Universities and schools face many unique challenges when it comes to strategic marketing. The value of education is clear, but for newer institutions - and even established ones - some hurdles can feel insurmountable.

Communicating the unique value of your institution, positioning your brand apart from competitors, and redirecting marketing strategies to include new technologies and techniques can be difficult, particularly in the face of the commonly found resistance to marketing in academic institutions. Coupled with budget constraints, decentralisation, regulatory and safety concerns, and ineffective data management, education marketers have a lot to work on, and often little to work with.

So what makes a successful marketing strategy for schools?

Before you dive into meta campaigns, search ads, and EDMs, identify your target audience and what will actually work for them. 

 

Who are they and what do they want?

With declining enrolments across the board due to affordability concerns and the post-COVID shift to online education services, international students are still at a low. This makes communicating value to students even more important. So how do you find out what they value?

Ask your current students. Conduct surveys, put out social media polls, and find out what attracted students to your university. This should be on a subject level, a cultural level, and a staff level. If there are particular subjects that you’re not focusing communications efforts on, but your students are enrolling because of, it may be time for a pivot.

The data you collect here will be crucial for delivering valuable content. What was their selling point? What are the main pain points of students joining your institution? The students currently attending your institution are the blueprint for those to come, their interests and issues will likely be similar. 

How do you start?

To address common budget constraints in education, your marketing strategy needs to focus on cost-effective, high-reward actions that will bring the most attention to your campaigns and overall brand to attract new students and increase enrolments.

This could be an organic social campaign, a targeted EDM, a paid meta campaign, Google search or PMAX. There are many different forms your campaign can take, but it’s important that you’re considering where your target audience - whether parents, students, or school careers counsellors - are.

Your audience won’t search for you, so your campaigns should meet them where they are. This could be Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or even a Reddit forum. Wherever it is, ensure you are creating content for that platform. 

Once you’ve identified your 'where', you can work on your ‘what’. Does your audience engage best with video content? Stills? Blogs? Carousels?

Determine what drives engagement with your content, and your competitor's content. This is the kind of content you will be creating. 

Now, how do you speak to them?

We’ve already established that you need to be where your audience is, speaking to them about the things that they find valuable about your institution. But what direction should your messaging take?

Create an overarching content strategy with concise messaging that gives them the ‘why’. You’ve uncovered the main selling points of your institution from the viewpoint of your students, now it’s time to address your competitors. Once you know what makes you different, and what sets them apart, you can start to build the messaging for your campaigns. Your value is in your unique program features, amenities, and any extra services or support you offer. 

Even if you can’t make bold claims about being number one, focus on the 5% that sets your school apart. This is what will enhance your school’s visibility, and should be communicated in all your messaging. Consistent messaging is good messaging. It builds trust and authority in your brand, and forms brand awareness and recognition that sticks in the minds of your audience, so that even if they don’t enrol now, when it comes time, you’ll be the institution they think of. 

Finalise your strategy

You’ve got your audience, identified your platforms, and defined your value proposition and messaging, now it’s time to tie everything together. Showcase your value proposition and messaging on your website landing pages in a variety of formats, including text, photos, videos, and testimonials. 

Focus on personalised, high-touch engagement with your audience on your chosen platforms to reinforce your values and demonstrate to students how they will be treated once they enrol. This can be done by engaging with peers on discussion boards like Reddit or video platforms like TikTok and YouTube where future students may be seeking advice. 

Coordinate your messaging with any other marketing departments in your institution to ensure consistency in communications and alignment of any communication strategies they may also have in place. 

Finally, organise your information to ensure that once your audience has decided to engage, they can find the appropriate information to enrol or speak to someone at your institution. You want your hard work to pay off, likely in the form of full enrolments, so it’s important to consider what your audience needs at all stages of the process. 

Looking to grow your marketing for your institution? You’re in the right place. Let’s work together.