Higher Education Marketing: How to Create a Strategy

Post-high school diploma marketing is simply the process of marketing any sort of degree. Given the diverse nature of the degrees, the marketing efforts need to be equally diverse as well.

In the competitive field of college marketing, it is difficult to stand out and be relevant.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for marketing a higher education institution, as strategies vary depending on the country’s social distancing guidelines. It can be difficult to know where to begin.

Don’t worry, keep reading to find out the latest and most popular strategies to improve your marketing campaign.

number one, the general public’s understanding of what marketing is. Before we discuss higher education marketing strategies, let’s examine some of the problems present in the industry. One of these is the general public’s misunderstanding of what marketing is.

The higher education industry is currently witnessing a steep decline in enrollments rates which have been made worse by the aftereffects of the pandemic.
Online competitors who offer similar content as universities are gaining good traction as their credibility keeps increasing every year. They are no longer considered as cheap alternatives to a college education.
Financially higher education looks scarier when the thought of repaying your education loan seems very bleak owing to the unemployment rates post-COVID.
COVID took away the most efficient higher educational marketing strategy out there, i.e. Senior-Junior interaction.
The increasing public skepticism about the need to go for higher education in the first place to acquire knowledge and the real value of a degree.
Pandemic put a halt to higher education recruiters who travel from school to school trying to get prospective students to sign up.
Since fewer students took SAT and ACT during the pandemic, institutions lost an easy route in capturing student details.
Adding on top of the above problems, heavy competition from other colleges who had started investing in digital marketing during the start of the pandemic and many years before that.

Understanding the Student’s Point of View

To understand how to market higher education to Generation Z, you would need to think like them and understand what they are looking for in a school. Follow their thought process and journey in deciding the perfect school for them.

By understanding their pain points, you can figure out what content they want to be presented to them, and how they want it to be presented.

In a hypothetical situation where we are high-school/undergrad graduates looking for prospective institutions for higher education, we would first research what type of institution we would like to attend. For example, we might want to attend a large university, a small college, or an online school. Once we have decided what type of institution we would like to attend, we would research specific schools that fit our criteria. We would then contact each school to inquire about admission requirements and tuition costs. After deciding which school we would like to attend, we would apply to the school and wait to hear back about our admission status.

Should you Google the name of the college, read the online reviews, click on their website, stalk their social media, see how the college ranks amongst its competition, and check out who their famous alumni are?

The first step to successful online marketing is combing through online content. However, there are certain strategies that can help you reach this step. Let’s take a look at them.

1. Define your goals

When will you know if it’s working? What is the goal of your marketing campaign? Who is your target audience? Why did you choose that group? When will you be able to tell if the campaign was effective?

What are the two main goals of higher education marketing?

Given that your team size can vary a lot, it’s important to set realistic and achievable goals.

Setting achievable goals will help to motivate your team and keep them excited. Additionally, it will assist you in targeting and designing your marketing plans to more effectively increase student enrollment.

Make sure your goals are clear, measurable, possible with the resources you have, relevant to the situation, and based on time.

2. Create/Refine your value proposition

The Marketing team of colleges and universities must work to show how relevant and important a college degree is in the real world, as people are constantly questioning the usefulness and credibility of college degrees. This is especially true now, as more and more companies are hiring people without college degrees.

Your college can help you get a better job by providing resources and opportunities to improve your career prospects.

Here are a few ideas on how to get the message out:

Get in touch with your successful alumni and give them a chance to speak on your behalf about how the institution was an essential step in their journey.
Use social media to get the word out about your accomplished educators and students.
Put content that highlights the latest successes in your institution (be it sports, theatre, academics, research, etc)
Use statistics to support all your facts and success stories.

3. Increase your brand awareness

We can learn a lot about choosing our favorite things from corporations. For example, how do you choose your favorite pair of shoes, or your favorite fast food restaurant?

companies spend millions of dollars on billboards, advertisements, and marketing campaigns to make us choose them over their competition.

It is very important that potential students are aware of your school and have a good image of it, as this will influence their decision of whether to attend your school over another.

If you don’t present a good image to your potential students, it will be very difficult to achieve your goals, even if you have everything else going for you.

Ask yourselves the following questions,

What makes your institution unique?
What can it offer in terms of academics, extracurriculars, and placements?
Why would anyone want to attend it?
How are your educators unique compared to others?
How is infrastructure compared to the rest?
How special is your institution’s legacy?

The amount of substance you have will determine how much you can craft or improve your brand image.

4. Bring Content- build out structures and systems

Now that you have a content strategy, you can start creating the structures and systems you need to carry it out.

We didn’t used to think about web content in terms of individual pages. Instead, we defined content by its page structure. Nowadays, though, content is more complex. It functions more like a system, so a content audit is a essential way to figure out what the current state of that system is.

In other words, a “system” is really a network of processes, people, and tools that work together to make sure your content is effective and efficient.

Here are some of the specific considerations that fall under this umbrella:

Our content should be presented in a way that is easy to understand and follow. It should be well organized and connected so that readers can easily find the information they are looking for. Taxonomy can help to organize content and make it easier to find and use.
Our publishing process involves a number of roles, and there may be gaps or inefficiencies in the workflow.
Content will be planned by the Content Manager, who will also be responsible for its creation and management.
What is our approach to dynamic publishing? How can we make the most use of the content available to us?
What requirements should a potential content management system or other publishing platform meet in order to fulfill our communication needs?
Who owns the content, and what responsibilities come with owning it? How are editorial decisions made?
Are there defined editorial guidelines and standards for content publishing, including style, branding, diversity, and accessibility?

In other words, thinking about the structure of something means thinking about the people and processes involved in it. It’s all about connectivity and how we use it.

5. Ensure Content Strategy Success

The success of your content strategy depends on whether your solutions match your reality. Can you achieve the goals of your strategy and structure within the time and resources you have? Are you setting yourself up for success or failure?

Carrying out a content strategy is similar to recruiting friends to help you move a heavy sofa. You need to make sure you have enough friends, that they are strong enough, and that they all know where they are going. The distance should also be reasonable. You should also provide water for them and make sure there is enough incentive for them to help you in the first place. You shouldn’t expect them to do all the work while you do nothing.

If you’re questioning whether you have the resources to complete a project, consider if your staff has the time and skills necessary. Additionally, think about if there’s enough money in the budget to bring on outside help.

Higher Ed Content Strategy Is a Partnership

An effective content strategy requires input and collaboration from everyone involved, with the same goals in mind. Digital governance is the framework that outlines who is responsible for what, and how decisions will be made and supported.

That means addressing the following questions:

Are roles and responsibilities clearly outlined and communicated?
Are training and documentation clear and accessible?
Do the right guidelines and templates exist to remove the element of guesswork and ensure that people are always aligned with the company’s purpose and processes?
Does the content measure strategy gauge effectiveness to inform future content planning?
Is there ongoing content quality assurance?
Do we have a clear and sustainable plan for managing daily content tasks and dealing with incoming requests or feedback?
How do you communicate with the people who will be carrying out your content strategy, and how do they communicate with you? Are there opportunities for them to support and communicate with each other?

If you want to be successful, it’s important to have enough support. This is especially true if your governance model is less centralized, because then you need to be sure that your content strategy partners can do their part.

6. Ramp up your digital marketing

These days, if your page is clicked or visited more often, you have a better chance of being selected as a prospective college. Let’s look at some digital marketing strategies you can use to attract more traffic and increase your enrollment rates.

a. Do a profile on your faculties

One of theprime reasons why students choose an institution is the quality of its faculties and the research work they produce. A short profile of the faculty, highlighting their daily work, can be a deciding factor for students who are considering that institution.

The department’s increased enrollment rate decreases the amount of speculation required. This, in turn, is a motivation for your educators who may always need encouragement.

Keep an open mind when deciding who to profile, it does not necessarily have to be people who win large grants or are very well published. It could also be people who have unique skillsets, stories, and those who can really contribute to the diversity your university offers.

b. Livestreaming, virtual events, and community-based engagement

Bring alumni and students who have found success during COVID times to speak about their experiences of graduating and finding employment during that difficult period.

Invite your popular educators to give virtual talks or seminars based on their research and future plans for developing their subject area and department. Ask students questions and get feedback on their level of excitement.

What difference did your engagement make to the society pre and post-pandemic?

The things that prospective students are concerned about are given prime importance by the university, which is an open platform for them to engage with.

Getting Started

Below are some additional resources to help you get underway with this approach at your institution.

This text provides an overview of content strategy, including its typical characteristics, activities, requirements for success, and recommended resources.
You can download a content strategy template which will help you structure your effort in five phases. This template reflects the three pillars which are mentioned in this post.
delving into your content inventory and content audit is essential for having a successful content strategy. Our guides can show you how to not only set up an inventory or an audit, but also how to get useful information from them.
Web governance is the process of ensuring that your website is managed effectively in order to achieve your content strategy goals. Benefits of web governance include improved website quality, increased accountability, and better alignment between your website and your organizational goals. To be successful, web governance requires buy-in from all stakeholders, clear roles and responsibilities, and regular review and adjustment.