Inbound marketing for the education sector attracts prospective students and their families by creating student-centric experiences, valuable content to engage them, answering their questions and encouraging them to interact with your institution.
Choosing a suitable school, college, or university has evolved from traditional outbound channels (where educational institutions had a great degree of control) to inbound channels, through which students and families can share opinions, read reviews, and research institutions. By the time the admissions or enrolment department interacts with a prospect, they often already hold a strong opinion about the school or college (an impression that can work in your favour or against you). By adopting an inbound methodology, educational organisations can take greater ownership of their online presence and help shape public perception of their institution.
The inbound methodology attracts customers by creating valuable content and tailored experiences at every stage of their journey. Inbound marketing for education focuses on attracting students (and their parents or guardians) to your institution by engaging with them earlier than the admissions phase. This is achieved by creating content that answers their questions and encourages meaningful interaction with your school or college. To grow and reach their target audience, schools and colleges must draw people to their website through relevant content, and then provide help and support.
Highlighting your unique selling points via inbound marketing will help you attract the right audience and increase enrolments. You can employ various inbound marketing strategies to achieve this, such as: content creation, email marketing, social media presence or events. Creating relevant, helpful and engaging content is critical as this represents the main element through which prospects learn about your institution. The content should always be created with search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind.
Some of the most common and effective content types include:
- Blogging: through blog posts, prospects can find answers to their questions. They provide value and build trust with your audience.
- Website: your website, being your central representation online, must communicate and reinforce the value you offer to prospective and enrolled students.
- Landing Pages: landing pages are specifically designed to convert visitors into prospects by encouraging them to take action. Landing pages must be designed and optimised to reduce friction, remove distractions and prompt actions.
- Content Offers: used to provide additional value to your prospects (e.g. a prospectus, guides or calculators). Use content offers to convert visitors into contacts.
- Social Media: having a social media presence and posting regularly is imperative to the inbound methodology for education organisations. It's a great way to promote your content and interact with your audience.
- Validation Points: methods and materials through which you can prove your value and build trust with visitors and prospects, such as statistics, reports, data or testimonials.
The inbound methodology for education organisations is constructed from the same three stages of the inbound process: attract, engage and delight.
1. Attract
The objective is to capture the attention of your target audience (parents, guardians or students) through inbound marketing methods. Create valuable content and tailored experienced at every stage of your prospects journey (even prior to them enquiring). Create content that answers your audiences questions and encourages meaningful interactions. Highlighting your unique selling points via inbound marketing will help you attract the right audience and increase enrolments. content should always be created with search engine optimisation (SEO) in mind.
Examples of content that you could provide:
- A guide on how to choose the right university
- A blog post to help parents with subject option choices for their child
- Social media posts about student success stories at your college
- Social media posts about the next stage of the admissions process
Building an SEO strategy starts with identifying the keywords and phrases your ideal audience is searching for. Consider: the challenges they face, the solutions you offer, and the services you provide. A strong SEO strategy helps your content appear in search engine results organically, making it easier for prospective families or students to find you when they’re looking for answers online.
More information about SEO and how it works can be found here.
2. Engage
The objective at this stage is to engage the audience by communicating with them, handling their enquiries and building long-term relationships with prospective students and families. You should use engagement strategies to showcase how your school, college or university will provide value. Conversations should be tailored and personalised to each contact, ensuring the recepient feels valued.
Prospects and students engage with various teams during their customer journey; some examples of departments or teams include:
- Marketing and events team
- Registrar/admissions team
- Senior leadership team
- Heads of Department/School (academic)
- Heads of House/Year/Student Services (pastoral)
- Receptionists/administrators
- Boarding/accommodation team
- SENCo/Support team
Analysing the customer journey and synchronising the conversations' goals across teams will ensure you offer the best possible service and are supporting prospects throughout their journey with you.
The engage stage is also when you will capture the prospects' contact details and interests. All forms must be optimised to accurately and efficiently capture the data you need to personalise future communications and report effectively.
3. Delight
The objective, in this final stage, is to ensure that you continue to nurture parents/ students after they have enrolled. Utilise well-timed chatbots and surveys to help delight.
Satisfaction surveys can also be employed to delight prospects and students, for example- surveys for students who have completed their first term can be used to capture feedback and delight prospects. Your blogs, website and social media content also facilitate the customer's delight. They represent channels through which students and their families can view student success stories, videos and exciting events or engage in meaningful conversations.
Students or families might also use your social platforms to provide feedback or ask questions. Interactions on social media platforms provide opportunity for you to share helpful information and reassure students/ families that they are valued. The delight stage requires focus on delighting customers in every situation, always offering assistance and support. This stage is vital to the inbound methodology as it powers the flywheel: a delighted customer becomes a promoter, or an advocate, for your school or college, providing valuable reviews and word-of-mouth that attracts more prospecting students and families to your institution.