Elevating Education: Mastering Digital Marketing Strategies

Why Digital Marketing Matters for Higher Education

When marketing your college or university to prospective students, you need to target two distinct audiences: teens and their parents. By coming up with approaches and strategies that speak to the needs of these distinct groups and focusing your efforts in the right location, you can ensure that you’re connecting with the audience you are trying to reach. Concentrating on digital marketing and SEM techniques will allow you to effortlessly connect with both students and parents, streamlining your efforts for better engagement.

Engaging Prospective Students Through Digital Marketing

Teenagers in today’s world have been raised in the digital age and are essentially always online. According to PEW research, 92% of teens go online daily, with nearly 25% reporting they are online "constantly”. These prospective students are experienced social media users and are adept at using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social channels for information gathering and communication.

A campaign targeted at teens needs to have a visible social media presence for best results; higher education facilities hoping to connect and engage can do so directly on a variety of channels. If you are not investing in digital marketing that directly targets youth users on the most popular social media channels, your messaging might go completely unnoticed by this target audience.

Since minors at the age of 13 can register for a Facebook account – and many other social platforms are used by minors, you can connect with your prospective students long before they make that crucial decision about their education. The successful Duke TIP program identifies gifted prospects in 5th-7th grade and maintains robust engagement and marketing programs on Facebook and Twitter. This early and ongoing engagement helps identify prospective students and positions Duke as a familiar source for education long before it is time to prepare for college.

Reaching Parents Through Marketing Strategies

While pre-teens and teens often make the headlines for online activity and social media use, adults are adopting smartphones and mobile devices at unprecedented rates. Most adults use a smartphone or device daily, and more than half make buying and other important decisions by accessing the Internet using a mobile device.

The active presence of parents online means that higher education organizations have the opportunity to connect in a variety of ways. The same social media efforts that work for teens also pay off for parents, provided the messaging is just right. Parents are concerned about the quality of your offerings, the cost of your programs, and of course the safety of your campus. When you engage with your community and share information that covers these important concerns, you build trust. When it’s time to guide their child and make a decision, you’ll already have a relationship in place.

When parents are footing the tuition bills, you have unique opportunities to connect elsewhere; your targeted ads can appear on pages offering tips on saving for college, investing, and balancing retirement savings with tuition payments. Effectively directing your digital marketing efforts towards parents can help you establish a valuable early connection, becoming a trusted source of useful information and ensuring parents know where to turn when the time comes.

Both parents and students are spending more time online and hanging out in specific locations – so how can you make sure your programs are in front of them in the right place and at the right time? You need to go where the prospects are – and make sure you’re serving up the right type of content and campaigns to this active and growing market.

If You Don’t Make a Connection, Your Competitors Will

Whether it’s a university across the state or across the nation, another higher education institution will reach out and capture the attention of your best prospects if you don’t have a plan in place. It's not just traditional brick-and-mortar schools; the University of Phoenix, an exclusively online college, invests over $200,000 daily in Google ads to attract students.

Around-the-Clock Access Is More Important than Ever Before

Your target students aren’t just online during standard business hours – they're located nationwide or globally and use smartphones to access the Internet day and night. By investing in digital marketing, you're well-positioned to make an impact on both U.S.-based and the vast international student base.

More than a million international students head to the United States each year for higher education. As you might have guessed, these students primarily connect with their chosen colleges and universities through the internet. An impressive 96% of students use the Internet as part of the higher education decision-making process. You may not be able to engage with these busy prospects every hour of every day, but your content, campaigns and social media posts can.

Search Engine Marketing for Higher Education

You now have an understanding of where these students are and how they use the web to gather college information, all while racing against the countdown to high school graduation. So, how can you capture their attention? By leveraging compelling content, effective search engine optimization, and a strong social media presence, you can position your organization to be easily discovered by prospective students and their parents.

Content and SEO

Roughly 90% of users start searching for information in the same way – via Google or another search engine. Your optimized content ensures that when a user searches for “art schools in New Jersey”, your school will be the very first relevant result they will see. SEO ensures users are getting authentic results.

Optimize your site for SEO and make sure prospects can find you by:

• Researching and targeting the right keywords, including your school name, geographic locations, main degrees or area of study, athletic teams, college prep terms and more.
• Eliminating or changing up stale, duplicate content, which will weaken your search engine position.
• Switching to a mobile-first environment to serve the needs of an increasingly mobile dependent prospect base.
• Trimming down page load times; a speed test can reveal how well your site is performing – if your pages take more than three seconds to load, 40% of your visitors will leave.
• Regularly reviewing metrics and reassessing your keywords and strategy to ensure you are meeting the needs of your target prospects.

The above steps will help you optimize your higher education site and boost your visibility and brand awareness online. 

Using Your Blog and Content to Attract and Engage Prospective Students

Incorporating SEO into your site is a start, but prioritizing quality, engaging and compelling content that is also SEO friendly will help drive results. Users who visit your site will be more likely to stay when they discover and engage with entertaining, long-form, and valuable content about both your school's academics and campus life in general. The trust you’ll build will help cement a relationship between your higher ed institution and your prospects and keep you at the top of their list when it comes time to apply.

In addition to details about your organization, your content should offer tips on topics like dorm room décor and paying for college, making you a valuable resource for students and parents. This approach provides a wealth of material to share on social media. Covering a broad range of topics in your blog and site, while incorporating identified keywords, can optimize your site and attract prospects. Consider these topics as examples:

• Academic tracks and classes
• Campus life – where students live, where the study, where they eat
• Your surrounding towns or cities that are top student destinations
• Topics about your school history, background and famous grads
• Sports teams, including news and how to join
• Photos and details about your fine arts, music and related programs
• Student and teacher profiles
• Student awards and news
• Information about paying for college
• Information about decorating your first apartment or dorm room
• Transportation information

Providing well-rounded information creates a rich site with diverse content that appeals to a wide range of students and parents. By positioning your brand as a trusted authority, parents and students will rely on you for crucial decision-making information around their higher ed institution of choice.

Social Media Marketing Forges a Trusted Connection with Prospects

You’ve taken the time to create an amazing lineup of written blogs, images, videos and even interactive elements, now it’s time to put it out there for your prospects to find. Social media marketing has been a bit of a disruptor in the higher education field, and it’s not hard to see why. With both parents and students actively engaging on social media channels, universities can no longer afford to ignore sites like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.

While social media is an ideal way to generate leads and entice prospects to apply, it is also a valuable tool for building brand awareness and sharing some authentic looks into life on campus. Colleges are using social media in a variety of ways to attract prospects and engage with both students and parents alike, including:

Boosting Brand Awareness: Universities can craft compelling brand stories by sharing student life images on Instagram and promoting events with Snapchat geofencing. Using branded materials like logos, colors, and mascots across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram creates a unified message that enhances brand awareness. Encouraging students to hashtag and share their campus images further boosts brand visibility and social credibility

Recruitment: Social media’s focus on instantaneous information and connections makes it an ideal addition to your recruitment efforts. Prospects in a hurry often turn to social media for help – giving you a chance to forge a personal connection and engage one on one. It won’t replace your other tools, but social media can greatly enhance your ability to connect and engage during the recruitment process.

Building a community: Students seek insights into campus life, while parents want assurance of a safe, quality education. Your social media community can address both needs by sharing candid student life shots and announcing rankings and awards, ensuring rapid dissemination. As parents and students engage, they support each other, deepening their connection with your school.

Hashtags matter: Use hashtags on Instagram, Twitter and other sites to raise awareness and help prospects find you. Simply identifying and using consistently branded hashtags will help users tag their own images and ensure that these authentic examples are seen. 

Making the effort to engage on multiple platforms and maintaining a cohesive voice and brand presence can go a long way toward making valuable connections that will help your recruitment efforts.

By making the choice to focus on and engage with students online both via your marketing efforts and your social media channels, you can be sure you receive a steady stream of qualified applicants to choose from. These engaged prospects and applicants will already be well connected with and trust your unique brand and approach to education, making it more likely that you’ll see the actual enrollment figures you want from your efforts.