Top 10 Marketing Strategies to Increase Enrollments
Every marketing specialist will tell you this: Designing a winning strategy for an institution of higher learning is no picnic. There are certain aspects of promoting a school that you need to take into account. Messaging should be on the top of your list, followed by the timing of your campaigns and demographic information.
In recent years, the education space has become ultra-competitive. The outbreak of the pandemic has exacerbated the situation and forced schools to come up with innovative means of marketing. In this article, we will delve deep into them.
Before we dive into strategies that your college may use, first things first: why utilizing marketing strategies matters for higher education institutions? Any university that invests time and money in modern marketing strategies stands a good chance of converting more leads. Reevaluating advertising and focusing on digital ads allow colleges to generate a sustained stream of enrollments. Pure and simple.
We came up with these top 10 Marketing Strategies your School can use:
1. Email Marketing
Getting started with email marketing is pretty easy. All you need is an email list of current students, alumni, the staff, subscribers of your content, etc. You can email a newsletter announcing your new programs and connect with your target market.
Email marketing has the potential to engage prospects on a personal level. Some of the insanely effective tactics that you can use include sending out updates on new programs, the latest news, announcements, and welcome emails to new students.
2. Optimize Voice Search On Your website
People are using voice search for various reasons, mainly because their hands are not free. For instance, they might be driving while researching your college. At least 4 billion people currently use voice-activated search online. This number could reach 5 billion in 2022.
According to Gen Z stats, 38% of them are likely to enroll with your college via voice-activated searching. Remember, Millennials and Generation Z use a college’s website when researching schools. Optimizing your website for voice increases your chances of being found by them.
3. Consider implementing retargeting
If you’re not using retargeting ads to market your school, chances are your competitors who use it get more enrollments. Retargeting is a powerful way of communicating with your audience after they have left your website. Using pixels, retargeting allows you to follow new visitors with digital ads. The ads will follow them on Facebook, including a news platform.
4. Optimize Your Landing page
Optimizing your landing page is one of the best ways to increase your conversion rate. You can add an explainer video of your new programs, registration forms, or even text announcing your new semester. A landing page ensures that anyone landing on your website sees fresh content. By simply optimizing your landing page, you will be reducing your marketing cost per acquisition (CPA) by 60%.
5. Introduce Virtual tours
Campus visits play an important role in influencing prospective students to choose your college. However, the current social realities have forced some institutions to replace campus tours with virtual tours. As face-to-face classes are becoming a thing of the past, colleges had to develop viable online alternatives.
Virtual tours could be one of your marketing strategies this year. You can hire an agency to film a virtual tour for you. Alternatively, you can also consider using video streaming. Remember this, using the correct information will help you connect better with your students.
6. Run PPC campaigns
Launching pay-per-click campaigns are one of the beneficial ways to market your college’s programs. However, timing is everything when it comes to running PPC campaigns. You might want to launch your online campaigns when prospective students are looking for institutions to enroll. Advertising year-round is still not a bad idea, but make sure your campaigns target a specific theme of the year, such as school opening, exams, virtual tours.
First and foremost, you must have a plan in place, and you set SMART goals for your campaigns. For instance, do you want prospective students to call your college, sign up for a program online, or just leave their contact details?
Use the following questions:
- Who am I targeting with my PPC campaigns?
- How old are they?
- What kind of content appeals to them?
- Which social media platforms do they use?
- What kind of content do they prefer?
7. Incorporate video marketing
Video is one of the most content right now. People watch more than a billion hours of videos on YouTube. 60% of these people are Gen Z, a group business schools are targeting right now.
The excellent news is shooting videos has become relatively easy. Today, most marketers use their smartphones to take videos that end up driving conversions better than videos shot with an expensive camera.
8. Use social media marketing
Using social media marketing is one of the best strategies for driving prospects to your website. One of the significant challenges with a school’s social media advertising strategy is that you often don’t know which platform to use. Is it Facebook, Instagram, or Snapshot? Do you have to do what most colleges do, which runs ads and hopes that someone signs up?
Using social media requires a social media strategy that will set you apart from your competitors. Every post or even an ad that you use should have a goal.
Some of social media platforms institutions of higher learning should consider advertising on include:
- YouTube
- Facebook messenger
- Facebook stories
9. Search engine optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can come in handy if you want your website to appear on the first page of search engines. SEO targets organic traffic that is often unpaid.
Typically, SEO specialists utilize keywords to increase your chances of appearing in search results. They will help to appear on of the following search engines: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com.
You should consider using one of the following SEO keyword types.
- Market Segment Keywords – those are generic keywords associated with institutions of higher learning.
- Customer-Defining Keywords – you use these types of keywords to identify your target market.
- Product Keywords – these are keywords that are associated with your program offering. For instance, IT courses in LA.
- Branded Keywords – when using such keywords, prospects will be using them along with your brand—for instance, UCT university programs.
10. Publish engaging content
Nothing keeps people longer on a website than quality content. By content, we are not only referring to text-based content but stunning infographics, podcasts, or even videos. Keep it simple and easy to digest, and your target audience will consume it. Even more important, they might even share it on their social media page as well.
Coming up with your institute’s marketing strategy is painstaking, let Big Hit Creative help you develop your roadmap to success. Contact us today!
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