How to Grow With Educational Marketing
Marketing is nothing more than the strategy of the concept, which is to encourage potential customers to use certain services or make them buy. For this purpose, a variety of tools are used, as well as appropriate activities. One of the strategies of this type is educational marketing. However, to better understand it, it is necessary to know its essence. So what is educational marketing, and how to grow with it?
What is educational marketing?
Educational marketing is a marketing strategy primarily intended to affect the achievement of previously intended marketing goals effectively. It uses several tools for this purpose, selected according to the adopted concept, plan of action, specific environment, and potential audience. Educational marketing is mainly used in education. So if a school or an institution wants to appear on the market of educational services and successfully attract new interested parties, i.e., students or parents, it uses all possible tools.
Educational marketing is based on the promotion of educational and scientific services. Its strategy is developed based on the results of the analysis of:
- Local environment
- Existing needs for educational services
- Group of potential customers, precisely such as parents, their children, and future students
- Demographic situation and the surrounding labor market
- Future forecasts that will show the demand for the school’s offerings in the coming years
- Existing institutions of this type in the educational environment, their level, and the way they operate
Even though education marketing was only established as a discipline in its own right a good 30 years ago, there were already marketing or advertising educational offerings before that. At that time, these activities were (usually) less strategic and did not include the variety of different marketing tasks that we know today. However, the need for professional educational marketing was nowhere near as great as today.
The trend of rising dynamics of the education market continues, and the competition density increases. In addition to private, public, and non-profit educational and training institutions, more and more independent trainers, coaches, and consultants compete for students. In the course of this, the range of offerings is also becoming increasingly diverse. Fortunately, a similar development can be observed on the demand side. Participation in education continues to rise in early education programs, vocational schools, and colleges. In particular, the trend toward higher-level educational qualifications is reflected more and more in the educational attainment of the population as a whole from year to year.
Competitive pressure is thus growing, forcing educational institutions to address strategic education marketing specifically. This development has been particularly intense in the higher education landscape for several years. With the founding of new private universities and the expansion of increasingly specialized study programs, competition for students has grown.
Suppose you still have questions about educational marketing. In that case, you can turn to experts and ask a question or check common questions about marketing on StuDocu educational platform.
Who is educational marketing aimed at?
As you might guess, educational marketing is primarily aimed at the local community, specifically at parents and their children who are about to start a new academic stage in their lives (in a few months, a year, or two). Educational marketing is therefore intended to help them decide on the choice of an educational institution and a direction related to the future, and at the same time – to make them choose a particular offer.
Educational marketing in the case of secondary schools may involve a somewhat broader audience, analyzed in terms of place of residence. Many institutions (high schools, technical schools, and vocational schools) offer boarding schools so that the marketing strategy can be developed for other groups, for example, potential students from neighbouring provinces.
What’s more, educational marketing is also a concept prepared by universities. It is aimed at prospective first or second degree students and potential doctoral students.
Effectiveness and educational marketing
The effectiveness of educational marketing is essential insofar as it must constantly promote change. Potential audiences must learn about the innovations being implemented and see them in a favorable light. This will help convince them of a given offer and, at the same time, determine the successful fight for a pupil or student.
It is necessary to develop the target audience and the means of communication that will best reach prospective students. We’re talking about such sources of information as radio ads, search engine ads, television ads, billboards, and flyers while promoting high scores and unusual educational offers, which no other institution has. This will help distinguish a particular school and convince the public to use a specific service.
So, in a nutshell, for educational marketing to be effective, it is crucial to take into account:
- Audience analysis based on the local community and market demand
- Promoting change
- Promoting innovative teaching methods and tools for this purpose
- Highlighting features that other competing establishments within the immediate area do not have
- Selection of communication channels to reach the widest, and most importantly, the right targeted audience
Although educational marketing focuses on the promotion of educational institutions, it is also possible to use it in a slightly different way. It implies the education of prospects on the value they can get from your services. Namely, it is not a direct sale of products or services but an aid directed toward prospects. It is designed to help them reach their goal and provide the knowledge they want to acquire to stay up-to-date on relevant topics.
Many companies and businesses use educational marketing. As is well known, it is one of the best practices to build trust, loyalty, credibility, and commitment. With this, success is almost guaranteed.
How does educational marketing work?
Educational marketing is becoming a vital tool in the world of technology and advertising. Customers treat their choices as a reliable source of information and usually do not allow themselves to be aware that they could be wrong about it. So to help consumers, educational marketing on a specific topic is used. A great example of educational marketing is the publication of videos to learn about repairing a car or articles like What Can You Do to Make Reddit Aware of Your Game?
The effectiveness of educational marketing allows you to enter a higher level and become a credible advisor while simultaneously selling your services. This type of strategy tightens the relationship between the brand and the customer and, at the same time, allows you to gain an advantage over your competitors.
Educational Marketing Strategies to Help You Grow
The best way to do educational marketing in the current market is to adopt unique approaches. Here are some of them.
Come up with a customer persona
To launch effective educational marketing and attract new customers, you must first determine who may need your services or product. Based on the customer persona, you can:
- Create educational marketing (ads, commercials, content, etc.) that is as valuable as possible for the needs of your target audience. Often the same product must be positioned differently for several categories of potential customers in educational marketing.
- Formulate a competent offer: learn the customers’ problem and promise to solve it.
- Elaborate on the benefits for the consumer and make up the unique selling proposition.
- Identify triggers for the influence and motivation of the client.
The more details you have in your customer persona, the better chance you have to create educational marketing that best meets the needs of your target audience.
Create content that puts your customers first
Your educational content should be valuable at every stage. For this, you need your customers` needs research. The following 3 questions will help you understand what your educational content should include:
- What is making your prospects’ lives miserable?
- What is going to give your prospects hope that everything will change?
- How can you help your prospects change their lives?
These questions should help you develop effective educational content niches/topics that will offer detailed guidelines on further actions people can take.
Optimize content for search engines
Educational content optimization for search engines is about improving online texts’ relevance for users and search engines like Google. For readers, educational content optimization means constant access to quality content that is fully relevant to their search intent.
Technical content optimization makes your educational texts machine-readable, easily discoverable, and well-structured for search engines. If search engines ask a question, your article or page should contain the best answer to that question.
Educational content optimization includes checking for related keywords, adding meta and title tags, and relevant links. Headlines should also be optimized to increase CTR and visual elements to increase user engagement.
Educational content optimization is essential because, without it, your content is unlikely to be found by your target audience. Think about it: search queries aren’t the only way people find educational content. But it is the easiest. When you optimize your educational content for search engines, people and potential customers find you on their own.
Here are some of the benefits of educational content optimization:
- SEO. Well-optimized educational content increases search engine rankings.
- Traffic. Higher rankings can lead to more organic traffic.
- Authority. Optimized educational content increases credibility with both users and Google.
- Efficiency. Updating and republishing existing educational content can save a lot of time.
- Prospectivity. Regularly auditing your educational content allows you to stay relevant.
So educational content optimization is very necessary for your educational marketing success.
Choose the suitable content delivery options
There are over 10 types of content you can use in your educational marketing. The most popular types of content delivery include:
- Blog posts
- Long-form articles
- Case studies
- Videos
- Podcasts
Nothing prevents you from combining these types of content in your educational marketing. Moreover, combining different types of content can double or even triple your educational marketing results.
3 Examples of Companies Using Educational Marketing
In 2022, many companies use educational marketing, and their number will constantly increase because it offers enormous benefits for any online business. The best way to start educational marketing if you have no previous experience is to analyze other companies’ educational marketing. We have gathered 3 great examples in crypto, SaaS, and IT niches: Binance, Plerdy, and IdeaSoft.
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