Well-executed digital marketing campaigns can be a boon to any college’s recruitment efforts. Knowing how to use the digital landscape to your advantage means the difference between attracting the interest of prospective students and falling off their radar. So, if your college’s digital marketing endeavors have fallen short, there’s no time like the present to refine your approach. Putting the following tips into practice can play an integral role in generating new interest and meeting your school’s recruitment goals.
Work with a Dedicated Marketing Agency
Work with a Dedicated Marketing AgencyIf your marketing strategies are in need of a significant overhaul, you may benefit from enlisting the aid of a dedicated marketing agency. The right agency will help guide your marketing efforts in the right direction, identify areas for improvement and implement a variety of effective strategies. For best results, seek out an agency that’s worked with other schools. You may find that a good higher education marketing agency is exactly what your college needs.
Step Up Your Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a large role in the digital marketing efforts of countless businesses – and it isn’t hard to see why. The higher your school’s search ranking, the more web traffic you’re likely to receive – the more interest you’re liable to garner from prospective students. So, if your school’s website leaves a lot to be desired in the SEO department, don’t hesitate to address this.
One of the most effective ways to go about this is producing engaging, authoritative content on a consistent basis. This can prove helpful on a number of fronts. For one thing, many search engines favor sites that receive regular content updates over sites for which content updates are rare. Secondly, if the content you create resonates with prospective students, there’s a good chance this will lead to heightened interest.
With this in mind, make a point of posting new blogs, feature articles and other types of content to your school’s website on a regular basis. At the very least, you should post one new piece of content per week – although more weekly updates are likely to increase your site’s odds of getting noticed.
You can also bolster your SEO efforts by incorporating search-friendly keywords into your content. For example, if your school is based in Wilmington, DE, you may find success with such keywords as “Wilmington colleges,” “colleges in Wilmington, DE” and “best schools in Delaware.” Just make sure that any keywords you incorporate are relevant to the subject matter and organically fit into the content. Littering content with keywords may strike you as an effective way to boost your search ranking, but this ultimately stands to do more harm than good. If search engines flag you for keyword stuffing, don’t be surprised to see your school’s site take a huge dip in the rankings.
Work with Experienced Content Creators
Of course, knowing what types of content stands to benefit your SEO efforts doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to produce such content. So, if your content creation efforts are lacking to nonexistent, consider reaching to experienced freelance writers, video producers and other types of content creators. With your supervision and direct input, these individuals will be able to produce a wide variety of winning content designed to catch the attention of both search engines and interested students.
When seeking out the right content creators, look for people who have experience crafting the kind of content you’re after. For example, individuals with experience producing content for colleges should receive special consideration. Still, this isn’t to say that a lack of experience with college-based content creation should preclude someone from being able to work with you – particularly if they have impressive resumes and are able to produce the type of content you’re looking for on an agreeable schedule.
A good college marketing campaign can mean the difference between meeting your recruitment goals and falling well short of them. With this in mind, every college under the sun would do well to make digital marketing a priority. As the odds of colleges connecting with their target demographic through print, television and radio grow increasingly slim, it’s in every school’s best interest to join the 21st century and realize the far-reaching benefits of digital marketing. To this end, the advice outlined above is likely to prove useful.
