23 Proven Digital Marketing Strategies for University

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Colleges and universities are increasingly turning to digital marketing strategies to boost enrollment numbers and reach more students. This guide provides an overview of creating an effective digital marketing strategy for universities or Institutes.

Before making a digital marketing strategy, you need to understand these questions :

What is the unique offering of the University to the students? 

How is this University different from others? 

What are the marketing ideas for college admissions?

Here are some observations that will increase the lead flow to the website and the other social channels that will increase the admission in the Universities. Digital marketing is an effective tool for universities looking to attract potential students to their programs. Here are some strategies to consider when developing a digital marketing strategy for university admission:

Here is Digital marketing strategies for college admission or University Admission:

List of Digital Marketing Strategies for the University

1. Identify Your Target Audience

The first step in developing a digital marketing strategy for universities is identifying your target audience. Who are the University’s potential students? Consider factors such as age, location, income level, and interests when narrowing down your list of potential students. Once you have identified and profiled your target audience, you can begin crafting tailored messaging that appeals to their needs and interests. This is one of the best university campaign ideas for admission.

2. Create Online Personas for Prospective Students

After identifying your target audience, you must create online personas for prospective students. This involves further segmenting your potential audience into distinct groups based on common interests and needs, learning styles, and lifestyles. Creating personas allows you to understand better how specific audiences prefer to interact with information and can help inform the content and tone of your digital marketing efforts.

3. Define Your Goals and Objectives for Digital Marketing

Defining your goals and objectives for a digital marketing strategy is essential to creating an effective plan. Start by asking questions like: What do you want your digital marketing efforts to accomplish? Do you need to create awareness, drive engagement, or increase conversions? How will this result in increased enrollment or improved student outreach? Having well-defined goals can help ensure your strategies are designed to achieve measurable results.

4. Utilize Multichannel Strategies to Further Reach.

A successful digital marketing strategy for universities should leverage multiple channels to reach its target audience better. This can include everything from utilizing organic and paid search engine marketing running social media campaigns on various platforms and leveraging influencer outreach programs. Utilizing a combination of tactics allows marketers to reach the greatest number of people efficiently and cost-effectively.

5. Video Marketing 

Nowadays, most universities use social media and short-form video content (less than 60 seconds) to engage prospective students. This video content must contain students’ testimonials to build trust. Use such testimonials to run paid campaigns on Google and Facebook. These platforms will give your University a much better reach and branding. 

6. Google Featured Snippet 

The featured snippet is ranked above the 1st position of Google. 

Getting your website to rank in the featured snippet box will help to increase our University’s brand visibility and organic traffic. The more traffic our university website pulls in, the more leads we’ll be able to generate. This will only happen when you have unique and top-quality content. 

7. Leverage lookalike audiences 

One of the most popular trends that higher universities used in 2022 is utilizing lookalike audience models. Lookalike audiences help the University improve its brand reach and acquire new student leads after creating a lead generation campaign on Facebook and Instagram. From the Facebook ads dashboard, you can create lookalike audiences. These audiences have a higher probability of getting converted. 

8. Chat boat Integration for more Leads

Chatbots offer outstanding customer service by automating human feedback and instantly providing crucial information to students.

You can add a tweak chat boat and integrate it into your website. If you have organic traffic, you get more leads with this chatbot.

The leads that are created by chatbots will give you more leads and responses. 

9. Implement an Omnichannel marketing strategy 

Omnichannel marketing involves marketing across different platforms. By different platforms, it means social media, email, mobile apps, and blog posts. The objective of omnichannel marketing is to improve customer experience and to deliver focused brand messaging that improves conversion rates also. The omnichannel strategy involves 🎯 Targeting via whatsapp, messages, email, etc. 

10. Live video on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube

According to a survey, nearly 80% of people prefer watching a live video over a blog post. And people spend 3X more time watching live videos compared to recorded videos. Students prefer consuming authentic content and opportunities to interact or connect with institutions. Live streaming fulfills that experience.

One common and dominant algorithm on all major social networks is a live video.

Choose a topic that tends to solve the problem of the students. And use Facebook Live, Instagram Live YouTube Live with the topic. 

Live videos give you more conversions.

11. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

As part of your digital marketing strategy, ensuring your University’s website is properly optimized for search engine visibility is important. This process involves creating content strategically designed to appear prominently in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant queries. By keeping up with the latest SEO trends and regularly monitoring performance, you can ensure your site is visible to potential students actively searching online for universities.

SEO for long-term results

Search engine optimization is the long-term strategy. 

To explain the difference between SEO and SEM, here is an example –

(SEO is like living in your room,

SEM is like living in a rented room)

A university has a huge potential to rank on multiple keywords and get more leads with it organically. SEO errors that need fixing can help us increase website traffic exponentially. It will also help to increase lead generation organically. 

These are the strategies that will boost our website traffic exponentially. 

Apart from these strategies, I have other strategies too. 

While Google is the most popular search engine hogging around 92% of all internet traffic, other search engines like Bing and Baidu have sizable monthly traffic.

12. Online Reputation Management 

ORM is the most important part of the digital marketing strategy for the University or College. Online reputation management (ORM) is the process of monitoring, tracking, and influencing what is being said about a particular brand or organization online. For universities, ORM is especially important because students, faculty, staff, and other stakeholders often turn to the internet to research and evaluate the University before making decision about their admissions.

If you have negative reviews on Quora and other review websites, then this is a cause for concern. You have to get positive reviews from your University’s students by asking them to share their feedback. It will create a more positive impact on our institution. 

13. Video Testimonial of the University

Video testimonials are a powerful marketing tool that can help universities to build trust and credibility with prospective students, alumni, donors, and other stakeholders. Here are some benefits of using video testimonials for universities:

• Authenticity for University
• Credibility for University
• Versatality
• Higher Engagement

In summary, video testimonials can be a valuable marketing tool for universities, helping to establish credibility, build emotional connections, and increase engagement with your message.

Video reviews will give more authenticity to your University or college.

Ask your students to share their feedback in a video format. Then run ads on those videos to generate more leads on Facebook, Instagram, and Google. 

14. Social Sharing-Oriented Content

 Social sharing oriented content for universities is designed to be visually appealing, easy to read, and engaging, with the goal of generating likes, shares, and comments. By highlighting the accomplishments of your students, showcasing campus life, and sharing inspirational and interactive content, you can build a strong and engaged social media following for your university.

Use a video made for students that go viral. Everyone likes viral videos, and these videos tend to reach more students. 

When someone likes the video, they will share it with their friends, and their friends will share it with them. 

15. Create an engaging website: 

Your website is often the first impression a prospective student will have of your university. Make sure it is user-friendly, visually appealing, and contains all the information students need to make an informed decision. This includes program descriptions, faculty bios, admission requirements, tuition fees, and contact information.

Websites should be responsive on mobile and desktop devices. Most of the students are on mobile devices, so the mobile layout of the web page must be clear.

The page loading speed of the website must be less than 5 seconds. A better page load speed will reduce the bounce rate of your website. 

16. Retargeting and Remarketing campaigns

The Remarketing campaigns on Google and Facebook give much better conversions. 

First, create your audiences by running campaigns on Google and Facebook. 

After creating the audience list, retarget them with email marketing and remarketing campaigns. 

Make sure that conversion tracking codes are triggering correctly. Also, check if your Facebook pixel code is set up properly. 

17. Content Marketing Strategy

You need to understand that lead generation is very important for the growth of any business, and one of the most efficient ways to grow leads is through a content marketing strategy. The best way to attract leads is by creating valuable content.

Try to create long-form SEO-friendly content based on the queries of the students. 

Create valuable content: 

Make blog posts, videos, and other types of content that provide value to potential students. This could include tips for applying to college, profiles of successful alumni, or stories about research being conducted at your university. Share this content on your website and social media channels to increase engagement.

18. Influencer Marketing for University

Influencer marketing can be a valuable strategy for Universities looking to increase their reach, credibility, and engagement. By partnering with influential individuals or organizations, universities can reach a highly targeted audience, establish authenticity and credibility, and generate higher engagement rates.

You can leverage the power of Influencer Marketing by collaborating with educational influencers. 

Influencers can be game changers for any industry. You can collaborate with influencers on Instagram and generate leads using reviews and giveaways.

19. Develop a strong brand identity

Your university needs to stand out from the competition. Develop a strong brand identity that highlights your unique selling proposition (USP), which could include things like academic excellence, research opportunities, campus life, location, etc.

 Also, run Brand Awareness Campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Google.

Do you know?

Why is creating brand awareness important?

 It is to set your University apart from the crowd.

Apart from lead generation campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Google, run parallel brand awareness campaigns, increasing your University reach at a lower cost. Brand awareness campaigns are available in both Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

20. Use targeted advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads can be an effective way to target specific demographics based on factors like age, gender, location, and interests. Use compelling ad copy and landing pages to encourage clicks and conversions.

Targeted advertising is important because it increases the visibility of a brand and boosts engagement rates with consumers. As compared to traditional offline advertising or complex online strategies, such as content marketing, targeted advertising is cheaper. Here are some ways to increase conversion rates in Google ads.

21. Build a strong social media presence

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are great tools for engaging with potential students. Post regular updates about your university and its programs. Leverage the power of social media by using relevant hashtags and target your posts to specific demographics.

It will boost your brand’s visibility and increase traffic.

Post giveaways regularly to get more engagement. 

It will also help you to create a user persona for the students. 

22. Create an Educational App

Apart from your official University website, create an app for your institution. Use this App for your University’s benefit to help generate leads.

By creating an app for university admissions can provide a number of benefits, including improved user experience, increased accessibility, personalization, data collection, and a competitive advantage. By leveraging the power of technology, universities can create a more engaging and convenient application process, improving their ability to attract and retain top talent.

Use this App as a signup form as a common feature. You can benefit from the signing up process, as it helps to generate valuable data. 

23. Provide excellent customer service

 Prospective students will likely have questions about your university and its programs. Make sure your admissions staff is responsive and helpful, and provide multiple channels for communication, such as phone, email, and live chat.

By implementing these strategies, your university can develop a strong digital marketing strategy that attracts potential students and helps them make informed decisions about their education.

Conclusion

Apart from implementing the above digital marketing strategy for university, it also focuses on delivering top-quality education to students. Include the student’s testimonials in both your social channels as well as on your website. These are the proven online marketing strategies to increase admissions to your university/college. These top digital marketing strategies empower your University to increase engagement and student enrollment. Leverage the power of digital marketing by hiring a result-driven Digital Marketing Agency. Also this blog will help you in generating more leads with Digital Marketing.