Your Educational institution you don't need to choose between one method or another because it is possible in them and increase enrollments with inbound It is outbound marketing. This is because, contrary to what many people think, the methodologies are not exclusive but complementary.
The advancement of digital marketing and new ways of communicating in an online environment have made the idea of attracting students with inbound marketing become quite popular among educational institutions.
However, inbound is not always enough and may not even be the best choice for a given situation. Therefore, it is important that your educational institution learn how to combine methodologies and also bet on attracting students with outbound marketing.
Good learning!What can you expect to find in this post?
Why combine inbound and outbound marketing
How to combine inbound marketing and outbound marketing
Inbound and outbound strategies to attract more students to the educational institution
Why combine inbound and outbound marketing
As you may already know, inbound marketing is a consumer-centric approach, that is, potential students, while outbound focuses on the company's brand.educational institution and in their courses.
Over the last few years, inbound has gained more prominence because it is a less invasive way of attracting the attention of students, following the idea of delivering content to them that corresponds to their interests and needs. In other words, inbound marketing presents your institution as being useful, capable of adding value to the student's life.
With this in mind, attracting students with inbound marketing is an idea that consumes a large part of educational institutions' marketing budget. This may also be associated with the negative connotation given to outbound. But it is possible and necessary to better balance the situation.
The most direct and even "invasive" profile of outbound marketing is what makes this approach faster results compared to inbound. So, if there is a potential student ready to receive an invitation to sign up for a course at an educational institution, there is no reason to passively guide them through the entire consumer journey and spend time and resources on it.
How to combine inbound marketing and outbound marketing
How to find out if a student is ready to apply and become a student at your educational institution? There are contacts that show this very clearly, for example, when this student sends a message via social media, an email or starts a conversation in the online chat on the institution's website asking how to register.
We know, however, that this situation does not always occur and it is up to educational institutions to identify the right time to take a more direct approach, aiming to attract students with outbound marketing.
A few years ago, text messages or telemarketing calls were sent and made almost randomly to the institution's contact list, but this no longer needs to be the case. Now, thanks to the different data collection and analysis tools, commonly used due to inbound strategies, its educational institution has information that can be very useful for outbound.
By monitoring potential students, the institution's leads, it is possible to identify which ones are at a stage of the journey that is conducive to more direct contact and carry out better audience segmentation. Something that contributes to the effectiveness of outbound action and, of course, to increase enrollments with inbound and outbound marketing.
Explore Further:
- 4 offline marketing strategies to attract more students;
- Integrated marketing: how to unite online and offline actions;
- Inbound and outbound marketing: understand the differences.
Inbound and outbound strategies to attract more students to the educational institution
To understand how to increase enrollments with inbound and outbound marketing, follow the sequence of actions that serve as an example of what can be done by your educational institution:
Content and posts on social media (organic and sponsored)
Quality content is essential to attract students with inbound marketing. These are relevant blog posts with proper SEO optimization that help your institution appear prominently on the page of Google results when a student makes a search on, for example, "Tips for studying for the entrance exam".
This same content can be shared by educational institutions in your social media, organically or even through sponsored posts, aiming to increase the reach of this publication. Something that is related to attracting students with outbound marketing and means complementing the inbound strategy with traditional marketing action.
Lead nurturing
Once the student accesses the sponsored post link to read the content on the institution's blog, they can find a CTA that invites them to download an e-book presented as "The Infallible Guide to preparing for the entrance exam", with tips that go beyond those already presented.
To download the ebook, the student needs to provide contact information to the educational institution, creating space for sending marketing emails with new content that guide potential students on their journey to enrollment. The idea is to prepare you to receive direct contact from the institution, with a view to completing your registration. You can better understand this process by reading this post: Lead qualification in education: how to do it?
Telemarketing e whatsapp
Throughout the lead nurturing process, the educational institution identifies which students are eligible to receive a call from the sales team or a whatsapp message with a link to register for the course of interest, for example.
It is important to note that, from the student's first contact with the institution until enrollment, the journey is not linear, nor is it the same for everyone. Therefore, some potential students take less time to be ready to make their decision to study in their educational institution, and it is in these situations that outbound accelerates the capture process.
Conclusion
Relying on just one of the two strategies can make the process take too long or simply undermine the relationship between educational institutions with your potential students.
In practice, it is easier to understand how the ideas of attracting students with inbound marketing or recruiting them with outbound are related and complement each other.
And to follow the strategies presented or develop others more suitable for your institution, you need to keep in mind that increasing enrollments with inbound and outbound marketing only works when it is understood as a methodology additionally the other. And that's exactly what we tried to show in this post.
Did you like the post, but still have questions about how to combine inbound and outbound marketing to increase enrollment? Enter in contact and find out how 4RevOps can help!
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