Why Every School Needs a Standout Promotional Video!

In this increasingly competitive education landscape, schools need to stand out and make a strong first impression. It’s well known that parents, students, and the community often rely on online content to evaluate institutions, and nothing conveys your school’s values and strengths as effectively as a professional school promotional video.

Fortunately, a well-crafted video can do more than just highlight your school’s facilities and programs—it can tell a story, build trust, and evoke emotion. Whether it’s showcasing a vibrant campus, a dedicated teaching staff, or the success of your alumni, a school video is the ultimate tool for communicating your institution’s essence to the world!

Since I know it can be a bit challenging to know where to start when you’ve never produced video content, I’ll go over everything you need to learn to get the fantastic educational video production your institution needs. Let’s go!

Benefits of a School Promotional Video

Now, first things first. You probably want to know why schools should invest in promotional videos. So, let’s begin by tackling that because the benefits go far beyond marketing.

1. Boosting Enrollments

As you might know very well by now, competition for students is fierce.  There are so many options out there, that parents and potential students are often bombarded with choices and loads of information. That’s why a school promotional video can be the deciding factor that makes you stand out from that sea of options, providing an engaging and memorable way to introduce your school’s offerings.

Whether it’s academic excellence, extracurricular opportunities, or a supportive environment, a video can highlight why your school is the right choice in a subtle yet effective way.

2. Building Trust and Credibility

A polished school promotional video plays a crucial role in building trust with parents, students, and the broader community. For families considering your school, it offers a transparent glimpse into daily life, showcasing the people, programs, and values that define your institution.

Moreover, something as simple as seeing teachers interacting with students, classrooms buzzing with energy, or alumni sharing success stories can help create an emotional connection that fosters confidence in your school being a safe, nurturing, and professional environment.

3. Showcasing Your School’s Unique Features

4. Fostering a Sense of Community and Engaging People

A school video is not just a tool for attracting prospective families—it’s also a powerful way to connect with your current community. Students, parents, teachers, and alumni all play vital roles in a school’s life, and a video can help foster pride and engagement among them. By celebrating achievements, showcasing events, or highlighting collaborative efforts, your video can serve as a rallying point that reinforces a sense of belonging and shared purpose.

5. Increasing Online Visibility

In today’s digital age, video content can significantly boost your school’s online presence and visibility. With the increasing reliance on the internet to make decisions, prospective families are more likely to find and engage with videos rather than traditional written information.  Moreover, this type of content is easily shareable across social media platforms, email newsletters, and websites, making it an excellent tool for reaching a wide audience!

How to Create a School Promotional Video

Creating a high-quality school video may seem daunting, but with careful planning and attention to detail, you can make a good piece that helps you achieve your goals. These are the key aspects you should focus on:

1. Identify and Define Your Main Goals

The first step is to make sure your objectives are clear to everyone involved in the production process. Start by thing about what you want your video to achieve and who you’re going to target. Do you want to promote a particular program or event? Are you targeting prospective parents? Is the goal to boost enrollments? Defining these goals early on will help shape the script, tone, and visuals needed to properly convey your message.

2. Make Sure You Understand Your Audience Well

Regardless of the industry you’re in, tailoring your video to the right audience is key. To give you a simple example, parents of young children may want to see nurturing classrooms and friendly teachers, whereas high school students might focus on extracurriculars, sports, or college prep programs. It’s always best to focus on one particular audience for each video you make, to make it easier to fully tailor your content to their interests and needs and avoid confusing them.

3. Don’t Forget to Set a Realistic Budget and Timeline

It might be a bit too obvious to mention, but budgeting is crucial and will influence every aspect of your video. You don’t want to get too excited and end up overspending. We’re familiar with the financial struggles of the education industry!

If you want to keep things budget-friendly, you can go the DIY route or hire a freelancer. The school video cost should be significantly lower, but you should keep in mind that the results might not have the best quality because polished videos often require professional expertise, including scriptwriters, videographers, and editors.

The alternative is to partner with a high-quality video production company that can take care of all of that for you. While this can be a significant investment, the payoff in terms of increased engagement and enrollment often justifies the cost. Moreover, most providers can usually tailor their services to your budget.

4. Determine the Key Aspects to Highlight

As I’ve mentioned before, your school promotional video should focus on highlighting your unique qualities. This doesn’t mean making a 10-minute-long video talking about every single aspect of your institution because, realistically speaking, no one is going to watch that. Consider focusing on one or two of these aspects: 

• Academics: Share innovative programs or top-tier faculty.
• Extracurriculars: Showcase sports, arts, and clubs.
• Facilities: Use visuals to emphasize modern classrooms, labs, or green spaces.
• Community: Highlight the inclusiveness and camaraderie within your school.

5. Craft a Compelling Script

Great visuals are nothing without a strong script. Just because you’re making a school promotional video, it doesn’t mean you should make it overtly promotional. Your script should tell a story, engaging viewers from the very beginning and leaving them with a clear takeaway about what makes your school exceptional.

6. Promote Your School Promotional Video

Once your school video is ready, don’t let it sit idle! Share it on your school’s website, social media platforms, YouTube channel, and email campaigns. Time to let it shine and do its job!

Live Action vs. Animation: Choosing the Right Format for Your School Video

When creating any kind of video, deciding on the style—live-action or animation—can significantly shape how your message is received and its effectiveness. After all, each style has unique benefits and challenges that align with different goals, so let’s go over them.

Live-Action

Live-action videos involve real footage of your school, capturing its students, staff, and campus in action, going about their daily routines. This format excels at conveying authenticity, showcasing real-life interactions, and building emotional connections. That’s because parents and students can see your facilities, classroom dynamics, and extracurricular activities come alive, making it easier for them to visualize being part of your school community.

However, live-action production can often be resource-intensive. Filming requires careful planning for schedules, permissions, and weather conditions. Hiring a professional crew is essential to ensure the visuals and sound are top-notch. While this format can demand a larger budget and more time, its ability to create personal connections often makes it worth the investment.

Animation

Animated school promotional videos, on the other hand, offer a creative and versatile way to present information. This format is particularly useful for explaining abstract ideas like educational philosophies, admissions processes, or achievements through colorful, fun, and engaging visuals. Animation allows for unlimited creativity—you can incorporate dynamic infographics, stylized graphics, and even playful elements to keep viewers hooked.

A key advantage of animation is its flexibility. Unlike live-action, it doesn’t require physical locations or actors, making it more cost-effective and easier to update.

(This piece is in Spanish, but I still thought it’d be a good idea to include it because it perfectly illustrates the power of animation.)

Combining Both Styles

Many schools find a hybrid approach—combining live-action and animation—offers the best of both worlds. Live-action footage can create an emotional connection, while animation can simplify complex ideas or data. This blend ensures your school video is both engaging and informative, appealing to a diverse audience.

Do You Need a School Promotional Video? Yum Yum Videos Can Help!

Here, at Yum Yum Videos, we have ample experience as an explainer video company working with institutions and providers of every size, as well as small startups and global brands like Amazon, Red Bull, and Walmart. We know very well that your school has unique needs and goals, and that not just any generic video will do. That’s why we’re devoted to producing video content that is 100% customized.

On top of that, we offer:

• Dedicated Team of Experts: We’ve built a talented team of professional designers, producers, directors, and writers who all work hard to provide the best results.
• Smooth Process: We’re constantly refining our process to provide a highly organized set of steps with several layers of quality control and fixed turnaround times that give our clients a clear path to getting that video graphic they’ve dreamed of.
• No Hidden Fees: During the first exploratory call, we’ll go over your graphic animation video needs in detail and give you a fixed pricing for it, so there’ll be no hidden fees or costs down the road!
• Fixed Deadlines: You’ll get access to a Gantt chart so you can keep track of our work at any given moment.

If you want to learn more about how we can help your institution stand out, attract more students, and strengthen your community, don’t hesitate to contact us! No strings attached, we’d love to discuss your ideas and see how we can help!

Wrapping Up

A school promotional video is more than just a marketing tool—it’s an opportunity to showcase what makes your institution special and connect with your audience on a deeper level. Whether you’re looking to attract new students, engage the community, or celebrate achievements, a well-crafted video can make all the difference!