Jul 5, 2024
Advance 360 Education Staff
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The following article details Pillar 3 of a comprehensive Four Pillars of Higher Ed Enrollment Marketing Whitepaper designed to illuminate approaches needed to navigate and succeed in today’s dynamic educational landscape.
Engaging and nurturing relationships with prospective students is crucial for successful enrollment marketing in a highly competitive landscape. In summary, institutions must design marketing strategies that align with specific audience segments, consider every stage of the funnel, and ensure each stage is set up with detailed campaign tracking for optimization.
DESIGN STRATEGIES ALIGNED WITH AUDIENCE SEGMENTS
Designing marketing strategies aligned with audience segments is critical for educational institutions to engage prospective students effectively and drive enrollment. Different audience segments have unique preferences, needs, and behaviors, so tailoring marketing strategies to address these specific characteristics can enhance your institution’s appeal and resonate with your segmented audiences. For example:
CONSIDER THE ENTIRE STUDENT JOURNEY
Considering every stage of the marketing funnel helps in maximizing the effectiveness of enrollment marketing campaigns. Top-of-funnel marketing is important in supporting and maintaining lower-funnel conversions.
Eduventures, a higher-ed blog, notes that a Top-of-Funnel campaign can yield 3x more leads than a Bottom-of-Funnel campaign, as some prospects may be earlier in the enrollment journey.
ACHIEVE OPTIMAL REACH
To attract best-fit prospects for your school, marketing campaigns should be grounded in strategies designed to deliver optimal reach. Don’t simply strive for volume. Rather, strive to reach those prospects that are most likely to be attracted to your school and to matriculate. A good example is narrowcasting — a targeted messaging approach that can improve enrollment marketing efficacy. It involves high-frequency, targeted messaging with strong calls-to-action, and can be used to amplify the impact of different marketing campaigns.
Additionally, Advance 360 Education’s unique and effective Layered Display strategy can be applied to both display and video advertising. This approach effectively targets an audience in stages, impacting and influencing the most relevant prospects as they research schools, develop deeper interest, and ultimately make decisions. DOWNLOAD Advance 360 Education’s Layered Display whitepaper.
CAMPAIGN TRACKING
Proper campaign tracking is essential in understanding the preliminary results of different campaigns. With a baseline for the success or failure of each campaign, optimization at each stage in the funnel becomes possible. By linking a brand marketing budget to lead generation and enrollments, institutions can justify to their leadership a case for more spend in brand awareness. Studies indicate that an increase in brand awareness corresponds to an increase in enrollment.
This chart demonstrates how an Advance 360 Education client’s weekly application submissions increased or decreased in direct correlation to a change in the campaign’s previous week branding focused impressions.
in summary
- Design marketing strategies aligned with specific audience segments to effectively engage prospective students and drive enrollment.
- Consider every stage of the marketing funnel to maximize the effectiveness of enrollment marketing campaigns, always recognizing the importance of top-of-funnel strategies on bottom-of-funnel success.
- Strive to reach the most relevant prospects through targeted messaging and optimized reach.
- And remember, proper campaign tracking is essential in understanding the success or failure of each campaign.
WHITEPAPER
This article highlights the third of four pillars that offers actionable insights and strategies, drawing from our extensive industry experience and data-informed approach. This content is part of a comprehensive whitepaper designed to illuminate approaches needed to navigate and succeed in today’s dynamic educational landscape. And don’t miss the included self-evaluation checklist. It’s not just a tool but can be a catalyst for transformative thinking.
Submit the form below to download the complete FOUR PILLARS OF HIGHER ED ENROLLMENT MARKETING whitepaper and learn more.
