DIGITAL MARKETING for Education Industry

The education industrys growth is often indicative of the evolution of technological advancements, expansions of training programs and, of course, the cultural transformations of today. In the United States alone, almost 5 million students are enrolled in at least one online course. Institutional Partnerships. Digital Marketing Trends A study released by eMarketer illustrates that the education sector is one of the top industries in the world currently using social media as part of their overall strategy. Seventy-two percent of respondents in the education industry said they currently implement social media tactics in their marketing initiatives

17% of educational companies worldwide said they plan to add social media to their marketing programs.
Only a small percentage (6%) said they do not use social media or have no plans of integrating it into their strategy.

Customer Acquisition via Social Media A recent study reveals that higher education institutions in North America said they have acquired new customers through social media sites and/or blogs.

Specifically, 72% of those in the higher education industry said they acquired new customers through Facebook; 47% said the same about Twitter; and 33% generated customers using LinkedIn.

Meanwhile, 67% of those in the higher education industry reported an increase in customer acquisition through their company blog.

In2009, 30.7% of higher education professionals admitted to using Twitter, and in just one year this number increased to 35.2%.

The percentage of education professionals that have never used Twitter at all has decreased over 12 months, from 56.4% in 2009 to 47.9% in 2010.

On the social front, educational institutions are using social media technologies like blogs, Facebook and Twitter to share news, general info, updates and to connect with their student and teacher population. As of March 2011, the educational sector was ranked as the 5th most common industry on LinkedIn. 5.4 million LinkedIn users worldwide in the education industry in March 2011. 6.2 million users in the medical industry. 6.9 million users in the manufacturing industry. 9.6 million users in the finance industry. 11.6 million users in the high tech industry. YouTube is utilized to help broadcast student testimonials and showcase student experiences to prospective students and parents. some educational institutions have jumped onto the social and mobile train sooner than others, below is where we see the majority making considerations from a strategy standpoint.

Digital Marketing in Educational Institutions

Digital Marketing is the use of digital channels for the promotion of a business or brand. Digital channels include but are not limited to emails, mobile phones, social networking etc.

The increased use of internet and digital media is a major influence in the field of education today. The education sector is a completely revolutionized sector since the majority of the population of students are the users of the internet.

This has a direct implication on the fact that educational institutions and universities need to make increased use of the internet and mobile devices to reach out to more students.

And digital marketing is the best method that can be adopted by the educational institutions to reach out to prospective students.

Why is Digital Marketing the best means to impress students.

There are various reasons that make digital marketing the best means of reaching out to the majority of the student population today. Some of these are: Prospective students are already searching online for educational and training courses. Students spend more time on the internet rather in front of other media including television. Display advertisements on the internet are highly effective and outperform traditional advertising. Parents and guardians have started to judge a school or college based on its website and its online presence. Most students have also begun to judge a school or college through its online presence. The internet is today the most favored channel for applying and making admission queries. Expatriates and outstation students rely heavily on the web for college admissions. Parents and students now consider web as the most convenient means for carrying out admission processes.

The various aspects of Digital Marketing for an educational institution:

Institutions that impart higher education are using digital marketing as one of the most preferred means of engaging students. These educational institutions follow a step by step approach and a well planned strategy that is implemented in the right manner. Now, for higher educational institutions, the target is obviously the students. Of the various students, there will be a market of the mature students who are the actual target audience of the educational institutions because of the fact that they research in detail about the courses and career options. When devising digital marketing strategies, the educational institutions need to consider the fact that the needs of every student are different and thus various types of communication and discussion channels may be required to be set up so that the needs of every prospective client is met in the best manner possible. One of the most important things that educational institutions need to keep in mind is the fact that most internet users do not go beyond the first three pages of the search engines to look for the required information.

The role of Social Media in Digital Marketing

Digital marketing enables the educational institutions to make use of the power of social media. Various social media sites can be used to share the information with a global audience.

The presence of such information on social networking sites is instrumental in influencing the decision making process of the students. One of the main reasons why educational institutions can make use of social media is the fact that 99% of the student population has presence on the social networking websites.

Advantages of Digital Marketing for educational institutions

Educational institutions can gain in the following ways by using digital marketing: Cost Effective: Most online marketing platforms are affordable compared to traditional marketing methods. Online Marketing methods such as social media, email, RSS feeds and mobile marketing require very little implementation cost or investment.

Instantaneous Feedback: Online marketing platforms offer instantaneous feedback as messages can be relayed immediately and instant feedback can be received.

Measurable: There are varied tools which can be used to measure digital marketing effectiveness. Since this type of marketing is highly targeted and in most cases uses permission based marketing.

Easily Accessible Tools: Digital marketing tools or platforms are easily accessible and as a result produce better results. Using digital marketing forms such as social networking sites like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and others

High Conversion Rates: SMS and email are some of the digital marketing forms that receive high response rates due to the fact that they are personal and educational institutions can easily target the audience in the right manner.

Digital Marketing to Attract Prospective Students

Social Playing an Increasingly Central Role in Academic Marketing Campaigns When it comes to the marketing practices of educational institutions (EDUs), digital marketing is playing an increasingly strategic role in reaching prospective students. Sixty-two percent of undergraduate and graduate institutions, on average, plan to turn to the power of online display advertising as a key marketing tool by 2013. 55 percent said the percentage of their overall marketing budgets allocated to digital marketing strategies had increased.

Further, respondents said they expected the trend of leveraging digital marketing as an increasingly greater percentage of the overall marketing budget would continue into 2013
55 percent are currently leveraging display advertising, focusing mainly on Facebook and Twitter. Of the remaining 45 percent that are reportedly not tapping display at this time, all are either considering it, or already have plans to integrate display strategies within the next year.

Key Survey Findings:

Digital marketing is an increasingly larger portion of both graduate and undergraduate overall marketing budgets: Sixty-two percent of educational institutions, on average, plan to increase their spend on digital marketing as a percentage of the total marketing budget through 2013.

Social platforms are playing a major role in digital marketing campaigns: Seventy-one percent of respondents say they do some display advertising on social media platforms; in line with recent data highlighting Facebook's growing prominence as a display ad publisher, 95 percent of respondents say they advertise on Facebook, followed by 78 percent on Twitter, 71 percent on YouTube and 71 percent on LinkedIn.

Display has slight edge over search concerning tactic of choice for EDUs: Thirty-nine percent of respondents say display advertising comprises a larger portion of their marketing budget than search; 37 percent of respondents say they do more search than display.

Increasing an institution's program awareness is primary campaign objective: Increases in program awareness emerged as the top objective, with 72 percent of respondents saying they expected their digital marketing campaigns to deliver this result.

Institutions are slowly adopting more complex display techniques to complement their media strategies: Rich media and video are being employed by 18 percent and 22 percent, respectively, of graduate institutions and 19 and 27 percent, respectively, by undergraduate institutions.

Digital Marketing In The Education Sector

To provide universities, colleges and schools with SEO marketing, web advertising, affiliate marketing services, social marketing, cost per lead and pay per click campaigns to build brands nationally and internationally and recruit students and staff in home and overseas markets. Advanced Search Engine Optimization You may have great looking websites but if they are not optimized to sit at the top of the search engines finding them will be like searching for specs of dust in a technology clean room.

Over 90% of students looking for a university or college will use a search engine and very few of them will bother go beyond the first page the search engine throws up.
Your websites and landing pages MUST get on to page 1 of all the major search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.

Search Engine Optimizations Secrets

We know the markets you want to reach and we will optimize our SEO marketing campaigns around the keywords and phrases prospective students will use when searching for your product or service.We will: Create proper page titles that include your keywords Write your text to fulfill the 6% rule Insert properly formatted meta data Include keywords in the meta tags Make your websites compliant with W3C HTML Name web pages to include keywords Include a robots.txt file for search bots Generate Google sitemap.xml and Yahoo urllist.txt files Register your sites with dmoz Register your sites with the search engines

The Magic Of Search Engine Optimization

It may sound like the black arts but our educational SEO team know what they are doing and will produce outstanding results.

Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate advertising can be a powerful and effective method of building your brand and driving student recruitment.

It involves pulling in websites around the globe to promote your university or college to the student community for an agreed cost per lead commission.
Some of the universities we serve have hundreds of sites marketing degree courses on their behalf.

The Beauty Of Affiliate Marketing

The beauty of internet affiliate advertising is that you don't have to pay until the host sites bring hot leads to your door and you can specify how many leads they generate each month. You need to educate them about your courses and you need to keep them motivated by providing regular updates - not just the monthly commission cheque.

Pay Per Click Management

If you want students to find your university or college on Page 1 of Google - we can get you there in the twinkling of an eye. What's more, we will ensure you reach students who really are interested in studying at your college.

We Know Educational Pay Per Click

The problem with pay per click marketing is that it can also be expensive as you are bidding against rival universities - some with deeper pockets than you. You can blow a fortune if you don't know what you are doing. That's why you should entrust your PPC campaigns to people who know the educational sector and have expertise to plan and manage them.

Keyword Bidding Wars

Paid search is becoming increasingly expensive but we will not get involved in biding wars and we will avoid overpaying for clicks. We will keep you visible when students are searching in their language or time zone.

Digital Advertising
Digital advertising is all about using the web and other platforms to generate student leads and grow the fame of your university or college brand.

A full digital advertising service from devising concepts, to creating your digital marketing campaigns through to buying space on multiple websites to target prospective students in countries around the world.

Offer The Works

Push" campaigns involving banner ads to "Pull" campaigns embracing interactive games, virals, widgets, competitions, downloadable applications and promotions.

Internet Marketing - Implementation

With the strategy, messages and tactics in place, then move onto to inspired implementation. As a client you will get a dedicated internet marketing team comprising talented and creative people who understand education and the pressures within the sector. Pride ourselves in our knowledge, energy and creativity.

Empowering India Digitally: Industry Responsive Digital Marketing Training Programs

Digital Academy India is an initiative to educate Indian students & professionals for career competitiveness in the Internet Economy. Its academic and practical learning ensures students build tangible skills that translate to todays evolving marketing environment. The training programs offered by Digital Academy impart skills required to implement, manage & evaluate digital marketing strategies in a globally connected economy. Digital Academy strives to advance thought leadership and industry responsive skill development through the best industry, institutional and academic collaborations,

Therefore, it has partnered with Global leaders in the digital marketing education space to bring the best global certifications to its students in India.
To increase the employability quotient of students and address the training needs of working professionals in the Online Marketing arena.

Education marketing strategy template

an education marketing strategy that could be used by business schools and other education sector organisations to focus planning and drive daily education PR and marketing activity.

Cover as much ground as necessary in this section, keeping in mind that many of the people who read the strategy will not have been informed why this document has been put together in the first place so mention it.
Product analysis In this section, straight after the introduction, you need to outline exactly what it is youre selling. Is it MBA courses, executive education, bespoke training courses or online programmes? Market analysis You cant run an education marketing campaign if you havent first identified and assessed your market. I like to break market analysis into two sections: target market and competitive landscape.

Target market:
Who are you targeting? What are the demographics of the target market? How does this target market use social media? How many are on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+? How many are there? Is there any research showing the size of the market? Look at the Office for National Statistics, or local industry bodies. How can you segment the market? By age, industry, education level etc.? What matters to the target market? Identify the criteria they would likely use to select your business school / education product. For example: Profile, Cost, Location, Rankings

Competitive landscape:
Who else offers similar or competing services to yours to the target market? What evidence can you gather about these organisations education marketing strategies? How do they rate, compared to you, on the key criteria of relevance to your target market? Create a value curve like the one shown, to identify where your genuine USPs lie.

Objectives The objectives for your education marketing campaign should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. Strategy This will require an internal brainstorm to decide whether your strategy should be, for example, to get in front of the target market first with a PR campaign, followed by a social lead generation campaign to directly encourage enquiries from the target market. Tactics Here you will list the specific tactics or actions that will be used to deliver the education marketing strategy. For example, social advertising campaigns, video production services youll be using, the B2B PR agency youll be working with, the email marketing campaigns that will be delivered etc.

To make sure your education PR agency's education marketing strategy delivers, you need to keep it fluid. It should act as a guide to activity, but should be updated weekly or monthly as you see whats working and whats not - with as much involvement from stakeholders as possible.

Changing education patterns with social media

A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.

So, the latest scuffle around is about learning! It sounds petty, but its a large issue to address. While Mr. Not Socials son shies away and doesnt participate in the class; on the other hand, Mr. Socials daughter is overtly active

So, why not acquaint the young buds with the fast growing life and make them smart! 1. Introduce and invite Your page must be telling. It must echo the message your school resonates. Your welcome page, therefore, should give the details (crisply) of the agendas youve in mind. Also, its important to keep in mind the kind of students you would want to invite to your school (through your fan page). Schools and universities work almost like markets. The difference, however, is in schools its a more preaching and you deal with young minds.

2. Make it even more detailed "PowerPoint presentations too often resemble a school play - very loud, very slow, and very simple. With Slideshare, you can explain yourself even better! PowerPoint presentations are always easy to understand.

3. Pick their brains! Once theyve joined your page and your institution, its time for activity now! Conduct quizzes, polling, use discussion boards and debates. Its the best way you can keep your students hooked up on your page. Forget the class work-homework time! Give them home works on quizzes and polling.

4. You write, they comment You cant be better than this! Sharing knowledge and being interactive at the same time is indeed an excellent feature. It allows you to share with your students what so-far youve maintained as web logs (popularly known as blogs).

5. Videos and Multi-videos These features are both attractive and effective! These tabs help you to share the events or festivals or inspiring speeches by important people with your pupils. Welcome comments from them and their likes. By sharing videos and receiving comments, you can make out the different choices the young generation make and how you can work out with them.

6. Jingle by mingle You can create a super-viral and synonymous effect by mingling your two accounts: Facebook and Twitter. With people joining you randomly on either of these sites, make sure you dont miss out to share the same important stuff with yours fans on both sides. So, to make it easy Tweets tab is on your platter

Get creative in school with digital media

The highly valued skill of creativity is increasingly scarce among job applicants. But it needn't be if more schools promote creative media technology across the curriculum . The latest figures from the government's Annual Business Survey show the sector accounted for 5.6% of the UK economy in 2008 about 2.3 million people are employed in creative industries including software, fashion, publishing, music and design.

In fact, according to the culture and media secretary, Jeremy Hunt, employment in these industries has risen by 1.5% annually while other sectors have been shedding jobs in the economic downturn.

"One student, one of the lowest ability boys I've ever taught, couldn't really read and write properly and staff spent more time talking to him about his behaviour than his work.

Knowledge-driven attitude to learning Creativity is at the heart of the school development plan for the next decade. If school budgets don't stretch to acquiring some of the more expensive modelling, design and gaming packages, there is a growing number of open source ie free resources online. The design skills it develops are exactly the ones that the games industry is hungry for, a former primary teacher turned education consultant and member of the board of Open Source Schools.

Creativity now ranks with literacy and numeracy Creativity, in fact, is now becoming a sought-after skill in all walks of life. According to a survey, Creativity in the Classroom, by digital media specialist Adobe, some 77% of employers and higher education lecturers quizzed said that they viewed "creativity" interpreted as the ability to generate ideas, developing online content, delivering persuasive, polished presentations or being imaginative problem-solvers as an "as an essential or important skill", alongside the basic ones of literacy and numeracy.

Reference Sites: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. www.google.com www.digitalmarketingshow.co.uk www.slideshare.net www.socialappshq.com www.digitalmarketinginstitute.ie

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