The global higher education market has undoubtedly emerged in the past twenty years and is further expected to grow in promising ways.
Going by what research report suggests, globally the higher education market size is expected to showcase a CAGR of more than 20% by 2021.
The higher education market is experiencing an evolution and there has been a shift from traditional way of learning to digital and distance learning culture. Now, institutions have moved to digital teaching and in order, to do so, they have adopted student-to-technology methods. As the higher education institutes keeps on evolving at a faster pace, you find, the Universities have started to encourage immersive and interactive ways to teaching. It also helps in integrating learning management systems and student information systems to ease the overall workload within the campus.
This is the evolution you find in the learning space, now as you move on to some other areas say how Universities are branding and marketing their Institution, there you will find some more maturity and evolution in the process. It is rather interesting to catch up some facts on how Universities are promoting content taking into mind the change in time and the change in the behaviour of the ever-increasing and diverse student base emerging out due to the ever-changing nature of modern technology.
Online marketing is definitely playing a huge role and has almost back-seated the traditional methods of marketing. Apart from the fact that, online marketing serves the students and parents of modern time as they take resort to online channel for any kind of information, ROI wise too, online marketing beats the traditional marketing in influential ways. Say- it is cost friendly medium of marketing and generates better results than what an old school marketing campaign did otherwise. Key to it is the fact that, it has the potential to reach a larger audience base faster and easily that is what is unlike to traditional marketing approach.
Learning it all, now let’s quickly check out, what are the four innovative higher education marketing approaches which is allowing universities to witness better outcomes.
1. Influencer Marketing
The influencer marketing approach is a mega beneficial thing for the higher education institutions. What Universities normally do is, they find their potential influencers and once found, they thereafter move on to leveraging influencer marketing. Universities also recruit influencers to produce and promote relevant content.
This marketing tact is said to generate 11 times the ROI of traditional digital marketing. Influencer marketing involves utilising key leaders in a given niche to successfully deliver a brand’s message to an appropriate audience. Universities prefer to find successful graduates and well-connected students to promote relevant content. Although there are endless opportunities to showcase and promote relevant content but you will mostly find, graduate success of a particular institute is reflected with a Q & A video between a journalism student and a successful graduate.
2. Mobile Marketing
On an average, students check their phones 150 times per day. Also, Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users and such data does influence the planning process of higher education marketing strategy. Mobile marketing in higher education has always yielded a high interest and is continuing to do the same presently as well.
For the Universities it is definitely important for them to reach the relevant prospects through a medium which they are most comfortable. So, instead of planning a multi-channel campaign, the marketing team of colleges prefer to carefully consider how they can tweak to optimise and plan out a successful mobile based campaign to attract larger pool of relevant prospects through this medium over desktop.
3. Video Marketing
Today’s higher education marketing is increasingly strategic. When you find, from online retailers to banks to retailers- all the companies today use videos to increase their brand exposure and generate new leads, so why should Universities miss it out. And with a third of all online activity almost spent by watching video, Universities have found video marketing a potential tool for marketing.
Investments by Universities have soared high in the past one to two year, in video marketing to promote its content to relevant prospects. Be it to advertise higher education courses or say attract students and staff, and boost engagement, you find Universities upload promotional videos on their websites and across the social channels to reach a larger pool of audience. Cost wise too, producing a promotional video is not a tough job for the institutions because due to the advancement in technology, they could well come up with an excellent video by just putting together excellent footage using a simple smartphone. Today, as a matter of fact you will find, marketers grow revenue at a faster pace say by 49% through video promotions.
4. Social Media
Social Media campaigns have always generated great results to increase interactions with target audience and engage more users. In fact, reports show that the growth across the social media landscape in recent years has risen with an average annual follower of 77 % in comparison to other industry.
As time moves on, Higher Education Institutions are using more strategic approaches to carry on Social Media marketing and focus is on a single goal across social media channels. The aim is to have a robust social media presence for their higher education institute. And because millennial and Gen Z have an almost constant presence on more than one social platform, therefore, Universities are trying out to plan out a multi-channel marketing campaign which can take them a way forward.
Right now, the marketing tact is aimed at creating an impact to enhance the enrolment numbers which has really dipped down. This is the reason, you will observe all the higher education marketing trends such like- influencer, mobile, video and social media that are dominating the sector is applied to connect and engage students and staffs with universities. All the four marketing methods allow students to create deeper and more meaningful connections with the institution.
The purpose in the future is certainly not going to remain the same and so will the marketing approaches too not remain the same. Thus, as the marketing world is changing constantly, the influence of such change would certainly have a direct bearing on the higher education marketing strategies. So, stay tuned to watch out some more innovative marketing steps that Universities adopt and which we will bring it to you notice.
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