Digital Marketing Services for Colleges

Digital Marketing Solutions for Student Enrollment

The essence of successful online marketing for universities lies in understanding and implementing key digital marketing tactics that resonate with today’s tech-savvy applicants. Let’s delve into the essential components.

1. Optimize Your Website for SEO
Start by making your website loved by search engines. Use keywords that reflect what potential students are searching for. Think of SEO for universities and colleges as the digital version of a campus billboard, but one that’s visible worldwide. Keep content fresh and relevant.

2. Target Long-tail Keywords
Using specific, long-tail keywords like “affordable computer science degrees in California” can attract students who know exactly what they want. It’s like conversing with students who are already interested in what you offer.

3. Develop a Backlink Strategy
Earning backlinks from reputable sites boosts your SEO for colleges and your credibility. It’s akin to having respected educators point students directly to your door.

4. Consider User Experience
Your website should be easy to navigate and informative, mimicking a welcoming campus visit. A positive online experience can make all the difference in converting a visitor into an applicant.

5. Run PPC Ads
PPC services for colleges and universities instantly put you at the top of search results, just like a strategically placed campus poster in a high-traffic area, catching the eye of every passerby.

6. Be Active on Social Media
Active engagement on social media platforms can showcase campus life, share success stories, and build a community before students even apply. It’s the digital equivalent of a vibrant campus quad.

7. Highlight Unique Selling Points
What sets your college apart? Highlighting unique programs, faculty, or career success rates can differentiate you in a crowded market, much like a college fair presentation that captures everyone’s attention.

8. Develop a Long-term Communication Strategy
Developing a strategy for ongoing communication through email newsletters or informative blog posts keeps your college on the radar of potential applicants, similar to a guidance counselor who keeps in touch through the application process.

9. Build a Responsive Site
Ensure your website looks great on all devices, especially smartphones. A mobile-friendly website is non-negotiable, ensuring that students can explore your offerings on any device, reflecting the flexibility and accessibility of a modern institution.

10. Optimize for Targeted Searches
Optimizing content for specific queries related to your programs can lead interested students directly to you, much like a well-placed sign that guides students to their desired department on an open day.

11. Create Multi-channel Content
Creating diverse content for blogs, videos, and social media expands your reach, engaging prospective students through their preferred mediums, akin to hosting different clubs and events that appeal to a variety of interests on campus.

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4 Ways Digital Marketing Boosts College Applications

In today’s digital world, online marketing for universities can boost college applications. Let’s look at four ways it can help your college attract more students.

1. Connect through Informative Content
Share engaging stories and helpful info on your website to connect with potential students. From blogs to articles, graphics, and downloads, provide content that showcases what makes your college special.

2. Drive Traffic with SEO and PPC
Boost your website’s visibility with SEO and PPC advertising. SEO for universities helps your site rank higher on search engines, while PPC services for colleges and universities target specific audiences with ads. Both strategies can bring more visitors and raise awareness.

3. Stay Engaged on Social Media
Be active on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Through social media marketing for colleges you can interact with prospective students, answer their questions, and share interesting content from your website. Building connections on social media can increase brand awareness.

4. Nurture Relationships with Email Marketing
Use email marketing to build relationships with prospective students and encourage them to apply. Send personalized emails based on their interests, providing valuable information and guiding them through the application process. Automation tools make managing email campaigns easy.

SEO Tips for Colleges and Universities

You can improve your college’s visibility with an effective SEO strategy for universities. Implement these tips to improve your search engine rankings and attract more prospective students:

1. Create Unique Content and Pages

Expand your college’s website with informative and relevant content. Focus on topics like degree programs, faculty, financial aid, admissions, campus life, and nearby attractions. Ensure each page is optimized for search engines with keywords and proper formatting.

2. Optimize Page URLs
Use clear and descriptive URLs that reflect the content of each page. Avoid generic or random strings of characters. Incorporate relevant keywords into the URLs to improve search engine visibility.

3. Target Ideal Students with Keywords
Tailor your content and keywords to attract your ideal student demographic. Research and use keywords related to specific programs, interests, and demographics. Optimize your content to align with the needs and interests of your target audience.

4. Highlight Individual Programs
Optimize pages for each academic program to improve visibility in search results. Use relevant keywords and phrases that prospective students may search for. Provide detailed information about program offerings, faculty, curriculum, and career opportunities.

5. Consider Local SEO
Optimize your website for local searches to attract students from your region. Include city-specific keywords and information about your college’s location. Highlight nearby attractions, amenities, and community partnerships to appeal to local students.

6. Optimize Non-Text Elements
Don’t overlook non-text elements like title tags, headers, meta descriptions, and alt text for images. Optimize these elements with relevant keywords and descriptions to improve search engine visibility. Pay attention to details that may impact your site’s ranking and visibility.

Key challenges for colleges

Explore the critical challenges colleges face in today’s competitive landscape. From driving website traffic to securing funding, discover how our digital marketing solutions address these challenges head-on for optimal success.

Not Driving Enough Traffic
Facing low website traffic? You can boost website rankings, attract prospective students, and engage alumni through strategic SEO, local SEO, content marketing, and web design services.

Opening a New Campus
Launching a new campus or program? Set your new venture up for success with revenue-driving tactics, enhancing online visibility through web design, local SEO, social media marketing, and PPC management.

Not Attracting New Students
Struggling to attract new students? Digital marketing for colleges and universities with targeted advertising campaigns and marketing strategies can help you reach your audience online, encourage enrollment through geofencing advertising, PPC management, social media marketing, and content marketing.

Struggling to Secure Funding
Need more funding? Online marketing for universities puts your institution in front of prospective donors. Use social media advertising, content marketing, PPC management, and programmatic advertising services to secure the necessary funding for your school and classes.

Digital Marketing Pricing

In today’s competitive educational landscape, determining the right marketing investment is pivotal. Let’s delve into the costs associated with marketing services for colleges:

Inbound Marketing Services

Many colleges opt for in-house marketing teams to handle their inbound marketing efforts. The cost varies based on factors like staffing and technology infrastructure, ranging from $5,000 to $15,000 per month.

Internet Marketing Agency

Partnering with internet marketing agencies offers a wide range of services, with costs varying based on scope and complexity. Monthly retainers typically start at $2,500 and can exceed $10,000, depending on the services required.

Professional Marketing Company:

Engaging professional marketing companies for comprehensive solutions involves higher costs, often ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 per project or more. These firms provide strategic planning, branding, and advertising services tailored to the higher education sector.

As colleges strategize for 2024, assessing ROI is crucial. Learn more about digital marketing costs here.

Ideas to Create Great Social Media Posts

In social media marketing for colleges, there are some important tips to remember. By following these, businesses can boost online engagement with their target audience.

Here are eight simple social media guidelines for universities and colleges.

1. Show off the school
Social media is often used as a way for people to show off the best parts of their lives, and there’s no reason your university should be any different.

Whether your biochemistry department has a major breakthrough or you simply see an opportunity for a beautiful photo of the sun rising over your football stadium, you can craft posts that show off the most impressive and attractive facets of your school.

2. Live-stream events
If there’s a cool event happening on your campus, you can use social media to do more than just tell people about it. You can live stream the event itself — whether in its entirety or only in part — for everyone to see.

You can approach this casually by pulling out a phone and recording like a regular social media user, or you can set up a professional camera and generate a high-quality stream.

Either way, letting people get a peek at your swim team competition or marching band performance can inspire students to visit future events on your campus or even attend your school.

3. Use separate accounts
Unless your university is especially small, you may not want to use one single account for everything. Your English department is probably quite a bit different from your equestrian team. Using a single account to post updates related to both of those — along with all your other organizations and departments — could cause a lot of disorganization.

Instead, consider creating separate accounts for different entities within the university.

Take Auburn University, for example. While the university has one overall Twitter account for the broadest information, it also has individual accounts for many departments, from Parking Services to the marching band.

Using these separate accounts lets users more easily find the information they want. If someone wants to know where they can park on campus, they know to go to the Parking Services page, not the marching band one.

4. Maintain a consistent brand
Social media for universities is a great tool to make people aware of your brand, but you have to make sure that brand is consistent. While your basketball and fine arts accounts might have different content, they should still convey the same voice on behalf of the university.

Even if you only use one account, you may have a team of different people that manage that account, and those people might be prone to use different voices. Make sure everything conforms to a shared standard.

To this end, it might be a good idea to create a style guide. Can you use emojis? Do you have to conform to any grammar and capitalization standards? Having everyone follow these social media guidelines for your university can do a lot for your brand.

5. Harness user-generated content
Not all your social media content has to come directly from your account. You can use your platform to encourage your students, alumni, and followers to put out user-generated content that promotes your university using tools like hashtags.

To promote a football game, for example, you can encourage spectators to tweet about the event and tag your athletics department account for a chance to display their tweet on the video board.

6. Play to specific platform strengths
It’s good to use multiple social networks for universities rather than only using one platform, but you shouldn’t treat all those platforms the same. Different platforms are optimal for different tasks and tend to target different audiences.

While you might post the same message on two separate platforms, you might still need to convey it differently on each platform. On Facebook, for example, you might make a single post with a long piece of information, whereas on Twitter you might break it up across multiple tweets, or make one tweet with a link to the longer piece of content.

For best results, come up with a plan for how you intend to use your account on each platform.

7. Engage with your audience
When it comes to universities, people are often looking for connection. Prospective students are looking for somewhere that conveys a sense of community, and alumni are looking to keep in touch with their alma mater.

To make that connection happen for your audience, make sure to engage with them through your social networks. Leave positive comments on their user-generated content, and answer questions from people who may comment on your social posts.

8. Provide alerts
In line with the earlier point about having separate accounts, it’s a great idea to have an account specifically dedicated to providing safety alerts. Whenever there’s an emergency on campus, you need to let students know.

Given how much time most of them spend on social media, there’s no faster way to notify them of the danger than to tweet about it. Baylor University, for instance, has a campus safety account on Twitter called “Baylor Alert” that notifies students of potential danger.

Looking to build your brand on social media platforms? We have in-house social media experts to do it for you. Get in touch today.