Your institutionTeaching already works with data driven your marketing data marketing?
For a long time, it was possible to develop successful strategies and campaigns based solely on the intuition and experience of the responsible team. But, in an increasingly competitive and demanding scenario, this is no longer enough.
Resorting to data and adding them to the process is what guarantees that your Institution will be able to circumvent the uncertainty of assumptions and start developing more assertive and powerful marketing strategies and campaigns.
Follow the post to understand better what data marketing is and know 4 good reasons to invest in this concept.
In this post, you will see:
- 4 reasons for you to invest in data-driven Marketing;
- How to create a Data Marketing strategy in your Institution?
- Target your content and campaigns;
- Keep the teams aligned.
Understand now the reasons for investing in Data Marketing and how you can create strategies to apply this concept in your Institution.
4 reasons for you to invest in data-driven Marketing
Data Marketing has changed the reality of several sectors and with the Educational Market it could not be different. That's why we separate four good reasons for you to start investing in data driven Marketing and explore the potential of your results based on numbers. Follow us!
#1. Use the power of data to your advantage
Information is power. What marketing has traditionally done is try to use the knowledge and experience of professionals in the field and rely on their intuition. This process is still valid, but it becomes even more accurate with the help of data.
This is because, your Educational Institution, like any other organization, generates and is faced with data from the public, the market and society all the time. Until then, its marketing and management professionals were already trying to base themselves on this information to make decisions.
Now, working with Data Marketing, it is finally possible to organize this information in order to get the best out of it, without assumptions. And then your Institution has the chance to use the power of data in favor of its own goals.
#2. Communicate better with your audience
You are probably already familiar with the concept of people and understand its importance for Educational Marketing. Based on real information, personas are more believable profiles and, therefore, defining them makes it easier to establish successful contacts.
Data Marketing allows the collection of secure information to find out which language your persona uses, what types of content interest you and which social networks are most present.
That way, it's simpler to turn any contact into a lasting relationship. That is, it becomes easier to attract and retain students.
#3. Understand the needs and conquer your audience
The education market has become more competitive over time. There are more institutions and teaching modalities and there is a growing offer of courses. All of this means that simply showing your services is not enough.
An Institution needs to find ways to involve students and potential students to become relevant in the market and attractive to its public. And the best way to do this is to know what this audience needs and what they expect from their Educational Institution.
Data Marketing makes it possible to gather information about this public and combine it with management reports and the results of other Institution campaigns, for example.
Thus, it leads to the identification of their behavior, needs and interests, and provides conditions to anticipate new behavioral patterns. And that, of course, results in strategies and more accurate campaigns.
#4. Know trends and conquer the market
The collection of real data, its combination and analysis in order to qualify this information and use it strategically defines what Data Marketing is.
Thus, following the same principle that allows the identification of behavior patterns, this work makes the prediction of market trends more grounded.
And that gives your Educational Institution the opportunity to be one step ahead of competitors, presenting strong competitive differentials, from management to Educational Marketing.
Now that you already have some good reasons to start working with Data Marketing at your institution, you need to know how to put together a strategy for it, right? Then keep reading!
See too:
- The education purchase funnel has changed: learn how to benefit from the new opportunities;
- CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization: what it is and how it works;
- Students Retention and Acquisition: who to do it? Learn with the best!
How to create a Data Marketing strategy in your Institution?
You already understood that improving the data part of your institution and applying it to marketing is essential to improve your enrollment process and relationship with students, right?
But for that to happen you need a good strategy. And how can you do this? What information to collect and what processes to put in place to make your Marketing Data happen? Keep with us!
Have clear goals
The 1st step of your strategy is to understand what you want to do with the data obtained. Definition here is the watchword. Define everything: your audience, your deadline, your KPIs (performance indicators), in short, all the points and all the steps to create your strategy.
Defining your audience
In terms of Educational Market, a target audience, or personas, as we mentioned earlier, seem obvious, don't they? But, in fact, here, the important thing is to define the public for each action and strategy.
"Students" can be the beginning of your definition and, from there, you can improve the characteristics of your persona, your audience, that is, these "students".
- Where are they from?
- Which social class?
- What states or cities or neighborhoods?
- What is your life background or family history?
- What is your average age?
Questions like these can help guide you in defining your audience, segment your leads and, also, to understand what data you will need to collect to make an efficient and assertive Data Marketing.
Defining your deadline
At this point, two factors are of great importance: the definition of your campaigns, whether they will be semi-annual or quarterly, for example, and the frequency of data analysis of your institution.
Remember that in Data Marketing - and in any other marketing strategy - it is extremely important to create goals and deadlines to have a basis for the next steps.
We assume that, if you decide to do six months of campaigns and actions and in three, you are still not even 25% of your student recruitment, you need to review the tactics and tools your institution is using to prospect.
But to understand this, you need to define your deadlines very well and when your analyzes and redefinitions of strategies will be carried out.
Defining your KPIs
This point is one of the most important in defining your strategies. Performance indicators will help you to better analyze your data. And therefore, they must be chosen carefully.
KPIs can be divided into primary, secondary and useful (or practical) for you to understand if your strategies are working. Some examples of KPIs that you can choose for your Institution are:
- leads;
- traffic;
- conversion rate;
- cost per lead at each stage of the funnel;
- newsletter subscribers;
- website/blog visits;
- source of traffic;
- most searched keywords;
- engagement on social networks.
Remember that these indicators guide all of your MarketingData, after all, they are the ones who bring the necessary information so that you can carry out your analyses.
Target your content and campaigns
Based on your personas, you must understand where your audience is, which platforms they consume and which they interact with the most. This will guide your institution to optimize its content and campaigns and reach as many potential students as possible.
Segmentation is also important. Target the right campaigns to the right audiences.
For example, if you have a Higher Education Institution with undergraduate and postgraduate courses, you need to understand that you already have two completely different audiences there. And if you think about the possibilities within these large segmentations, the divisions widen even further.
A person who will ask to transfer to your Institution, is not part of the same audience as those who will come with the Enem score, for example.
The same happens with postgraduate studies: people looking for a specialization and a PhD, for example, have completely different profiles.
Targeting and segmenting will help you a lot to understand your data and how to analyze it in the best possible way. You will be able to see, in detail, where your outreach strategies are right and wrong.
Keep the teams aligned
The last strategic point that you need to strongly consider so that your marketing strategies for Data to work is to integrate your teams. As the name suggests, it is necessary that marketing and big data connect and align.
And, of course, not only these, but also the sales people are essential for the operational process to work. Keep in mind that weekly or fortnightly meetings to jointly review how the actions are performing are essential.
We hope that by getting this far you have understood how essential it is to change your marketing strategies and make them more and more data-driven, right?
Having a team that specializes in the subject can also help your institution a lot to obtain the best results from this technique. Count on 4revops experts to help you in this process.
Want more tips for developing revolutionary strategies? Also check out our post on Marketing attribution, Automation and BI for educational institutions!
Portugal