While each student’s path is unique, one thing is certain: marketing in higher education presents a distinct set of problems. Often regarded as one of the most challenging forms of marketing, higher education marketing strategies comes with their own sets of benefits and complications.
In this article, we will decode how you or your higher education institution can master the art of education marketing with ten simple marketing strategies.
What Is The Definition Of Higher Education Marketing?
Higher education marketing promotes an institution to those looking for any form of higher education degree. In the United States is defined as any degree that is not a high school certificate.
An overview of Education Marketing
In this article, you’ll discover how to prepare for those obstacles and establish a successful higher education marketing strategy using ten proven strategies:
- Improve Your Student Value Proposition
- Make the most of high-profile endorsements
- Use social media marketing to promote campus life.
- Use Responsive Chatbots to Increase Conversions
- Use Live Streaming and Video Ads to Stay Connected
- Use SEO to boost organic traffic for your higher education marketing.
- Use Niche Blogs to Increase Organic Traffic
- Make Websites That Are Mobile-Friendly
- Use Email Marketing to Communicate
- Use display advertising to raise brand awareness.
Top 10 Higher Education Marketing Strategies
As stated above, one of the most challenging marketing businesses to work in is higher education. Making this decision entails not only a significant personal commitment but also a significant financial investment.
According to a recent study, higher education student enrolment is on the decline, making the industry’s position even more difficult for marketers. It’s more crucial than ever to ensure that your marketing strategy is effective.
So, without further ado, let’s get started.
1. Improve Your Student Value Proposition
First and foremost, you must improve your value proposition as well as your messaging. Students have put their educational goals on hold to deal with the crisis and an uncertain economic future.
Higher education institutions must demonstrate the value of their degrees and assist students in grasping them in real-world applications at a time when the value of a college diploma is continually being questioned. Career viability has always been important, but it is now even more crucial.
Now is the moment to fine-tune your value proposition and generate content that demonstrates to students that the path they choose will lead to a bright future.
You must demonstrate to kids that they will be successful, rather than simply telling them. This includes gathering testimonials, conducting case studies, and substantiating claims with data.
Here are some suggestions about how to get the word out to boost your higher education marketing strategies:
- Make movies of your previous grads explaining their professional accomplishments.
- Publish blog entries about student victories and share alumni and student success stories on social media.
- All messaging in the program and degree curriculum should be backed up by hard data.
- If you don’t know how your kids are doing after they graduate, you should make it a high priority.
- Make use of your alumni network and pay attention to what they have to say.
- The core focus of your marketing activities should be on communicating the value students gained from your school.
- Find out what matters most to students, improve your value proposition, and message to ensure the best results for your education marketing.
2. Make the most of high-profile endorsements
You can market your institution by obtaining high-profile endorsements. Influencer marketing is pretty similar to this. Marketers can mention notable grads in commercials and content because most colleges have prominent alumni.
These well-known alumni can also be engaged for broadcast or online advertisements endorsing the university. According to several surveys, prospective students place faith in an academic institution’s alumni employment track record.
Using your website or social media platforms to highlight your alumni successes and current accomplishments can be a terrific method to attract both new and present students.
High-profile students can also serve as “social media ambassadors” and influencers for higher education marketers. This will help your school gain more exposure on social media. It’s an excellent example of self-generated organic content.
3. Use social media marketing to promote campus life.
Colleges and universities must use social media channels to engage with prospective students.
Take a look at these facts to understand why:
- According to Emarsys, social media networks now have more than 3.1 billion members. This amount represents almost 42% of the world’s population.
- According to a recent study by eMarketer, US teenagers prefer to use Instagram and Facebook, followed by Snapchat.
- A small but growing number of people are beginning to use the new TikTok platform.
A great case study for any higher education marketer is to study the Stanford University social media page.
Take a peek at the Instagram pages of Stanford University and Texas A&M University. They both give prospective students a glimpse into college life.
Sporting events, student accomplishments, school surroundings, and student life and community are all featured. This gives prospective students a better idea of what life will be like at the school, increasing their likelihood of enrolling.
Now, let’s look at some of the most effective social media marketing tactics for increasing enrollment.
- Use Hashtags That Are Specific To You
According to a Gartner study, more than 80 percent of millennials are influenced by user-generated content.
Your institution can harness social proof to create its social media brand by employing specialized hashtags on social media.
Alumni can use hashtags to demonstrate their gratitude to the institution that helped them flourish, and current students can use hashtags to display their lives on campus.
You can also make hashtags for departments and events and promote them.
The University of Michigan started the hashtag #MYUMICH on Instagram and even utilized it to hold a contest that drew a lot of attention and resulted in many new students enrolling.
- Create a directory of social media sites.
Create a directory on your website with easy connections to the many social media accounts used by your school’s departments, schools, and administration.
It’s a quick way for kids to stay informed. With this method, NYU has had a lot of success.
- Feature The Social Life at Your School
Using your social media channels to highlight student events can help prospective students imagine a social life on your campus and develop a feeling of community.
On your social media platform, highlight accomplishments. Use your social media platform to highlight the achievements and talents of your students and faculty.
This allows students to envision the success they can have at your institution. They will be more encouraged to enroll if they know that students have a good support network and succeed after graduation.
- Display Your Lovely Campus
Show off your lovely campus on social media if you have one. Photograph public settings such as lawns, outdoor study areas, and stunning structures.
The school atmosphere has a significant influence on students’ lives, especially when it comes to making decisions.
4. Use Responsive Chatbots to Increase Conversions in your Higher Education marketing website
More than 60% of prospective students expect to hear back from an academic institution the same day they submit an application.
Colleges and institutions, according to Drift, are ten times more likely to lose out on a follow-up contact if they don’t answer prospects’ inquiries within five minutes.
You may utilize chatbots to ensure that potential students receive a prompt answer. Admissions workers might use chatbots to respond to frequently requested inquiries quickly. The dialogue can then be passed to a human representative, if necessary, who can provide a more personalized response.
Case Study
The first university chatbot, dubbed “Pounce,” was created by Georgia State University. Thanks to Pounce’s rapid response time enabled by artificial intelligence, the university saw a 90 percent increase in student engagement, and students received answers to their inquiries in under seven seconds (AI).
5. Use Live Streaming and Video Ads to Stay Connected
Higher education marketers can engage in video chats like Snapchat, Facebook Live, Periscope for Twitter, and Instagram Stories to feature their universities.
Classes, activities, and even Q&A sessions can all be streamed live. Live streaming is prevalent among Generation Z, and it can be an excellent method to build strong ties with potential customers and boost your higher education marketing strategy.
Video is processed 60,000 times faster by the human brain than text, according to studies. This makes videos incredibly effective for higher education advertising.
With over 1 billion active users, Facebook’s newsfeed is great for video ads.
According to Databox, video advertisements perform better than image ads in terms of engagement and clicks. Users must spend more time analyzing the information they’re viewing before continuing their scroll with video content, resulting in increased click-through rates.
Facebook video ads should be considered by higher education marketers seeking the best advertising channels.
6. Use SEO to boost organic traffic for your higher education marketing.
Having a website is no longer sufficient. You won’t get any visitors if people can’t find it when they run a search.
If you want to ensure a consistent stream of internet traffic, you must optimize your website’s search engine rankings.
According to several studies, more than 90% of individuals use a search engine to get information on the internet.
Higher education marketers can use the following common SEO strategies:
- Concentrate on less competitive long-tail keywords.
Any SEO effort relies heavily on keywords. For influential organic search rankings, colleges and institutions must research to discover the best keywords to optimize. These keywords should then be strategically integrated into site content.
- Produce top-notch content
You must have content and web pages that discuss the topics relevant to higher education marketing if you want to rank for specific keywords.
Higher education institutions must make sure that the content on their websites is well-written and timely.
- Consider the questions and information that prospective students are looking for.
- Create helpful content that addresses these queries, and you’ll improve your organic search rankings.
- A blog is a standard material that can be used for higher education advertising in content marketing campaigns.
- Use Page Titles and Meta Descriptions that are enticing.
To attract prospective students to their website, colleges and universities should employ relevant and intriguing meta descriptions.
The page title and meta description can persuade prospective students to click on your link when searching through their search results.
7. Use Niche Blogs to Increase Organic Traffic
Many content marketing and SEO methods include blogs, and they may be an excellent tool for higher education marketing strategies. Successful blogs can attract a lot of traffic, and their postings can reach many people.
Firms that blog consistently produce 88 percent more leads than companies that don’t. Higher education institutions that remain silent can be in the same boat as the latter, which does not benefit from education marketing.
Higher education institutions can use blogs to promote their brand and engage with students. Consider how you may relate to prospective and present students while building your content strategy.
Here are some examples of how academic institutions might use blog entries to reach a wider audience:
- Blog on Admissions
Incoming students may find the admissions process complex and daunting. They, like their parents, are likely to have a lot of questions.
Create a blog dedicated entirely to admissions and utilize it to address frequently asked issues and allay any fears. This will not only answer their doubts but will also promote your brand as a caring institution that understands the needs of its students, which can significantly boost your higher education advertising.
- Different Departments’ Niche Blogs
Your university’s many departments or colleges can start blogs to promote their activities.
The College of Engineering, for example, could seek to showcase new research projects or national conference presentations.
The College of Agricultural Sciences might write on community projects such as the local elementary school gardens they maintain or their extension programs on their blog.
- Guest Posts
Higher education institutions can write for their blogs, but they can also submit guest articles to other popular blogs to reach a bigger or more targeted audience.
Most academic institutions find it easier to get their guest articles accepted by blogs because of the nature of the topic and the school’s reputation. Hence, if you haven’t tried out guest blogging, you must try it and see the difference it can create in your marketing to college students.
8. Make Websites That Are Mobile-Friendly
Prospective students begin their search for a college or university online, and the main webpage of the institution is frequently the first stop.
Websites should provide a good user experience and work properly on desktop and mobile platforms. Delivering a mobile-friendly experience is critical since users should access your content quickly at home and on the move.
This is especially true for Generation Z, which has become the target demographic for most colleges and universities.
Consider Southern Virginia University as a case study for this education marketing strategy. It accomplishes this via its mobile-responsive website, which works well on both desktop machines and mobile phones.
Most search engines include page speed when determining a website’s page rank. Google and other search engines aim to provide the best results available.
They understand that users don’t want to visit websites that take a long time to load or provide a bad user experience (UX). Your search rankings could suffer if your website takes too long to load. Hence, if you want to boost your marketing to college students, you must ensure the speed of your website is adequate.
9. Use Email Marketing to Communicate
Some marketers disregard email marketing, believing that it is no longer relevant. This could not be further from the truth.
Email marketing is still quite adequate, and several organizations have begun to employ it.
More than 70% of students said they would like to get information from schools and universities via email rather than plain texts, according to Statista.
On the other hand, Cold emailing works against your marketing to college students because most emails sent to prospective students end up in their spam folder.
So, how can higher education marketers make sure their emails don’t end up in spam folders?
- Personalized Mail
Email leads with personalized, segmented, and relevant emails. This is a tried-and-true method for increasing engagement and improving overall deliverability.
According to an Econsultancy survey, 74 percent of marketers believe targeted personalization is one of the most effective strategies to improve user experience and increase engagement.
- AI Can Help You Improve Your Email Marketing
Some specialist technologies can assist higher education marketers in determining the optimal moment to send an email to everyone they’ve previously emailed.
These features are available in popular email marketing solutions, including MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and ConvertKit.
10. Use display advertising to raise brand awareness.
Digital display ads are typically 35% more successful than billboards for education marketing, and they can help colleges and institutions reach a wider audience.
To target prospective students based on their search histories, banner adverts can be put on high-traffic websites or through the Google Display Network.
Banner ads should feature movies, GIFs, and photos that are likely to interest potential registrants in addition to intriguing content.
To sum it up
While higher education marketing is one of the most challenging marketing techniques because of its volume, but it is also the most rewarding. Follow these above ten fully functioning and proven education marketing strategies and boost your higher education business.
However, if you’re looking for an easy, one-step solution! Hire professional higher education marketing service providers such as Ranolia Ventures. Not only will you witness an exponential rise in your education marketing, but you will also observe a massive profit in your business.