How educational marketers can up their digital game

– Vikram Kumar, co-founder & managing director, SRV Media, Pune

The digital landscape in India is undergoing a sea change. Clients are seeking digital marketing services that can put their institutions in the spotlight. Against this backdrop, curating creative content and adapting to the prevailing trends become more of a necessity than a choice, especially for digital marketing professionals in the education arena. The emergence of innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, and more has led to steady evolution of the education curriculum. These newly emerging technologies are also being used increasingly in promoting educational institutions the right way and giving them an edge in their respective domains.

A crucial reason to boost your digital game is to reach a wider audience. Ideating and running campaigns that cater to end-to-end marketing helps an educationist in testing the waters and setting the right foot forward. Gone are the days of traditional and conventional marketing. It is time to bring in the digital A-game.

Given below are a few essential areas that modern marketers need to upskill in order to run a successful campaign:

R & D: Research and Development

A campaign, in order to run successfully, requires an optimal level of research on how the brand wants to be perceived. Based on that, extensive research on factors including client background, market tools, similar courses existing in the industry, competitors, etc can be conducted. Having a deep understanding of the latest trends can then be leveraged in developing campaigns for your institute which can help differentiate it from the rest.

Data analytics

Google Analytics acts as a central idea to most of the digital marketing campaigns. Educational institutes have a huge amount of data to track from. However, even though digital marketing companies understand how to track the data, knowing how to use it in designing an apt business strategy and tapping the right audience should be worked upon.

Design thinking

Design thinking is a step ahead of data analytics; it provides a better understanding of consumers’ needs and enables creation of innovative solutions to cater to them. Design thinking comprises focused steps that help marketers emphasize on specific needs and work around them in order to establish a strong digital presence for students and parents to discover your channel and consider your institute while making a choice.

Content marketing

Considered a core and ethical aspect of marketing, content is the major driving force of every campaign. Data-driven marketing helps marketers gather information on students’ activities, engagements and interactions on online platforms. Content marketing as a skill is not only limited to the education vertical but all other domains. Developing platform-centric content, which is not only SEO friendly but also helps engage the target audience grasps more and more traffic, thus helping boost the digital footprints. According to HubSpot’s Social Media Statistics, 97 percent of marketers are taking advantage of social media marketing to reach their audiences.

Being tech savvy

Students are the major target audience for educational institutions. Therefore, keeping up with the millennials requires one to be digitally smart. Gone are the days when traditional platforms were used for navigating and executing marketing procedures. Having said that, being well versed in innovative technologies isn’t much of a hassle. Basic knowledge of web coding and basic content management skills can very well equip one in running a successful marketing campaign.

An important factor that differentiates a digital marketing campaign from a traditional marketing campaign is that the former is trackable and modifiable. Even if the web has been saturated with a million data-driven tools, you have the liberty to pick the right one based on your objectives, budget and services.

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the article belong solely to the author, and not necessarily reflect the views, thoughts, and opinions of EducationWorld.