Get this: when it comes to marketing for higher education, less than 35 percent of advertisers are using Pinterest to share content. To make matters worse, most people use social media to entertain, not educate.
Are you still using last year’s education marketing strategies?
Update your higher education marketing to increase enrollments in 2020. Start now with this complete guide!
Videos Ads & Online Learning
Whether you like it or not, higher education is a business. That’s where college marketing campaigns come in. To be a competitive university that increases revenue and enrollment, you’ve got to have a solid advertising plan.
News flash: if you are planning to go into the new year using the same old strategies as last year, you are already far behind the competition. But with our help, you will be able to develop the best advertising plan out there.
To be quite honest with you, it is more difficult than ever to make users engage with your content. Clearly, no one has the time to read a lengthy post on social media. So, colleges are starting to understand and move toward video messages to spread the word.
Not only is video blog content great for people who are short on time, but it is also a super-efficient strategy for all target audiences. The best part is that your video doesn’t necessarily have to be about your institution.
Instead, it should work with the user to answer any questions they have about your college. Plus, strong video content will encourage your viewer to read and learn more about your organization in the future. Who wouldn’t want that?
Moving forward, online classes are another wonderful way to help students continue learning at their own pace. No matter if they can’t make it to campus or work a full-time job, students are looking for online alternatives to traditional universities. Luckily, many universities are picking up on the demand for online learning.
But here’s the catch: be cautious when you promote your online classes. Marketing courses without enough variety to support user demand might turn into a disaster. Solution: hold off until your college feels like it’s ready to do it!
Fewer Ads, More SEO
Let’s face it: old-fashioned marketing methods like TV spots, newspaper ads, and direct mail are on a sharp decline. Therefore, it is vital to shift your educational marketing strategy accordingly. Rather than sending out ads that don’t connect with your customers, scale back advertising to strengthen design and copy.
Although change might be difficult to approach at first, it will really help you in the long term. This is especially true since it will show that your college is capable of adapting to the modern world. To do this, you’ve got to make your ads shine online.
We highly recommend that you move to mobile marketing. In case you weren’t aware, advertising on social media platforms like Instagram will hit the target audience that you are looking for. In fact, promoting your ads on Instagram is effective for marketing to transfer students and high school students.
Besides becoming a social media expert, your school’s website has to be mobile-friendly. Make sure to have an effectively designed website that is simple and efficient to use. Also, you should double-check that it will display well on the tiny screen.
Now, let’s talk about search engine optimization. Even though this is not a new trend, it has become a useful tool for organizations and businesses lately. More colleges are prioritizing search engine optimization to boost their online learning resources.
For the uninitiated, most students are looking for colleges based on the following factors:
- Majors
- Sports
- Types of degrees
For example, if a student is looking for a bachelor’s degree in graphic design, tons of different programs and schools will appear. Simply by using search engine optimization and strong keywords, your school’s website will pop up too.
Need help? To make your college stand out from the crowd, use “long-tail keywords” on your site!
Public-Private Partnerships & Social Platforms
Every college wants to improve its institution in some way. That’s why we suggest that your organization looks into developing a public-private partnership. Although this is a popular practice, each university needs its competitive edge.
If you want to take your organization up a notch, you’ll probably want to think outside the educational marketing box. For most institutions, partnering with companies is the right way to go. When you use outside resources, your school will be able to expand its reach and market like no other.
Another rule of thumb is to develop a partnership that will help you to create new content. Similar to advertising online courses, it is fascinating for students to know that a company is helping you to build unique lessons.
Has your university ever considered switching social media platforms?
Due to the ever-shifting social media landscape, what is hot today may not be hot tomorrow. There’s no harm in pulling out of an unsuccessful social media platform in favor of a better one. When you are one of the first adopters of a new social media platform, you will see a lot more results and engagement from users.
As one of the first giants on a new platform, your educational marketing strategy will more than likely succeed. Nonetheless, being well-liked online is never a guarantee. However, having high-quality video, copy, and design will put you one step ahead of the rest.
Speaking of which, it is also a smart idea to market to incoming pupils with products such as Google Home and Amazon Echo. Since this is a new market, it’s still easy for colleges to enter it. Plus, voice search is the perfect companion for search engine optimization.
Want your college’s keywords to be the top result? Then your content should answer consumer questions!
Immersive Learning & Online Tours
Since the world is evolving with advancing technology, potential students will have to adapt to these digital changes. By taking advantage of the next best thing in tech, educational institutions can promote themselves even more.
Obviously, being ahead of your competitors is the goal. By becoming a disruptive innovator, you will make sure that your institution doesn’t fall behind the rest. One of the most interesting ways to do this is to offer 360° tours of your university online.
Yes, you read that right. Even though many colleges haven’t grasped this concept yet, you’ll start to see more and more of it this coming year. Admit it: not every student has the luxury to visit prospective universities that are located far away.
When you provide an online tour of your school, you will save them both the effort and the time of taking a trip. At the same time, your online tour will keep your school in the races, so to speak. Better yet, you might as well map out your whole campus while you are at it.
Still not convinced?
You should know that 360° online tours are beneficial because of their ability to:
- Let students comprehend your geographic location
- Show students your institution during initial onboarding
- Allow students to see things that are occurring on campus in real-time
On top of online tours, augmented reality and virtual reality are also trending in the educational marketing world. Since augmented reality engages students physically and visually, you can offer futuristic courses. How can you possibly beat that?
Optimizing and Evaluating Your Website
You might be surprised to find out that most students paint a picture of your college based on your school’s website. This plays a huge role in convincing potential students to enroll at your institution. In this respect, you need to optimize and evaluate your web page to make it convert leads and perform better in the long run.
To get a better idea, examine how users engage with the informative content on your university’s website. If you want to optimize it, you may have to make a few coding changes if needed. The craziest part is that simple tweaks to your site might help it to rank even higher on the Google search engine results page.
As we mentioned above, virtual reality and augmented reality take the cake in terms of elevating a user’s experience. Using this technology, you can let students explore environments that videos or photos cannot grasp.
While your institution grows with technology, you can add augmented or virtual reality campus tours to your website as well. By following these techie trends, your institution will be interacting with new students in no time.
In addition to this, adding user-generated content to your school website should be a no-brainer. It is probably not a shock to learn that referral marketing is the most efficient advertising strategy. Thus, asking your students to create quality content for your social media platforms and your website is the best way to go about this.
All that you need to do is have them post photos of themselves enjoying fun activities at your institution. Surprisingly enough, this can add tons of value to your educational marketing strategy.
What makes new candidates choose your school over other schools?
The answer is simple: they’ll enroll at your university if they see glowing student recommendations!
Making Customer-Friendly Content
You already know that making customer-friendly content is vital for your school’s success at enrollment time. After you’ve posted selfies of students having a ball on campus, you’ve got to move to the next step. Your best bet is to have an influencer speak at your college to get more students to take notice of your school.
But wait – there’s more. To find the best social influencers for your university, you must understand how your target audience behaves. In addition, it pays to use customer reviews as another type of educational user-generated content.
The majority of new students spend hours reading customer reviews before enrolling at an institution. Since this is the case, you have to collect some testimonials or reviews from current students about their time at your school.
As if that’s not enough, it also helps to put a face next to your review. This works well for two reasons. For starters, it makes your school seemed more personable.
Secondly, it can make your institution appear “more human” as well. If you want to try this yourself, post a picture or record a video of the student recounting their amazing experiences at your college.
Now that we’ve got that covered, tracking your efforts is just as important as creating user-friendly content. Raise your hand if you may have forgotten to track metrics during your last educational marketing session. For those of you with your hands in the air, you should know that advertising isn’t merely about posting content to reel in students.
The point is to make sure that your text, photo, or video content is performing as well as you would like it to be. Once you start calculating the metrics, it will be easy to find the patterns. This will also help you to understand which platform is performing the best!
Elevate Your Education Marketing Strategies
Want to elevate your education marketing strategies? We’re here to help.
With our niche online marketing and SEO skills, you won’t even know what to do with all of the organic traffic flooding your site. Not to mention that your enrollment and revenue will go through the roof too.
Looking for more college marketing strategies?
Contact us to sharpen your education marketing strategy today!