure that your message stays the same. 

However, certain types of content may benefit your school and your trade, depending on what it is. 

If you want a campaign that has more depth, it may not be a bad idea to have some blog articles ready to go by the time you start your campaign. However, if you believe in visualization, videos may be the way to go to grab your audience’s attention. 

Figure out what direction you want to go with here and run with it. 

Increase User Engagement 

To take your marketing campaign to the next level, you need to make sure that there is user engagement. That will help users get more invested in your content pillar strategy and it could help them look forward to the next part of your marketing campaign. 

Users can engage with each other and your trade school. If you are looking to emphasize this, make sure you have someone who can manage your social media accounts when you post this content to those pages. 

About 30% of people engage on social media 10 times per day. With that in mind, there should be plenty of opportunities to get people to engage with your social media posts. 

Another thing user engagement will do is start more conversations. People interested in your school can interact with each other and this can be a great opportunity to learn more about your target audience. 

That is because the people commenting on your content are the most likely to be the most invested in your content. As a result, your ideal demographic will voluntarily reveal themselves if this works out the way you expect it to. 

If it happens to be the target audience that you were expecting, you can proceed as planned. However, if you notice a different target audience responding to your content and engaging with it, this may be something to note and use later. 

Track Performance 

Finally, make sure you take the time to track the performance of your ads during this marketing campaign. You want to make sure you are using your marketing budget wisely and that you are getting the results that you aimed for. 

How many people are viewing your social media posts? How many people are liking and sharing your social media posts? How many people are commenting on these posts? 

These are questions you need answers to get the best idea of how many people are viewing your content. More importantly, you need to get an idea of how many people you are converting with this content. 

How many people are checking out your trade school website? Are more people enrolling in your trade school since you started this marketing campaign? If so, how many of those people were drawn there due to your marketing campaign? 

Tracking this success can help you fully understand why you succeeded, and it can help you continue to succeed in the future. 

Use Social Media Content Pillars

These are the main things that you need to know about social media content pillars. 

One of the first things you will have to do is find the appropriate keywords. You can use local SEO and school SEO to do this. After that, you need to come up with a central message to develop your content around. Then, you can start developing that content. 

Do you need help with this? See what services we offer here.