4 Ways for Colleges and Universities to Market Themselves

When focusing on their marketing campaigns, colleges and universities have to balance engaging with students and speaking to them on their level with providing factual and accurate information that can give potential applicants an idea of the experience that they might be signing up for. Here are some of the top ways that colleges and universities can market themselves to potential students. 

1. Develop a Comprehensive SEO Campaign

Once you have created your website, you also need to draw potential students toward it, which you can do by developing a comprehensive SEO campaign. To do this, you should isolate the key-words that students may use to find potential options for college, for instance, the names of specific courses or location-based words. Then, you should make sure that these are scattered across your pages and your blog posts, and that you include enough backlinks to boost your traffic. If you are struggling with any part of your marketing or SEO campaign, you should consider hiring a higher education ad agency that can use their expert knowledge to make your strategies successful. 

2. Create an Informative Website 

The first step that all universities and colleges should take is to create an informative website where they can share basic information with their students in a clear format. Your college’s website is its domain, and one that can help to give your institution a voice. To create an engaging yet factual website, you should create a drop-down menu and search bar that can allow students to search for specific pieces of information that they may need, and you should create an FAQ that answers common questions about the application process and your campus. However, your website should not be purely factual, and you should focus on your website design too to create engaging and professional-looking pages. 

3. Get on Social Media

Getting on social media is an especially important strategy for colleges and universities since the vast majority of young people spend a lot of their time online and scrolling through these platforms. You should make sure that you create an account on a variety of different social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, to create a multi-channel strategy that enables you to connect with as many students as possible. One of the best uses of social media for colleges in 2020 is to post videos and infographics that can give your students all the information that they need to know in under two minutes- and in an engaging way. Not only this, but many higher education institutes also now use live videos to answer questions from prospective applicants directly and to show the friendly faces behind their messaging. 

4. Send Personalized Emails

Every student is looking for a different type of experience. To connect with all of these students, you should consider sending personalized emails from your college account. To do this, you should give your mailing list the choice of choosing specific content options when they sign up, and you should consider creating emails that are triggered by the use of certain functions on your website.