Colleges and universities sometimes struggle to recruit new candidates, especially when tried-and-true strategies begin to falter. The information age presents a unique blend of new challenges to traditional thinking, and new opportunities to reach people in new ways. In order to become or remain successful in your recruiting strategies, you have to be able to adapt.
These five lead generation strategies for higher education marketing are some of the most efficient, especially for small colleges with low budgets, yielding tremendous results for a minimal initial investment:
1. Content Marketing. Most people think content marketing is only useful for B2B operations, but it can be extremely beneficial for colleges and universities as well. Focus on generating volumes of quality content your target demographic is going to be searching for, such as information on how to pick the best school or prepare for college life.
2. College Networking Sites. These are increasing in popularity as matchmaking algorithms become more complex. On sites like Zinch, colleges can post information about their facilities and programs, and students can search for universities based on their interests and backgrounds.
3. PPC Campaigns. With a solid pay-per-click strategy, you can limit your investment to a specific budget, and guarantee some level of traffic to a landing page. It will cost a bit up front, but the quality of your leads will be much higher than those coming in from a direct mail or similar campaign.
4. Traditional Social Media Marketing. It sounds strange to call social media marketing “traditional,” but the familiar realms of Facebook and Twitter are still ideal for colleges and universities to generate leads. Reach out to high schools, post relevant information, and find opportunities from there.
5. Hyper-Segmentation. Whittle down your target demographics to very specific subdivisions. This will allow you to create targeted, niche campaigns that will reduce your competition and increase the chances for conversion.
With these five higher education lead generation strategies in tow, your college should see a huge jump in interested leads without eating up a huge portion of your marketing budget. For more information on these programs or just a bit of advice on how to get started, don’t hesitate to contact us.
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