Get 2020 vision for your January planning sessions
As you enter into your inevitable January planning sessions determined to find ways to innovate and prepare for the upcoming recruiting push, consider these top marketing trends and opportunities for your school.
Video
As you scroll through your feed, you may notice more and more videos. Whether they are animated, organic videos shot with a GoPro or professionally done snippets, video is now king in social media marketing. And many websites are even using video as a way to replace longer content narratives. Video is becoming imperative in higher ed because of the personal scale connection required for large buying decisions like a degree.
The opportunity: Find ways to integrate video into your marketing strategy, vary your content and don’t sacrifice production quality.
Influencer Marketing
In the past, you may have thought of an influencer as a celebrity or a high-profile executive. But on Facebook and Instagram, anyone can be an influencer. And social feeds are cluttered with people telling you what to buy, do and even think. Sometimes it can be hard to determine if what you are seeing is an ad, an endorsement or simply someone giving a recommendation for a product they like. Influencer marketing can be extremely lucrative, but also risky because of the personal implications. It is less controlled because it is tied to someone’s personal opinions. On the other hand, if an influencer has sway with your target, it could be a solid strategy. Just be sure to select well.
The opportunity: Think of influencers in a non-traditional way. Could an alum or professor be an influencer?
Blogs
The evolution of the blog in recent years has rendered it one of the single most important ways to boost your organic website viewership. When written well, with abundant and well-placed keywords and search terms, blogs can create well-qualified traffic to your website. Their value also extends into thought leadership and general education. Adding a blog or re-imagining your current blog can pay dividends.
The opportunity: Research trends in education each month and write about them using the top keywords. Recency is key so be sure to capitalize on what’s trending while also relating it to your school and website content.
SEO
Writing keyword-rich content is no longer an option. SEO can give your website higher rankings on search engines that can translate directly into more traffic. If you are unsure about how to get started, a qualified firm can help you conduct an audit of your current site and give you recommendations for improvement.
The opportunity: Research keywords to find out what is trending in competitive searches. Incorporate those words into your website content and increase your organic traffic.
If you’re looking for ways to innovate in your upcoming strategy sessions, GPRS can help you keep up on the digital marketing trends and customize your communication for your prospects.
An age-old debate in higher ed is whether to focus on quality or quantity of leads to obtain the right amount of applicants, and ultimately, seated students.
When you ask any marketing or admissions team member what their key goals are for the coming year, almost all of them have these two at the top of the list: increase quality/quantity of leads, and increase enrollment. And many will follow up with the statement that they will be relying more heavily on digital advertising to help them reach these goals.
Did you know that the average working adult receives 121 emails per day? But the average click through rate is 3.1%* — meaning that people tend to only read through and take action on about 2-3 emails per day. Not to mention, many are only viewing those emails on a 2-3″ wide phone screen. So, in a world where spam is dominant and your leads are prioritizing what they choose to read, it’s your job to differentiate your communications with personalized email. And if you are an educational institution, it’s likely you are not just competing with spam/work/personal messages, but also other colleges or universities your prospects are exploring.
The mobile first website design strategy suggests a paradigm shift from traditional website development – to design for users that are viewing your content on a phone or tablet vs. people that are sitting at a computer digging into the details.
Three of the top types of content in higher ed right now are infographics, videos and blogs. This may not come as a surprise considering prospects are seeking quick, bite-sized pieces of information they can consume while on the go. But how do you create and curate this type of content that is meaningful to your audience while on a budget and with limited time?
Data can be your most powerful marketing resource. But using it can also become one of your biggest challenges if you’re not used to working with statistics, crunching numbers or harnessing large amounts of information to make informed marketing decisions. Here are some simple ways to start using data to strengthen your marketing campaigns, regardless of your comfort with data visualization tools.
Say you’re aimlessly scrolling through social media or you’re on your favorite news site and all of a sudden, you see it – the thing you’ve been waiting for. It’s going to change your life. It’s the price you want. So really, it’s perfect. You must buy it right away. You click on the link while anxiously reaching for your credit card. The link takes you to the company’s homepage and you scroll and scroll. You may even click over to another page looking for the very product you wanted. It’s not there. At this point, you’re frustrated and less likely to buy.
You don’t have to be a marketing pro to notice that video ads are taking the digital advertising world by storm. It is likely that 50% of your social media feed is populated with videos or that a friend or colleague has recently shared a video with you on their phone or computer screen. Although video advertising can work for any company in any industry, it’s becoming imperative in the higher ed world because of the personal scale connection required for large buying decisions like a degree.
In higher ed marketing, a competitive analysis can help you gain insight into program trends, offerings and innovations. You can even determine how your competitors are creating their messaging to prospects and channels they are using. But if you’re not in their market it may be harder to gather intel. If you’re like many schools, you may have missing pieces of the puzzle like how peer schools are marketing and on what channels. You may even be wondering what they’re spending, how many leads they’re getting and where their students are coming from (hopefully it’s not your backyard). Wouldn’t it be great to have a marketing partner that has all of these answers, and more?
