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Dr. Savita Mohan
Director
GNIOT MBA Institute
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Digital Marketing is the key to effective promotion of brands with cost-effectiveness. It ensures that the right message reaches the right person at the right time. In this internet age, in order to specify the existence of the business, an online presence is compulsory. So, the application of this great change to educational institutions will help the education sector grow to the next level. With the advent of new technologies, the internet has become the major search source for everything. The increased usage of the internet has a great influence on the education sector. These days, the majority of the students are the users of the internet. The Internet has become the major search platform for all, starting from courses, schools or colleges, study material, and even fee payment method has become online. This indicates that the educational institutions must mark their presence online to reach more students, existing as well as prospects. Even parents are searching online for best schools and colleges, unlike personally visiting the educational institutions like olden days. They are expecting the entire details about the institution online like facilities, faculty, fees, course curriculum, and extracurricular activities, as well as the online forms for admission process and other queries. Even parents started judging the institutions by their website and online presence. So, the implementation of digital marketing in the education sector is the best and effective solution to reach these requirements.
Some of the best practices for digital marketing in the education sector are below.
- Create or Update a Website
A website must be a solution for the possible questions of the students, prospects, and parents. Create or update the existing website properly with the details about the institution establishment, campus and environment, courses, faculty and their experience, facilities, and amenities, benefits, etc. in an organized way. And don’t forget that the web page must be mobile optimized, as there are more of mobile internet users.
- Maintain Blogs to motivate a blog attracts a lot of audiences. Blogs are sources of various information and knowledge. A regular blog with education elements and current affairs attracts the students. The blog is not only to promote the institute but also to motivate the students as well as faculty to learn, write and share the information. Involvement of faculty and students in writing the blog will be advantageous to get the new content regularly. You must have an idea of what other education blogs and college/university sites are providing to the audience and what are the current trends in the education sector. A blog must be up to date in order to gain the reader’s interest. As the education blogs are mainly targeted for students, they must provide information about trending topics, which every student would like to know.
- Search Engine Optimization Content Optimization helps in high search rankings of the website or the blog, which helps in reaching more students and prospects. Best and relevant keywords help in driving more traffic to the site.
- Engage through Social Media Social Media is popular and most followed, it will be very advantageous to promote it. Promoting the institute through useful and quality content by targeting the social media communities of parents, students and faculty will be advantageous. Unlike traditional marketing channels, it engages in a two-way conversation. Different social media channels which are useful to reach more students are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.
- Manage Online Reputability Online reputation management is what matters for a business much equal to profits. Building an online reputation by maintaining best blog contents, campus videos, testimonials from achievers and great inspirational personalities, alumni feedback, faculty interviews, successful researchers, campus news will help to attain audience attention. It creates interest in the mind of the audience and leads to an online reputation. By implementing digital marketing in the education sector, we can increase the online reputation for the institutes.
Conclusion
For an educational institution to reach the goal of success, digital marketing is the path. We are not saying to completely avoid traditional marketing, because offline reputation is the foundation for any online actions, especially for an industry like the education sector. But, digital marketing in the education sector has committed to giving something big that out-stand and engage the right audience.