The Ultimate Guide to Education Marketing: Top 10 Strategies

Institutions in the education industry have the same needs as businesses in any other niche: finding and retaining customers. Although, in this case, it’s typically students they’re after, so they need to leverage education marketing to achieve their goals.

Marketing for education offers a wide range of strategies to enhance visibility, stand out, and attract students that schools, higher education institutions, and even e-learning platforms can take advantage of. That’s why, in today’s pieces, we’re going to go over 10 of those strategies so you can understand and implement them effectively.

Let’s begin!

What Is Education Marketing?

Educational marketing is the practice of promoting educational institutions and services in order to appeal to prospective students, (and their parents!) as well as investors and stakeholders. 

The goal is to boost brand awareness while conveying the value of the institution’s offering to ultimately drive enrollment and retain students. For that reason, education marketing encompasses a wide variety of marketing tactics that can be applied throughout the entire education sector by tailoring each of them to the particular and unique needs of the institution or platform. 

Why Is Education Marketing Important?

After the previous explanation, you might wonder why, if at all, is marketing for education important. Well, here’s why:

• Improve Brand Building: By establishing a solid brand identity online, institutions and platforms can build credibility and foster trust, both of which are essential for long-term success.
• Foster Enrollment Growth: Tailored and targeted education marketing campaigns can attract students who resonate with what you have to offer, ultimately leading to increased enrollment and higher revenue.
• Stand out from the Increased Competition: After the boom of online education, now there are more educational options available than ever. That’s why institutions must leverage marketing for education in order to differentiate themselves and attract students.
• Aid in Informed Decision-Making: Prospective students and their families typically carry out thorough research and weigh their options carefully before making an enrollment decision. If you do your education marketing right, you’ll provide them with the information and reassurance they need.
• Get Closer to Your Community: Some marketing tactics can greatly help institutions connect with their target communities, whether they’re local or global, and foster partnerships and support.

Top 10 Education Marketing Strategies

Now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for! Here are 10 proven strategies you can implement to enhance your educational marketing efforts:

1. Video Marketing – To Attract Your Audience

It’s been found that our attention spans are 8.25 minutes on average. This means you don’t have much time to lure your potential students and their families and show them everything you have to offer while trying to prove to them why you’re the right choice.

Luckily, using video content to do so is one of the most effective education marketing strategies to convince your audience to stop scrolling and listen to what you have to say because the combination of appealing visuals and sound. Moreover, video is an incredibly flexible medium, so you can have multiple options to choose from depending on the goals you’re after.

For example, you can create explainer videos to summarize in 30 seconds what your online educational platform has to offer. Or make a how-to video to guide students through the enrollment process. You can even produce student video testimonials to build trust in your institution! 

2. (Personalized) Content Marketing – To Engage Your Audience

There are other types of content you can create to engage your potential students besides videos. Blog posts, e-books, webinars, guides… As long as you offer valuable and informative content that directly addresses the needs, pain-points, and interests of your audience, you’ll have a powerful tool that can not only showcase your institution’s expertise but also intrigue and attract prospective students. 

But to do that, you’ll first have to do your due diligence and research your audience thoroughly. Who are they? Where do they live? What educational needs do they have and how can you help them solve them? All of this information will help you better personalize your content and ultimately make your education marketing strategy more effective.

3. Social Media Marketing – To Connect with Your Audience

Everyone is on social media nowadays, so it’s no surprise that these platforms are the best way to reach and connect with your target audience. However, it’s not as simple as it sounds. You can’t just log in, and sporadically share a flyer or a link to your website. No, social media education marketing actually requires a lot of effort because you need to share updates regularly. 

This doesn’t mean you have to go crazy about it and bombard your followers with stories or posts, just that you need to find a publishing schedule that works for you and your audience. Is it exam season? Then, you might want to share daily updates on exam times and location. Are the summer holidays coming up? Well, then you can share content more sporadically and simply remind your students of enrollment times.

The goal of this educational marketing strategy is to build a strong online presence that makes your institution look reliable.

4. Search Engine Optimization – To Increase Online Visibility

Whether you have an educational institution or a platform, you must have a website where you share all kinds of information about it. But that, on its own, it’s a wasted effort if no one can actually find your site.

The best way to go about this is by implementing SEO education marketing. Search Engine Optimization is all about optimizing your website (and its content!) to increase its visibility in search engine results pages. This typically involves using relevant keywords and creating high-quality content (such as landing pages and blog posts) where you can incorporate them. 

This way, if someone is looking for a university in California, for example, you’ll pop up as the first option.

5. Allow and Manage Reviews – To Improve Transparency

Other people’s opinions are crucial in our decision-making process, especially in the education industry. That’s why one of the top education marketing strategies is to allow and encourage students to leave reviews about your services. You might even suggest what they could talk about: the facilities, the teachers, the curricula, etc.

Of course, you might get some negative reviews here and there, but that doesn’t mean all your efforts will be in vain. Quite on the contrary, if you reply to them quickly, addressing the reviewer’s concerns with sensitivity, you can improve your transparency and build trust with your audience.

6. Email Marketing – To Deliver Key Information

Email is probably the most direct and cost-effective way to communicate with your audience and deliver important information and content on a regular basis. By creating personalized email campaigns as your education marketing strategy, you can nurture your relationships with both prospective and current students. However, it’s important to offer something valuable in those emails, be it the latest news, event invitations, or even resources. Another key aspect to keep in mind the subject line. It needs to be short, descriptive, and compelling so recipients will open your emails.

7. Event Sponsorship and Participation – To Build a Community

An underrated education marketing strategy is to sponsor and participate in educational events such as school fairs, industry conferences, and even community activities like career fairs or cultural festivals. It’s important to build a community around your institution, and activities such as this are the best way to increase your visibility and connect with potential students and their families. 

Of course, this might be a bit trickier if you offer online educational services, but it’s not impossible! You just need to be a bit creative about it.

8. Influencer Partnerships – To Promote Your Institution

To reach a wider audience or a younger segment group, influencer partnerships can be an excellent education marketing strategy, as influencers already have huge established platforms where they can promote your institution and programs.

For this strategy to be effective, though, you need to carefully research the influencers you’re considering partnering with. It’s vital that their values align with your institution’s, as it can severely damage your image and reputation otherwise.

@yfilly #AD me and my boy @chunkz were challenged by @duolingo ♬ original sound – Yung Filly

9. Data-Driven Marketing –  To Improve Decision-Making

No educational marketing effort is complete until you can measure its performance. I know it might be cumbersome and boring, but you must use data and analytics to keep track of the effectiveness of your strategies. No point in wasting resources on something that’s not yielding any results! Understanding what’s working and what doesn’t, and what your audience is enjoying or not, allows you to refine your education marketing strategies for better results.

10. Paid Advertising – To Ensure Success

Paid advertising is widely used strategy in which institutions and businesses create ads and then pay a certain platform (like Google Ads, YouTube Ads, or other social media ads) to display them so they can reach a larger audience and drive specific actions, such as clicks, sales, or leads. The appeal of this type of advertising lies in how specific you can be in your targeting. You can ensure the right audience sees your commercial ad by targeting your desired demographics, interests, online behaviors, and even location, among other things.

Do You Need a Video for Your Education Marketing Strategy? Yum Yum Videos Can Help!

With over 12 years of experience in the industry, we’ve created hundreds of videos for clients in all kinds of industries, including the education industry. Now, proudly stand as a recognized leader in the market, ready to give you a hand with your educational marketing needs.

Our exceptional team is made up of passionate and talented professionals in animation, design, and video production who all ensure a simple and smooth process for our clients while taking great care of every detail in each video we create.

We take pride in working closely with you and thoroughly understanding your institution’s goals and values before embarking on the journey to create video content that not only meets but also exceeds your expectations.

If you want to discover how we can take your message to the next level through the magic of animation, just drop us a line! We’ll be happy to exchange ideas with you.

Wrapping Up

Education marketing is shaping up to become an essential component of any institution’s strategy not only to attract students but also to retain them and keep them informed. There’s no “simple way” of doing it, as there are many options available when it comes to the strategies you can implement. Moreover, deciding which one would be best for you will ultimately depend on your needs and your audience’s preferences.

But it all starts by understanding the importance of marketing for education and the main strategies you can leverage to effectively communicate your institution’s value, build a strong brand, and achieve your enrollment goals. Luckily, you should be well equipped after reading this post to start working towards ensuring your institution remains competitive and successful.