Defining the essence of a university: branding strategies for higher education

Whether it is attracting students or motivating existing students, universities attach great importance to marketing. After all, education is not cheap, and higher education institutions need to inform the community that their university experience is worthwhile. Digital marketing strategies for higher education are playing a bigger role than ever in hiring. Today’s youth are using technology for life, and this is the main hope of today’s college students to impress generations of the past. For example, it is no longer enough to have social media and a website. Today’s students expect these tools to be user-friendly, beautiful, transparent, and authentic. This is just the beginning. If colleges and universities are looking to grab the attention of the next generation, discover 5 key digital marketing strategies that can drive engagement and increase enrolment in the digital age.

For colleges and universities, customer research and buyer personality development have additional complexity, simply because there are many important audiences that need to be positioned. Although the average business may focus on understanding and talking with customers, higher education institutions should consider and focus on.

Branding strategies:

Aesthetic and powerful website: With so many different audiences looking for information on your website that can answer their questions, your website must be organized and easy to navigate. Chatbots are a great tool for attracting website visitors, identifying their problems, and guiding them to the right page. In addition to functionality, your website must also be visually appealing and SEO optimized. This helps the tech-savvy generation find your website and recognize it as relevant and useful. Since many website visitors will also find you through digital and printed materials, make sure that your brand and message are consistent in all your marketing efforts for a more seamless experience that reflects your school well.

Search engine optimization: Universities should be easy to find on the Internet. Unless you’re one of the lucky Ivy League high-profile schools, you should make sure they show up in a potential students search. Universities usually get a lot of organic traffic from student searches, so best practices and search engine optimization (SEO) are very important. The design of the university website and the content it provides must be based on Google algorithms and must be carefully designed to rank high on the local stack.

Social media marketing: An institution of higher education will find that most of its marketing activities will target Gen Z and some millennials returning to campus or starting later. Compared with any other group of people, they have the highest participation on daily social media. Among this population, nine out of ten potential students use social media, and 70% use it to research higher education institutions. This means that social media marketing in higher education is an opportunity to connect with these potential students, and it would be wrong to ignore these, although just having social media is not enough. It should have compelling, informative, and authentic content. Today’s students are proficient in marketing techniques, especially in the digital realm, and they want to see what the school actually offers, not just beautiful images. We can give them this authenticity by answering their questions and introducing the school through the eyes of the students.

Email marketing: It may be old now, but a reliable email marketing strategy is still an important marketing tool for higher education. In fact, when it comes to higher education communication and marketing materials, three-quarters of students prefer to contact via email. This makes it an important tool used by schools, but they need to be able to use it properly. Unfortunately, emails from universities are more likely to be filtered as spam, because many organizations do not understand how to properly manage their email marketing. This means you need to make sure that your institution uses email marketing in a way that bypasses these filters and ends up in the eyes of potential students.

When it comes to digital marketing for higher education, pay-per-click advertising remains an essential tool. It can be used to target prospective students and display personalized advertising based on research. PPC campaigns can be used to market higher education on several advertising platforms such as Facebook, Bing, and Google Ads. On mobile devices, you can target ads based on the location and website you visit. These campaigns can be designed to better fit your organization’s budget.

looking to speak with someone regarding your goals, Brandsandu team is looking forward to listening to you contact us.

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