Internet evolution has made a significant impact on the lifestyle of the people living in this modern world. Technology advancements have also played a key role in this process by making the internet accessible through a wide range of electronic devices resulting in the growth of internet usage by the people across the world.
Wondering what the growth of internet users would mean to your educational institute? Well, this is an important factor for any educational institute to consider. Because within the millions of people using the internet there are many students and parents who might be looking for an institute offering a particular course.
Students are also using the internet to learn online reading blogs, watching videos online and communicating better with their friends by creating groups on social platforms like Facebook, Reddit, etc. They are trying to get answers to their subject-related or career-related questions from the web.
Even parents are searching online for an institute offering the desired course programs to enroll their children. The most important fact is that many people are searching for institutes online rather than the traditional offline process because of the flexibility to access the web using internet at any time they are free.
Having a good online presence, reviews and information about your institute online can help in building your online reputation eventually so that there is a higher chance of more people recommending your institute for the courses offered and close your admission process within a short time.
So if you have an educational institute, it is a must for you to get started with online marketing for your business. Let’s discuss in detail how digital marketing strategies can help your educational institute.
How Digital Marketing Can Help Your Educational Institute?
Marketing is required for any business to grow and reach a larger audience which helps in building brand awareness. But in the world today, digital channels are more popular than traditional marketing channels such as newspapers, FM radio, etc.
Using digital marketing strategies you can reach the audience using digital platforms. Educational institutions can easily get more admissions or enrollment in the programs or courses offered by them with the help of digital marketing services because of the fact that the majority of internet users are teenagers.
Digital marketing can help you reach a specific target audience depending on the requirements without any wastage of your money. Moreover, the performance of the digital marketing strategies is measurable and hence you can even calculate the ROI of your marketing strategies implemented.
The first step towards the maintenance of your digital presence is getting an official website that can help you a lot in many ways. As generally parents or students would make search and visit it, you can build their trust by making all the necessary information available to the users such as;
- Courses and their curriculum
- Infrastructure and Amenities
- Contact Details
- Accreditations and Awards
- Achievements of Your Past Students
And many more such things which can help them compare your institute with the other institute and make a decision to select one for pursuing their desired course.
Digital marketing services can help you gain more traffic or visitors to your website either through paid ads or organically. You can even retarget the specific visitors as well with the help of digital marketing.
Before you think about using digital marketing services for your educational institute you need to identify your;
- Audience
- Goals
Audience:
Defining your target audience is important for any marketing effort to drive results. So you must identify the audience like their age group, interests and other common demographics of a person who would be looking for a course to enroll offered by your institute. This buyer persona helps a lot in digital marketing campaigns.
Goals:
Identifying the goals of your educational institute such as brand awareness, communication with the audience, etc can be quite useful. You can easily choose the right channels which can help you achieve those goals in a short time.
For example, if you are planning to generate leads for course enrollments then a lead generation Pay per Click campaigns can help you achieve them immediately. Moreover, you will be able to predict the time in which you can achieve them when you plan things ahead.
So after identifying the goals and target audience of your institution you need to get started with digital marketing. In this article, I have listed down some of the best digital marketing strategies for educational institutions in 2024 so let’s go through them in detail.
1. Search Engine Optimization:
Search Engines Optimization is one of the key cost-effective digital marketing methods to drive more traffic to your website from the search engines by optimizing your website. The process of optimizing your website involves finding the status of hundreds of SEO factors and fixing whatever is possible which are identified using an SEO audit.
The SEO factors are primarily categorized into three main categories:
i. On-Page Factors
ii.Off-Page Factors
ii.Technical SEO factors
On-Page SEO:
On-Page SEO factors are the things that need to be checked on your web pages.It involves many activities of which most important are:
Responsive Design:
If your website looks good only on desktop browsers then you would be definitely missing out a lot. Because most of the traffic to websites is from mobile devices. Every website must have a good responsive design so that it looks good even in mobile devices and provides a good user experience to the visitor with proper navigation in place.
Site Speed Optimization:
If your website doesn’t load fast then the visitors will bounce back without even checking the content on the website. So you must get it optimized for speed so that it loads fast in all the devices.
Adding Relevant Keywords:
Keywords play a major role in traffic generation. So you need to add them in the title tags, meta descriptions of the content on your website. Also, you must add the ALT tags for the images and videos on your website.
Off-Page SEO:
As a part of your off-page SEO strategy, you need to get the links to your website from various relevant sources such as a government website or news website which would build the trust on your website by the search engines.
Also providing links for the sources of every important aspect that you describe in the content on your website can make it more authentic from the perspective of a visitor.
Technical SEO:
When you have the website,there is a higher chance that there some technical issues like 404, SSL certificate,Robots.txt, etc. As a website owner, you need to get all such issues fixed so that the search engine crawlers can easily crawl all your web pages and understand more about your website
Each of the above three categories has to be fixed. After fixing these things you can get online visibility and organic traffic from the search engines as soon as you get higher rankings in the Search Engine Result Pages. Finally, you can get more enrollments in the courses offered by your institute easily without the need to spend any money on advertisements for a longer duration of time.
2. Quora Marketing:
Quora is an amazing platform for educational institutions to attract more students or parents and make them check the digital assets such as a website, social media handles, etc. You can start answering different types of questions which are commonly asked by the students such as;
- Career After Completion of The Course
- Course-related questions
This way writing a detailed answer and guiding them about such aspects you can easily win the trust of a reader who is generally or a parent searching on quora for answers. This way they would follow you or check your profile. Depending on the quality of your answers you can get more upvotes which results in the increase of their views.
Moreover, you can use the answers to drive traffic to your website for free regularly as long as your answers are relevant and getting more views on the platforms. Remember the quality of leads you get from quora is high leading to more enrollments in your course. So you must have a proper quora marketing strategy in place to get the best results from it.
3. Youtube Marketing:
YouTube has billions of monthly users. As an educational institute, you can create videos of short and long durations. Some ideas I would like to suggest you are;
- Testimonials From Past Students
- Videos Showing the Infrastructure at your institute
- Videos showing the education classes
By making videos and uploading the right way with good titles, thumbnails, tags, descriptions, etc, you can reach more people watching videos on the platform organically resulting in an increase in the awareness of your institute and its specialties. You even run video ads on YouTube for immediate results. So YouTube provides a great marketing opportunity for your educational institute.
4. Social Media Marketing:
Social Media Platforms have a large user base and each platform individually has millions of registered users. Having a social media presence for your educational institution on all the most popular platforms can help you easily share various kinds of information related to your institute such as Updates, Wishes, etc to the students or parents.
Communication is very easy on social media. So parents or students can easily contact you by using these platforms. You can address their queries and resolve their concerns in a short period of time. This way you can build the reputation of your institute online among the other users of the social media platform as well.
Some of the most important social media marketing strategies include:
Facebook Messenger Bot Marketing:
There are many people using the messenger on their devices and the open rates are very high as well. You can send a broadcast of the updates related to your new courses or achievements with a single click from a messenger marketing tool once they have subscribed to your bot.
Instagram Stories:
Instagram stories have more than 500 million active story viewers and the teenagers are the majority in the user base of the platform. Uploading stories regularly with a proper strategy by using the right hashtags, right stickers, etc can help you reach more people.
This way you can attract more followers and receive more admissions for your institute using the right URL in your bio of Instagram profile.
Social Media Advertisements:
Social media advertisements are way cheaper compared to search engine advertisements. You can easily get started with them to reach more people and gain more attention from social media platform users. Moreover, you can retarget the visitors of your website easily with social media advertisements.
Live Videos:
Going live on Instagram and Facebook regularly taking the questions related to your course and answering them during the live stream can also help a lot in reaching more people who might become students of your institute in the future. You can also make live videos showing the classes conducted at your institute.
As more people see the videos they would recommend your institute if any of their friends or family members are looking to enroll in a course offered by your institute.
5. Search Engine Marketing:
Search Engine Marketing can help you generate inquiries or leads immediately even though they are a bit costly relative to social media ads. Because of the fact that people making a search with clear intent, the conversion rates that is the inquiry leading to enrollment are much higher. So running pay per click campaigns on the search engines is a good strategy.
Conclusion: Digital Marketing Strategies for Institutes
Digital Marketing services are essential for any kind of organization to grow in 2024. Planning the right digital marketing strategies for educational institutions and implementing them properly you can build awareness and a good reputation about your institute. Moreover, I (Pranav Jha) can help you attract more students or parents towards your institute resulting in more enrollments in a short period of time.
