Modern education marketers understand the critical elements to drive new students through proven education marketing strategies.
Education marketing is increasingly competitive, fueled in part by the downturn in enrollments for smaller schools. According to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, enrollments in the fall of 2016 declined 1.4% — which may not sound like much but represents more than 270,000 students.
With more awareness of the difficulty of paying off student loans and the fact that a college education doesn’t guarantee a high paying job, smart education marketing is a necessity in order to keep from sliding to that inexorable black hole of empty classrooms.
This article takes a look at some of the top strategies that demand attention for effective marketing.
Branding and Education Marketing
Most people think of logos when they think of brands, but a brand is more than a logo. A brand covers an individual’s perception of a company or an organization as a whole; it has to do with the marketing, the message, the tone, the responsiveness, the customer service, the outreach, and any other point of contact between the organization and the potential customer.
That being said, logos are an important, even vital, part of branding. As the focal point of visual representation of the educational institution, the logo should be easy to remember, aesthetically appealing, and on-message, along with the technical aspects of good logo design, such as scalability, vector-based, high resolution and looks good in black and white.
The logo joins other aspects of the brand when it comes to high-quality marketing that is clear and consistent across platforms.
Whether you’ve designed a flyer to advertise autumn enrollment, or you’ve sent out an email blast about a job fair that the school is hosting, there are multiple aspects that should be considered for your branding.
Branding also includes the institution’s official website and platform marketing, such as Facebook, Instagram, and other social media.
These are ideal ways to reach out to potential enrollments and offer welcoming and professional conversation, including answering questions and giving tips. All of this helps to spread and grow a solid brand.
How important is social media in marketing an education brand? Studies indicate that half of all teen applicants use five or more social media platforms when doing their college research.
Marketing Strategy:
- Create a professional, memorable logo
- Build a user-friendly website
- Use social media platforms to connect
Content Creation for Site And Blog
Any good college website should fulfill certain key objectives:
- Answer common questions
- Provide necessary information for interested readers to take the next step
- Gather potential leads
- Be usable, accessible, and appealing
But getting potential students to your website, to begin with, is an entirely different ballgame. Marketing in every niche is humming with information and strategies for SEO content. An estimated 93% of people begin their web sessions by using a search engine. That makes search engine rankings a vital concern for education marketing.
Over and over again, it’s proven that one of the best ways to up your SEO-rich content is to create and maintain a blog that is linked to your website. Websites that include a dedicated blog actually tend to have up to 434% more indexed pages than those which don’t have a blog attached to them.
And it can’t be just any blog content. SEO keywords, especially long-tail keywords, are often more organically worked into blog posts than they are website content. But SEO isn’t the only factor for optimized content.
Put a special emphasis on creating usable, helpful, entertaining content for each post. Include photos, infographics, and videos at every chance. Increasing the demonstrated usefulness of your content also increases the shares and linkbacks, all contributing to the effectiveness of your blog.
And yes, the website itself is important, too. If your potential students can’t find the information they need, there’s no chance that you’re going to actually make any sales. You’ll just end up with a lot of frustrated readers who decide to become students elsewhere.
A newer focus that shouldn’t be neglected is the issue of web accessibility. Accessibility guidelines dictate the size, color, and contrast of content in order to make web pages accessible and legible to as many as possible. Cover your bases and follow the guidelines as closely as possible to open up your website to a wider audience.
Education Marketing Strategy:
- Create and update regularly a blog which showcases usefulness and includes SEO-rich content
- Include graphics, photos, and videos to increase interest and investment in content
- Follow web accessibility guidelines for a wider audience
INTEGRATED RECRUITING CAMPAIGN
University of Denver
We’ve met their students, eaten in their dining halls, and uncovered their differentiators.
Networking and Education Marketing
Networking is an integral part of marketing. Effective marketing requires spreading the message about a brand. Just like growth needs oxygen, brands need exposure.
How can you make networking work for you?
- Social media: Take advantage of the platforms available. Students conduct research through a variety of avenues, including Facebook. Create content that can be posted across platforms, and which funnels the student to the official website.
- Alumni: Mentioned above, success stories can have a huge impact on enrollment. Successful graduates typically have a fond place in their memories for their school; reach out and invite them to be involved in the recruitment process. Conducting a short interview with a successful former student, either for the transcript or on video, gives prospective students something to aim for. Videos are recommended for engagement, especially if it will be posted on the official website; an average user invests 88% more time on any given site if there is video content.
- Partnerships: Educational facilities often work together with companies or other organizations, and this gives another opportunity for networking. “Partnerships between colleges/universities and corporations has been on the rise as federal and state support for higher education institutions decreases,” notes the Campus Media Group. Sponsorships and partnerships create new sources of revenue for institutions and can draw attention through the corporate world.
Social platforms are a primary focus in all markets, and education marketing is no exception. Just take a look at famous examples like Harvard, which boasts 853,000 Twitter followers and more than five million Facebook followers. Those numbers don’t happen by accident.
There are a number of fronts for education marketers to strategize for when it comes to social media. Posts can be created around ideas like the following:
Following along the same line of thought as the promotion of dedicated hashtags, allowing students to contribute to a school’s social media platform again boosts the “identification” factor.
It also builds current students’ own investment in their school, which often leads them to promote it on their own social media accounts.
A great example of this done right is found here at the YouTube channel of Flagler College. The college’s channel features student-created content, walkthroughs, and other videos that highlight the involvement of the attendees.
Education Marketing Strategy:
- Plan out cross-platform networking, both virtual and physical.
- Use online platforms. An estimated billion people use social media.
- Create social media profiles with the brand in mind. Each point of contact with a potential lead is a chance to promote the brand personality.
- Garner social proof through tools like hashtags and student-created content.
Events and Conferences
Networking also requires awareness of upcoming events which give the brand an opportunity to have more exposure. These can be events in the community, such as job fairs, or educational conferences that open up discussion between institutions. Both of these avenues can facilitate network-based marketing.
Education Marketing Strategy:
- Take advantage of upcoming events to market the brand.
- Create events and opportunities to spread awareness.
Sales Funnel and Education Marketing
Education sales funnels are designed to continually lead the viewer to the next step, with enrollment as the end goal. In this particular market, it’s often called the enrollment or admissions funnel.
Each prospective student is at a different stage in the decision-making process. Some are still years away from applying; some wait till the last moment.
Some know exactly what they’re looking for in a college; others have only a vague idea. Taking all these variations into account is important for an effective funnel.
Here’s a quick breakdown of stages that should be considered.
The target audience for a funnel not only ranges from awareness to acceptance and beyond, but there can be a wide variety even among each of those stages.
Market research can help to determine who the brand should be aimed at for the highest efficiency; whether it’s young adults looking to go to college in the next year or two, people in their early twenties who have decided to go to a trade school. O
Or someone older who wants to get further education so they can pursue a long-time goal, tailoring the funnel for your intended market requires re-working the content to appeal to the demographic.
Education Marketing Strategy:
- Create a sales funnel that addresses each stage
- Conduct market research
- Know your intended demographic
Using Winning Strategies for Education Marketing
Though securing applications and enrollments are ever more difficult in the competitive market of today, it isn’t impossible to gain an edge. Knowing where to direct marketing efforts, and how best to reach individuals, is key to making your marketing dollars count.
With smart use of virtual platforms, networking, and responsive branding, you can direct attention where it should be — to your education brand — and secure sales.
Wrap up about Strategies for Education Marketing
One of the primary goals of education marketing is to attract prospective students with user-generated content, live streams, marketing campaigns, high ed content marketing, virtual reality and focusing on search engine optimization (SEO), speed for mobile devices and all connected with marketing automation.
It essential that your digital marketing strategy and traditional marketing strategies are integrated across all of the customer touchpoints.
These touchpoints must be mobile-friendly tailored to your higher education marketing strategy and must take into consideration higher education marketing trends.
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Alicia Rother is a freelance content strategist who works with small businesses and startups to boost their brand reach through creative content design and write-ups. You can connect with her here.
