Road to Successful Education Marketing [Tools, Strategies & More]

Classrooms with boards, buildings with long corridors, playgrounds in the vicinity- these images start to pop out in our head whenever we try to imagine any educational institution.

This evergreen concept of academic institutions may last time immemorial, but they have always adopted the latest trends to keep pace with the advancing civilization, eventually rising to the position of industry.

Technology has long infused the education system and the Covid-19 pandemic has made us rethink the usual concept and purpose of institutions.

While famous schools worldwide are trying to attract new learners, micro or individual educators are launching their educational content through multi-platforms and providing specialized courses.

This magnificent rise of this industry defines how important it is to focus on education marketing and not to fall behind the great race.

If you are someone from the education industry and looking for genuine help and guidelines for your marketing strategies, we’re here to help.

In this article, we will walk you through the ins and outs of education marketing and share strategies that will bring you to the road of success.

Let’s start!

What is education marketing?

Like any other form of marketing, it combines certain strategies and tools to understand the needs and pain points of the prospective students and provide better value propositions.

Though education marketing follows the same approaches, resources, and channels as other marketing forms, the focus is quite different.

To understand the difference better, you need to be clear that in education marketing you are more like a mentor than a seller.

Your responsibility here is to assure people that they have the opportunity to pursue their dreams and motivate them to take the steps that will alter their life course.

Warmth, transparency, and trust are the keys here.

Let’s make things clearer with an example.

Suppose a neighborhood community school is looking for ways to enroll more people in its culinary courses.

To achieve their goals, they decided to promote their courses on social media, make short-form educational content and long-form tutorials for video marketing, and collect testimonials from their successful alumni.

Moreover, they started hosting different webinars and virtual meet-ups to engage prospective students, answer their queries, and discuss the market demands of the students who graduated from their programs.

Difference between education marketing and education-based marketing

First of all, education marketing and education-based marketing are not the same! Though they have distinctive differences, it can be a little confusing sometimes! In that case, let’s clear things up here.

Education Marketing: The purpose of education marketing is to promote academic institutes and adopt all kinds of marketing activities to turn them into a brand. That includes social media promotions, SEO optimization of academic websites, creation of learning apps, and so on.

Education-based Marketing: This is a unique marketing approach applicable to education sectors or any kind of industry. It is a strategic approach to educate potential customers about specific products or topics, eventually creating demand in the long run rather than directly pushing toward sales.

Why education marketing is important for institutions?

The education sector is rapidly evolving with technological upgrades. New cutting-edge teaching and learning opportunities and facilities are popping up, and this sector is now a fully flourishing industry.

The total revenue of the education industry in 2023 is $6.72 billion and is projected to reach $11.83 billion by 2029 with an astonishing 9.11% yearly growth (Source: Statista).

That’s definitely something to be taken into account!

Millions of mobile apps, websites, e-books, tutorials, online courses, and resource materials are springing up to meet the growing educational needs. That makes it quite impossible to stand out with helpful content solely even if your intentions are pure.

Don’t get us wrong. Helpful and valuable content is something that you never should compromise with, but at the same time, you must make sure that it reaches the right person at the right time.

You cannot do it without an on-point marketing strategy for your content to stand out. That’s the basic reasoning. And the benefits of thoughtful, customer-driven education marketing stretches far and wide.

Let’s take a detailed look at them.

It helps to reach a diversified audience spectrum

Education marketing helps institutions to broaden their target audience spectrum. That includes international students, online learners, and part-time candidates.

The USA hosted more than 1.5 million international students in the year 2023 alone! The evidence should suffice to understand the impact of education marketing on a global scale.

Let’s try to understand our point with some realistic scenarios and situations.

International students always look for opportunities and information worldwide, but it’s quite hard to access genuine and helpful guidelines. Education marketing through digital channels can help them overcome this geographical barrier and access your offerings wholeheartedly.

Part-time or non-traditional learners need information regarding the courses and programs your institution is offering. Prompt education marketing can help them understand whether your courses can fit into their busy schedules or if they can avail of online course facilities for their career opportunities.

The demography we have mentioned is certainly huge and as an institution looking for an improvising enrollment ratio, you must not leave them out.

Lay the foundation for a trust-based relationship

Trust is the fundamentals of a business relationship and institutions must focus on this basic before they try to attract new pupils.

The trust is built through regular, consistent, and organized communication with the prospects regarding the mission, vision, extra-curricular facilities, career opportunities, and achievements.

Education marketing includes the proper usage of tools and strategies as per the audience demands that lay the foundation of a long-term relationship with prospects and raise the brand value of an institution.

Build thought leadership for educational institutes

It’s our basic instinct to trust and follow a leader.

That’s why it’s crucial for businesses to establish their leadership in the industry with their expertise, value generation, and consistency. And education marketing strategies can take you to that position and influence prospective students to trust you more.

Understanding the sentiments of your niche, tailoring the contents accordingly, and delivering them to the right people at the right time not only expands your knowledge but establishes your thought leadership.

Your marketing strategies can significantly make you a resourceful and trusted source in the education sector.

For example, large-scale academic papers can often be overwhelming for prospective students. But you can extract the key takeaways and their significance and discuss them in your articles, tutorial videos, and social media posts.

If you continue to do so regularly, eventually you are raising the bar of your authenticity as a thought leader for students and potential investors bringing in more enrollments and investments to your institution.

Bonus Tips: If you are new to social media marketing and feeling lost, check our exclusive social media marketing strategies that will guide you to the path to success.

Influence the decision making of the guardians

A well-executed education marketing will cover all sorts of information necessary for prospective students and their guardians.

It will show them what the odds are, what to expect from your courses, and why your institution should be their first choice.

Testimonials from the alumni, introductory videos, and virtual tours of the campus- they are all persuasive marketing strategies for students and guardians alike.

Additionally, strategic email campaigns regarding the tuition and accommodation costs, program details, requirements, and deadlines are highly convincing for the guardians to make up their decision.

8 effective education marketing strategies

After the long journey of learning the ins and outs of education marketing, you have made it to the section where you will learn the top strategies for your successful marketing campaigns.

The wait has been long! So, without any further ado, let’s jump to the action.

Use social media platforms to promote your institution

Around five billion people are using social media platforms around the world! (Source: Statista)

For a successful education marketing campaign, you can not rule out its massive audience and influence.

Your social handles are the best and the most responsive way to reach both prospective students and their guardians alike.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cornell University (@cornelluniversity)

Regardless of the social media platforms you choose to promote your institutions, you must make them a go-to place for learning about your campus culture, the courses you are offering, values you uphold, and your educational goals.

Here are some effective tips for you to get started with your social media marketing:

• Choose the popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc.
• Understand the vibe of the platforms and make content accordingly
• Don’t be hesitant to create different content for different platforms
• Make sure that your content style and design represent your brand voice
• Cross promote your key contents on multiple platforms
• Launch targeted ad-campaigns
• Finally, connect and embed your social media presence with your institution’s website

So, what’s the final goal for all these social media tactics and strategies?

Well, it’s quite simple actually- build authenticity, reliability, and credibility through social platforms to drive more people to your website and retain your web visitors through your social presence to increase enrollments. Two birds with one stone.

Invest in digital marketing to strengthen your online presence

Traditional marketing tactics are long gone. People have long become numb and immune to old-school sales pitches, especially the younger audience!

We are living in the virtual multiverse and commuting through the digital channels.

If marketing is all about taking your brand to the right people at the right time, digital marketing has what it takes to make your efforts successful.

Digital marketing is a broad landscape and covers a wide range of actions. Therefore, it is always a good practice and safe to follow mixed approaches.

Here are some special tips for you to make your digital marketing approaches successful:

• Focus on the copywriting of your website’s landing pages- make it clear, simple and precise
• Publish SEO-optimized, elaborated, and informational blogs, news, articles for your targeted audience
• Launch paid ad campaigns like Google Ads, YouTube Ads, Bing Ads, etc.
• Use different tools for research and measure the key performance metrics and area of improvements

It’s true that digital marketing takes quite a lot of effort, research, analysis, and involves several tools, but each penny is worth the result.

The main purpose of digital marketing for your educational institutes is to boost your brand visibility and make it a top choice for the relevant audience.

Launch precise and organized email marketing campaigns

Emails are the direct gateway to reach the personal inbox of your targeted audience.

It is cost-effective yet one of the most efficient methods to deliver important contents and build a long-term, functional relationship with prospective students and guardians.

Email marketing is a precise, segmented, and in-person approach with a high conversion rate, especially for the education sector, the outcome can be simply miraculous.

You can nurture your prospects through deliberate, relevant, and personalized approaches which will be the base for a long-term relationship.

Here are some effective ideas for you to make your email marketing a successful venture:

• Set several email automations like subscription confirmation emails, greetings emails, etc.
• Segment your audience for personalized and relevant email campaigns
• Promote different types of contents; for example, blogs, webinars, how-to videos, tutorials, etc.
• Use actionable CTAs like Enroll Now, Learn More, Register Today to boost click-through-rate
• Set multiple onboarding email automations for newly enrolled students to guide them through the admission process
• Automate your result updates and program announcements for the current students and their guardians

Even with the finest tool, the success of your email campaign is still dependent on your mastery.

What mostly matters is how well you set your subject lines, how different elements are organized in your newsletter, and how to set up unique emails for different demography-focused audiences.

Encourage and promote student reviews and testimonials

The first thing we do before making a purchase decision about a product or service is to look for reviews from existing customers.

Reviews are purely user-generated content and they’re trustworthy and reliable sources for gauging the quality of a business.

That’s why it’s important to motivate and ask your existing students to leave more reviews as an integral part of your education marketing.

You can collect reviews from different platforms and collect testimonials from your alumni and display them on your website to show how your curriculum can positively impact their lives.

Here are some tips for you to collect more reviews and testimonials:

• Create custom review field on your website and make the review process easier
• Respond quickly to each and every reviews and display them on your website
• Handle negative reviews carefully and show your prospects how well you can handle a bad situation
• Deliver helpful content via emails or chat widgets to your prospects before asking for reviews
• Collect text-based and video testimonials from your successful alumni and display them on your website

Prospective students are often confused about the options to choose from, making it difficult for them to make a choice between institutions.

Reviews and testimonials are the deciding factor to persuade them that your institution is what they require at this moment.

Make your website mobile responsive and user-friendly

Did you know that according to Statista, almost 96% of global internet users access the internet with their mobile phones?

Whether it’s for researching their desired educational institution, people tend to use their mobile devices as their preferred method to use the internet.

Therefore, it’s crucial to make sure that your website is mobile-responsive and able to provide a great user experience for all sorts of devices.

Here are some important tips for a mobile-responsive website:

• Make sure that all the links and navigational elements on your websites are easily clickable and set at the right place
• Focus on the font sizes, colors, and readability of your contents on all pages
• Optimize and ensure that your page loading time doesn’t exist three seconds
• Choose the color palates of your website carefully so that it doesn’t feel irritable to the visitors
• Use different CTA buttons

Your website can significantly influence how visitors perceive your institution. So, it is a wise decision to invest time and effort for a responsive website.

Create more engaging and informational video content

Among all types of content formats, videos carry the most information and can create the most long-lasting impression.

The education sector has a great potential to attract potential students with engaging video content and promoting them on leading platforms like YouTube.

Educational content is already popular among YouTube viewers, which saves educational institutions from looking for new video ideas.

All you need to do is to present your existing activities and services in an interesting manner and innovative way. There are plenty of YouTube marketing tools available to make the efforts into successful ventures.

Here are some interesting and effective video marketing tips for educational institutions:

• Create robust and dynamic promo videos of your campus or institution
• Produce how-to tutorials and explanation videos from time to time
• Try to publish myth-busting videos following the popular misconceptions
• Create animated video content for complicated theoretical concepts
• Experiment with new video formats like virtual reality
• Always track your video performance metrics

Video contents can send your message more dynamically, yet in a fun way.

When you are generating video content that is informative, educational, and entertaining, you are getting in the minds of your audience.

Your institution will always pop up when it’s the time to make the final call for them.

Boost your impression with celebrity endorsement

It all comes down to impression. Whether it’s a retail store or an education institution, impression is certainly the most influential decision-making factor.

And celebrity endorsement can significantly connect with a diverse audience and make your institution a thought leader in the respective field.

Whenever a celebrity or renowned individual endorses an institution, it makes the offerings more interesting, credible, and trustworthy. It can humanize your online presence and make your courses, methods of study more inspirational and aspiring.

Here are important things to consider before you go for celebrity endorsement:

• It’s always the best if the celebrity is an alumni and a well-known figure in a certain industry
• The endorser must be supportive to your educational goals
• You should always look out for the endorser’s image, reputation, and controversies
• Make sure that contract cost with the celebrity fits your budget before finalizing the deal

Celebrity endorsements should be fluent, relevant to the audience, and aligned with your institution’s mission and vision. When executed properly, celebrity endorsement can be a deciding factor that transforms your organization from a local to an international brand.

Create and promote learning apps

People are always looking for new and convenient learning methods as the education sector evolves with the growth of the internet. An amazing way to attract a new group of learners and promote your institution is through applications for mobile phones or apps.

The easier, the better- that’s the basic motto you should follow for your education marketing. An app that features easy navigation buttons makes it effortless for users to learn without having to go to the browser and search for you on the web.

Here are some exclusive ideas to promote your educational app:

• Create an easy navigating system for your app with a clear user interface
• Run paid ad campaign on different app stores and social media platforms
• Promote your app from your different social handles
• Create SEO optimized landing page on your website to encourage visitors to use your app
• Invest on influencer for marketing you app
• Promote app reviews on your website and social platforms
• Design an iconic mascot for your app

Apps are a modern and trendy approach to attract the younger generations. By offering convenient services to your audience, they will be more inclined towards your institutions, ultimately leading to the creation of your brand.

For example, the famous Duolingo Owl has become much more than a mascot. It has become the brand itself. Whenever people see their logo, they automatically know that it’s a famous app to learn a new language.

Top tools to succeed with your education marketing

By now, we have learned together about the methods and strategies to make your education marketing efforts successful. However, you must have felt that you will need special tools to make them come true.

Actually, there are plenty softwares, applications, and tools that can serve your purpose. In this section, we will only mention the best tools in the relevant fields till date. Let’s take a look at them.

The major demographics of education marketing

Education marketing has been changing its approaches with time, but the niche and demography have remained more or less stable for a long time.

The foundation of a successful marketing strategy lies around understanding the prospects! So, in this section, we will break down the entire niche of the education sector and learn about them in detail.

Pre-school and high-school level students

This is the largest demographic in the education sector and also the most sensitive one. Their learning opportunities and scope are the highest and the most diverse.

Schools and institutions that are specifically dedicated to this niche should focus more on building trustworthiness and authority. That includes emphasizing marketing their resources and flexibility of learning, which makes things easier for schoolers.

Higher education candidates

They are the most careful and selective niche in the education sector. Institutions targeting to attract higher education candidates should focus branding on their competitive advantages over others from the same field.

The higher education marketing strategies should revolve around the on-campus facilities, traditions of academic excellence, cultural richness, and alumni endorsements.

Specialized corporate training participants

Corporate industries are always in need of raising new leaders and facilitating policymakers. These kinds of people are the supporting pillars of the current world’s global economy.

Training individuals who can reduce inefficiencies, excel in customer service, create collaborative work environments, and standardize internal communications is a priority for companies.

Institutions targeting this demography should focus on data-driven promotions, resource-oriented branding, paid campaigns, etc.

Vocational training participants

The aim of vocational institutes is to train and prepare individuals for specialized jobs like technicians, artisans, machine operators, etc. More and more countries are patronizing these trainings to strengthen their economy making it an emerging niche.

Education marketing for vocational training institutions should focus on their practical training capabilities, resource availability, and program structures. 

EdTech Institutions and online learning communities

How much do you depend on the virtual world?

Think carefully and you will see how much our lives are invested into the realm of online! That makes it needless to say the rise of EdTech companies and its impacts on how we view the term- ‘Learning’

Surprisingly, marketing goals for EdTech companies are quite simple- show the school authorities that with your products, teachers and students can improve and enhance what they are already doing. That’s it!

Meaningful impacts on learning in a personalized and sustainable way are the main selling points EdTech companies should prioritize.

End note

We’ve come a long way, my friend! If you have come all the way here, we will consider you sufficiently knowledgeable about education marketing.

Technology has changed our perception about education and at the same time, it has presented us with new opportunities to spread the light of education to everyone who seeks knowledge to the last corner of the world.

From conventional educational institutions to the distant learning culture, mankind has come a long way. We hope and pray that your noble purpose of spreading knowledge will be successful with our aforementioned strategies and tools.

We wish you all the best.