Category: Education Marketing

If you are a higher education marketing professional looking to attract new prospective students, you had better be using social media. 58% of student applicants say they vet the schools they are applying to using social media, and experts project that figure will only continue to grow.

According to Hootsuite, over 98% of higher education institutions use social media to reach students across campus. And while these are enrolled students, this figure sheds light on how essential social media is to the modern student experience. Students start engaging with social media well before they even start applying. 

Students are actually well-versed with social media across multiple channels, with research pointing to preferences for TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. Although, Twitter, Facebook, and even LinkedIn remain strong contenders for engagement as well.

Because you are dealing with such a savvy audience, you absolutely have to master social media best practices if you want to be successful in reaching them. Consider the following four social media tips as you build out your approach. 

4 Useful Tips For Higher Education Social Media

1. Define your tone and voice

You likely have more flexibility than you think with this, even within the brand guidelines that your institution requires. Think carefully about who you want to engage. Consider how you want to relate to them, and how you want them to relate to you. 

The messaging you use as a result of this tone and voice will define your interactions. It affects not only how you engage with your audience in social media but also determines whether you will build relationships that last.

In order to be successful, you have to put your audience’s needs first:

• What makes your audience feel connected, proud, nostalgic, or emotional?
• What does your audience need in order to feel supported?
• What questions does your audience need answered, and how can you simplify things for your audience, so they are met with the information they need right as they need it?

Once defined, consistency in voice and tone is key. Clearly determine the rules and parameters for students and staff to abide by as they post and engage.

2. Follow content best practices

Your audience is always the target; they are who you are talking to and trying to reach. Keeping your audience’s needs first is vital to successfully building a following and maintaining engagement. 

A good practical starting point for pinpointing your audiences is to build out an audience map, where you identify the various personas across all of your channels. From here, you can make sure that all the content you deploy across social media platforms is optimized to resonate with the audiences that “live” there.

Next, build out a content inventory that you can dip into to save yourself time and ensure a steady flow of consistent posts. For example, if there’s an annual big game and alumni event, you can reuse past content and just change the wording a little to make it fresh. There is no need to reinvent the wheel constantly.

Monitor your content’s performance so that you make sure it delivers the results you expect of it. Set measurable goals and constantly measure them. If you are reaching them, you can find satisfaction in knowing that your content is meeting its goals and keep building on that success. If you need to adjust your strategy, this data will help you pinpoint where change is most needed.

3. Engage with your audience – constantly

We’ve addressed the need for consistent delivery of content, but that’s only half of the engagement battle. You have to consistently engage with prospective and current students as well as alumni. Aside from posting, respond directly to and encourage discussion across the social media channels, especially through Twitter and Instagram. 

Leverage live videos, reels, stories, and audience members directly responding to your content. Add a human touch and showcase your institution’s brand identity. 

Social media can help drive audience members to your site—hello, applications!—and even increase engagement during big school events, such as graduation or athletic games. You can also build interdepartmental communication and a more cohesive community by uniting different faculty and students under common interests. 

4.  Build a social media communication plan for various crisis situations

Being prepared for a time of crisis is a powerful way for your social media channels to serve your audiences. It can be a powerful opportunity to cement engagement and build a meaningful connection with your audiences, who will trust you more and therefore keep returning.

Consider the protocols your college or university has in place when disaster strikes, whether it’s national or local. How would you notify your employees, staff, and students on campus of any issues or associated protocols? How could you leverage the distinctive features of each social media channel they are on to reach them most effectively? 

With social media you can give timely updates on how to navigate through such crises. But don’t wait for disaster to strike; build out your content library and plan ahead of time, so that you are ready in case they are (unfortunately) needed.

Contact us for more higher education social media tactics!

Social media is more important than ever in higher education marketing. The core principles of being aware of your target audiences, being attentive to their needs, and being consistent with delivering content and engagement remain the same as with any other marketing strategy. Following these best practices lays a solid foundation for the rest of your marketing efforts.

Ready to take your social media strategy to the next level? Contact us for a free consultation.

A student enrollment journey is a combination of online and offline touch points. Yet, many higher education marketers track only online marketing activities and therefore miss important information about the quality and value of the leads. To tackle this common issue, we hosted a webinar together with Google to discuss smarter data integration tactics.

Webinar hosts Stephanie Chan, Agency Development Manager at Google, and Adrian Padron, Director of Media at Mason Interactive, explored Google’s Offline Conversion Tracking as an advanced solution for education marketing professionals who want to increase efficiency and profitability.

Continue reading for the webinar highlights and more information about Offline Conversion Tracking. 

2021 Higher Education Trends

Student enrollment journey is expanding 

The changes inflicted by the 2020 pandemic influenced institutional consolidations, budget freezes, and an increase in demand for online education. Effectively, the environment is moving quickly and ferociously towards new and diverse student enrollment journeys. 

“While other crises reshaped the future, Covid-19 is just making the future happen faster…”

Scott Gallaway, NYU Professor

Now that budget freezes are warming back up, colleges and universities use integrated marketing strategies to drive more, and higher quality leads to their admissions teams. Today, prospective students may enter the lead flow after searching for a specific degree program on Google, seeing an ad while streaming a video, or word-of-mouth referrals. 

The demand for online education continues to grow

Online education degrees and programs experienced an almost overnight growth spurt in 2020. Stephanie shared results from Google’s recent study that showed a shift in demand for online education happened promptly in January 2020. Why? The P-a-n-d-e-m-i-c, of course! More schools created online learning spaces for high school students and postgraduate adult learners who consider online education a “must-have” when deciding where to apply.

Gone are the days when students opted for legacy or local schools only. “Online education provides prospective students with the flexibility of learning from home or while sustaining other responsibilities, Stephanie said, “approximately 42% of prospective students consider at least one other school when evaluating their options.”

Since digital education is rising in K-12, higher EDU’s should expect this trend to continue as online culture expands into early academic careers. So, let’s take a closer look at prospective students before they apply to your school. By knowing your student lead-to-enrollment journey, you’ll attract more valuable leads. 

Refining the Application to Enrollment Journey

Here’s an assignment: Ask your marketing team, “How much visibility do we have on our student enrollment journey?” If you’re not sure or have little visibility, here are some preliminary discussion questions to gain more perspective on your lead-to-enrollment journey.

How do students most likely find your school?

It’s no surprise that the internet significantly boosts campus discovery through social media and search platforms. During the webinar, Stephanie shared data from GlobalWebIndex (GWI2020 Report) stating that “52% of prospective students leverage search engines during their [college] research journey.”

Here are some primary higher education lead generation tactics:

• Online search engines, like Google and YouTube
• Social media, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter
• Word-of-mouth from current or past students and staff
• Top-of-mind from local awareness

What happens to new leads?

It’s increasingly common for schools to use CRM software like Hubspot and Salesforce to integrate their prospective student data with their marketing campaigns. Once a student submits an inquiry form, their information loads into the CRM as a ‘Prospective Student.’ Then, an admissions counselor or recruiter contacts them and gathers additional details.

After advising, the staff member provides the prospect with resources for applying to their program of interest and helps throughout the application process. A conversion happens when the student completes enrollment and becomes a ‘Current Student’ in the college’s CRM. 

Attracting and Tracking High-Quality Leads for Higher Education

Why do high-quality leads matter so much in higher education today? Because reaching enrollment goals and retaining students relies on getting the right students at the right time in their academic growth. Focus on attracting high-quality students for an efficient and profitable enrollment process that benefits both students and the institution. 

Attracting high-quality leads 

The best answer to “how to attract high-quality leads” is “use an omnichannel marketing approach”. Most colleges find success through an integrated marketing plan which includes a tailored, omnichannel digital advertising strategy. 

To create a digital advertising strategy, a) perform a competitive analysis b) and gather information about prospective student and family psychographic and demographic qualities. To meet your goals, you might need to make an initial investment (so it’s best to work with an experienced education marketing partner who understands your needs). 

Bridge the gap between online and offline attribution

Obtaining and managing prospective student lead data helps you identify and invest in your school’s top-performing lead generation tactics. Be on the lookout for gaps in your data! In particular, the gap between offline and online conversions. 

What are online and offline conversions?

Online conversions happen when students visit a landing page, submit an inquiry, or apply online. The lead source tracking occurs through APIs and pixels. Offline conversions occur via email, over the phone, or in person. The lead source is relatively unknown unless integrated with other data sets. 

So, how do you track the lead source for offline conversions? And, how do you know which online actions influenced your offline conversions?

The benefits of Google Offline Conversion Tracking

Luckily, cutting-edge advertising platforms like Google create solutions for integrating data sources. Google provides Offline Conversion Tracking (OCT) through their Google Adwords Platform. Using a GCLID (a privacy-friendly user identification code) to cross-analyze data uploaded from your college CRM, Google allows you to integrate online conversions with offline conversions. 

“We’ve found that integrating multiple sources of customer data into the application to enrollment journey has resulted in 20% efficiency gains.”

Stephanie Chan, Google

Here are some benefits of Google’s Offline Conversion Tracking:

• You’ll be able to make better decisions about driving better leads with integrated data
• You’ll get a better understanding of your ROI
• More cost-efficient bidding due to a better info feed for AI/Smart campaigns

To enjoy the full benefits of Offline Conversion Tracking it’s important to involve your digital advertising agency, Web Developer, CRM Manager, and Google Ads Admin. Together, they can create an Offline Conversion Tracking strategy and process for set-up, website and CRM modifications, and data uploads. 

Working with an Agency for Offline Conversion Tracking (OCT)

If you want more information about Offline Conversion Tracking for your college or university, contact Mason Interactive for a discovery session with our well–educated, Google Adwords Certified team. 

YouTube advertising is a powerful channel for an A+ integrated higher education marketing strategy. 2 in 3 prospective college students use YouTube to learn skills, discover new things, and find relevant information.

In this article we listed the top five tactics higher ed marketers must know when advertising their college or university programs on YouTube. These are the steps you need for campaigns voted as “most likely to succeed” in their class. 

5 Must-Know YouTube Ads Tactics to Reach Prospective Students

1. Use YouTube SEO and paid YouTube advertising 

What can you do to drive organic traffic to your YouTube channel, where you host your campus’s video content? Many colleges have a YouTube channel with valuable content for students about their campuses, courses, and culture. Since 3 in 4 prospective students go to YouTube while evaluating schools, you’ll need to use organic tactics to help them find your YouTube channel. Implement these best practices to improve your YouTube SEO:

• Do keyword research on Google
• Look at other relevant videos similar to yours
• Optimize your titles, descriptions, tags, and thumbnails
• Optimize your video transcripts 

Above steps will help you build a strong foundation for YouTube SEO. If you are unsure how to conduct a thorough keyword research or activate optimization techniques, book a free consultation with us. Our strategy team can help you get on the right path. 

2. Use emotional appeals for video ads but share informative channel content

When creating your video ads, focus on generating an emotional response from viewers. Your video ads are 15-30 seconds long in general, so you won’t be able to share tons of information. Thus, you’ll want to capture the viewer’s attention using videos that make them feel inspired or motivated to learn more about your college. 

First, decide on your ad’s goal. What do you want the target audience to do after seeing your video? Then, determine the emotion that inspires that action. For example, suppose I want prospects to fill out a lead form in my TrueView for Action campaign to learn more about enrolling in my university’s computer science program. In that case, my video ad might include a young person receiving an award from NASA for the programming skills they learned at my university. 

On your school’s YouTube channel, your video content should be informative and compelling to retain your viewer’s attention as long as possible. It will be easy to identify which types of videos your audience like most. Popular and well-performing videos will have higher click-through rates, more views, and extended view times. 

3. Map out the student enrollment journey

With a beautiful video ad and quality ad copy, you’ll be collecting clicks, views, and lead forms in no time. But have you considered what happens after capturing a new lead? How will you nurture the lead and guide them towards enrolling next semester? Map out a student enrollment journey for each campaign, including all that happens before and after seeing your video ad. 

Journey mapping is an exercise to get you thinking “big picture” and reducing your lead generation and nurturing process gaps. Here is an example of a student’s journey to enrollment to help you map out crucial checkpoints:

• Zoey recently became an RN! She’s hoping to find a flexible RN-to-BSN program that advances her career. 
• After searching for RN-to-BSN programs on Google, Zoey visits your school’s website (Awareness) but leaves and continues exploring options.
• Zoey goes to TopBSNColleges.com and sees a display advertisement (Retargeting) for your school. The ad is relevant to her, and she recalls your school’s website from earlier. She adds your school to her mental list of possibilities (Consideration).
• Zoey uses YouTube every day and decides to look up “tips for new nurses” on YouTube. Thanks to your SEO strategy (Intent), one of your videos shows up in the results, but she chooses to watch a video created by her favorite personality. 
• While watching the video, she sees your TrueView for Action ad and fills out the lead form (Action) with her First Name, Last Name, Email Address, and Program of Interest. 
• Zoey’s lead form goes to your database, and an enrollment specialist emails her within a couple of hours to set up an appointment (Lead Nurturing). 
• Zoey learns more about your program, tuition, and benefits during her appointment and decides to enroll in your upcoming semester (Success!).

In this example, we used a TrueView for Action ad, which allows you to embed a lead form within your advertisement. Depending on your campaign format, you might need a landing page linked to your ad. Andrew Wombles, an Associate Director of Media at Mason Interactive, suggests using short, concise forms on landing pages. Ideally, limit your lead generation form to 3-5 questions and input fields that only capture the information you need to follow-up with a potential student. 

“With Youtube being the 2nd largest search engine in the world, this platform is a great way to reach users across multiple devices and is an amazing platform to leverage upper-funnel branding and efficient remarketing campaigns to drive leads.” 

Andrew Wombles, Associate Director of Media and Higher Education marketing expert at Mason Interactive

4. Choose the right YouTube solution for your objectives

YouTube provides full-funnel solutions for your marketing objectives. But, associating the right solution with your campaign makes it a real lead magnet. What goals and objectives can you achieve on YouTube? The three marketing objectives for a YouTube campaign are to 1) maximize reach and awareness, 2) build consideration and interest, and 3) drive online action and sales. 

Once you’ve selected the marketing goal you want to achieve using YouTube, you’ll be able to decide what advertising solution matches your objectives. Here’s a quick visual to help you:

YouTube Solutions Overview

YouTube Masthead: A digital billboard placed on YouTube’s homepage for about 24 hours.

TrueView for Reach: Skippable, in-stream (video plays while someone is watching content) video ads with an open time-limit.

Bumper ads: non-skippable ads no more than 6 seconds long shown at the beginning or end of a video. These work best for mobile device users and in coordination with TrueView ads. 

YouTube Select (non-skip ads 15/20 sec): non-skippable ads no more than 15-20 seconds long show at the beginning of a video in which messaging and relevancy are extremely important. 

TrueView Discovery: Clickable thumbnail ads and text which run on YouTube search results, watch pages, and mobile apps which lead users to your channel or video ad.

TrueView In-stream: Video ads that are skippable after 5-seconds that may be delivered on YouTube or across the Google Display Network.

TrueView for Action: Video ads with powerful action-driving capabilities, including CTA buttons, headlines, banners, site links, and lead forms.

Standard Display ads: 300 x 250 display ads which appear everywhere in YouTube.

5. Measure your campaigns in the right way

Every college should know how to measure the impact of their YouTube ad campaigns. Why? Because if you use the wrong performance indicators, you won’t have the best understanding of your data to drive future decisions. When measuring campaign performance, make sure you consider the right metrics for your campaign objectives and solutions. Here is an extension of my previous visual to guide you:

Working with a YouTube Advertising agency for Higher Education Marketing

Mason Interactive is a performance marketing agency for higher education providing digital strategies across multiple channels, including YouTube. If you are looking to partner with an agency to maximize reach, build interest, or drive online leads for your school, schedule your free analysis consultation with our team of strategists to get started.

Higher education marketing challenges in 2021 present critical opportunities for creative strategy and engagement through ads, content, and optimization. To maintain high rankings amid COVID-19, it’s time to rethink the enrollment journey and take a red pen to your digital marketing strategies in the new year. 

Standardized strategies set you back, and right now, your goal is to push forward. Pushing forward means fearlessly facing challenges like fewer applicants, supporting personalization in education, and promoting your academic programs’ unique benefits. 

Let’s resolve higher education marketing challenges in 2021 by strengthening your recruitment programs, communicating value, and generating high-intent leads. Here are three ways you can fill your classes and communities with scores of students next year. 

Higher Education Marketing Challenges in 2021: New year, new challenges, new opportunities

1 | Make social media the focus of your recruitment process to increase engagement

Challenge: Prospective students use your website and social media presence to get a sense of your school’s spirit. In 2020, you mastered the essentials of updating and posting on your institution’s social media accounts regularly (right?!). This year’s challenge is actively reaching out by replying to comments, leveraging chat features, inviting student feedback, or running focused social ads to connect incoming students with your school’s message. 

Opportunity: How can you stand out when your competition is on every platform? Have an action-packed profile and social ads that pop! Try posting video clips with a welcoming message from your recruiters or use creative ad copy that resonates with your target audience. Host live tours of your campus to showcase social distancing and health safety efforts. In the world of virtual interaction, increasing engagement through social media recreates the “college experience” that students desire in exchange for their most precious resources: time, money, and interest.

2 | Communicate value by distributing optimized content on your blogs and popular student websites 

Challenge: You can add value to future graduates long before they log on to register for classes. Your target audience is ripe for learning, so use rich content to plant some university wisdom and nurture new relationships. But, you reap what you sow, right? Sow some SEO seeds in 2021! 

Opportunity: Optimized content provides more outlets for potential applicants to find you in a saturated online network. For best results, create valuable content tailored to your target audience with long-tail keywords and built-in links. Take things a grade-level further by asking high-authority, popular student websites to link back to content on your blog. 

3 | Generate leads with paid search and creative landing pages for more enrollments 

Challenge: If you have a new program or a desirable program, like distance education, that serves a niche student market, use high intent searches to your advantage to reach enrollment goals. Here’s the extra credit: restructure your paid search campaigns (that’s what we did for this higher education organization to increase their enrollments). 

Opportunity: By generating qualified leads using efficient paid search campaigns, you drive traffic to creative landing pages that speak directly to prospective students. After one or two clicks, learners can request more information from your recruiters about how they can enroll in your upcoming semester. Remember: testing isn’t just for earning college credits. Use A/B testing to discover the best landing pages for the students you serve best. 

We’re here to help you make it through these challenges and more. Our team of edu-focused digital strategists follows your unique data trends, so applicants follow you. Let’s have a rally for opportunities in higher education digital marketing! Start the new year fearlessly with a free marketing analysis. 

Many higher education marketing professionals are looking for new tactics to improve enrollment in the digital-driven environment. Before implementing new marketing strategies, it is important to take a look at what you are doing now. Is there anything you could be doing differently? Is something hindering the results? 

We listed the most common marketing mistakes that may prevent you from reaching your enrollment goals. Don’t get spooked by the don’ts, we also included do’s so you can create the best enrollment marketing strategy possible. 

#1 Not Knowing Your Target Audience

Understanding who your target audience is, where they are, what content resonates with them, and how they prefer to receive communication from you is the key to increasing quality leads. If you don’t have your target audience in mind with everything you do, it is unlikely you will be able to reach, engage, or eventually convert them into enrolled students. 

What to do: Create student personas

The first step is to research and collect as much data as you can about your ideal student. Interview existing students to understand what platforms they use, what motivates them, why they chose your institution, and so on. Leverage that data to create student personas that will help you target specific individuals. Write a detailed summary of each persona, including behavior patterns, demographics, expectations, motivations, and pain points.

#2 Tracking Activity, Not Results

Is your reporting focused on activity metrics such as social media followers, likes, shares, subscribers, and page views? While it makes us feel good when these numbers go up, they don’t provide real indication on how successful your campaigns are. It can be dangerous to make decisions based on activity metrics because they don’t translate into new inquiries, enrollments, or overall profit – all of which are common goals in higher education marketing. 

What to do: Focus on meaningful metrics

Use analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, to track actionable metrics, align them with your goals, and measure them regularly to track the progress of your marketing efforts. In enrollment marketing, the most meaningful metrics include conversions, search ranking, click-through-rates, cost per lead, and ROI.

#3 Underestimating the Power of Social Media

Statistics show that 90% of users aged 18-29 use at least one social media platform, so it is fair to say a majority of your prospective students use either Instagram, Facebook, YouTube or TikTok. If your institution doesn’t have a strong social media presence, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to be where your target audience is. 

What to do: Focus on authentic content

Avoid using stock photos, or high-produced branded content. Instead focus on posting good quality, authentic content, consistently. Gather user generated content (UGC) from your student ambassadors, faculty, and alumni to engage audiences and show behind-the-scenes clips on what the life on campus looks like to help prospective students imagine their future at your school. Creating a unique hashtag for your school is a great way to encourage users to produce and share content. 

#4 Ignoring Lead Nurturing

As marketers, we love to see new form submissions come in, whether it is someone requesting more information or booking a (virtual) campus visit. But our work shouldn’t end there. Even if a prospect has shown interest in your college or university, it is likely going to take them a while to make a final decision. 

What to do: Keep the conversation going

It is important to understand the stages of the student enrollment funnel, and all the touch points along the journey. Help the prospective student with their decision process by maximizing the number of touchpoints through effective remarketing and email marketing campaigns. Provide useful content at each stage to stay top of mind, and continue communication.

#5 Poor Mobile User Experience (UX)

There is no denying we live in a mobile-first world with little patience for pages that take over 5 seconds to load, or buttons that are impossible to click on a mobile screen. Mobile responsiveness plays a significant role, especially if a majority of your site visitors are Gen Z; a whopping two thirds of Gen Z internet users report smartphones as their preferred device to access the web. 

What to do: Audit and monitor page performance

Ask your web development team to perform a site-wide audit to identify errors that may impact UX for mobile users. Some quick fixes can include improving site load speed by compressing images, making call-to-action buttons more prominent, and improving mobile navigation. 

We recommend using Google’s PageSpeed Insights to find out where your site stacks up.

#6 Not Optimizing Your Website for SEO

You have put time and effort on your website design, its usability and content. But all your hard work will never be seen if prospects can’t find your website. Many may think it is enough to optimize your website once, and the SEO work is done. In reality, maintaining a high-ranking website requires ongoing work to keep up with algorithm changes and competition.

What to do: Focus on relevant keywords

Start with an in-depth keyword research to discover what keywords your prospects use to find you (and your competitors). Then implement those keywords on your website content including meta descriptions, program descriptions, press releases, and blog articles. Pay attention to relevant meta descriptions and titles; they are the first thing a prospective student sees on the search engine results page and can convince them to click your link. 

#7 Not Knowing Your Competitors

No matter how hard you and your marketing team are working, your competitors may be doing things better. Who are you losing students to? Why are they outperforming you? What strategies do they use? These are some of the questions every higher education marketing professional should address regularly to better understand the competitive landscape.

What to do: Competitive analysis

Performing a competitive analysis of your top competitors helps you identify similarities and differences between you and your competition, and what you can do to make your school stand out. Use the information to take a critical look at your positioning and to implement changes to your enrollment marketing strategy. Need help with the analysis? Get a free marketing analysis, put together by Mason Interactive’s digital experts. 

Hopefully, this list will help you to steer away from the common enrollment marketing mistakes. Book a consultation with our higher education marketing experts to talk more about your enrollment strategy.