As the competition for higher education enrollment increases, schools are using a variety of marketing and advertising techniques to attract students.
In this guide, we’ll cover the most effective video marketing strategies for higher education institutions. If you’re wondering where to invest your budget in attracting more students, video marketing is definitely worth your time and attention. Let’s get started!
Education Video Marketing Overview
Why is higher education video marketing worth investing in? Because video marketing has a proven impact on admissions and enrollment numbers. 68% of prospective undergrads say that videos were an influence on their final decision.
Colleges and universities are investing in video because the internet has become increasingly dominated by video content, especially among younger generations. The amount of time people spend watching videos online has increased drastically since 2018.
If you’re not including videos in your digital marketing plan, you’re missing out on a big chance to connect with and engage potential students and their parents.
If you have not had much success with videos in the past, it is likely because your strategy was not effective. Just posting videos without a plan is not likely to result in success. Here is how to create a better strategy.
1. Define the Goals of Your School’s Video Marketing Strategy
Start by defining your goals for your college marketing videos. This will help you create the right strategy for your campaign.
The best way to create videos that will be successful is by having a clear plan and purpose for them. Making videos without a plan or only because your competition is doing well with them is not going to give you the best results. Since creating videos takes a lot of time and money, you don’t want to make that investment without a solid plan.
It is important to have a video marketing strategy that explains what you hope to achieve with your videos before you start filming and distributing them.
Some potential goals for your university video marketing campaign could include:
- Building awareness of a new program
- Generating more prospects and increasing enrollment
- Increasing your conversion rate
- Building brand engagement through storytelling
- Getting more engagement on your social media channels
Your campaign’s messaging and content should be focused on the goal you’ve defined.
2. Target The Right Audience
Who do you want your college marketing videos to reach? Engage students who might attend your university or target their parents?
Universities need to engage students as they are likely the first to find recruitment videos and show interest. Keep in mind that there are different types of prospective students – targeting by persona can be more effective in meeting goals.
Although it is typically the parents who foot the bill for their children’s tuition, they are also the ones with the most stake in the decision. If you want to increase your school’s enrollment, focus on winning over the parents.
When creating content for promotion, it is important to consider who the intended audience is. The messaging and platform for distribution should be adjusted accordingly.
3. Create Types of Videos for Your University or College
Once you have decided on your goals and your audience, you can start creating your video content. If you need some inspiration for your upcoming campaign, here are some ideas for college promotional videos.
Campus Tour Videos
In light of the pandemic, many on-campus tours have been canceled, disrupting national and international travel. In order to combat this, schools have begun creating more compelling campus tour videos.
The campus tour videos should be interesting and helpful. You can take students into a classroom with a charming teacher, a popular student gathering place, and around the grounds with a student guide, just as you would if they were there in person.
New Student Search Campaigns
The process of converting prospects and leads into new students involves many stages. Most of these stages include getting the prospective students excited about envisioning their life at your school, as well as covering the practical aspects of the admissions process.
Applicant Communications
Your school’s communications should give applicants and prospects a sneak peek of what to expect. This can be done by featuring students in videos, showing them receiving acceptance letters, or walking them through other communication touchpoints.
Parent Messaging
Parents will want to see videos about financial aid processes, safety on campus, and housing options. Students will want to see videos about campus life and traditions. You can create videos that address these concerns.
Admissions & Enrollment
A video explaining the application and enrollment process can help individuals follow through and prevent any confusion.
Welcome To Campus
New students can expect to be welcomed by a friendly and supportive community when they arrive on campus to begin their education. A video that gives them a taste of what the start of the exciting next phase of their life will be like can be effective at getting them excited to join while putting nervous parents at ease as well.
Unique Commencement Addresses
If you have had celebrities or other well-known alumni as speakers at your commencement ceremonies, you likely already have great video content on film.
Stanford University has published the 2021 commencement address from the actor, writer, and producer Issa Rae on their YouTube channel. It has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
4. Personalize Video Content
Tailoring your videos to your audience is becoming more important as generic videos are less effective in converting leads. Personalized videos have higher open and click-through rates, making them a more effective marketing tool for colleges and universities.
You can personalize videos for prospective students based on your information about them. Some ideas for personalized college marketing videos include:
- Explaining the application process
- Custom campus tours based on potential majors or interests
- Explanations of the financial aid process
- Individual acceptance videos
5. Don’t Overlook Short Form Video in Your School’s Strategy
Don’t underestimate the power of short-form videos on apps like TikTok and Instagram Reels. TikTok is currently the fastest growing social media platform and recently overtook Facebook as the world’s most downloaded app. Inspired by TikTok’s success, Instagram created its own feature called Reels. Reels lets users create entertaining videos with a variety of features, effects, and musical selections.
Not sure how to get started on these platforms, and get the most mileage you can from them in your video strategy? Both TikTok and Instagram Reels call for 15-second videos on average, which may sound like a short time to get your school’s messaging across – but can be used effectively by following these quick tips:
- Create content that’s entertaining, funny, and interesting to make your content more discoverable
- Feature students in your videos in ways that show off your campus and courses
- Find social media savvy student ambassadors to help create your school videos
- Re-purpose your TikTok creations on Reels and vice versa to boost views and extend your reach
- Find out what’s trending locally on either platform and try your own (e.g. hashtag dance challenges, or any type of trending challenge)
In order to gain popularity on the app IG Reels, the University of Florida Student Body President accepted a challenge to shave his head and dye the sides of his remaining hair in the school colors of orange and blue. The video gained an impressive 229,000 views and plenty of engagement.
By taking a few simple steps, you can make your content more shareable, thus increasing the reach of your video content.
6. Select Where You’d Like to Distribute Your School’s Video Content
Your school will need to decide where to best display its video content for marketing purposes. In addition to sharing the videos through all social media channels, they can be placed on the website itself. Having them on the site can serve as a appealing visual that might prompt new website visitors to investigate programs or events the school is trying to promote. It also gives prospective students a chance to see what the school is like before they decide to apply.
The Vancouver Film School showcases some of the projects students and alumni were involved in 2021 through a “Showreel.” Additionally, the school summarizes awards received over the past year.
You can also change the video on your homepage to update any important messages you wish to convey in the moment.
Most marketers report that video provides a good return on investment, according to Forbes. Furthermore, over 90% of businesses gain new customers from branded video content. Therefore, incorporating video into websites and other channels is likely to result in new leads and enrollments in the educational field.
7. Optimize Your Videos for Conversion
You will need to optimize your videos for conversion in order to motivate your viewers to take action. This is done by making sure your videos are interesting and relevant to your viewers.
It is important to have a call to action in your messaging so that your prospects are prompted to take an action. The action might include downloading information about your campus or subscribing to an email list or a YouTube channel for prospective students.
You can also add CTAs to your video’s end screen – the final 15-20 seconds of your video, where YouTube allows users to suggest other videos, to subscribe to their channel, and to promote their website and overall brand. Remember to reiterate your CTA by having them mentioned by the student or other talent featured in your video.
It is also important to optimize all videos that are uploaded to YouTube for SEO purposes. Remember that YouTube is the second largest search engine, only behind its owner Google. Therefore, by including an SEO optimized title and some optimized descriptor text, there is a chance that the video will rank high on Google searches as well as on YouTube.
8. Be Sure to Monitor the Performance of Your School’s Video
You’ll need to use analytics to measure the success of your videos and determine whether your video strategy has been worth the investment. To do this, you’ll want to keep an eye on a few key metrics to understand the impact and reach of your videos and identify areas that need improvement.
You can use YouTube Analytics to track the performance of your videos by looking at things such as how many views your videos have and how long people are watching them for. Both these measurement tools will give your school insight into some key metrics, including:
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- View time
- Viewer demographics
- Most popular videos
You can measure your brand’s awareness by looking at the number of views, shares, and mentions your video has.
The other social channels you’ll be using, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, also have their own metrics tools that you can monitor. The specific data available to measure on these platforms vary from one to the next, but some examples of the metrics covered include:
- Reach
- Engagement
- Average watch time
- Audience retention
- Audience demographics
- Top Videos
- Followers
The social platforms mentioned above have an “insights” or “analytics” section where you can see detailed information about a video’s performance.
You need a Pro account to track analytics on TikTok. With a Pro account, creators can track the performance of their videos compared to their competitors, see how many new followers they gained after posting a video, and find out which of their videos is trending or most engaging to audiences.
You can focus your monitoring efforts by tying them back to your original video strategy goals. If you’re trying to raise the number of followers, those are the metrics to watch. If you’re looking to increase overall engagement with your audiences, be sure to check total likes, comments, shares, and other forms of engagement connected to your video content. Finally, if you have a combination of goals, be sure to monitor all of the associated metrics.
You can improve your school’s video strategy over time by analyzing your video performance, understanding which content is most effective with your viewers, and monitoring metrics. This will help you generate the type of video content that drives traffic to your website.
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