It's not enough to have one budget to invest in marketing. The use of resources must be well done and always seeking the best results in an optimized way.
Digital marketing has established itself as one of the main pillars of educational institutions’ recruitment and relationship strategies. According to a Carnegie report, investment in digital actions has grown significantly in recent years, driven by the transformations brought about by the pandemic and the new demands of the student public. Instead of representing a small fraction of the budget — as was the case in the past — digital marketing now occupies a strategic space, with most institutions expanding their resources to online campaigns, paid media, SEO, content and data, seeking greater efficiency and measurable results.
With the advancement of global digitalization, countries such as the United States, China, and the United Kingdom are leading investments in the digital market, driving transformation in the relationship between brands and consumers. Although Brazil is not yet among the largest markets in terms of investment volume, the constant growth of the digital sector in the country makes it essential for educational institutions to invest in online strategies to strengthen brand presence, generate relationships with leads, and boost student recruitment.
Obviously, we cannot forget that content is one of the key pillars of inbound marketing: one of the best and most efficient ways to optimize your financial resources is to invest in organic content.
However, using more resources is ideal, however, you must set this budget strategically. The first step is to analyze which were the sales of each of the courses, identifying the growth rate in the number of students and the targets for increasing the number of enrolled students.
Next, make an estimate of the institution's revenue per course sold and general maintenance expenses, thus verifying how much is left over to invest in attracting new students.
With the budget defined, it's time to plan your actions and to help you with that, here are some tips that will contribute to your planning and boost your marketing results!
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It is essential to understand the current situation of the teaching. Make an analysis of the courses with less demand, which have had more students enrolled and which have fewer, and identify opportunities to change the scenario.
Using data analysis tools, such as Google Analytics, allows for a deeper understanding of student and potential student behavior, helping to identify areas that require greater investment or restructuring.
It is also important to check how the competition is doing. Here, the intention is to find out if the problems faced are unique to your institution or it is a market situation as a whole.
After identifying your institution's needs, it's time to outline your goals and objectives, always considering your priorities.
Setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely) makes it easier to monitor progress and the effectiveness of the strategies implemented.
Each goal drawn must have a different action. Therefore, the strategy must be thought of for each achievement: are the enrollment low? Is the student dropout rate high? Are there courses with low demand?
That way, your efforts will be focused on solving these problems. Campaigns should be developed for a specific audience and objective, as this greatly facilitates the achievement of positive results.
With the goals and objectives defined, it's time to see which actions are already planned to be achieved.
The team should do this analysis and assess whether it is necessary to make news, create a website, update the persona, change the language of social networks, produce more content, such as to the target audience, etc.
Don't forget to consider a certain period to carry out each action, as well as designate a budget for each one of them and then measure the results, to know the real value of the investment.
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It's crucial to find out what works best to boost your activation. For example, the use of Inbound Marketing has been very effective for universities to attract more students.
This is a result of the quest to build a relationship with a potential student from the moment he starts his search for a course.
In this way, information about the educational institution is brought to the student in a natural way, without forcing the sale so much.
Through quality content and a well-targeted strategy, the student discovers more about the college and increases his interest and, consequently, the chances of choosing the institution to conduct his studies.
This marketing strategy is worked on together with the sales team, accompanying the student's purchase journey. In this way, the resource employed is well directed, dedicating efforts to a goal that is easier to achieve.
Therefore, it becomes an effective way to optimize educational marketing spend.
Digital marketing offers multiple tools and opportunities, and monitoring your results is essential to know if you are on the right path or if the strategy should be reassessed.
It is important to have systems that facilitate processes to monitor the data and results of the entire campaign developed, integrating softwares, Platforms, and Analytics all in one place.
Another tool that can help you optimize resources in the medium and long term and still offer a range of extremely necessary information regarding your customer journey, is the Hubspot!
This is a CRM developed with a focus on inbound, which will help you enormously to get more results and optimize time with manual activities.
As important as knowing how to use the available budget in the best way, it is to bet on measures that help to reduce costs of marketing, because that way, the organization will have a greater profit.
However, this does not mean that it is necessary to cut costs on strategies that are working or avoid betting on new plans that have a great chance of bringing results to the EI. Here, the main tip is to know how to use money intelligently.
Another crucial point that will make your marketing budget well spent is ensuring that your marketing strategy is being done equally across all communication channels. With this, it is possible to standardize the message that is being passed to your public.
In addition, the communication alignment of your company's channels will allow it to have a coherent and standardized tone of voice and service. After all, imagine the confusion it would be for a user to receive information by email, but a totally different service in the inbox of a social network.
If that plan is no longer giving you the results you expect, it's time to let go of it. After all, it's interesting to keep in mind that a strategy that has worked several times before is not a guarantee that it will always work.
Therefore, it is very important to carry out a constant analysis of the metrics related to investments in the marketing budget, so that this area is always aligned with what is most yielding results for your institution at that moment.
In short: to optimize your marketing budget, you must diagnose the area, determine your objectives, direct resources, use good tools, invest in cost reduction, align strategies across all channels and let go of what doesn’t work more.
That way, by putting these tips into practice on how to optimize your marketing budget, you'll be able to increase your results in this area and, at the same time, save money!
Want to know how to further optimize your marketing budget? Invest in lead scoring!
Start with a detailed diagnosis. Analyze course performance, student demand, and competitor positioning to uncover areas of improvement and hidden opportunities.
SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely) help guide actions, track performance, and ensure each strategy is aligned with a clear objective.
Inbound marketing and organic content strategies are cost-effective and help build long-term relationships with potential students throughout their decision journey.
Use platforms like Google Analytics for behavior tracking and HubSpot CRM for campaign automation, performance monitoring, and resource optimization.
Yes. Unified messaging across email, social media, and websites strengthens your brand identity and improves communication efficiency with leads and students.
When a strategy stops delivering expected results, let it go. Regularly evaluate metrics to ensure your budget is focused on actions that truly convert.
Focus on automation, analytics, and organic content. Reallocate budget from underperforming tactics to high-impact areas and test new channels gradually.