Technology has certainly been a wide-scale revolution, leaving no sphere untouched. Education has been no exception. Today, education technology or EdTech has opened up new avenues for advancement and taken over much of the education system. Since the face of education is changing, the primary marketing strategy for educational institutions must also be revised accordingly.
Given that the pandemic has completely changed the “normal”, the prolific growth of EdTech has reinvented the education system through technological innovations that helped streamline the distance teaching-learning process.
EdTech Then and Now
EdTech has seen tremendous growth, partly because of the benefits it reaps and partly because of the pandemic and its consequential need for social distancing which has shut down schools and educational institutions. And the education sector is better for it! The global education technology market was worth USD 89.49 billion in 2020, and it is predicted to increase at a CAGR of 19.9% from 2021 to 2028.
From game-based learning to virtual field trips, education has totally transformed. But acceptance of this transformation has been varying. This is where the digital marketing strategy for educational institutions comes in! In the face of this revolutionary transformation of the education sector, bringing skeptic learners to acceptance of these new mediums while also maintaining already enrolled students is essential.
Problem Statement of Company “A”
An educational company “A” came to us with the challenges it was facing to market its courses. These included a complete shift of medium from offline to online classes due to the pandemic. This required a completely different approach to marketing strategy. Further, their courses were expensive which made certain marketing strategies ineffective in attracting enrollments. Their social media reach was negligible and their cost per lead, a statistic that assesses how cost-effective your advertising campaigns are in producing new leads. was very high.
Developing A Marketing Strategy for Educational Institutions that Worked!
Our approach to developing a marketing strategy to help Company “A” involved aligning their marketing to their business goals. Our strategy followed as such:
Search Engine Optimization
SEO involves developing, modifying, and tweaking a website’s content and code in ways that maximize the likelihood of the website’s pages showing in search engine results pages. Company “A” needed to generate organic growth for which Search Engine Optimization involved the old page optimization in terms of modifying meta titles and meta descriptions, URLs, and increasing internal linking on the web page. Then, a blog action was created which answered questions commonly asked potential customers. These included not just questions about the courses offered but also about the prospects after the course and companies that hire people with the skills offered by the course.
This marketing strategy brought forth fruitful results. Impressions on the website rose from 6K to approximately 9K in 2 months. The Google ranking of the website’s keywords improved significantly with 41 keywords ranking on Google’s top page while more than 210 keywords ranking in the top 10 pages of Google.
Social Media Management
Social Media marketing strategy for educational institutions involves curating content that is engaging. So our approach to improving the Social Media presence of Company “A” involved making posts that were informative and relevant to the audience and introducing weekly quizzes to gamify interaction. These tactics help brand promotion while also building a trust factor with potential customers.
The results, in just two months, were promising. Users on LinkedIn increased from 10,600 to 11,000, Youtube saw an increase of more than 100 followers, from 430 to 538 and Instagram followers increased from 300 to 349.
Performance marketing
Company “A” was running three types of paid advertisements: Google Search, Display Ads, Facebook Lead Generation Ads. The type of ads that the company “A” was running pan-India had only details about the course. This was largely unhelpful in making an impactful impression. The marketing strategy that improved the impact of running advertisements involved dividing the audience on the basis of key demographics like age and city. Further, the ads require conveying more than just about the courses. It aimed at specific communication about placements and job preparation.
The strategy worked by reducing the Cost Per Lead on Google reduced from 600 to 350 and Cost Per lead on Facebook from 250 to 150.
To conclude, our marketing strategy for this institute brought about desirable results in minimal time. This was possible because our SEO aimed at answering questions of the target audience. For Social Media, generating relevant, engaging content was our way to efficiently work the algorithm to our advantage. Improving advertisements through enhanced targeting and specific communication had a substantial impact, making our marketing strategy for educational institutions successful.
Photo by Julia M Cameron from Pexels
The post Digital Marketing Strategy For Educational Institutions: A Case study appeared first on Brandshark.
Leave a Reply