Education sector is one of the fastest growing hub in the world. And as they say, “Change is only Constant“, everyone changes with time.
With the advancement in technology, everyone is heading towards a path of success.
All the businesses and startups are investing in digital marketing to create a strong foundation in the market. Also, nowadays, it is seen that digital marketing of educational institutions are making their mark on among students.
Since, the spread of students has become a global thing, the digital marketing for universities has become a necessity. The need of the hour is saying that digital marketing for colleges has become a necessity.
University’s Digital Marketing Strategy to Brand Itself
A study released by eMarketer states that the education sector is one of the top industries in the world currently using social media as part of overall strategy.
Over a 72% of institutes said they currently implement social media tactics in daily marketing activities.
17% of educational institutes worldwide said they planning to add social media to their marketing programs.
Here are 10 reasons why it is important to have digital marketing for colleges and universities.
1. Students are largely present on Social Media Platform
A survey by marketingcharts, say that in an average 18-34-year-old college student own 7 tech devices .The laptop and computer are the most commonly owned devices.
Around 85% of the college student population, with smartphone impact nearing 70% and tablets (36%) more widespread than cell phones (33%).
Thus, this makes it clear that being an educational institute why you should be on digital platform. In the days of responsive websites and apps, people want everything at their fingertips.
A well marketed website and a decent presence on social media platform solves these issues.
The students most of their time on social media platforms that include Facebook and Instagram. Thus, tapping the right audience specifically for universities and colleges gets easier because you know where to target!
2. Displaying ads on internet is effective as part of digital marketing for colleges
Digital Marketing for educational institutes is effective because the niche audience can be targeted easily.
This includes local, people live in 5 km radius, city specific, age group, gender specific or even a specific country for that matter.
With digital advertising, a piece of content can be shared across a variety of platforms.
Digital advertising allows you to reach your audience on the go, wherever they are, whenever they are online.
These ads perform the best on Facebook. Now the above ad will attract two type of audience, one is the students and the others who are looking for a job in an educational institution.
3. Digital marketing for universities benefiting outstation students
Outstation students depend heavily on the websites for college admissions and now digital media. If we take a look at Symbiosis University, they make the best use of digital media to reach up to their target audience.
Symbiosis being an international university aims to call up students from around the globe.
Therefore, the students who are looking for an admission in this university will easily get the updates from their Facebook page.
In this way, educational institutions can target a larger audience at a low budget and yield better conversions.
4. Easy to measure performance
The performance of digital marketing for universities can be measured easily.
Digital marketing is measurable and ROI driven channel. Each penny spent can be measured and the report in desirable matrix can be obtained. The campaigns can be altered as per the results and ROI.
Facebook campaigns are very good for branding and engagement for education institute. You can run interest based campaign as per your target group, also custom audience, regretting campaign to engage users can be run.
The results for Facebook can be obtained from Facebook Insights. The Google Search Ads conversions can be tracked from Google Adwords. The analytics of Twitter and Instagram can be taken from their respective accounts.
It is very simple to measure, no one has to be an expert to calculate the social media matrix.
5. Answering queries quickly
The vital advantage of digital marketing for colleges is that the queries can be answered promptly. If you have a decent presence on social media, then people will ask questions.
You can just answer the questions by sitting at one place. This also saves the time from both the ends.
Once, the content goes viral, the prospects also get time to think before making any decision.
Thus, it is a responsive medium through which the college or the university.
6. Creates brand awareness
When it comes to digital marketing for universities, it is also important to create brand awareness and spreading some knowledge.
So, instead of always selling yourself, go for some engaging content like sharing some latest information or conducting a contest.
Sharing the updates of passed students is also a good way to connect to the prospective students.
Information about placements is a good way to attract students. These days students look for good packages after studies.
Below, the Mudra Institute of Communication has given information about their summer placements long with highest stipend amount.
7. Digital is more than sales
Showcasing all your skills on digital platform adds to the credibility of the educational institution.
From which people come to know the real facts about the university. And when people know what exactly the product is, they will invest with complete trust.
Education is kind of a product that everyone count their lives on. Therefore, it is important to portray the complete side of what exactly you offer to the students to shine their careers.
Here, the goodwill comes to the picture more than getting admissions.
The number of admissions depend upon how much goodwill you have in the market. Again that depends on how do you showcase yourself on digital platform.
So, keep a check to be original to your audience.
8. Paid campaigns to drive instant traffic
Paid campaigns are important to get instant traffic and leads. For Google Adwords, make a list of keywords like communication colleges, Arts colleges, Commerce colleges. Make ad group and ad copies and run campaign, optimize campaign based on keyword performance.
Connect Adwords account with analytics and setup conversion goal.
Running along Facebook campaign along with Instagram and showcasing creative ads and videos will engage users.
Through these campaigns, the traffic can be attracted to the desired ads and apt audience can be tapped.
9. Media Buying as a part of digital marketing for colleges
Institutes can do media buying from educational portal and engage students there thriugh listing, banner ad, sponsor news, sponsor articles etc.
Some famous education portals in India are shiksha.com, htcampus,com, jagranjosh.com, collegesearch.com, collegedunia.com to name a few.
10. Email campaigns
If you have target audience data then you can design different type of e-mailers like newsletter, admission news, event news, recent blogs and engage the audience.
Also the calls-to-action button does wonder with email marketing. A sample of email marketing for reference.
With such newsletters, be always careful with the content. The content has to be such that the reader should take call-to-action and proceed to the next step.
This helps in building the database on large scale.
Today,many students have got Facebook and social network apps installed on their smartphones.
To Like or share a post hardly takes any time.Make sure your Facebook posts are engaging one.The more it gets shared, the more you get publicity.
So these 10 hacks why an educational institute should have a dynamic presence on digital platform will be useful to you.
Always think of giving the best to your audience and you are half way there!
