3 Ways Digital Marketing Can Boost Student Recruitment for Further & Higher Education Institutions

March 16, 2017

Over the past three years Venture Stream has been lucky enough to work with some fantastic educational institutes, and with our strategic partnership with Alphagraphics, we are constantly asked to consult with even more.

It’s increasingly difficult for the marketing department within the school, college or university to know where to spend their budget most effectively.

Do printed prospectuses still have a place? Do I try local advertising? Will digital help us?

In short, the answer to all the above is yes, but below are our top three points to consider from a digital point of view.

1. Seasonality – Effective Lead Generation for Student Recruitment

Demand for further and higher education courses is undoubtedly seasonal. There will be key timings that your prospective students will be doing their initial research and this is the time you need to be putting your institution’s brand out there for consideration.

One great way of doing this is via Google AdWords. There are so many targeted opportunities you can adopt to put your brand in front of the right people at the right time at the right cost, from Time of Day bidding/rotation to geographical targeting.

Remarketing and Dynamic Remarketing is another opportunity to adopt, whereby we can serve up text and image-based ads to visitors of your site as they browse other sites online, highlighting the specific products, courses or pages that they viewed while on the site, in order to re-engage them and reacquire that potential customer.

2. User Experience – Stand out from your competition

Consider the fact that your audience is looking at possibly three or more other educational sites, they need to see what they want quickly and easily and don’t want to get too stressed in finding the information they want. If you know this, then make your site as easy to navigate as possible, sign post the site accordingly, is there any need to use terms that mean nothing to the student, parent or carer just because they sound good?

3. Connect the channels – “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”

Everything you could do will have some merit and impact, but if you can join up your marketing efforts and take a multi-channel approach the story you are telling will resonate with your full audience. This means making sure your open days, email marketing, social media channels, PR and advertising (digital and print) are all working together to create a huge impact.

Prospectuses, as mentioned above, still have a place to play and will remain the initial go-to resource for the decision makers internally. I’ve seen first-hand the great work that can be achieved from a beautifully designed prospectus with our partners at Alphagraphics, but imagine if you could then view this online, ask questions online, and then possibly have a digital section of the courses you want to research all personalised to you and your requirements and sent directly to your inbox.

All achievable.

There are so many parts to producing a good marketing campaign for an educational site and we believe that with our history of working with Sunderland College, CCAD & Realising Opportunities to name but a few, that we have the knowledge and experience to give the best possible advice.

If you’d like us to show you how we can improve your digital marketing campaigns, register for your free audit now.