In the competitive world of higher education, making sure that your school stands out among the many alternatives potential students have is crucial. With thousands of college options and an increasing potential of skipping a college degree altogether, higher ed marketing becomes a strategic priority. Once you know how to market university programs, you can differentiate your school.
At the same time, it’s not as simple as building some quick-hit marketing campaigns and hoping for the best. Only institutions with a comprehensive, internally aligned student recruitment and university marketing strategy can succeed in attracting high school students and other learners. This guide on how to market university programs can help you get there.
Why Do Higher Education Institutions Need Marketing?
In this competitive environment, a comprehensive marketing strategy for higher ed institutions is no longer optional. From increasing student enrollment and retention to building and strengthening your university identity, the right strategy following the right best practices can help you compete in a crowded market.
Increasing Student Enrollment and Retention
All higher education marketing strategies tend to focus on one primary goal: increasing the number of college students who attend and ultimately graduate from your institution. But the exact process of how to market university programs changes from school to school. Through a marketing plan that incorporates both print and digital means, your institution can build a targeted outreach mechanism that attracts new students while keeping current students engaged throughout their academic journey.
Consider the student’s journey to college and ultimately to graduation as an example of how to market university programs:
- Through digital marketing and social media, they first learn about your school.
- On your website and landing pages, they fill out forms to learn more.
- Nurturing them through email marketing and printed marketing materials, you can gradually provide more info about your institution.
- All the while, content marketing and other digital tactics help to keep them engaged as they make their enrollment decision.
In other words, your marketing strategy and execution can play a central role in your future students’ decision-making process. Even when they’re enrolled, social media and website content can keep them engaged and increase their odds of retention.
Building and Strengthening University Identity
Marketing experts have long understood that brands are not fully controlled by the companies they represent but are formed in the minds of their target audience. What is true, however, is that your marketing strategy can have a massive impact on how those audiences perceive your institution. Every decision you make about how to market university programs for your university makes a difference.
With a comprehensive, well-planned brand and messaging framework, executed throughout their physical and digital marketing strategy, higher education institutions can craft a compelling brand identity that encompasses the following:
- The core values and mission that drive the institution at all levels
- The differentiators that set the institution apart from its competition
- The voice and tone with which these values and differentiators are communicated
- The visual identity that aligns with the brand voice and builds consistency
This type of framework can tie all of your marketing initiatives together. That fosters a strong sense of community among students, faculty, and alums while also turning every marketing touchpoint with your audience from an isolated message to part of a greater case of why they should enroll.
Competing in a Crowded Market
Finally, effective marketing can help higher education institutions stand out in an increasingly competitive landscape. The National Center for Education Statistics recently reported a decline in higher education institutions, largely due to a shrinking high school student pool. Even still, the number of institutions granting four-year degrees in the United States exceeds 2,600.
Through the right strategy for how to market university programs, you can make your institution stand out. But you can also get specific within that larger framework. Differentiate individual academic programs and highlight unique offerings while leveraging digital tools like search engine optimization and social media marketing to reach prospective students effectively.
The Importance of Understanding Your Target Audience
No marketing strategy can be successful without a full understanding of your target audience. Their demographics, preferences, and motivations should drive your messaging, tactics, and program efforts. As such, defining your target audience is an essential first step for successful higher ed marketing.
But your target audience is not homogenous. Even smaller institutions with more defined student demographics will likely still need to attract different segments. For example, local students who already know about your school will approach their research about your school differently than out-of-state students who need to build that brand awareness. Also, parents are becoming an increasingly important part of the college search. They require their own nuanced messaging priorities.
Creating audience personas is one approach to ensuring that all of your marketing and user experiences align with audience expectations. In addition to defining basic demographics, parent and student personas can outline typical preferences, needs, and motivations for your marketing team to reference when creating content and planning out tactics.
9 Strategies for Marketing University Programs
All higher education marketing starts with defining your audience. From there, you need to decide how to market university programs based on those audiences. These nine strategies can help you maximize your efforts to recruit new students and grow your enrollment.
1. Develop a Strong University Brand Identity
Most stakeholders on campus already know what your university is about. The key is taking that general understanding, as well as perceptions of prospective students, and turning it into a well-defined brand identity.
That identity should include several components:
- A central brand promise that turns your institution’s mission statement into language that’s relevant to your prospective student and parent needs
- Brand pillars or differentiators that become your unique selling points across all short-form and long-form content
- A brand voice that defines the tone and style with which all content will be written
- A visual identity and style that outlines the colors and graphic elements to help your institution stand out
A branding exercise is a complex process. It can take months to survey your current and prospective students and other stakeholders. But that effort is well worth the time, creating a unique North Star for how to market university programs.
2. Produce Video Content for Each Program
Video content has become more important than ever as the preferred content type, especially for teenage audiences. When you’re showcasing individual academic programs, it can become a key component of how to market university programs.
Create short, high-quality videos to highlight the expertise of the faculty, student experiences, and career outcomes in each of your programs. Treat them as case studies that enable future students to see themselves in these programs. The more authentic and closely aligned with your audience personas, the better.
3. Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Increase Visibility
Your website is likely the top destination for prospective students and families researching your school. Through the right SEO strategy, you can ensure that they’ll find the content you’re looking for. In fact, SEO is key to developing a strong online presence, which should be a core goal of your broader marketing strategy. Keyword optimization and technical improvements to your website, like optimization for mobile devices, work together to ensure that your institution appears prominently on relevant online searches.
The potential impact can range across your website. Individual program pages can be optimized for keywords surrounding career outcomes. Meanwhile, your pricing page can become an opportunity for students to research what your college costs and how scholarships and financial aid can make it more affordable. Rankings, especially well-known rankings like U.S. News & World Report, can be another SEO booster for your website.
4. Enhance Website Engagement With Interactive Campus Maps
Speaking of your website—when your audiences research your institution, they’ll look for fancy messaging and details on what they can expect. That’s where interactive maps can come in. Give your prospective students an engaging and immersive way to explore your campus, facilities, academic buildings, and other highlights.
With a solution like Concept3D, you can go even further as you decide how to market university programs. Beyond showcasing your campus, the platform can turn into a wayfinding tool that helps students find their way to open houses and all the way to Move-In Weekend when they enroll. In addition to enhancing your website, the campus map becomes a powerful tool in its own right. It can even give you the ability to share key content on other digital channels.
5. Leverage Social Media for Engagement
No modern higher ed marketing strategy can be complete without a comprehensive effort to engage your audience on the social media platforms of their choice. Here, you can share program highlights, student stories, and campus events while also fostering direct engagement with potential applicants.
An effective social media strategy is a comprehensive undertaking in its own right. It starts with finding the right channels. For example, teenagers still love TikTok, while LinkedIn is ideal for prospective graduate students.
In addition, you can leverage social media listening by following higher ed-specific hashtags to better understand what your audiences are saying about your school and their college search.
6. Utilize Paid Advertising for Targeted Outreach
Organic efforts on your website and social media rely on your audiences finding you. Through paid advertising, you can reach out to students and parents without requiring them to actively search for you first.
Most universities now embrace a multi-channel digital advertising approach, including channels such as pay-per-click (PPC) search engine ads, social media ads, and display banner ads. These efforts are programmatic, meaning they can be targeted based on specific demographics and keywords to reach thousands of potential students.
Given the typically limited space, the type of content you present in these ads is vital. Infographics, for example, can be a good way to get complex factual information about your school across to your audience quickly without sacrificing visual appeal.
7. Offer Virtual and In-Person Events
Events have long been an important part of the college search journey. Open houses and campus tours are vital pieces in providing prospective students with first-hand insights into anything from campus life to individual academic programs.
At the same time, a campus visit takes a significant time commitment from prospective families. In recent years, virtual events have become more popular. Through live streaming technology, your school can offer anything from program-specific info session webinars to virtual open houses that allow students to learn about the school, ask questions, and immerse themselves into your culture from the comfort of their own homes.
8. Focus on Personalization
Even as you attempt to reach thousands of prospective students, each of them will expect a personalized approach that caters to their needs. Through personalized marketing efforts, you can make them feel welcome and provide the information they need to make the right enrollment decision.
Your personalization efforts can range widely. Most commonly, they will include:
- Email campaigns tailored to their program of interest or other motivations for enrollment
- Chatbots that they can leverage to ask questions about anything from application requirements to financial aid
- Customized content on your website, depending on the information you have
Get the personalization right, and you can significantly improve student engagement rates and applications.
9. Leverage Student Testimonials and Success Stories
Finally, you can supercharge your marketing efforts through the power of user-generated content. Prospective students love to hear from their peers to ensure that the marketing messages you send are backed up by lived experiences. It’s a key component to the authenticity Gen Z audiences crave when consuming content online.
Strategically gather student testimonials and success stories about the topics your prospects care most about. At least one testimonial for each academic program will be helpful. They not only build credibility but also showcase the real-world impact that university programs can have on their students.
Attract and Engage Prospective Students With Concept3D
For powerful modern higher education marketing, you need an effective marketing strategy. That means not only identifying your audience but also leveraging the right tactics. Use SEO, paid ads, personalization, and user-generated content to engage and convert prospective students and families.
Above all, though, a content-based approach is key. With Concept3D, you can effectively attract and engage prospective students, showcasing your campus and institution in the best possible light. Request a demo today to learn how Concept3D can help you power up your university program marketing.