13 Higher Education Marketing Strategies In 2024

In recent years, there have been many changes in what students are looking for in an educational institution. A higher education marketing plan should take into account these changing expectations in order to attract the highest quality candidates. Robust distance learning programs, local student outreach, and student focused digital marketing are all important aspects of successful marketing strategies for colleges in 2024 and beyond.

Why Do Higher Education Institutions Need Marketing?

Every year, new students are graduating from high school and are looking for the place they will be continuing their education. They are bombarded with brochures, speakers, ads, and suggestions from those around them, all trying to steer them to one higher education institution or another. These are all forms of higher education marketing in some way and all are pieces of the puzzle that prospective students use to decide where they will go. The right marketing strategy can help a school to stand out above the rest.

Students are not the only ones who can be drawn in by well designed marketing strategies of educational institutes. Parents and others who help students make decisions are also important to market to, as their influence can be an important factor. A great marketing plan can also be vital for attracting high quality teachers and faculty. All of this can synergize together to increase a school’s enrollment and reputation.

In this article we are going to look at 13 useful techniques to use as part of an effective higher education marketing strategy:

1. Branding
2. Search Engine Optimization
3. A Great Website Experience
4. Social Media Marketing
5. Livestreaming
6. Email Marketing
7. Interactive Advertising
8. Leveraging Alumni and Students
9. Distance Learning
10. Pay Per Click Advertising
11. Short Form Video Advertising
12. Focus On Positive Career Outcomes
13. Don’t Forget The Traditional

These techniques will help you lay the foundation for a great marketing strategy, and partnering with a higher ed marketing agency such as ComboApp can help you put it all together successfully.

13 Higher Education Marketing Strategies For 2024

Having the right marketing techniques is a vital part to achieving success for any higher education institution, but in 2024 the stakes are even higher. These 13 tips are ingredients that can be put together to cook up a recipe for triumph over the competition. These are especially important in a world where the usual routes for getting information into potential students’ hands have changed or become unavailable.

1. Branding

Let’s face it, branding is important no matter what your business sector. For schools, branding is going to help define who you are to potential students. Defining who you are means letting them know what makes your school unique. A Gallup study showed that students had trouble differentiating between different school brands and mission statements. This is an institution’s opportunity to stand above the crowd.

Higher education branding means crafting an identity that represents both the school and it’s student body. While many schools have things in common, every institution has its own unique attributes. Your programs, history, campus, community, alumni, and faculty are all unique and are able to be highlighted as part of your brand. Think about the students you want to attract and what will bring them to your institution. Above all, make sure it is authentic. You don’t want to craft an image that students will find to be untrue once they step on campus. Retention is as important as acquisition, and bad word of mouth can undo all of the work that good marketing has done.

2. Search Engine Optimization

A higher education institution needs to be able to be found online easily. Unless they are one of the lucky institutions who has Ivy League levels of word of mouth, they must ensure that they show up in a potential students search. Higher education institutions tend to get a lot of organic traffic from students who are searching, so great search engine optimization (SEO) practices and optimization are vital. A higher education website design and the content it features needs to be carefully crafted to take advantage of Google’s algorithm and get high rankings, including on the local stack.

High ranking is so important because 75% of users never click beyond the first page of a Google search. If you are not on the first page then 3/4ths of people searching will never see you. Some of the most important SEO techniques include:

• Mobile page speed optimization and Accelerated Mobile Page HTML code options.
• Solid technical SEO to ensure sites are crawled properly.
• Target keyword research and use.
• Creating optimized content.
• SEO-friendly meta tags.
• Site optimized for voice search.
• Link-building to establish, maintain, and increase authority.
• Press releases and other forms of outreach to media outlets.
• Proper schema markup for education institutions.

When developing a higher education website, these tips will help ensure that the site gets the organic traffic it needs. A full cycle marketing agency such as ComboApp, with experience in how to market universities, can build a site that fits these needs as part of a strong higher education digital marketing plan.

3. A Great Website Experience

Higher education website design needs more than just solid code and information about the school. School websites have gained a reputation for being labyrinthine affairs that are difficult to navigate. Breaking away from this trend to create a great user experience will make for more engaged visitors as well as better search engine rankings.

A great mobile site is one place to start. The importance of mobile-first design in 2024 and beyond cannot be stressed enough. Mobile friendly is not enough anymore, as Google has moved to a mobile-first approach to ranking and users are increasingly using phones as their main web browsing device. Millions of Gen Z students have grown up with mobile devices and have become used to using them for day to day tasks.

Speed and ease of use are just as important as being mobile-first, as a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load will lose visitors fast. A fast loading site that is easy to navigate and find information on will make for happy, engaged, and informed potential students. A higher education marketing agency such as ComboApp can help an institution by building a site that will meet these goals.

4. Social Media Marketing

A higher education institution will find that most of its marketing will be geared towards Gen Z as well as some millennials who are going back to school or getting a later start. More than any other demographic, these will have the most engagement with social media on a day to day basis. 9 in 10 potential students in this demographic use social media, and 70% have used social media to research higher education institutions. This means that higher education social media marketing is an opportunity to connect with these potential students that would be a mistake to ignore.

Simply having a social media presence is not enough though. You need to have content that is engaging and informative, as well as authentic. Today’s students are savvy to marketing techniques, especially in the digital space, and they want to see what a school really has to offer and not just a crafted image. We can give them this authenticity by being responsive to their inquiries, as well as presenting the school through the eyes of students. Get students from digital media departments to craft some content, encourage students to use a hashtag to post about the school, or have student leaders do account takeovers in order to give your social media a voice that speaks to potential students on their own terms.

Social media is a chance to show off your school’s brand to the world, and communicate to potential students why they want to come there. A great enrollment marketing plan will take advantage of these outlets as much as possible and make your institution into a place that students want to go.

5. Livestreaming

Livestreaming is another up and coming tool in your higher education digital marketing tool belt. Facebook Live, Instagram Live, YouTube, Twitch, and more all provide outlets for getting live video content straight into the hands of potential students. This can be used in a variety of ways, such as streaming events, Q&A sessions with students and faculty, sports, and of course classes and lectures. These livestreams can be used to enhance your brand, as well as give students an authentic look at what an institution has to offer.

Of course, in 2024 livestreaming has taken on even more importance as a way to communicate with potential students after the pandemic. Schools can use live streaming to conduct campus tours, talk with groups of interested students, and conduct classes over distance. Getting on board with this technology is essential to any higher education marketing strategy.

6. Email Marketing

It might be an old stalwart at this point, but a strong email marketing strategy is still an important higher education marketing tool. In fact, when it comes to higher education communications and marketing materials, 3 out of 4 students would prefer to be contacted by email. This makes it a crucial tool for a school to use, but they have to be able to use it right.

Unfortunately, college emails are more likely to be filtered as spam due to many institutions not understanding how to properly manage their email marketing. This means you have to ensure that your institution is using email marketing in ways that will avoid those filters and end up in front of the eyes of potential students.

Personalization and segmentation will help you avoid sending out mass emails with general information. This is done by using an email automation tool and setting up emails that go to individuals with specific interests, and at relevant times. Giving prospective students personalized emails will help keep them engaged. Emails should also be able to be replied to and receive a prompt response from a real person. AI tools can take this even further by crafting these emails using data that has been collected about the recipient or segment being targeted.

Setting up these tools and managing them might seem daunting. But, a full cycle agency that offers higher education marketing services like ComboApp can make sure you get the most out of them by putting their skills and experience to use for you.

7. Interactive Advertising

Interactive advertising offers a form of higher education advertising that has many possibilities to explore. You can use interactive ads to not just reach and engage with potential students, but also get them to let you know exactly what they care about. This is another field that is just starting to really blossom, and taking advantage of it now will be an excellent addition to all strategies for increasing student enrollment.

Imagine a student sees an ad from a school on a social media platform, and that ad comes in the form of a game that they can play. They enter in an email and name, or just use the credentials from their social account, and soon they are interacting and having fun with a quiz or other type of game that gives the school an insight into the things they value.

Another possibility is a video ad that follows a student beginning their journey at a school. As they make decisions, the viewer gets to choose what the student does and how the story plays out.

For a different type of interactive ad, an increasing number of schools have E-Sports teams. These teams can work as a form of advertising themselves, and can also provide avenues for items such as school branded in-game content for the games they compete in. If a potential student becomes a fan of a school’s team, and are willing to wear their uniform in a game, then they are more likely to attend that school.

Higher education marketing firms like ComboApp are there to help you create the perfect interactive advertising campaign for your higher education institution.

8. Leveraging Alumni and Students

There are few more powerful forms of marketing higher education than word of mouth. No matter what an institution says about itself, the words of those who went there themselves is far more valuable in the minds of many prospective students. If a school is looking for marketing strategies to increase student enrollment, they need look no further than their current and former students.

One of the simplest ways to get this type of word of mouth advertising is by encouraging students and alumni to review the school on various review sites. They can also be featured in videos or profiles on websites or social media, letting them put into their own words their experience at the school and how it benefited them.

9. Distance Learning

When approaching marketing for higher education, a focus on distance learning will help attract prospective students. In 2024, there will be a large number of students who will be looking at options that involve not having to go to a campus. For many reasons, including a desire to not commute, having a plan for students to learn from home is a way to create opportunity. Schools can now have access to new students who would have never been in their reach before.

Showing that a school cares about students and faculty by offering distance classes helps on its own, by giving the school a positive reputation in most people’s minds. It also means that students who will be seeking distance learning are more likely to choose your school over another that does not offer distance learning or offers a less robust distance learning offering. Distance learning also can make your school accessible to prospective students who are unable to leave their areas due to family or other reasons. Distance learning helps a school’s enrollment marketing plan by increasing the potential pool of prospective students.

10. Pay Per Click Advertising

When it comes to higher education digital marketing, pay-per-click advertising still remains an essential tool. It can be used to micro-target prospective students and offer them ads that are personalized to them based on their searches.

A PPC campaign for marketing higher education can be used across multiple ad platforms including Facebook Ads, Bing Ads, Google Ads and others. With mobile devices you can also target ads based on location or locations the person frequents. You can tailor these campaigns to best fit your institution’s budget in the most efficient way.

Digital marketing for higher education in 2024 means using a diverse ad strategy that targets the prospective students the school is most trying to reach. Google search provides excellent ROI, while interactive ads will have students more engaged with the ad.

There are 5 main types of digital ads that can be used as part of a higher education marketing strategy:

1. Display Ads – These are the standard banner and image ads that appear on websites.
2. Social Media – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media sites offer many options for paid ads. From boosted posts to interactive content, there is something that will be suitable marketing for higher education institutions
3. Native Ads – Ads that are targeted based on interests and behavior that show up in feeds, on sites, and in apps.
4. Search – Search result ads on Google, Bing and other search engines. Based on the keywords a user searches.
5. Video Ads – A content rich form of advertising. Lots of opportunities for making an emotional connection.

Higher education marketing strategies that use PPC ads should be an indispensable part of any marketing campaign. A higher education marketing agency like ComboApp can help you determine which type of ad is best for your institution’s needs and craft a campaign for your success.

11. Short Form Video Content

Almost every social media app and even YouTube now have some form of short form video content. This is a fantastic way to introduce potential students to your campus and should be a part of nearly all digital marketing strategies for higher education institutions. Short form content is great higher ed marketing because, by nature, the content is quick and engaging.

Tik Tok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and more are all popular platforms for short form content, and your higher education content marketing plans should involve making content for each platform. You can use these short videos to promote campus life, answer frequently asked questions, showcase your sports teams, give tours of your campus and student facilities, or even have endorsements that you solicit from notable alumni.

These short form videos can also be used to link to school websites and longer videos with more information. You can take advantage of this new trend to boost your higher ed digital marketing efforts and increase potential student enrollment.

12. Focus On Positive Career Outcomes

There has been discussions lately about the value of higher education and the ability of students to get high paying jobs after graduation. The challenge of the moment is to counter these claims in the media and discussions at the family dinner table by showing tangible benefits to a college education. This means that digital marketing for higher ed is no longer just about marketing your institution, but the very idea of higher education itself.

The best marketing strategies for universities will take these new challenges into account. Offering up content that talks to successful alumni, and collecting data from graduates via surveys are both effective marketing strategies to increase student enrollment. Delaware University, among many others, now features a page on their website filled with data and infographics that demonstrate the career success of their graduates.

13. Don’t Forget The Traditional

While a digital marketing strategy is incredibly important, that doesn’t mean you should throw out those traditional college marketing strategies. The best marketing strategies for universities will mix the digital and traditional in creative and interesting ways. Universities want to reach students wherever they are, and that can mean in their mailbox, on the phone, TV or radio, print ads, or in the digital world.

Imagine a student receives a brochure in the mail, they take a look at it and find themselves interested. A QR code on one of the pages catches the student’s eye and the student scans it, opening up a video from the school’s website that shows an engaging video that features a student talking about campus life. Maybe the brochure has a campus map that interacts with an AR app and allows the students to take a 3D tour of the school.

This can also work in reverse. Not every student’s parent is well versed in using technology. Students who visit the school’s website, or interact with digital marketing, might get a prompt to request a physical brochure that they can have sent to their home. Then they can go over that brochure with their less tech savvy parents and explain why they wish to attend your school and help to convince them you are the right choice for their child.

Phone calls also can take part in these university marketing strategies. Reaching out to speak with students and parents by phone can be a great way to help them make a decision. Some of the higher education marketing best practices we have used in the digital world can be applied through the phone too. Your school can involve students and alumni in phone marketing, matching students with similar interests and backgrounds to potential students for personalized conversations.

Television and radio are also still incredibly viable forms of marketing. While lots of people watch and listen to streaming services, many still watch traditional television or listen to terrestrial radio. Marketing strategies for colleges that neglect these outlets are leaving out large swaths of a potential audience. Another factor is that more and more streaming services both for video and audio content have ad supported tiers as well. Your television and radio ads can be adapted to these new advertising outlets. Of course, you can also use ads developed for short term video content to the TV too.

When it comes to print, many parents and some students still enjoy reading a magazine or newspaper. The opportunity to get these eyes on your university's brand remains important to attracting students of all backgrounds. These should remain a part of all strategies involving marketing for universities.

These are just a few examples of how to mix traditional and digital into your university marketing strategy. Be creative and get the word out to as many of your potential students as possible.

Conclusion

In 2024 marketing for higher education is incredibly important to help schools meet the moment and rise to the challenges they face. It is our hope that this article helps to serve as a guide to successful university marketing strategies.

ComboApp is a full cycle higher education marketing agency that can help you in crafting a digital marketing strategy for higher education that involves building a brand, designing a fast website with a great user experience, and marketing in diverse and personal ways to prospective students.

Contact us today to get your school on track for success in 2024 and beyond.