What have you been doing to attract more students to your Higher Educational institution? When it comes to University Marketing, investing in a good capture and retention strategy is essential to obtain good results.
After all, with increasingly demanding students and fiercer competition in higher education, it can be very difficult to stand out and attract your target audience without well-designed strategies.
To do marketing successfully, it's no use trying to do a little of everything or simply taking chances without knowing exactly what you want and what you can achieve. In fact, not knowing which way to go, you can waste time, effort and money.
So that your Educational institution is not one to waste resources and lose confidence in the power of marketing, we have gathered in this post eight actions that will make a difference in connecting, attracting and delighting students and potential students. Follow!
In this post you can see:
- Understand Educational Marketing;
- What are the benefits of Educational Marketing?
- Which Educational Marketing actions to put into practice?
- 3 most common educational marketing mistakes;
Good reading!
Understand Educational Marketing
If you are starting out in the educational market, know that to attract students you need much more than having a good faculty and structure.
In fact, to promote all this and its other differentials, good University Marketing is necessary. But, do you know how this is done?
Educational Marketing is a set of actions implemented in an institution, whether at the higher or basic level, with a focus on attracting more students and retaining those already enrolled.
To put these actions into practice, various channels are used with the aim of attracting and converting students. But, after all, how is this done? In the next topic, we will explain the advantages of Educational Marketing and how to apply it in your Educational institution. Let's go?
What are the benefits of Educational Marketing?
Before we talk about Marketing actions, it is important to understand how this investment can greatly benefit your Educational Institution, whether you are the manager of a university, school or preparatory course.
Regardless of your segment, Educational Marketing can help you and to prove it to you, we have separated four benefits that it can bring to your Educational institution.
Recognition in the educational market
The first great advantage of good Educational Marketing is the recognition it brings to your Educational Institution. Through the right strategies, your university or school becomes recognized and seen as a reference by students, parents and other institutions.
With an increasingly competitive market and the number of institutions growing in Brazil, having your brand name recognized can make all the difference. Furthermore, by positioning yourself in the market, showing your values and missions, you build an increasingly positive image of your Educational institution.
Direct and effective communication
Another great advantage of Educational Marketing is the communication you establish with your target audience. By implementing strategies on your channels, you create a relationship with that student and can nurture them with certain types of content until they are ready for the final step: enrolling.
On this journey, you will need to do Content Marketing to attract your potential student with useful and rich materials, such as blogs, ebooks and articles.
Increases the scalability power of the institution
When it comes to scalability, a good Educational Marketing strategy can make all the difference.
In short, scalability is when a company increases the offer of a product or service without spending increasing in the same proportion.
With your strategies linked to the practicality of the Internet, you have the opportunity to have a large volume of data available to your Marketing team.
With this important information and following the metrics of your campaigns, your company is able to compare its performance, invest its efforts in more assertive strategies and change necessary actions, which consequently contributes to the optimization of its investments.
Improve lead capture and retention
Are you satisfied with the results of your Educational Institution? If your answer was negative, know that Educational Marketing can help change this scenario.
As we already mentioned at the beginning of this post, Educational Marketing focuses on attracting and retaining students, and through strategic actions, it can improve its results.
With SEO tactics applied on your blog, sponsored links, strategy on your social networks and other Marketing techniques, your IE can attract more students. But, we'll talk about these strategies in the next topic, okay?
In addition, with such actions, you can invest in customer loyalty and have good propagators of your brand.
Which Educational Marketing actions to put into practice?
All right, now that you've come this far and already know the advantages of Educational Marketing, shall we go to practice? After all, what strategies do you need to put into action in your institution?
In this topic, we separate eight actions that you can implement in your University Marketing strategy, such as:
- Develop and use personas well;
- Collect, measure and use data;
- Be active on social media;
- Produce relevant content;
- Have open communication channels;
- Invest in email marketing in your campaigns;
- Build a good website;
- Bet on paid media.
#1 Develop and use your personas well
Universities mainly talk to young people and this audience is already used to the personalization that content marketing or relationship marketing strategies adopt. Therefore, to really know them, it is necessary to invest in the creation of people.
Personas are semi-fictional characters of your Educational institution's ideal customer. In other words, it is that student you want to reach with your strategic Educational Marketing actions.
Based on your personas, your Education Institution must be attentive to the use of appropriate language, the choice of the right media and the appropriate content and interaction formats.
In this way, your Educational institution will connect with your people and approach them in a more meaningful way, which contributes to attracting new students and to the enchantment of those who can act as university promoters.
#2 Collect, measure and use data
Business intelligence in education represents the collection, measurement and analysis of data that can be used intelligently and strategically in the decision-making process of University Marketing.
This data makes it easier to identify failures, weak strategies, and successful ones. In addition to allowing to know relevant data about the institution's students and their prospects and leads, for example. In this way, they contribute to the development of increasingly appropriate and assertive campaigns.
#3 Be active on social media
The preferred public of universities (young people aged to enter undergraduate or postgraduate courses) is formed by individuals who were born in an already digital world and who are very familiar with the use of social media.
To communicate with them, your University needs to know which social networks they prefer, identify the most strategic ones and be present. However, it is necessary to be an active presence, regularly disseminating relevant content and interacting with the public.
#4 Produce relevant content
A content creation relevant and in different formats (texts, infographics, animations, podcasts, videos and others) can feed different digital marketing strategies, including your Educational Institution.
It is through this content that your University can answer your potential student's questions and help them along their journey, awakening their interest and confidence.
Being one of the fundamental tactics, many educational institutions adopt the production of content because they know its potential to reach, engage and conquer the public. After all, it is this strategy that allows your University to show its services and generate value with its public, showing itself capable of providing the content that it needs, when it needs it.
Read too:
- How to decrease the rejection rate and increase the conversion?;
- 5 ways of how to capture students;
- How to retain customers? Understand how the CRM can help you!
#5 Have open communication channels
Those seeking contact with their University do not want (and probably will not) wait days to get an answer. An active presence on social networks or the good use of tools such as email and chatbots on the site contribute to different and effective forms of communication between your student or potential student and your institution.
Investing in communication that is close and attentive, promoting a pleasant and memorable contact experience is the premise of relationship marketing.
Remember that, more than solving doubts and problems, the demand is for a customer service that does not carry the same reputation for slowness, inefficiency and impersonality as in the past.
#6 Invest in email marketing in your campaigns
And since we are talking about email, this is another important strategy in your capture and retention actions. According to a survey by Kinsta, around 4.03 billion people worldwide will use email in 2022. And if there are so many people using it, and email is a direct channel between your University and the student, then why not use it to your advantage?
When a potential student downloads an ebook, subscribes to a newsletter or downloads an infographic, he leaves some data, such as his email.
With this information in hand, you can use Marketing automation to nurture these leads,trick them, keep them always informed and build a relationship with the customer.
7# build a good website
Regardless of your product or service, having a good website is essential for your Marketing strategy. But when we talk about a site, we are not just talking about the content produced for them.
Creating a good website goes far beyond! It involves a visually pleasing layout, fast loading, simple and intuitive navigation, organization and responsive website that adapts to whatever your device.
It is important to emphasize that your portal is where the student seeks to know more about his Educational institution and is usually where he seeks answers about your course, so add all this information.
Constantly update it with what happens at your University, leave your contact information accessible and show why your institution is the best option.
Also remember that your website is the basis of your positioning in search engines and with a good On Page and Off Page SEO strategy, your page can appear in the first results of Google and attract more students.
Even if you are starting to invest in your website or blog, we have complete content on our channel about SEO strategies. Were you interested in the subject? Just click the link below and check out our free SEO training.
8# Bet on paid media
Have you ever heard of sponsored links? This is one of the paid media methods that can help a lot in your Educational Marketing strategy.
Your sponsored links are a type of advertisement made on the Internet, where the plain text format predominates. An example of the most famous sponsored links in Marketing strategies are the ones you find on Google.
Do you know when you search for something and some links appear in the top positions with the name ad next to it? These are sponsored links, which appear on the first page according to the keywords that the user searches for.
But why should you invest in this strategy? By implementing sponsored links in your Educational Marketing actions, you can increase traffic to your website and accelerate your results.
In addition, sponsored links are easier to measure, faster to optimize, have greater targeting and can improve your brand positioning.
Okay, with all our tips, you can now implement good strategies at your University. But, attention! It is not enough just to put these actions into practice, it is necessary to be careful not to make some common mistakes in Educational Marketing.
To avoid failures in your strategy, in the next topic, we list three of the most common mistakes that educational institutions have made in their Marketing actions.
3 most common educational marketing mistakes
As Augusto Cury said: "an intelligent person learns from his mistakes, a wise person learns from the mistakes of others". And between us, learning from the failures of other Educational institutions can save your University a lot of headaches.
With that in mind, we separate the three most common mistakes in Educational Marketing. Pay attention and don't repeat them in your Educational institution!
Not segmenting your audience
One of the mistakes most practiced by universities, the lack of segmentation, can lead to the failure of their strategies.
After all, without segmentation, it is difficult to really know your target audience and produce good communication, which consequently can result in generic materials and efforts applied in vain.
By segmenting your audience, you understand your client, optimize your resources and create successful strategies, directing your actions correctly.
Not understanding the customer journey
Another very common mistake in Marketing strategies is not trying to understand the customer journey. Think about it: if you don't know what stage your client is in, how are you going to deliver the right content to convert them?
In practice, the customer journey has four stages:
- Learning and Discovery: where the customer still doesn't really understand their problem and it's your role to help them;
- Problem recognition: in this phase, your client became aware of the problem and is looking for solutions;
- Consideration: At this point, your lead evaluates some solutions. It is at this time that you must show that your Institution is the best place to promote quality training and meet your needs;
- Purchase decision: Finally, he makes the big decision: finalizing his purchase, or in his case, enrolling. It is here that you should bet on your differentials and show why the student should choose your institution over the competition.
Knowing all these steps, you can produce the right content for your client's stage and deliver it at the right time.
Not tracking the performance of your strategies
Many companies have the habit of thinking that their mission is over when their strategy is in action. But really, it just started. In order to have a successful Educational Marketing, it is necessary not only to create good strategies, but also to monitor the results of your efforts.
By analyzing your performance, you can identify your mistakes and successes, improve your strategies and make them more assertive according to your target audience.
Did you like the tips and want to find out how to make it feasible to put them into practice? Check out our post about marketing budget optimization!
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