Marketing a college or university is a challenge. On the one hand, you have rules and regulations governing the way you can market different courses and programs. On the other, there are marketing instruments (including digital ones) ready to broaden your exposure.
The challenge is an exciting one to solve, especially since you now have digital marketing on your side. To help you run a successful college marketing campaign, here are the top tips and tricks you can use as you get started.
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Target the Decision Makers
The decision to go to a particular college is usually made by more than one party, which is why targeting the decision makers is very important. This means running parallel campaigns for potential students as well as their parents.
Each campaign can have its own set of objectives. You are free to use different marketing instruments and utilize different content depending on who you want to target. For example, running ads on Instagram is perfect for when you are targeting future students. For their parents, however, Facebook and other websites are more suitable.
This kind of personalized approach is how you win both sides. Pay attention to every detail of the campaigns, from the content and wording to your calls to action, and you will be able to win the attention of all decision makers and convince them.
Go Long Term
The decision to go to college is a big one; it is certainly not a decision that students (and their parents) can make overnight or spontaneously. This means your marketing strategy must also follow the decision-making process along. I’m talking about running longer campaigns in general.
Going long term when running college marketing campaigns is also great for branding purposes. Through instruments such as content marketing and social media marketing, your campaign can center around developing the school’s reputation as the best in its field.
When potential students are ready to make their decision, your school is already at the front of their minds. Converting interested students into actual students of the college is just a matter of sending the right calls to action at the right moments.
Get Help
It is difficult to ignore the fact that the education landscape is very competitive right now. There are hundreds – if not thousands – of other colleges and schools competing for the attention of the same market segment: potential students. So, how can you stay ahead of the market with your own marketing campaigns?
Enlisting the help of professionals, particularly those with experience in marketing schools and higher education programs, is the way forward. You can find a capable higher education marketing agency to help you with planning and executing your campaigns.
The marketing agency can also help you process data and gain insights in a more effective way, allowing you to continue refining future campaigns. Getting a higher education marketing agency to help you is a fantastic investment in today’s competitive market.
With these tips and tricks in mind, reaching the right audience and convincing them to enroll are easy tasks to accomplish. You can run highly optimized marketing campaigns without the usual hassle of creating one.