Strategies for Higher Education Marketing. Digital marketing strategies for higher education are playing a greater role than ever in recruiting Generation Z. The things that have impressed the previous generations are now expected of today’s high school students and college students.
It is not enough to have a website and social media presence. Prospective students today expect these tools to be useful, beautiful, transparent and authentic. And that’s just the beginning. Five Strategies for A+ Higher Education Marketing that can help your university or college standout and attract the attention of the next generation.
Colleges and Universities face challenges
If you’re at all familiar with top-notch practices for digital marketing, you already know the importance of customer research and buyer personas. Understanding your audience and their problems is key to engaging them.
Colleges and universities have a unique challenge in customer research and buyer persona creation because of the many audiences they need to reach. Higher education institutions need to target and understand their customers.
- Students looking for a job
- Current students
- Parents of current and prospective students
- Alumni
- Potential donors
- Faculty
- Potential faculty
Each audience has its own set of needs, expectations and questions. This diversity must be considered when planning digital marketing strategies for higher educational.
There are many people within your organization that can help you recruit. Each person is able to target a different audience and understand the needs of others. As you invite more people to your organization, make sure that your branding and messaging is consistent across all platforms.
Contributors could include students, alumni, faculty, from different colleges, departments and other individuals with diverse interests. It is important to first establish your voice, messaging, and brand online. This will ensure a consistent, high-quality user experience. Next, you need to create a system that communicates these guidelines to all contributors who have access to your platforms.
5 Strategies for Higher Education Marketing To Increase Engagement & Boost Enrollment
Higher education is not without its challenges. However, there are proven digital marketing strategies that can help schools increase enrollment and engagement through their online presence.
Digital Marketing Strategy #1: Get Specific
As a college or university, you will have many audiences that you need to reach and engage. You can organize the information you have about these audiences by creating user personas. These semi-fictional representations of your audiences can be used by content creators to help them create relevant content for each audience.
You may feel compelled to market to everyone in your audience once you have created your user personas. However, this will produce boring content that isn’t engaging anyone. Instead, make sure to create unique opportunities for each audience on your website or social media platforms.
First, make sure your website is organized so that each audience can find and navigate to the pages they are interested in. Next, create social accounts that are unique for each area of your university so that people can follow the content and interact with it.
Digital Marketing Strategy #2: A Beautiful and Functional Website
It is important that your website is easy to navigate and well-organized because so many people are searching for answers on your website. Chatbots are great for engaging website visitors and helping them identify their questions and guide them to the right page.
Your website must be functional but also visually appealing and optimized to SEO. This allows tech-savvy visitors to find your website and identify it as useful and relevant. For a seamless experience, ensure that your branding and messaging are consistent across all marketing efforts. Many website visitors will find you online and through print materials.
Digital Marketing Strategy #3: User-generated content
You may feel overwhelmed when you plan content for multiple audiences on different platforms. You don’t have it all to yourself.
Instead of writing all the content yourself let your audience do it. Engaging different audiences with user-generated content is possible through the collaboration between alumni, students, and faculty. Prospective students love the behind-the scenes look that current students offer when they are considering a career at your school.
Use and promote university hashtags to generate this content. Next, look for high-quality content that you can post on your profiles. Engaging user-generated content can be created by students, studying abroad photos, and sunsets on your campus.
Students, alumni, and faculty can write guest posts for your blog, or take control of a social media platform. Prospects will feel that they are actually meeting and engaging with people from your university.
Digital Marketing Strategy #4: Go Live
Gen Z, a generation that values authenticity and is redefining the way we communicate with each other online, prefers highly-curated content. Live streaming is a great way to promote authenticity and transparency in higher education.
Live videos are a great way to show prospective students what university life is like. Live video features are available on Instagram and Facebook. You can host a Q&A, highlight a student event, tour your dorms and give a tour.
You can also invite alumni, students, and faculty to live-stream your school and take control.
Digital Marketing Strategy #5: Manage Your Reputation
We’ve covered a lot of the content that your university or college creates. But, it is equally important to consider what other users are creating about you. Higher education is complex. This means that there are endless opportunities for students to have great and frustrating experiences at your school.
Social media is often used by people to express their emotions. Negative feedback can be detrimental to your school’s reputation by monitoring mentions and comments. Next, make a plan to address negative comments in a positive, helpful way.
Social listening can help avoid viral posts that portray your school negatively. Your responses will show your followers that you are listening and engaged, and that your care about your community.
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