As you may already know, digital marketing and inbound marketing. They have opened up many avenues for communication between an educational institution and its public, especially online. But, and offline, which marketing strategies for colleges to use?
Outbound marketing for educational institutions can be used to improve your offline communication educational institution and in this post, we're going to show you how to do it.
What you will see in the post today:
How to think about outbound marketing for your educational institution
Bet on omnichannel communication
As you will see, more than rescuing traditional marketing actions, we will show how your institution can innovate and present these actions in a more appropriate way for the current public. The idea, therefore, is to leave the commonplace and make the educational institutions make the best use of the resources you have to communicate and attract new students.
How to think about outbound marketing for your company educational institution
Before we present some strategies for outbound marketing for educational institutions, we will explain why to do this and what your institution of teaching needs to consider to develop successful actions and campaigns.
Traditional means of communication ― such as TV, radio, pamphlets and busdoors ― continue to be relevant and can generate good results for attracting students if used well. Something that could be very interesting for your institution, especially considering that the competition for attention in the digital environment becomes fiercer every day.
For your offline communication strategies to be successful, your educational institution can (and should) use the data that is collected thinking about strategies for inbound marketing. Everything that indicates your audience's preferred language, as well as their interests and needs, contributes to making your message, even offline, more assertive and more likely to generate results.
Bet on omnichannel communication
Furthermore, in your educational institution you need to understand that your audience, made up of potential students, as well as consumers in general, are omnichannel. And this means that students use multiple channels to communicate with the institution before enrolling. You can understand more about the subject by reading the post Omnichannel consumer journey is essential in attracting students.
Here, the most important thing is to know that the outbound marketing in Education can be related and make connections between the offline and online universe, increasing the effectiveness of their actions.
What is expected from an omnichannel service is that the student who sends an email to their educational institution, for example, you do not need to go over all the information already mentioned if this service continues via telephone. The idea is to ensure continuity and make the conversation flow even if contact is established through different channels.
With this in mind, your institution can use an offline action as the starting point for this conversation and continue it online. Furthermore, making a contact initiated online rely on offline communication to evolve and culminate in new enrollments.
Further Reading:
- Learn how to generate leads online and offline;
- Offline lead generation: 4 strategies you can’t miss;
- Integrated marketing: how to unite online and offline actions.
Ideas for outbound strategies in practice
So that you understand more clearly how to use marketing strategies for colleges and improve offline communication at your educational institution, we present some examples below.
As you will see, these are just a few ideas that indicate that it is possible to use creativity to get out of the ordinary and give a boost to your image.educational institution. Check it out below:
Radio advert + online action
Even though Youtube and streaming services are successful among music lovers, there are still good radio stations aimed at young audiences and which, therefore, can be taken advantage of for their educational institution.
This way, your institution can pay to advertise on a radio that has the right profile. The message may indicate that the student contacts via WhatsApp or accesses the school's website.educational institution/ your Facebook page for more information.
In fact, this is one of the marketing strategies for colleges which is already known, but which can be improved. It is interesting that, when accessing the indicated channel, the student has access to an exclusive message or promotion, different from that seen by those who arrive at the educational institution by other sources. A point that can even be announced on the radio as an advantage for the listener who contacts your institution.
Pamphlet + QR code
Flying near where students enter and exit high schools is a strategy of the outbound marketing in Education already well known and used by higher education institutions.
To achieve a good result with this action, your educational institution needs to rely on data to use the right language and, of course, create a piece that is visually appealing. But it is possible to go further!
An interesting option is to make the pamphlet contain a QR code that can be read via a mobile app. This code can be programmed to open a page on the company's website.educational institution, blog, a sign-up form, or other type of content.
Young people generally know how to use this technology well and could easily access extra information that is related to that read in the pamphlet they received.
Online actions + telemarketing
On our blog, we published the post “Telemarketing Does it still work to attract students?”. In it, we tell you that telephone contact can generate good results if carried out with qualified leads, that is, with students who are ready to enroll with the educational institution.
So, we’re not talking about randomly calling every potential student on your contact list. The idea is to identify, through data collection based on the online relationship established by the institution, which of the leads are at the ideal time to receive a call from the sales team.
It is important to remember that communication needs to be omnichannel. So there's no point in educational institutions using the information you have just to know who to call. Each student's data should be used to drive the conversation, as if the salesperson was part of their journey from the beginning.
In fact, there is automation software, such as HubSpot, which has among its functionalities and characteristics a complete candidate timeline. What is the advantage of this? Allow agents an overview of the journey and the best possible approach during the call, since they have the entire interaction history of the person concerned.
Example: educational institutions call a student who expressed interest in the Law course by searching and reading content related to this degree. In addition, he sent an email asking for information about the institution's financing programs. Telephone contact must be right and continue from there, talking about the dates and prices of the course of interest, in addition to guiding the student towards closing their enrollment, already knowing how to obtain financing.
In conclusion, it is worth saying that the outbound marketing for educational institutions does not need to be adopted independently of your company’s other marketing strategies. Unlike that, it can be linked to them to obtain better results.
Did you like the post? Read too: 4 offline marketing strategies to attract more students
Portugal