Nowadays, the technology is increasing its reach and requires new and advancing skill sets. This is one of the reasons why the primary focus of higher education courses has shifted towards a more practical approach, industry relevance, employment orientation, and adaptation to corporate demands.
Today, educational degrees are no longer limited to face-to-face. There are many online courses that provide their students with the same knowledge as face-to-face education. Of course, this is good news for the students, as the higher education system clearly becomes more flexible.
However, this has also led to increased competition among higher education institutions that want to maximize the number of newly enrolled students.
As a result, higher education institutions are seeking the help of digital marketing agencies to build a strong brand image through the development of effective communication strategy with the students, parents and industry experts.
So, here are some digital marketing techniques for the education sector to keep in mind:
Design a “mobile first” website.
Today, the number of online users significantly surpasses the number of computer users. This makes it clear that mobile is the most used platform for accessing the Internet trends and is especially popular among students and young people.
Therefore, when developing your website, you should make sure that you offer the best possible experience to your mobile users. Mobile optimization is the first and most important digital marketing technique for companies operating in the higher education sector.
If your website is not mobile-friendly, then you are missing out on the majority of potential students.
Targeted content to drive traffic
In a successful digital marketing strategy, language is not the only parameter that is taken into account when generating high-quality content.
Nowadays, the “quality” of the content is determined by whether the content is able to increase your website traffic and page rank position.
Therefore, make sure that your content is focused on generating more traffic and improving your rankings. This can be achieved by conducting keyword research with focus on the long tail variations.
With that in mind, variations of your main keywords are a great resource to identify other keywords related to your educational institution. However, it’s essential to make sure that all of these keywords are affordable to rank for and will bring high-quality traffic to your website.
Conversion-oriented content
Initially, you have to define the desired conversion rate based on your business objectives. This helps you to generate high-quality content focused on improving the conversion rate. Conversion-oriented content, by its nature, aims to target potential students and convince them to enroll in your institution.
Conversion-oriented content can be generated by describing details about your institution, like your services, infrastructure, campus facilities, faculty details, placement records, fee and pricing, etc. These details are essential to directly persuade your potential students but even more importantly, your site must convey trust and credibility.
To build this credibility it is key to make use of real student testimonials from past graduates, as well as use video and images of real people as often as you can.
Internal link building
Link building should be a fundamental criterion when formulating an effective SEO strategy for any educational institution.
Nowadays, the quality of a website is not limited to content alone. The average time spent on your website depends to a large extent on internal links.
Let’s suppose that your website lacks internal links. Then, the user will consult the information of the specific page they enter and will most likely leave the website afterwards.
However, when you include several links leading to information related to the content of the page they are viewing, it is very likely for the users to continue browsing your website instead of going to another one to look for more information.
Video
Video marketing is one of the most effective techniques because it quickly captures the attention of Internet users. Human beings are, by nature, visual, and the first thing that strikes us is the content we perceive through our eyes.
It consists of using videos to promote a product or service. This online marketing strategy has an incredible potential thanks to the growing use of smartphones for information consumption, as well as platforms such as YouTube, which are used daily by millions of users.
Moreover, this type of advertising is effective as it facilitates additional social interaction: videos are the most shared type of content on social networks.
Prospecting campaigns
For any educational institution it is very important to position its brand image and enhance its reputation. Prospecting campaigns on Google and Social Ads serve precisely for this purpose.
A campaign should be structured, taking into account the objective of attracting traffic and potential customers (students). Prospecting campaigns consist of launching ads in banner or video format on third-party websites. These ads have the goal to impact our defined audience based on interests, social engagement, lookalike, competitors, etc.
Retargeting campaigns
Retargeting is a slow but steady process that effectively increase the conversion rate if implemented correctly.
The main advantage of retargeting is that it allows you to reach potential students who have already shown interest in one of your services by visiting specific parts of your website. The clearest example is the following: let’s say your school offers an MBA and you have a dedicated conversion page on your website for this particular course.
The basic condition for such a remarketing campaign would be to impact all users who have seen that page but have not seen the thank you page. This will ensure that we impact only those people who have not filled out the contact form.
The ideal practice for this type of campaign is to offer a conversion catalyst such as a discount (classic approach) or urgency incentive with last places available (limited edition).
SEM campaigns
It is important to use campaigns based on keywords to collect all those interesting searches related to your educational center.
It is true that SEM in education can be expensive since many institutions use this type of campaigns. However, if it is planned in a smart way and taking into account the seasonality of the sector, the achieved results could be fascinating.
As we have mentioned before, it is vital to plan campaigns with long tail keywords to avoid too high CPCs.
Lead Magnets
Another of the most interesting digital marketing techniques for the education sector is to make use of the well-known “Lead Magnets”. This is basically a downloadable resource or material in a pdf format that the company provides in exchange for the contact data of the potential customers (in our case, students). It is interesting to offer different types of information as a “Lead magnet”, for example a course program or informative dossier with prices.
Using these documents in exchange for contact data will allow us to identify interested users who are not yet ready to formalize their enrollment.
The key to all this is to design a good email marketing automation that nurtures all the Leads that have downloaded the pdf. This way, automatically, and step by step we can increase the number of enrollments of our educational center.
Webinar – Masterclass
One of the most used techniques nowadays is to organize a Webinar with a free Masterclass given by one of the best teachers in the educational center or another special guest.
The educational institutions that make use of this technique create the following flow to attract their students.
- They use traffic or prospecting campaigns to generate interest and give visibility to the masterclass.
- They use social networks organically for the same purpose, leveraging on the personal branding of the speaker and the school.
- They create a landing page where they direct all the traffic from the campaigns and generate the conversion for the Masterclass.
- Include automations to remind subscribers that the day of the masterclass is approaching and provide additional value during this process.
- In the Masterclass, the teacher provides a lot of value and raises several Call to Actions to encourage listeners to enroll in the full course.
- Another automation is generated to encourage all the attendees of the masterclass to enroll in the course.
Making use of this technique helps the students perceive that you have genuinely provided value to them. Simultaneously this stimulates an increase in your conversion rate. In the digital ecosystem, one of the fundamental pillars evolves around trust and people.
Social Networks
When developing an effective social media strategy, you should identify the most relevant networks where your potential students are most active. Generally, the top three social media platforms among the student community are TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
It is important to focus on few networks and work them separately. By sharing the same content on all social networks you only stimulate users to follow you on one of them. However, they are unlikely to follow you on all networks. For this reason it is best to focus on the main networks where your students are active and develop these in a genuine way, providing a differential value in each of them.
Conclusion
The strategies mentioned above contribute to effective result optimization in terms of awareness, retention and visibility of any educational center, regardless whether it is a university, a high school or a graduate school. However, keep in mind that there are many other factors and strategies that can influence your current student acquisition model.
