13 Proven digital marketing strategies to increase School/College admission (updated for 2023)

13 Proven digital marketing strategies to increase School/College admission (updated for 2021)

Are you looking to get a rapid increase in your school/college admission in 2023, then this is the right education marketing strategy for you. Whether you are a small private high school or a large university, it does matter. Here are the best-researched marketing strategies to increase your enrollments rapidly.

I am sharing the exact education marketing strategy we have used for generating the following results for our clients.

  1. Despite COVID-19 time, we gave 129 closed MBA admissions to the DCSMAT (leading MBA college in Kerala) Vagamon campus & 48 closed admissions to the DCSMAT Trivandrum campus in 2021.
  2. We have closed 283 admissions in 3 months for Manjoorans (Asia’s largest language training company).
  3. We have also completed 124 students enrolment in 6 months marketing campaign for ECR Aviation (India’s biggest aviation college)

I am going to share the deeply researched and worked out marketing tactics you can use for increasing the student’s enrollment for your education institution.

Let’s jump in

1) Persona Identification

Persona Identification

Find the right parents and students for your educational institution.

Persona identification is simply the process of identifying the target audience that is the ideal parents and students, who you want to influence for your educational institution.

We should have a proper and clear-cut understanding of who is our students/parents are going to be. Are you providing top quality infrastructure in your institution and expecting high-income parents to pay your high monthly fee? Or you are expecting ordinary people who can afford the standard monthly payments.

Are you looking for students who are looking for institutions proving exposure in sports and arts activities? or academic activities.

If you had a clear understanding of your ideal parents and students, it would help in reaching and converting them to your customers quickly.

Better customer understanding is equivalent to customer retention and advocacy.

The benefits of doing this are:

  • It increases profit
  • Give a Better understanding of the parents and students
  • Helps in Targeting and positioning them
  • To implement motivation in the parents/students to take admission
  • Helps to Generate more lead in your institution

How can this be done:

  • Through data collection
  • Survey
  • Observation
  • Learn from existing students

This step has considerable importance in the success of your organization.

A better understanding of the persona helps in knowing more about the common needs of the students and parents into consideration and prioritizing and marketing to them accordingly.

2) Create a customer journey map for your ideal parents.

Create a customer journey map for your ideal parents

Map the touchpoints of your parents and students from the awareness stage to taking admission in your institution.

Customer journey maps are visualization of end to end customer experience. It is a visual story of your target audiences’ interactions with your school/college at each stage. It allows you to gain deep insights into your ideal parents and students’ pain points that lead them away from your institution to your competitors.

  • How are your ideal parents and students interacting with your educational institution’s touchpoints?.
  • How do they learn about your institution?
  • Whether they are interacting with the website, social media, any other online places?
  • What are the motivation and rejections points of your institution for your ideal parents and students, and how can we improve it for better results?.

It would help if you found it for your educational institution, it will reduce the conversion window; i.e. admission for your institution.

Important things to be considered while preparing a customer journey map is:

  • Understanding who the customers are is; persona.
  • Take the customer journey yourself and adopt necessary changes and update accordingly.
  • Understand the parents/students goal at each phase
  • Understand the touchpoints of the parents and students
  • Identify main areas where they experience difficulty and frustration in choosing you
  • Sort out if people are abandoning you, why is it happening?
  • Stay updated and keep improving.

The benefits of doing this are:

  • Able to attract parents and students equally and able to hold them
  • Target audience based approach
  • Implement customer-oriented service
  • Create a student/parent focused mentality in your organization

283 Admissions in 3 Months

Find out how we achieved 33% increase in admissions in little time!

283 Admissions in 3 Months

3) Create a Website for your parents and students.

Website for parents and students

The institution’s website should meet the expectation of your ideal parents and students.

Now you might be wondering how a website can increase admission. Humans process images 60,000 times faster than text. Make your website attractive and captivating. It will leave an excellent first impression on your customer’s mind; moreover, an elegant and standard website represents the reputation of the organization.

Now, this will, in turn, work as an efficient sales tool for you. Make your website more transparent and let it reflect the student life in your institution. Let the visitors get a good outlook and a better understanding of your institution at a glance.

A good website can take your visitors to an amazing virtual campus tour. That will further increase the chance of getting students enrolled by creating an image of beautiful campus life in the minds of the students.

  • Surveys prove that 46% of students identify websites as the most impactful information source to attract their attention.
  • Time spent on the University website found to be 116 billion hours, and the majority of them are candidates planning to join the university.

The website plays a significant role in getting students enrolled in your institution.

And some additional tips are to make your website browsing a great experience by including a clear navigation pattern, and fast loading pages, and mobile responsive.

You can create faster and responsive landing pages using any landing page builder. Also, you can get your visitors engaged with you by adding CTAs.

You can also test your website at www.thinkwithgoogle.com/feature/testmysite/ get google’s latest technology suggestions and know your websites speed in seconds.

You can also check out the importance of a website for your business here – 19 Statistics showing “why website is important for your business”

4) How to use Social media for education marketing

Social media for education marketing

Find and use the right social media channels your target parents & students using. You need to understand their expectations too.

Social media is the most effective tool to attract students and parents equally to your institution. All you have to do is simple. Find social media channels your target audiences are using and create contents to meet their expectations.

Create an online community. Simple, isn’t it? Now this will act as an instant source of information for parents and students about your institution. Create a marketing strategy to get them engaged by developing a conversation. Always stay updated with uploading videos, upcoming events, photos of functions, and other activities.

Keep a good connection with the school/college alumni through social media. LinkedIn is an excellent platform for that. But not only on LinkedIn but also on other social media platforms that your audience is likely to use.

LinkedIn helps to improve your institutions’ image and reputation since it displays company profiles, students, and alumni and is highly professional.

Use social media as a speed booster to generate traffic to your school/college website. Social media like Facebook helps to find a more similar audience, and you can target and run ads to users of a particular location.

Strategical usage of social media will increase the chance of students getting enrolled at a faster rate and rapid increase in number. Today everyone starts their day with social media, and it can influence the viewers to a large extent.

Get your audience engaged and take action, making inquiries, and taking admission.

124 Admissions in 6 Months

Find out how we achieved 32% increase in admissions in 6 months

124 Admissions in 6 Months

5) How to use Content marketing for your institution

Content marketing for your institution

Create valuable, relevant, informative content for your target audiences and distribute to them consistently.

Most probably the first contact between a student or parents with the university/school is through online content.

It will leave the first impression in the minds of your target audiences that will decide whether to proceed or not.

Invest in good quality content. It helps to boost the presence of your institution on online platforms. Create highly engaging content that will increase enquiry rates.

Make sure you have included different forms of content like attractive images, texts showing your mission and vision, videos of various activities, and promotion.

These contents will help parents to get a clear cut idea about your school/college effectively. They will get all the pieces of information they are looking to collect.

Content marketing helps to generate more qualified leads, high enquiry rates and admission rates too. Content marketing will act as a 24X7 customer executive for your target audiences.

Additionally, content marketing is also an effective tactic to increase SEO ranking, so that your website appears top when target audiences browse search engines like Google.

6) How to use SEO for your education institutions

SEO for ducation institutions

Keep in front of your target parents and students when they are looking for information online.

SEO, Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website/page through search engine results.

Now let’s see how your school/college can increase enrollments through this.

What You get:

  • Free unlimited traffic to website/page
  • Improve visibility of website/page
  • Growth in brand awareness
  • You can assure your content gets to your target audiences when they search in Google or any other search engines.
  • Now, this will help to engage the viewers and build a relationship with them; this leads them to the process of taking admission.

What all to make sure of while doing SEO:

  • The website design should be customer-oriented, that is the parents and students.
  • Content should be engaging and instructing through the details of the process.
  • Content with relevant keywords
  • Should have relevant keyword-focused page titles, descriptions, headlines, and content.
  • Both Websites and content should be easy to find.
  • Should have a good architecture
  • Positive user experience
  • Content should be useful
  • The helpful description should be there
  • Include targeted keywords also so that parents can find your school/college website easily when they use a specific keyword.
    • For example: “Top ICSE schools in Kerala.”

These above tips will help you to rank higher in search results and also increase traffic to the school/college website.

Create brand awareness about your institution to the right target audiences and help them to take admission.

Do you want to know the importance of SEO for business – 16 Statistics showing the Important of SEO

Do you want to know how SEO can benefit your institution?

Book a free discussion with our SEO consultant today!

7) How to use Google PPC for your educational institution?

Google PPC for your educational institution

Generate highly targeted website traffic from potential parents/students.

What is PPC? Pay-per-click. It is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher when the ad gets the click.

Google ad is a type of pay per click advertising relatively cheap, easy, and strategic. It can increase the awareness of your school/college effectively to your target audiences.

Mainly two places the ads are seen:

  • Google Search Network: it will appear like a text in the Google search results.
  • Google Display Network: In other third-party websites, you can see the ads like a banner.

The next question that arises is,

How can we advertise our school/college on Google?

Learn the basics of Google ads and run the campaign by yourself, but to mention that it’s a time-consuming job to learn, and you have to monitor its progress and keep track of it.

Hire an educational marketing agency to build and monitor the campaign and keep track of it.

Suppose you are ambitious about it and would like to have a considerable increase in students enrollments. It would be better to engage in an experienced education marketing agency.

If you want, you can contact us. We Graffiti9 digital marketing agency have an intense experience in education marketing with proven case studies and client reviews to showcase.

Like to know – How to hire a digital agency for your educational institution’s marketing?.

8) How can we use remarketing for your educational institution?

Remarketing for educational institutions

Attract and follow potential students/parents online, who are already shown interested in your institution.

It’s nothing much. Recently I searched Amazon to buy a laptop. Later on, I noticed that whenever I open Facebook or any other websites or pages, everywhere, the ad for laptop starts popping up.

The logic is simple, keeping something you are interested in right in front of you always so that you will decide to buy it. It’s a simple virtual call to action.

Now let’s see how this helps in educational marketing. We can show the ads about your school/college to your target audience who already visited the website.

Suppose if we can convince them to take a call to action like calling the school/college counsellor for more information or a campus visit. There is a high chance that will take admission as they already showed interest in your institution.

Remarketing is one of the famous and influential online marketing tactics. It helps your target audiences to consider your institution by following them online, with attractive offers or contents that motivates them to take action favourable to our brand.

9) Implement lead generation and nurturing for your institution

Lead generation and nurturing for institutions

Create strategies that motivate them to contact you and provide excellent customer experience.

Lead generation is the initiation of parents/students enquiry to our institution for more details. Lead nurturing is effectively engaging these audiences by offering relevant information, providing all the necessary support they need, maintaining interest and delight throughout the admission process.

Timely follow up, and personalization is also essential as it impacts the decision of the parents and students.

Let’s see how to generate lead:

  • Identify the target audience.
  • Choose the apt in promotional methods.
  • Create and promote valuable gated contents to generate leads.
  • Create personalization in website
  • Live chat and support
  • Use email newsletters to build relationships with the customers.
  • Make maximum use of social media to connect and engage with the audience.

Effective ways for lead nurturing are:

  • Use targeted content
  • Using multiple platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. does not stick to a single one.
  • Use mixed content concentrating multiple touchpoints.
  • Timely follow up to keep the customers engaged and interested so finally they take admission.
  • Make emails personalized to attract leads.
  • Keep track of the leads and determine which lead to concentrate.
  • Brush up your Customer Relationship Management team and marketing team to improve lead generation and nurturing for conversion.

10) Implement live support and chatbots for potentials

Live support and chatbots for potentials

Be available for your potential parents/students when they need help.

What is the use of live chat and chatbots?

Imagine if potential students or parents are stuck while filling the online forms or anything on your school website, there is no one available for help. Then if we have a good and efficient help desk with live chat and chatbots, it would be a great experience in the minds of the potentials.

It will reduce the errors and anxiety of your parents and students. You can also instantly connect with more students using live chat and chatbots that will promote the engagement of the potentials.

Better customer experience leads them to share their personal information like mobile numbers and emails, which can be used for online remarketing and offline personal follow up.

Where to concentrate:

  • Increase your availability
  • Engage with the visitors
  • Build a relationship with customers
  • Use chatbots

11) Provide Personal assistance:

Personal assistance

Personal assistance is the most critical step to increase enrollment.

Maintain good customer service in every interaction your staff has with the students/parents comes under customer service.

Make sure that:

  • Customer service strategy should consider both parents and students
  • Have a dedicated team for this
  • Keep in touch through live chat and social media platforms
  • Response time should be convincing
  • Keep a check on the satisfaction level of the students and parents
  • Provide personalized customer care service
  • Make sure they have resolved their question and satisfied
  • Ask for feedback
  • Update and make changes based on feedback
  • Be customer-centric.

Above mentioned efforts will build a positive brand perception in the minds of the potential students and parents that will lead them to take admission fast.

12) Use marketing automation tools.

Marketing Automation Tools

Use technology to personalise the experience and importance for each parent/students.

The best key to increase enrollment, deliver the right messages to the right parents and students at the right time. Marketing automation is the best way to do this.

For this purpose, you can invest in any popular marketing automation tools. Which includes email marketing, social media marketing, lead generation, lead nurturing, website personalization, and a lot more.

What are the benefits of doing this:

  • Reduce staffing cost
  • Better ROI capable of automating cross-sells upsells and follow-ups which can boost revenue.
  • Easier for the marketing and sales team
  • Saves a lot of time
  • Increased effectiveness

It tracks students and parents in brand touchpoints based on behaviour and interests.

It automatically tags students who haven’t been engaged in campaigns and send targeted messages to students what they want. It can free up your Counsellor’s time. It’s beneficial for being consistent with the customers and developing customer retention. Helps to keep in touch and interested and then take action.

Marketing automation helps you to give priority for those students, who are mostly going to be our admission.

13) Let them Convert (take admission)

Take Admission

Creating a smooth and non-pushy experience leads to taking admission.

Which actions of the parents and students lead to the final conversion fast?. Conversion means to take admission, mark the steps before taking admission and create strategies to do the same with potentials.

Like:

  • Campus visit: Motivate them to experience the campus and features. By the help of an in house counsellors at school/college, we can convert the highly interested students quickly.
  • Online Admissions: A student can take admission through the internet. You can use digital agencies who will take the responsibility of entries.
  • Find out which all areas do the students/parents feel difficulty or they drop the plan of admission. Find it and fix it, take the necessary steps to speed up the conversion.

Make a smooth and comfortable user experience. Let them recommend you to others too by getting impressed in your service. Develop an outstanding online as well as offline user experience.

Additional marketing tactics we can use.

Supporting marketing tactics, we can use for speed up the conversion

Include Alumni

Alumni are former students of the school/College, keep in touch with them. It is a beneficial marketing idea. You can share photos and special events with them. Make them engaged, ask them to share their reviews on social media and google.

A strong alumni network is always increasing the strength and reputation of the institution. Suppose the alumni of your school/college are well placed in jobs and society. It will also promote others to take admission into your school/College.

Include informative videos and photos

We can use mixed content to attract more audience. Share videos and photos of your school/college to better understand the facilities and infrastructure, take them through a virtual campus tour.

Include in house event photos and videos, including parents and students. Let others see all the activities that take place in your school/college. Create an excellent promotional video and include them also. In this way, we can attract a lot of potential customers.

Take a serious approach to your online reputation.

Now, this is serious.

Online reputation matters a lot; it has a very strong influence on the parents and students decision making. People check reviews even before making a small online purchase.

So take a serious look at your online reputation and keep a check on what your current parents/students and competitors are saying about you.

Do you know: 84% of people trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations from friends.

Hope you got the importance of your online reputation now. You can work with an online reputation management agency to take care of your online reputation.

Find any negative comments/ reviews this

Negative comments may influence the students looking to take admission in your school/education. Fix it immediately. Keep track of websites, social media, inside and outside branded channels. Keep an eye on reputation.

If a customer is satisfied with your service, you can ask them for a review. Ask your school/college alumni for positive reviews on social media and websites that will help a lot.

Each of these strategies mentioned above plays a vital role in the rate of enrollments.

Now you would have understood how important this is. You will require an experienced education marketing agency that can take this responsibility and make it a success with their experience and dedication.

We are here with years of experience in education marketing for your institution.

Let’s increase enrollments and build your institution together. Take a small initiative for great success.

Enhance your marketing with Graffiti9

Are you an educational institution trying to build your presence? Do you know that digital marketing can make a difference?

Graffiti9 is a dedicated company that focus on providing digital marketing services especially for educational institutions. Our team has hands-on experience in assisting educational institutions and that too with proven results.

Enhance your marketing with Graffiti9

So, are you looking for a marketing agency for your school marketing for the academic year 2020-21 to increase admissions? We are here with years of experience undertaking the responsibility for conversion too.

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