What Makes Marketing for Higher Education Different?
Higher education marketing is one of the services that the education specialists at Communications Strategy Group (CSG®) are approached about most often. Why? Because higher-ed institutions are in a tightly-packed, competitive space, one that has been wracked by tremendous upheaval in recent years. Although the sector has seen an uneven recovery from previous enrollment lows, driven mainly by increases in undergrad enrollment at public universities and community colleges, many institutions’ numbers are still heading in the wrong direction. Colleges and universities know they must launch bold advertising initiatives that foster engagement through multiple channels. Those initiatives have to take account of all the platforms, forums and real-world spaces where the relevant audiences mostly reside, and show understanding of their unique needs and challenges. Despite overall higher ed marketing spend falling in the last decade (probably in response to enrollment challenges), the median spend for a private institution is still $98,000 per year, and the average is much higher because of a few institutions at the top of the range.
Some institutions handle marketing initiatives in-house, and some contract with higher education marketing firms, but either way the goal is the same: to publish compelling communications that strengthen a brand and reach the right people at the right time to boost enrollment.
How to Create a Successful Higher Education Marketing Strategy
If you are a higher-ed institution vying for enrollment increases in this high-pressure ecosystem, you will need to have a solid plan, along with data, experience and industry intuition, to attract and hold prospective students’ attention. You may find that it makes more sense to engage a partner out-of-house for all your higher ed marketing activities than to manage them yourself. In any case, for higher-ed institutions hoping to distinguish themselves from competitors and attract enrollees, the following tips can lay the groundwork for an effective higher education marketing strategy.
10 Higher Education Marketing Strategies to Boost Student Enrollment
1. Utilize YouTube
Education marketing strategies should take advantage of Gen Z’s and Gen Alpha’s affinity for YouTube. This social platform gets daily traffic from up to 90% of Gen Alpha kids, who will begin making their way into colleges soon, and two thirds of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 also use it daily. Ads on the platform often see higher levels of engagement than many other forms of promotion. Marketing for higher ed can harness these trends by showcasing education institutions’ outstanding qualities and connecting their stories to those of their target audiences.
2. Incorporate Video
A related point: video marketing in general, including short-form formats, is one of the biggest marketing trends not just in higher education but all sectors. Ninety-three percent of marketers say video is a key part of their larger strategy. In higher ed, video is a powerful medium that can give prospective students a better introduction to your campus amenities or eminent faculty than you could achieve otherwise. This builds trust and brand awareness that will benefit your campaigns at large. Your videos can be long or short, and they can cover a huge range of topics, from campus life to the history of your college or university, to FAQs about the admission process. Making this form of content a priority in your marketing campaigns across channels will help you raise engagement and conversion rates and boost your SEO and AEO metrics.
3. Increase Organic Traffic Through SEO and AEO
Speaking of SEO and AEO, you might think that enrollment is a game of chance, that you have little control over whether students stumble upon your website. That is not true. In fact you can increase the traffic entering your marketing funnel through a variety of strategies that improve your position on search engine results and answer engine results like Google AI Overviews. To make sure your higher ed marketing cuts through the commotion of internet activity in your field, you first have to conduct research to find out what searches your audience is performing most often. Next, use that research to find promising keywords to include in your content, so that search engines will be more likely to send people toward your website, blog or other material in the course of their school enrollment research. Then, structure the content in a clear, hierarchical way to help AI-powered engines understand the value you’re offering your audience. Try to answer the main question in the first few sentences before going into more detail, and add the author’s name. Insert keywords where it makes sense, but don’t go crazy. A clear, natural tone is best.
Overall, make sure your blog posts, infographics, thought leadership articles, videos and webpages are easy to understand, functional, credible and timely. This will improve metrics like time on page and bounce rate, while also increasing your chance of earning citations from third-party sites, i.e., backlinks, which exert a further favorable effect on your search engine and answer engine ranking and overall competitiveness. Spending time on SEO and AEO is an avenue for marketing higher education that should not be overlooked.
4. Use Lookalike Audiences
The Lookalike Audience option in Facebook Ads allows you to identify key characteristics from an antecedent customer base — such as age, sex, income, location, engagement patterns and interests — and then target a group of people similar to that base with your advertising. You may choose how closely the lookalike base must match the original base, opting for a wider, less similar audience or a smaller, more similar one depending on your marketing goals. Lookalike audience campaigns tend to have much higher conversion rates than just sending your promotions out blind, making it a valuable tool for marketing in higher education.
5. Prioritize Mobile
People are on their phones more than three hours a day on average. That means there’s a good chance potential enrollees will run across your marketing campaigns while on a mobile device. You can help create the best user experience possible in this scenario by utilizing responsive ads and, if you rely on a CMS for your webpages, choosing one that gives you the option of flexibility between desktop- and mobile-friendly formats. If you partner with an outside agency for web development, make sure they understand and can fulfill your need for mobile-enabled content.
6. Create a Personalized Experience
71% of consumers expect companies to make the effort to offer a personalized experience. Meanwhile, consumer willingness to switch brands is at an extreme high. Factor this into your higher education marketing. Emphasizing how your institution respects individual learning styles, schedules, goals and preferences in your marketing campaigns can give prospective students confidence that you provide a service tailored to their unique circumstances, making it easier for them to take the step of enrolling.
7. Make Friends with Influencers
We’ve written before about how paid media (traditional ads) likely aren’t enough to compete in a highly content-driven environment like the digital world. With earned media taking on more and more importance in modern marketing, you’ll want to try to secure third-party endorsements of your institution. Social media influencers can be a powerful force to generate awareness of and interest in your brand, and a multi-tiered marketing strategy that harnesses that force can work wonders in education contexts. Marketing for higher education should include some strategy for getting the people who set trends in your industry on your side, so that students researching colleges to attend are likely to run into a positive mention of your organization.
8. Choose KPIs Wisely
As in all other types of marketing, collecting data from education marketing campaigns can mean the difference between failure and success. The key performance indicators (KPIs) that you choose to monitor can tell you how your efforts are going in real time, highlight trends over time, reveal areas of weakness, point to new opportunities, and allow you to revise your campaigns for maximum effect and focus future efforts where it is most economical to do so. Will you track leads? Conversions? Backlinks? Time on page? Traffic source? The particular combination of KPIs you prioritize will depend on your institution’s goals, budget and timeline, but the bottom line is that you have to collect data in order to make informed decisions about your marketing.
9. Emphasize Real-World Outcomes
In a period of high tuition rates and the looming threat of AI workforce disruption, students are worried about getting jobs that justify the cost of going to college. Emphasizing real-world successes and the practical value of the education you offer will not only make prospective students feel understood but also help allay their fears about enrolling.
10. Create Engaging, Sincere Content
Enrolling at a higher ed institution, with all the effort and expense that entails, is a deeply emotional decision that requires a strong bond between the institution and its audience. Even if you offer a program that is a perfect fit for a student and falls within their budget, if they don’t feel an emotional resonance with your messaging, they may turn elsewhere for help. One way to avoid this is by making sure your higher education marketing conveys who you really are — what your values are, why you strive to help students succeed and how you understand their motivations and concerns. This can go a long way toward building the relationships you need to achieve higher enrollment rates.
FAQs about Higher Education Marketing
How do you market higher education?
You market higher education through preliminary research and audience insight that informs a balanced campaign with both PR and marketing elements, across multiple channels, guided by real-time data.
What marketing strategies do universities use?
Universities use a variety of marketing strategies including influencer outreach, social media, SEO, AEO, paid media, reporter pitches, video and thought leadership articles.
How much does higher education spend on marketing?
Higher education institutions now spend an average of around $800,000 on digital advertising every year.
Ready for Your Next Move?
Successful marketing in higher ed is a complex process that will most likely require expertise acquired through long experience. If you want to skip the trial and error and go straight to the payoff, you’ll need help from a higher education marketing agency. The education team at CSG is always ready for a new challenge, so get in touch with us here today.
