Improving education marketing and admissions with inbound methodology

Inbound marketing is all about helping your customers - providing what they need, when they need it. It's the opposite of outdated interruptive 'outbound' methods that can be pushy and impersonal. Inbound marketing can deliver impressive results when used for education marketing and admissions.

Inbound marketing in education is about attracting students (and their parents) by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them. It's about solving problems for your customers and personalising their experience with your school, college or university at every step of their journey with you.

The ultimate purpose of inbound marketing is to attract new prospects, engage them with insightful content and delight them by delivering expert advice, products and services; all without annoying or interrupting them with traditional marketing methods.

It's not enough to just attract people to your website; you have to continue to help, support, and empower them well after they become a customer. 

The inbound methodology aims to keep Marketing, Admissions, and Service constantly focused on how to help current and future students.

HubSpot refer to this as the 'flywheel', and the philosophies of inbound permeate and accelerate that flywheel - from Attract (marketing), to Engage (admissions), to Delight (offering an exceptional service) - to help you grow faster, and grow better. Think about each stage of your customer journey (from initial interaction with your website through to enrolment and beyond) and put yourself in the mindset of your prospective student and/or their family. We recommend spending some time on developing your buyer personas, there's a great free persona development tool here. 

Attract

Use what you know about your customers to inform the content you produce and where you share it to make the most impact. Inbound marketing is all about attracting more of the right people, by offering them relevant content, at the most convenient time.

Start by creating and publishing content — such as blog articles, content offers, and social media — that provide value. A few school blog ideas include:

• 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 
• A guide to your university's city with content from current students
• An infographic to showcase the variety of courses you offer at your college
• A blog article written by industry experts who recommend your university course
• Social media posts about the next stage of the admissions process

Engage

This stage of the customer journey is just as (if not more) important than attracting your prospective students in the first place. Ensure you’re communicating and dealing with enquiries, and of course, current students/families, in a way that makes them want to build long-term relationships with you. 

Every conversation needs to be tailored, personalised and ultimately needs to reassure your prospective students that your education offering is right for them. Take a look at your current 'customer journey', how does your conversation from initial enquiry through to enrolment look? Do all of your staff give the same message about your offering?

Who does your prospect engage with during their journey to becoming a student with you? Are they all singing from the same hymn sheet?

Specific engagement strategies may include how you handle and manage your incoming admissions calls and how you manage your open day events. Be sure you’re always offering solutions to meet the needs of your customers at each conversation, rather than just talking about who you are and what you offer.

The engage stage is where you will capture your prospective student's contact details and interests, so you should be considering your website forms, contact database/CRM functionality, call-to-action buttons and smart content to personalise your communications.

Delight 

Delighting inbound methods ensure customers are content with the service you are providing long after they make a commitment with you. These strategies involve your team members becoming advisors and experts who assist at any point in time - something that we in education are pretty good at!

By using thoughtful, well-timed chatbots and surveys to assist, support, and request feedback from your current students/families is a great way to delight. Bots and surveys should be shared at specific points in time throughout the customer’s journey to ensure they make sense and are of value.

Blog, website and social media content also has a big part to play in delighting current students and their families in education. Use your platforms as a way to share student success stories, capture video footage of exciting events, share student work and engage in meaningful conversations. 

Lastly, the mark of an inbound strategy focused on delighting customers is one that assists and supports customers in any situation, whether or not your school, college or university gets any value out of it. Remember that a delighted customer becomes a brand advocate and promoter, so handle all interactions, both big and small, with care.

We know that education marketing and admissions departments are busy places and we are here to help. Here are a few services our education marketing specialists can offer to help you implement an inbound marketing strategy:

• Connect Call (free) - arrange a meeting and let's talk about what your growth goals look like. If we think we can help, we can set up a further free Exploratory Call to delve a little deeper.
  Arrange a meeting here.
• Consultancy - as many days as you require, in person or remote. We can look in-depth at what you are currently doing, how it could be improved and which tools would help you the most. 
  Find out more about our consultancy services.
• HubSpot onboarding - if you have your mind made up about HubSpot, get in touch before you get started and we can help you make it work for your student recruitment goals. As Certified Agency Partners, we can provide your education-specific onboarding (required at point of purchase) and support.
  Find out more about Hubspot for education.
• Ongoing support and content creation - we can tailor our services to meet your needs. Whether you need some content writing, automation building or a guaranteed helping hand as you make the transition to effective digital marketing, our education marketing experts are here to help.
  Find out more about our content services and monthly support packages.