(Ad) Higher education is getting more and more competitive every year – schools are competing for students using every tool in their marketing and advertising arsenal.
If you’re wondering where to invest your budget in attracting more students, you might have wondered if video marketing is worth your time and attention. It absolutely is – and this guide will take you through the most effective video marketing strategies for higher education institutions. Let’s get started!
Education Video Marketing Overview
Why is higher education video marketing worth investing in? Because video marketing has a proven impact on admissions and enrollment numbers –68% of prospective undergrads say that videos were an influence on their final decision.
And colleges and universities are investing in video because it’s become such a huge part of how people use the internet, particularly younger generations. The amount of time people spend watching videos online has nearly doubled since 2018.
If your digital marketing plan ignores videos, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to connect with and engage potential students and their parents.
And if you’ve experimented with videos but haven’t found much success with them, it’s possible that your strategy is lacking or non-existent. Simply posting videos and hoping they’ll perform well isn’t a great plan – here’s exactly how to create a better one.
Define the Goals of Your School’s Video Marketing Strategy
To begin building the right strategy for your college marketing videos, you need to clearly define your video campaign goals.
Creating videos without a defined plan because you see your competition doing well with them isn’t going to yield you the best results. And since creating videos requires a significant investment of time and money, you don’t want to make that investment without a clear plan.
Your video marketing strategy should describe what you want your videos to accomplish before you film and distribute them.
Some potential goals for your university video marketing campaign could include:
- Building awareness of a new program
- Generating more prospects and increasing enrollment
- Increasing your conversion rate
- Building brand engagement through storytelling
- Getting more engagement on your social media channels
Once you’ve defined your goal for the campaign, your messaging and content should all be aimed at that goal.
For example, suppose you’re looking to get new leads. In that case, your video content should focus on content that speaks to potential students and gets them excited about exploring your college or university.
Targeting the Right Audience
The audience for your college marketing videos is also vital to determine before you begin creating them. Are you looking to engage the students who might be attending your university, or are you trying to target their parents?
Engaging students is essential for universities because they will likely be the first to find your recruitment videos and demonstrate interest. Don’t forget that there are many different types of prospective students – targeting by persona can be more effective at achieving your goals.
However, parents are likely to be the ones who will invest in the cost of your tuition and will have a lot of say in the final decision. If you’re looking to increase enrollments, they might be the group to speak to.
The messaging for each audience will be different, especially if you’re promoting your adult learning programs. The platform for distributing the videos may shift with each persona, so you should determine the audience before you start creating content.
Types of Videos for Your University or College
Once your goals are decided, and the audience identified, you can begin creating your video content. Unsure where to start? These college promotional video ideas can inspire your upcoming campaign.
Campus Tour Videos
With some on-campus tours getting canceled because of the pandemic and long-haul and international travel disrupted, creating compelling campus tour videos is essential for schools.
Your campus tour videos should be both engaging and informative. You can take students virtually into a classroom with a charismatic professor, a popular student hangout, and around the campus with a student guide, just as you would in-person.
This campus tour video from the University of New Hampshire is a great example of engaging and informative content.
New Student Search Campaigns
The process of converting prospects and leads into new students has many stages – most include getting them excited while envisioning their life at your school and covering the practical aspects of the admissions process.
Applicant Communications
What kind of communications can applicants and prospects expect from your school? Give them a sneak peek by featuring them in videos, showing students receiving acceptance letters, or walking them through other communications touchpoints.
Parent Messaging
While students will want to see videos about campus life and traditions, parents will typically have more practical concerns. You can create videos that address these concerns, such as financial aid processes, safety on campus, and housing options.
Admissions & Enrollment
Walking potential applicants through the application and enrollment process via video can help ensure they follow through on filling out applications and enrolling and don’t get confused.
Welcome to Campus
What can new students expect when they arrive on campus to begin their education at your school? Creating a video that gives them a taste of what the start of the exciting next phase of their life will be like can be effective at getting them excited to join you while putting nervous parents at ease as well.
Boston College creates a welcome video for each class – this one from 2021 walks them through the highlights of their upcoming college experience.
Unique Commencement Addresses
If you’ve had celebrities or other well-known speakers at your commencement ceremonies, those can be great sources of video content that you likely already have on film.
Stanford University added the 2021 commencement address from the actor, writer, and producer Issa Rae to their YouTube channel, and it’s received hundreds of thousands of views.
Personalized Video Content
Creating one-size-fits-all videos isn’t always good enough to convert leads into students these days. Personalized videos are more effective and becoming the norm in digital marketing for universities and colleges. Personalized videos also have much higher open and click-through rates.
You can personalize videos for prospective students based on your information about them. Some ideas for personalized college marketing videos include:
- Explainers about the application process
- Custom campus tours based on potential majors or interests
- Explanations of the financial aid process
- Individual acceptance videos
Sample Course Content
Potential students often want to know what the courses they could take will look like before they decide to apply – and their parents could be interested as well. Creating sample course videos that give them an idea of what a class will look like or what a semester will cover can be very appealing.
Livestream Events
One low-cost way to create more video content is to live-stream events you have already planned on your website and/or your social media channels. Doing this gives your events more exposure while showing potential students and their parents some of what they can expect to experience at your school if they are offered and accept admission.
Student, Alumni, and Faculty Testimonials
To show the education, connections, and values that alumni have received from attending your school can help convince parents and students that attendance is a good investment. Video testimonials are a great way to convey this information in an engaging way.
Harvard University alumni speak about how their education shaped them for the better.
Research Spotlights
If your university or college produces exciting research, you could share those accomplishments in video content for students and parents.
This video from Rutgers University about the research that went into growing the perfect hot pepper is a great example of this kind of video.
The Importance of User-Generated Content
And if creating hundreds of videos a year seems overwhelming, know that you don’t need to do it all yourself. Encouraging current students to create videos of their campus experience and sharing them can help you target prospective students without needing to make every video on your own.
Why Your School Shouldn’t Overlook Short Form Videos
With shorter videos, your viewers are more likely to make it to the end. And short-form videos can be shared on platforms that the demographic of prospective students love, like Instagram Reels and TikTok, making short-form videos appealingly multi-purpose.
Marketing Your University’s Video Content
Marketing vs. Advertising Your Videos
University advertising and marketing are related but not identical – and your campaigns should reflect the difference.
Marketing is about identifying customer needs and then meeting them. This can mean posting organic content on your social media platforms or video content on your website.
On the other hand, advertising promotes your college or university through paid channels like social media or programmatic ads.
Website
Embedding videos on your website, like a commencement address or a campus tour, is key in your college digital marketing plan. It helps your website visitors to learn more about what your university offers and what they need to know to apply and enroll.
Email Marketing
You can also embed your videos into your email marketing, whether that’s an addition to your regular newsletters to students or parents or part of a campaign to attract MBA applicants.
Social Media
The power of social media is no secret by now. You can enhance your marketing by posting videos of behind-the-scenes life at school or your school overview as organic content.
You can also pay for social media ads to reach a wider audience, which is helpful if your goal is to increase brand awareness. The most popular social media platforms include:
Native Advertising
Native advertising can be effective in helping your school tell in-depth stories that educate and ultimately inspire.
One option is to host native advertising content on your school’s website and ask a media partner to provide a thumbnail and external link.
Some media partners can even work with you to develop the content. Additionally, Native advertising can have an impact on social media platforms.
YouTube
YouTube is a powerful way to increase your marketing and advertising reach because it’s essentially a video search engine. And it’s extremely popular with the student demographic – 89% of Gen Z uses YouTube at least once a week.
YouTube offers multiple options for ads, including:
- In-stream ads: short ads that play before a video
- Discovery ads: ads that show up in search results or as a link at the bottom of a video
Programmatic Ads
Programmatic ads run on websites instead of social media platforms have plenty of potential for university advertising videos because they can be highly targeted.
Hiring a digital marketing agency specializing in higher education can be a worthwhile investment if you want to run more marketing and advertising campaigns but aren’t sure where to start.
Video Marketing Tips Overview
Optimizing Your Videos
To ensure your videos are successful and represent your university brand well, be careful when creating them. They should look as good on a phone as on a desktop and have captions so viewers can understand them even with the sound off.
Another way to optimize your videos is to strategically insert the right keywords you want to target in the title, description, and tags.
Monitoring the Performance of Your Videos
And just as you would for any other kind of digital marketing campaign, monitor the results once your video campaign is launched and make any needed adjustments so they perform at their best.
Video Marketing Strategy for Higher Education: Key Takeaways
Video marketing should be a significant component of any digital marketing strategy for colleges and universities.
- Video is quickly overtaking other formats as a primary source of web traffic, and schools are creating lots of video content every day.
- Some of the best college promotional videos come from events or content you are already creating or filming – be sure to share them as marketing or advertising campaigns to increase their leverage.
- Your audience and campaign goals should drive which platforms you use for your marketing and advertising.
Want to learn more about how Hearst Bay Area can help your college or university meet its goals?
Contact us today to get started.
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