Online research plays an essential role in a prospective student’s decision-making process. Therefore, a strong content marketing strategy is an invaluable tool for attracting future students to your institution.
To create and implement an effective strategy, you need to understand the journey your audience takes before they enroll in your institution. This will allow you to engage with them from the moment they begin their search and address their needs at every important juncture.
Follow these five tips to create a content strategy that sets your institution apart:
1. Enhance or develop your marketing personas
The first step in establishing a content strategy that boosts enrollment is to understand your audience’s needs and their enrollment journey. It’s crucial that you develop a few distinct personas that represent and encompass your distinct types of prospects.
Even if you’ve already created marketing personas, you should make sure to revise them periodically. Here are some methods for producing or improving your personas:
- Conduct interviews to clearly define key drivers and motivators for applicants
- Analyze your student database to gather more information about where students are coming from
- Monitor social media interactions and industry news
- Look for discussions about employment trends and skills gaps, and reflect on how your programs are relevant in that context
Your content marketing plan should reflect the path that each persona will take to make a decision. Creating personas will help you determine what kind of information your target segments require at each stage of their journey. Use this process and the insights you gain to guide your content creation.
2. Audit your existing content
Most higher education institutions have a wealth of marketing materials readily available. In such cases, the best way to start improving content strategy is to perform an audit of all existing resources. An audit will allow you to identify resources that need improvement, as well as content gaps and topics that need to be addressed. To audit your content assets, follow the steps outlined below:
Identify your content assets
Start out by making a list of all the content and marketing materials you have available — both print and digital. The best way to audit and analyze your digital assets is to extract all content and sort it in a spreadsheet.
Asses your current content
Analyze each asset to determine its marketing effectiveness. The content should meet the needs of at least one target persona and address a stage in the student journey. Determine which pieces of content best address applicant pain points and clearly communicate the institution’s value. These will be the assets that you keep. Any redundant, outdated, or trivial content you come across should either be updated or discarded.
Determine which prospect pain points are not properly addressed by your current content
By this step in the audit, you should have clear understanding of which content pieces you plan to reuse and which can be expanded or revamped. You can also ascertain where your missing content.
Incorporate these findings into your content creation strategy, but be sure to consider where these assets will fit on the student’s journey.
(Next page: 3 more tips for boosting enrollment)
3. Leverage storytelling to communicate your value
Storytelling is a powerful and engaging way to communicate your institution’s value proposition to prospects. Whether you are creating additional marketing material or revamping existing assets, storytelling can take your content to the next level.
The role of storytelling in content marketing strategy is to:
- Communicate your institution’s unique differentiators
- Engage applicants and show them how they will fit into the community on campus
- Demonstrate what the university’s values are, and how they are applied in the community
- Entice readers or viewers to explore more
Aside from simply delivering the facts, storytelling aims to engage prospects emotionally, nourish their interest, and leave a positive and lasting impression.
4. Promote your institution’s research
It is important to provide prospects with information about the fascinating and ground-breaking research taking place on campus. However, admissions and marketing departments often neglect to promote these successes.
Universities have been the site Leveraging academic research allows you to showcase your institutions achievements and exhibit the expertise of your faculty and students. This higher education content marketing tactic is an impactful way to communicate the value of your institution, as it endows your brand with authority, credibility and legitimacy.
You can highlight academic features in a variety of formats. Regardless of which format you choose, make sure you present the content clearly and concisely so that applicants of varying skill-levels can understand it.
Developing content around academic research can be challenging, but the following ideas can help you get started.
- Ask faculty to provide you with simple explanations and descriptions of the research they are doing, and the results they are achieving
- Turn academic research and results into blog posts, news articles, interviews, etc.
- Incorporate visuals such as infographics, photos, and videos
- Have students share their own stories and contributions to research
5. Create experiences for your prospects through video and photos
Utilizing videos and photos allows you to bring the campus experience to life. The following tactics will provide you with ideas to take your visual content to the next level:
- Engage the admissions staff in your visual content creation brainstorms. Given that they interact with prospects daily, they are more inclined to have well-informed ideas.
- Ask current students and alumni to provide testimonials and share their personal stories.
- Produce evergreen videos with useful advice and tips from your staff.
- Feature and promote student success stories that inspire.
- Explore the campus through video and VR and detail your school’s differentiators.
Video and photos are among the most influential types of content you can produce. However, you must position these assets carefully along the student journey to ensure their relevance.
Solve problems and create experiences for your prospects
When implemented correctly, content marketing plays a powerful role in helping educational institutions penetrate and influence target audiences. Your content should provide your audience with high-quality information that addresses their questions and generates excitement about enrolling in your institution.
Remember that life at a university is as much of a social experience as it is an educational one. Promoting engaging content that combines information about the educational and social benefits of attending your institution, will undoubtedly entice prospective students to attend your school.
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