BlogDigital Marketing / Inbound Marketing

3 Reasons Education Sector Should Invest in Inbound Marketing

By Rajesh Jhamb
November 23, 2017

The digital landscape is constantly on the rise and is evolving at a pace that’s honestly hard to process. Evolving technology and the ease that these digital platforms are providing to consumers is what’s changing the status-quo of every industry, regardless of their domain. From consumer electronics to education, and from technology giants to food manufacturers – there’s no vertical that’s unaffected by these recent developments. This is pretty much the case with the marketing industry. With the advent of social media platforms and other interactive digital platforms, traditional marketing strategies have taken a backseat, and it’s now more difficult than ever before to get a hold of the market and establish a name for any particular organization. Internet – being an open platform – gives everyone an opportunity to express themselves, which makes this case even worse, because now people can compete with pretty much anyone on a social platform, with millions of people being nothing more than a spectator. So, the question that arises is – how can an educational institute distinguish themselves from others and attract their TG with ease? What are innovative marketing strategies there that an educational institute can opt for? Considering the industry trends and the stats (1) of the marketing world, one solution that has the answer to most of these problems is inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is growing exponentially and is being used by almost every smart marketer in the industry – and for good reason. It is based on a straightforward rule of attracting your consumers, rather than going after them. Unlike outbound marketing, which was done on the terms of the marketer and was quite intrusive in nature, inbound marketing depends on the consumers and their overall preferences. Inbound marketing strategies are known to produce effective results, and are based on a methodology that’s divided into four basic steps:

Attract
Convert
Close
Delight

Let’s understand why inbound is the solution for marketing in the education sector:

1. Students are now more aware than ever

In today’s day-and-age, when people research and read reviews before even buying earphones worth a few hundred bucks, imagine the amount of research they would be doing before investing their money in any particular college. It’s more than just money – students are worried and confused about their future and are on a constant lookout for quality information which can guide them in the right direction. Therefore, it is essential for educational institutes to understand the needs of students and feed them with the information that they want. Inbound marketing ends up doing this work for educational institutes as well. One major aspect of inbound marketing is mapping the buyer’s journey. When done efficiently, the buyer’s journey gives enough insights into the behaviour of students to institutes and ultimately lets them understand exactly what are the things that students want. Utilising this information, an institute can create and publish content that is relevant to students, and help them make well-informed decisions. This helps universities to build authority amongst their TG, and stay in front of them every time. When a student trusts your content, it further improves the chances of them sharing your content with their friends, which adds-on to the credibility of your institute. Also, when a student trusts an institute, there is an additional advantage for an institute to convert them and subsequently increase their enrolment rates.

2. Reliable data sources

With inbound marketing strategies, institutes reach out to consumers with the information they want, which makes students share their information willingly with these educational organizations. Therefore, institutes don’t have to buy any unnecessary email data and student name, thereby wasting their money for a useless purpose. Inbound marketing helps a university build a detailed database of potential consumers, which has a higher chance of conversion and improves the enrolment rate exponentially as well. Also, when an institute uses refined data, they subsequently get updated information about the trends and queries of students that they can use to improve the quality of content that is being published online.

3. Don’t spam

Inbound marketing, unlike outbound marketing, is permission-based. Inbound marketing lets marketers establish a strong connection with their audience, and makes them aware of the importance and quality of your content. But, why is visibility of a university name important to begin with? Ask a student preparing for their higher education about the number of e-mails they receive regarding the admission process every day, and you’ll have your answer. Trust us; you don’t want to get into the spam radar of students. Students are more cautious now than ever before, and to successfully keep them engaged, you need to know the exact amount of quality data you have to send them so that it doesn’t become redundant and they don’t start ignoring you – which is the worst result for an educational institute. Inbound marketing helps universities to understand the underlying psychology of students through various methods, and lets them hit the right chord with students. The higher education market is something that is dependent majorly on digital marketing, and if an institute wants to make the best of their campaigns, then inbound marketing can help them achieve their goals. Inbound marketing is something that is proven to generate results for universities worldwide. Here are a few examples of how universities got sizeable results from their inbound marketing strategies: https://www.hubspot.com/customers#/f=education

BlogDigital Marketing / Inbound Marketing

3 Reasons Education Sector Should Invest in Inbound Marketing

1. Students are now more aware than ever

2. Reliable data sources

3. Don’t spam

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