Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | April 30th, 2024

How to Differentiate Your MBA Program

In a post-pandemic world, MBA program enrollment competition is fierce. To stand out among your competitors and meet your enrollment goals, you must have a bulletproof value proposition that is fully integrated into your content marketing strategies. Your institution’s value proposition, however, may not always fit the bill for adult learners who have busy schedules, prioritize flexibility, and value clear, tangible career outcomes. A combination of storytelling and data-driven strategy can help you differentiate your MBA program and institution, address the specific challenges of your prospective students, and exceed your enrollment goals.

Share your student success stories to differentiate your MBA program

Graduate success stories can help prospective students visualize themselves achieving the same or similar accomplishments by completing your program. This approach leaves prospects with a positive impression of the student experience, helps them justify the cost-to-benefit ratio, and can make your program stand out among your competitors’ generic marketing materials. You can help connect prospects with graduate outcomes through:

Website, direct mail, and social media testimonials that celebrate graduate success stories, new titles or roles, and other professional achievements.
Recruitment event Q&A sessions where prospects can ask graduates candid questions about their program experiences, their employability after graduation, and why they chose this specific program among a sea of competitors.

Graduates who have been asked to share their positive program experiences are also more likely to re-share their feature stories through their social media channels, are more willing to connect with prospects organically, and often feel honored to be asked to participate. It’s a win-win for everyone and can differentiate your MBA program!

Make sure your strategy is data informed

While student success stories foster emotional connections with your prospects, it’s equally as important that your strategy and brand story are also driven by data – especially in a hyper-competitive market with rising costs and waning budgets. It’s crucial to elevate your program’s specific skills, knowledge, and outcomes, of course, but applying sophisticated data analysis to your enrollment strategy can take your brand value a level above the competition. A data-informed marketing strategy can:

Highlight your program’s ROI through data points that directly address an adult learner’s unique needs, wants, and concerns.
Elevate your engagement and conversion rates while tailoring your efforts to prospects’ individual needs through personalization and timing.
Give you a competitive advantage over programs that aren’t as familiar with the specific needs of your prospective students.
Help your marketing efforts remain nimble throughout the cycle by providing real-time feedback about your current results compared to historical data.
Enable you to measure the effectiveness of your current marketing strategies and set realistic goals for the enrollment year and beyond.

Aligning your enrollment strategy with current market trends and data-informed goals drives engagement, produces results, keeps your budget in check, and helps your program’s unique value stand out.

Are you ready to differentiate your MBA program and optimize your enrollment strategy? Contact GPRS today and we can help you leverage our resources and experience.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | April 17th, 2024

Top Graduate School Myths in 2024

Higher education, including graduate schools, sometimes gets a bad rap. All too often, prospective students assume graduate school isn’t for them because of some persistent myths and skepticism about higher education. However, higher education institutions can dispel these graduate school myths by communicating their value to prospects clearly and effectively.

Here are three common myths that grad schools should address with their marketing content to put prospects’ minds at ease.

1. Grad schools aren’t worth the investment

One of the biggest misconceptions about grad schools (and higher education in general) nowadays is that it isn’t worth the investment.

On the contrary, obtaining a Master’s Degree translates into $3.2 million in lifetime earnings compared to $2.8 million in lifetime earnings for a Bachelor’s Degree holder. MBA graduates from the top 50 business schools in the United States, more specifically, will see a staggering $5.7 million in lifetime earnings.

Clearly, obtaining a graduate-level degree is worth the investment. To counter the myth that grad schools aren’t worth students’ time and money, higher education institutions should focus their marketing messaging and content around the value that an advanced degree brings to help prospects see that their hard work and financial investment in grad school is worth it.

2. Grad school is unaffordable

While it’s true that graduate school isn’t cheap, many financial aid resources exist to help students pay for the cost.

Loans, grants, scholarships, and academic fellowships are readily available to help students lower their tuition and overall grad school costs. In some cases, grad programs at certain institutions are fully funded, meaning that students graduate essentially debt-free. Plus, it’s important to remember that graduate degree recipients enjoy higher lifetime earnings compared to those without them, meaning that even though their initial upfront investment may be higher, the long-term financial payoff is worth it.

For graduate schools like yours, it’s important to communicate these financial resources in your marketing materials as a way to entice prospective students and convey that, even though the upfront costs may seem intimidating, financial help is available in many forms.

3. A full-time job makes it impossible to attend graduate school

Finally, another graduate school myth worth dispelling is that having a full-time job makes it virtually impossible to attend school at the same time.

This myth lies in the common misconception that graduate school is the same as college when it comes to time investment. However, the truth is that the vast majority of graduate schools tailor their programs with working professionals already in mind. That means that classes are more sporadic, often meeting just once or twice a week, and typically in the evening hours or on weekends to accommodate working professionals. In addition, many grad schools have increasingly adopted hybrid and remote options in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, offering even more flexibility for grad school students.

To boost enrollment, it’s important for grad schools to bust this myth in particular. Marketing content in the form of blog posts, landing pages, social media posts, email communications, infographics, videos, and more are all ways to convey the flexibility and student-friendly options that current grad school programs offer.

Convey value to prospects to debunk graduate school myths

While it’s no secret that higher education, including grad schools, has faced strong headwinds due to factors like rising costs and alternative career options for prospects, their future is still bright. By working to dispel these common graduate school myths, schools can position their marketing campaigns for success and stand a better chance of converting prospects into students.

Looking to boost your conversions and optimize your marketing efforts? Contact GPRS today to find out how we can help.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | March 26th, 2024

How to Grow Enrollment in Your Specialized MBA Program

Specialized MBA programs remain a popular option for graduate school students, but growing enrollment can be difficult. It’s no secret that competition for prospects is fierce and finding the right recruits can be tricky, so higher education institutions need to implement the right strategies and best practices to grow enrollment in your specialized MBA program.

Here, we’ll take a closer look at some of them to help you boost your enrollment. With these strategies, your institution can leverage tried-and-true ways to help attract and retain the right graduate school prospects for years to come.

Take a digital-first approach to marketing

When it comes to marketing, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve.

Many higher education institutions still don’t utilize digital marketing and advertising to their full potential. Make sure that your institution fully embraces digital marketing, including various social media channels to attract and engage with prospects, personalized email communications, a frequently-updated blog, and paid search and social ads targeted specifically to your audience.

Emphasize all of your flexible learning options that are available

These days, specialized MBA prospects value flexibility and choice. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic made online and hybrid learning the norm in many ways for students nowadays. Embrace this change by highlighting any flexible and remote learning options your program offers in your marketing content, as it can pay dividends over the long-term.

Create detailed personas

Data-driven, detailed personas can play a key role in your marketing efforts too.

As specialized MBA prospects differ from traditional graduate students in a number of ways, understanding their specific demographics, pain points, and goals is crucial. To that end, creating personas can help you craft the right marketing materials for your audience. This can be done by carefully analyzing your current student database and conducting surveys and focus groups to obtain the data you need before creating in-depth personas tailored to your specialized MBA audience for your marketing campaigns.

Stress the value of a specialized MBA

It’s also a good idea to emphasize the value of a specialized MBA from your institution.

Stress that a specialized MBA is worth a prospect’s time and money as an investment in their future. This can be done by leveraging data available on statistics like lifetime earnings, job prospects after graduation, career satisfaction, and the like in your marketing content.

Data-driven infographics and short-form videos work especially well in this regard since they convey large amounts of data in a visual and engaging way, though longer, more in-depth content like blog posts can also work. Whatever marketing channel you choose, be sure to demonstrate the value of your program to prospects clearly, concisely, and effectively for maximum impact.

Humanize your marketing with student testimonials and alumni success stories

Finally, humanizing your marketing with testimonials and success stories can help create better engagement and personalization with your prospects, boosting conversions.

This is a great way to tell a story and communicate the value of your specialized MBA programs in a unique way that helps connect prospects with their peers in your programs. Blog posts are a good marketing channel for these, but the most effective way is generally through video marketing. Videos can easily be distributed via social media, email newsletters, your website, and even paid ads, greatly amplifying their reach to your target audience.

Grow enrollment in your Specialized MBA today for success tomorrow

Specialized MBA programs face tough competition for students, but with these tested strategies, you can successfully grow enrollment. When implemented, they can help supercharge your marketing funnel and bring in a steady stream of prospects over the long run.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | February 27th, 2024

What Do Grad Students Want in 2024?

As 2024 dawns, higher education institutions all across the country are hard at work preparing for the next wave of graduate school students with marketing and recruitment efforts. But what do grad students really want in 2024?

In order to recruit and retain the next class of students in 2024 and beyond, it’s important to have a strong grasp of their pain points, needs, concerns, values, and goals to successfully produce the marketing materials needed to connect with them. Here, we’ll take a more detailed look at what prospective graduate school students really want so you can better craft content and messaging that connects with them.

Flexible courses

The COVID-19 pandemic made virtual and hybrid learning commonplace for students. Even though the pandemic has receded and virtual learning largely with it, today’s graduate school prospects still value flexibility. To that end, make sure that your programs offer online and hybrid class options and that this is effectively communicated via your marketing to show you know what grad students want in 2024.

A commitment to inclusion

Prospective students today value diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) more than ever. To attract them in 2024 and beyond, recommit to DEI initiatives at your institution, build diversity into your marketing efforts, and make sure that your prospects know about them through social media, email, blogging, and other marketing channels.

An eye on the future economy

Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders.

That means your institution needs to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to offering courses and classes relevant to the emerging economy. Make sure that you’re incorporating new trends like AI, robotics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, digital media, green energy, and the like into your curriculum, and communicate this to your prospects in your marketing materials.

Mental health support

Prospective students take mental health seriously. Don’t discount this – invest in mental health professionals at your institution and ensure that your students know that you value mental health as well.

Career readiness

Finally, emphasize career readiness at your institution too, not just gaining an advanced degree in and of itself.

All too often, graduate school students feel unprepared for the job market after graduating. However, your institution can make a difference for them through networking opportunities, job interview advice, internships, hands-on training, and other activities to maximize their employability after graduating.

Know what grad students want in 2024 to attract and retain students

The nature of prospective graduate school students is changing – will your institution change along with it?

By having a stronger grasp of how to connect with prospective students, you can tailor your content, marketing channels, and messaging to them more effectively. In turn, this can lead to improved recruitment and retention in 2024 and beyond despite a more challenging and complex educational landscape.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | January 30th, 2024

Paid Search Best Practices and Strategies for Grad Schools

Paid search ads (also known as pay-per-click, or PPC ads) can be a powerful marketing tool for graduate schools for many reasons. How so? Paid search best practices and strategies for grad schools allow for specific demographic targeting based on specific criteria, can be turned on to generate leads almost instantly, and offer a lot of flexibility when it comes to crafting your messaging and marketing goals, such as boosting brand awareness, generating demand, or bringing in more qualified leads.

All of that being said, it’s important to have a strong grasp of how paid search marketing works in order to use it the most effectively. Below, we’ll examine a few strategies and best practices in detail so you know how to effectively leverage it. Let’s take a look.

Research and understand your audience very carefully

Before actually launching any paid search campaigns, always conduct thorough research of your target audience and understand their goals, demographics, and pain points.

This may seem obvious, but all too often paid search campaigns are launched by schools, businesses, and organizations without a clear understanding of who exactly they’re targeting. As a result, many of them waste their time and money on ineffective campaigns. To avoid this, have a strong grasp of who you want to target and for what reasons before budgeting for any paid search campaigns.

Conduct thorough keyword research

Conducting extensive keyword research is also crucial.

Focus on high-volume, relevant keywords with user intent in mind. For example, focusing on a general keyword like “MBA” is too vague and will likely result in squandering your budget, but targeting keywords like “best schools for an EMBA” are much more likely to connect you to the right target audience that’s seeking the programs you’re offering.

By targeting these longtail keywords based on user intent, your campaign will more effectively target the right audience and more effectively funnel leads directly into your specific programs.

A/B test consistently and for many variables

A/B testing is a great way to determine what’s working most effectively in your campaigns and help you optimize them by leveraging this information.

When A/B testing, focus on variables like ad copy, keywords, landing pages, calls-to-action (CTAs), and visuals in both the ad if applicable and landing page. The more information you can glean from A/B testing, the better optimized your campaigns will be, leading to higher conversions without wasting precious dollars.

Determine your goals and KPIs

Setting up specific goals and KPIs early on is critical too.

Without a clear goal and KPIs to track in mind, your campaign will be aimless and end up wasting a lot of time and money. Instead, map out what your specific goals are and the metrics needed to track them before launching a campaign. For example, you may want to set a goal of increasing leads 25% before the start of the next semester. Whatever your goals and KPIs are, be sure that everyone on your team is aware of them and is working towards them with the correct metrics and timelines in mind.

Avoid contact forms that are too long and complex

Finally, avoid contact forms that are too long and complex for your ad landing pages.

While paid ads are great for generating leads and increasing conversions, your efforts may go to waste if your landing page contact forms are too long, overly complex, and invasive in terms of privacy. Instead, keep your contact forms simple, concise, and avoid asking for too much personal information, as many people may be reluctant to give that out early on.

Leverage paid search best practices and strategies for success

By keeping these paid search best practices and strategies for grad schools in mind, you can better optimize your paid search campaigns for your grad school programs. Whatever your goals are, paid search can be a powerful tool when it comes to accomplishing them – if you do it well!

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | January 17th, 2024

Effective Grad School Email Marketing

Although social media has been all the rage over the past few years when it comes to marketing to prospective graduate school students, email remains a very cost-effective and reliable method for communicating with prospects. As with all forms of marketing, email marketing has changed a lot over the years, meaning that higher education institutions need to know the current best practices and strategies to ensure that they’re using it effectively for grad school email marketing.

So, let’s examine some email marketing tips for higher education institutions to help supercharge your marketing campaigns!

Segmentation and automation are key

When email marketing to prospects, be sure to segment your campaigns based on factors like funnel stage, anticipated start date, and persona match. This way, you can better tailor your messaging and content to the right audience simply and effectively. Using automation tools like HubSpot or Constant Contact is something else to keep in mind, allowing you to fully automate your campaigns so you can focus on strategy, creating content, and other more productive tasks as opposed to time-consuming manual work.

Personalization is a must in grad school email marketing

Likewise, personalization is key nowadays too.

A mass email addressed to prospects is unlikely to get their attention, but including the specific names of individual recipients in the subject line and body is a simple yet effective way to increase open rates and conversions. Similarly, including the signature of an actual staff member, such as the Dean or Director of Recruitment, can add an additional personalized touch to each email, creating a human connection with prospects.

Optimize for all devices

When email marketing first started in the 1990s, marketers only had to worry about how their emails looked on desktops. Today, the media landscape is much more diverse, with recipients regularly checking emails on their smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other devices.

To that end, make sure that your emails are fully optimized for all devices, especially mobile. This can be done with thorough testing to ensure that your content reaches its recipients visually represented like you wanted it to.

Ensure brand consistency in email marketing

Consistent branding and imagery is important when designing your emails so that the recipient can identify your institution quickly and easily. Including your logo, branding colors, and a consistent voice can build trust and a stronger connection with your prospects more effectively.

Convey engaging stories to your prospects

Finally, use email marketing as a storytelling medium to boost engagement with your prospects.

Email can be used to convey student and alumni success stories, testimonials, interviews, and other forms of content that focus on personal stories. Doing so is a great way to add a personalized, human touch to your program, boosting engagement and conversion rates in the process.

Use grad school email marketing to reach and engage prospects

Indeed, email marketing may not be new or flashy, but it’s a tried-and-true marketing channel that continues to pay off today – and for years to come. By using these grad school email marketing strategies and best practices, you’ll be able to better reach and engage prospects with valuable and useful content, boosting your recruitment efforts over the long term.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | October 31st, 2023

Grad school demand generation best practices and strategies

You’ve launched brand awareness and lead generation marketing campaigns in the past for your institution, but something still seems a bit off in your marketing strategy. Are you taking grad school demand generation best practices and strategies into account?

As graduate schools face an increasingly complex marketing landscape trying to reach, engage, and ultimately recruit prospective students, it’s important to take demand generation into account, not just traditional metrics like brand awareness and lead generation. Let’s examine what demand generation is and take a closer look at some demand strategies and best practices to keep in mind for your recruitment marketing campaigns.

What is demand generation?

Demand generation is a marketing strategy that educates and informs consumers about products and services with the ultimate goal of creating demand for them.

It’s similar to both brand awareness and lead generation, but differs in some key ways. While brand awareness focuses on establishing a brand’s presence and lead generation attracts prospects, demand generation centers on creating measurable demand. You might want to think of it as filling in the gap between brand awareness and lead generation, serving as a bridge to generate demand for products and services that consumers are aware of. Ultimately, using all three approaches for an integrated marketing strategy is typically your best bet for success.

Boosting grad school demand: Focus on the “why?”

At the core of demand generation is answering “why?”

Why should consumers buy a product, use a service or, in this case, attend your graduate school? To determine this, take a step back and ask some high-level questions about your institution itself. What are the main reasons why a prospect would want to attend? How would attending your institution advance the career of a prospect? What’s its history and culture?

Once you have the answers to these questions and can better articulate your value proposition to prospects, you’ll be in a better position to create demand generation content.

Create educational content that engages

Educational content to spark consumer demand is a key pillar of any demand generation strategy. Specifically, the content you produce should focus on conveying your value proposition clearly and concisely to educate consumers about your institution’s selling points and ultimately turn them into leads.

Many formats are effective at doing this, including blog posts, videos, case studies, landing pages, newsletters, and more. Be sure to also leverage email marketing and social media channels, especially LinkedIn, to distribute your educational content quickly and effectively to your target audience.

Personalizing communications is an important demand generation strategy

Personalized communications are another important demand generation strategy to keep in mind. Make sure that all of your email communications, newsletters, flyers, and other marketing collateral address prospects by their first name to create a more humanized, personal touch.

Create lead scoring models to boost grad school demand

Creating a lead scoring model can be an effective way to gauge where prospects are in your sales and marketing cycle and tailor the next phase of your messaging and marketing channels specifically to them. For demand generation specifically, they’re often a great way to measure the success of your efforts so far, gauge what’s working and what’s not, and craft a more personalized, bespoke form of messaging for individuals in your funnel.

Use these grad school demand generation best practices today for success

Understanding what demand generation is and some strategies to employ it can help supercharge your recruitment marketing efforts, filling in the missing link between brand awareness and lead generation.

Are you looking to boost your demand generation efforts and overall recruitment marketing strategy? Contact GPRS today to leverage our expertise for your institution!

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | August 30th, 2023

Proven Graduate School Engagement Tactics

The competition for graduate school program and MBA recruits has always been tough. Many times, higher education institutions focus on building awareness and generating leads first and foremost – and rightfully so. However, there’s more to it than just that if you want to convert these leads into actual graduate students. Our proven graduate school engagement tactics can help.

Generating inquiries is key, but keeping leads engaged and interested is even more important. By failing to do this, your marketing funnel campaigns will fall flat, with very few leads ultimately becoming students. However, many prospect engagement strategies exist to keep your grad school and MBA programs front and center, boosting the chances that they’ll stay interested and ultimately convert. Let’s take a look at some proven graduate school engagement tactics.

Focusing on value is one of the proven graduate school engagement tactics

First and foremost, prioritize bringing valuable content to your target audience. By showing your program’s value with engaging and informative content, you can better convey your unique value props to prospects and keep them interested. This can be done in a number of ways, including blog posts, whitepapers, social media, videos, infographics, and more.

That being said, it’s important to focus not just on your own program, but the benefits for your prospective students. How will your programs help change the trajectory of their careers? Will they make connections? What will be their long-term benefits financially? By answering these questions in your content, you can convey value and entice your prospects to learn more.

Interact on social media to engage with graduate prospects

Engaging with prospects on social media is another crucial strategy to use. Sure, social media is a great way to bring valuable content to your audience quickly and efficiently, but don’t forget to engage and interact with them too!

Answer their questions and comments, hold Q&A sessions, conduct polls, and try to interact as much as possible with your audience as opposed to just posting content. This way, you can convey a more human touch and improve engagement with your prospects in real time.

Personalize your marketing efforts to engage your audience

Personalization is key in marketing today, but all too often, some higher education institutions may forget this. Generic content to a mass audience just doesn’t cut it anymore – instead, personalize your email marketing campaigns, newsletters, direct mailers, and as many other forms of communication as possible to let your prospects know you understand them on a more personal level.

Understanding your audience is another one of the proven graduate school engagement tactics

Finally, make sure you understand your prospects so you can better craft your messaging to them. Conduct polls and focus groups, research extensively, and talk to them on a one-on-one basis in order to ascertain their pain points, goals, challenges, and other views in order to tell your story and serve them the most engaging and valuable content possible.

Improve prospect engagement today

Boosting engagement with prospects can seem difficult, but with these proven graduate school engagement tactics, you stand a much better chance at success. If you need help building a pipeline of leads and prospects for your grad school and MBA programs, contact GPRS today to see how you can leverage our experience and expertise as trusted higher education marketing experts.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | August 16th, 2023

Graduate School Lead Generation Strategies For Your Programs

Graduate school lead generation strategies are always at the top of the mind for higher education institutions – and for good reason too. Without a steady stream of leads, enrollment is sure to dry up.

But just what is the best way to go about this, particularly for graduate school and MBA programs? The good news is that plenty of strategies and best practices are readily available to help your institution generate new leads. Here’s a quick look at just a few of them.

Optimize your email workflows

Email marketing can be an excellent way to generate leads, but it’s important to do it effectively for the best results.

That means creating and optimizing email workflows that are triggered based on the actions taken by the recipient. For example, if you’re marketing an upcoming informational webinar, a workflow could include two or three follow-up emails to recipients who don’t sign up after the first email as reminders to them.

This is a great way to not only guide your leads along the marketing funnel automatically, but do it in a personalized and segmented way for maximum impact. By shifting from generic email content to personalized workflows, you can much more easily keep your leads warm and ultimately convert them.

Leverage LinkedIn to its full potential

LinkedIn is another great tool to use when it comes to graduate school lead generation strategies.

While posting informational content and enrollment deadlines are always good ideas, try to go beyond that for the best results. Position your institution as a thought leader and showcase the specifics of what’s happening at the school, such as guest speakers, alumni meetups, special events, and more. Message Ads and Sponsored Updates are especially useful features for getting quality content in front of leads quickly and effectively.

Invest in social media ads for graduate school lead generation

Similarly, paid social media advertising is yet another tested and proven strategy at your disposal.

By investing in paid ads on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and especially LinkedIn, you can get your most valuable content in front of users most likely to become inquiries, growing your lead pipeline with minimal cost and time. From promoting informational webinars and open house events to building an audience for your grad school’s blog, paid social media ads are an effective tool with lots of flexibility when it comes to graduate school lead generation.

Host virtual events

Nowadays, virtual events are widely accessible to just about anyone and offer a great alternative for prospective students who can’t attend in-person events. Just a few ideas include informational webinars, virtual open houses, conversations with current students and alumni, faculty meet-and-greets, and more. Given their low cost, wide reach, and many uses, virtual events should always be a lead generation strategy to keep in mind.

Implement graduate school lead generation strategies today for success tomorrow

With these graduate school lead generation strategies, your program can usher in a new generation of prospects and ultimately, grad school students. From higher education email marketing to higher education social media advertising, there’s a wide array of great tools readily available to bring in fresh leads on a daily basis. Need help with your grad school lead generation efforts? GPRS has the expertise you need to succeed. Contact us today to learn more.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | July 31st, 2023

Optimizing Your Top of the Funnel Recruitment Marketing Strategy

As an institution of higher education, attracting and recruiting new prospects is always top of mind. To do this, you first need to build awareness for your graduate school and MBA programs in a way that reaches your target audience efficiently and effectively. But what’s the best way to do just that?

Fortunately, there are many top of the funnel (TOFU) marketing channels and strategies at your disposal, each of which offers its own unique advantages and niche. With these strategies, your graduate program can generate awareness, provide information to your target audience, and bring in leads to nurture. Let’s examine a few of them in detail and learn more.

Increase your blog output and take search engine optimization (SEO) into account

First and foremost, your blog is a great tool when it comes to boosting your TOFU marketing strategy to build awareness and pique the interest of prospects. By blogging consistently and frequently, you can boost awareness for your graduate programs in search engines, convey valuable information to your audience, and boost your school’s authority and brand recognition.

As you ramp up blog post output, remember to keep SEO front and center as a way to optimize your content for search. That means researching and incorporating keywords into your blog posts, optimizing each blog post’s metatags, breaking up the content into brief paragraphs, bullet points, and numbered lists, and the like. By incorporating SEO best practices into your blog posts, you can supercharge your SEO and increase your grad program’s brand awareness very effectively.

Get active on social media

Social media is an outstanding tool for building brand awareness and engaging with potential prospects.

As today’s prospective grad school students are more digitally-engaged than ever, social media has become one of the most effective ways to reach them quickly and cost-effectively. When using social media marketing, it’s important to use an omnichannel approach that reaches as many social platforms as possible in order to reach your target audience. In other words, don’t just rely on LinkedIn, for example. Instead, leverage not only LinkedIn, but Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and more to maximize your reach.

That being said, altering your messaging and content can also be very useful based on which channel you’re using. For example, video platforms like YouTube and TikTok can be great for testimonials and alumni stories given their visual format, while Instagram and Facebook are more often effective when it comes to conveying more general information about campus activities and events, career fairs, and the like.

Leverage video marketing effectively

Video marketing is a powerful but sometimes-underutilized tool for higher education institutions when it comes to TOFU marketing. Video is an excellent channel to communicate with your audience, especially on social media, and can be used to convey information about campus events, alumni testimonials, your institution’s recruitment process, and much more in an engaging way.

Optimize your top of the funnel strategy to build awareness

From blogging to videos, there’s plenty of great ways to build up your top of the funnel marketing channels and increase awareness for your graduate school programs. Interested in optimizing your marketing funnel and boosting recruitment? GPRS has the resources to do all that and more. Contact us today to learn more.