Being present online and creating an “image” to show the world has become one of the most effective digital marketing strategies of the modern era. Even colleges have gotten on board as more and more universities develop user-friendly interfaces and strong social media presences.
From a serious ivy league to an organic state college, digital marketing attracts applicants and impresses donors. But knowing exactly how to reach prospective students during their decision-making process is easier said than done.
In this article, we’ll show you why digital marketing is so important for universities and give you some real-life examples of institutions that are doing it well. After all, if you want to earn a marketing degree, it might be a good idea to do it at an institution that excels in marketing.
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What are the Marketing Strategies of Universities?
Every university has the same goal — to attract prospective students and keep admissions coming through the door.
When it comes to targeting prospective students, there are a lot of subgroups to consider. Undergraduate and postgraduate graduate students, part-time students, and international students are just a few of the subgroups that universities want to target.
As a result, universities use a range of marketing tactics and platforms to build relationships with these different groups. Here are some of the common marketing activities and strategies they use:
- Social media. Social platforms are a great way for universities to connect with prospective students. And with so many platforms to choose from, you can use different mediums to reach different audience groups. For example, Facebook’s largest audience is between the ages of 25 to 34. TikTok, on the other hand, is most popular with users aged 10 to 19. This means universities can use Facebook to target postgrads, and TikTok for undergrads.
- User-generated content. This can take many forms, but the most common example is on social media. Universities can repost content from students, or even host a takeover with a current student running their account. Here’s an example from Babson College, who let their students do an Instagram takeover to answer questions about the institution. Not only does this build trust with prospective students, but it also gives them a real insight into what life is like at your institution.
- Paid advertising. When trying to find the perfect university, prospective students will turn to the internet for more information — both on search engines and via social media. This is where paid ads come in handy. With paid ads, universities can promote their institutions and get themselves seen by prospective students. On search engines, they can put themselves at the top of SERP rankings for relevant phrases. On social media, they can use sponsored posts to appear in feeds for users that match their target audience.
These are just a few examples of the different marketing tactics and strategies that universities use. We’ll look at these tactics (and a few others) in more detail later when we explore some real-life examples.
Why is Content Marketing important for Universities?
Your content could be the first interaction a prospective student has with your institution. It’ll form their first impression of your university, so it’s important that you get your message across.
Not to mention, it helps you develop your online presence. With content marketing, you can add some personality to your brand, reach a wider audience, and encourage prospective students to engage.
Let’s take a look at some of the other benefits of university content marketing:
To Increase your Brand Awareness
If you don’t have an online presence, you simply won’t reach as many prospective students as you could. This is where content marketing can help.
Sharing content that’s diverse, consistent, and engaging can boost your brand’s presence. Whether it’s videos, social media posts, infographics, or blog articles, content marketing is a great way to get your university in front of more prospects. As a result, you’ll have a higher chance of getting more applicants.
To Differentiate yourself from Other Institutions
It’s safe to say that higher education is a saturated market. In California alone, there were 416 higher education institutions in 2020 — and that’s just one state.
So how can you stand out from the crowd and show prospective students why they should study at your college?
Content marketing is a good place to start.
By creating relevant and strategic content, you’re far more likely to grab the attention of potential students. Without it, you risk floating in the ether of endless universities.
To Sell an Experience
When choosing a university, students aren’t just looking for a place to study. They’re looking for an experience.
On top of the academic information, they want to know about daily life at the university. Content marketing is a great way for you to showcase the campus environment, lifestyle, culture, and social aspects of your institution. It’s a chance to delve beyond academics and breathe some personality into your university.
To give you some inspiration for your own university marketing strategy, let’s take a look at some real-life content marketing examples.
10 Universities with a Solid Content Marketing Strategy
1. The University of Wisconsin
YouTube can be an excellent tool for university marketing, but you have to be strategic about the content you post. You want content that appeals to different audience groups.
The University of Wisconsin is a prime example of how YouTube can help you appeal to a wide audience. They talk about college side hustles to appeal to students, as well as alumni successes and commencement videos for students’ families.
Each video is also carefully organized in a playlist so that you can easily navigate their channel to find exactly what you’re looking for.
There’s something for everyone on their YouTube page, and the school can easily repurpose this content for other marketing opportunities.
2. Boston University
Having a central hub to highlight university publications is a great way to boost content marketing — and that’s exactly what Boston University has done.
By collecting articles written by students, faculty, and alumni, Boston University showcases its publications while covering enough topics to interest a wide audience. Categories like “Wellness” and “Voices & Opinion” make it easy for visitors to find exactly what they’re looking for.
The amount of internal and external linking also boosts the website’s visibility, making it more likely to be seen by potential donors and future students.
The articles themselves also help BU craft their brand perception. For example, there’s an article about a BU graduate’s clothing line that donates 10% of its profits to charities. It shows a successful yet caring side to the university, which humanizes the institution. It also shows prospects that the BU alumni network is relevant, generous, and prosperous.
3. Spelman College
If you want to see how to use Instagram to your advantage, look no further than Spelman College. They use every feature Instagram has to offer to curate a beautifully designed account.
Every image on their page is clear and beautifully lit — even the candid shots. They also use the Story, Highlights, and IGTV features with equally photogenic content that makes every post look TV quality.
Having a well-curated and high-quality Instagram feed shows prospects that the university is modern. They’re up-to-speed with the latest trends, and they use their social accounts regularly. It makes the university more relatable.
They also use their Instagram page as a platform to create excitement over university news in conjunction with their website. Instead of relying solely on their blog, they utilize the power of multi-channel marketing to reach a larger audience.
4. Indiana University
TikTok is a recent fad in social media. As of July 2021, the social media platform had one billion monthly active users.
At this point, universities either need to get on it or fall behind the times if they want to be able to reach this large audience of future applicants.
But despite seeming like simply a place for silly videos, it can be an incredibly useful tool to revolutionize your enrollment strategy. Indiana University is a prime example of how to use these trends to increase engagement with your content.
Take a look at their TikTok channel to see for yourself.
(Image Source)
The channel features a lot of user-generated content by existing students. By attracting current students and encouraging them to contribute to the content, the university creates fun, engaging, and relatable content.
5. Rhode Island School of Design
Maybe it’s a given that a design school would have an absolutely gorgeous Instagram page, but that doesn’t make the Rhode Island School of Design’s page any less beautiful. The RISD Illustration Department Instagram features student-created art in every style imaginable.
It’s not just a page of pretty pictures, though. Each post highlights and promotes a student with relevant captions, tags, and hashtags. This helps to signal boost to their students by linking to their professional portfolio pages while also creating new linking opportunities for the school.
6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Everything MIT does is professional and efficient, but their social media hub is the work of a marketing genius. The hub collects MIT’s posts in one “Social Wall” so users can easily browse all of their social channels at once.
Each thumbnail also includes a timestamp and an icon to show you what platform it links to.
Feel like just looking through their Twitter feed? Click on their Twitter icon and you’ll be taken to their directory where you can see every department’s social media links. From here, you can get really specific.
You can browse their Department of Chemical Engineering feed, or maybe their Center for International Studies feed instead. You can choose whatever you want.
7. Santa Fe College
With all the different social media, blogs, digital marketing strategies, and viral trends out there, it can be easy to forget the value of a strong website. A home page that’s difficult to navigate or outdated can be just as damaging as having no online presence at all.
Santa Fe College’s main website uses a bold yet simple color scheme, clear menus, and has plenty of internal linking. Overall, the page is extremely easy to navigate while still looking professional and containing useful resources.
This careful design extends beyond their main page. Santa Fe College strikes a balance between simplicity in design and only including useful information. You can see this clearly on their Little School page where they talk about the childcare they offer for students and faculty.
The page maintains a strong design while appearing more child-friendly. But they still include important information without getting bogged down with over-the-top self-promotion.
8. University of North Dakota
YouTube is difficult to use correctly, so any university using it successfully deserves a shout-out. Not only is the University of North Dakota’s main YouTube channel beautifully organized, but they’ve mastered the art of linking.
Every video has links to the university’s social media pages, the main website, about page, majors/programs, and the application process page. It encourages viewers to engage with the school instead of bouncing to the next video.
Uploaded videos also have in-depth captions with strong keywords to help them survive YouTube’s rocky algorithm.
With so many videos and a long history of spotty “recommendations,” it can be easy for videos to get lost in the depths of YouTube. By using keywords and updating them regularly, this university manages to keep its channel performing well and looking constantly refreshed.
9. University of Wisconsin (again)
So nice, we’re showing them twice: the University of Wisconsin knows how to craft a social media presence.
Social media doesn’t just have to be a source of self-promotion. It can also be a tool to give updates on campus life, news, and events. The University of Wisconsin-Madison began doing this on their Instagram through weekly COVID-19 updates.
In addition to posting pictures of student life, this university is harnessing the power of social media to keep its students informed on what’s happening. By creating content that’s relevant to incoming students, they can increase engagement. Think about it. If the content is relevant, students are more likely to interact with posts and boost visibility.
10. Bowling State Green University
With the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen a drastic increase in the popularity of podcasts, and it doesn’t seem to be disappearing anytime soon.
According to Edison Research, around 80 million people (28% of the US population) became weekly podcast listeners in 2020. That’s a 17% increase over the year, which is a huge audience that universities can reach.
Take a page out of Bowling State Green University’s book and give students a space to focus on interdisciplinary work that helps them move beyond their major. Their podcast, BG Ideas, brings innovative research to the public.
This university’s podcast appeals to students from all disciplines while addressing big social problems — a topic that strongly appeals to the Gen Z crowd.
Feeling Inspired?
If you take nothing else away from this (except maybe some drool-worthy design ideas), we hope we got you thinking a little bit about the importance of a multi-platform attack in your content marketing strategies.
In this digital age, a “set it and forget it” web page won’t cut it. You need to integrate multiple forms of content and some serious design skills to encourage your audience to engage and study at your university.
If you’re looking for ways to streamline your content publication, check out Wordable. With our platform, you can clean and properly format your HTML, compress images, and automatically set featured images with a single click from Google Docs to WordPress.
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Related reading:
- 9 Content Marketing Tips to Stand Out in a Crowded Digital World
- How to Create a Mouthwatering Content Brief for Your Writers
- How to Create a Content Production Machine that Outpublishes Your Competition
- Pro Content Optimization Tips from Doing 300+ Articles per Month
- 5 Reasons You Need a Content Marketing Manager (+ How to Hire One)
