From social media to SEO, this exclusive webinar shows schools how to adopt an inbound approach to tried and true digital marketing tactics.

1. Digital Marketing Essentials:
Inbound Marketing for
Student Recruitment

2. Today’s Presentation
• What is Inbound Marketing?
• Persona Development
• Content Strategy
• Social Media
• Optimizing your Website for SEO
• Email Marketing

3. What is Inbound Marketing?

4. What are the Main Channels?
Organic SEO traffic from search engines
Email Promote and link to website content
Direct Enter URL directly into browser
Referral Other websites link to yours
Social Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Paid Google Ads, social ads, etc

5. Why Inbound Marketing?
• Today’s prospective students are digitally literate
• They expect meaningful dialogue and relationship-building
• Inbound marketing is 10x more effective for lead conversion than outbound
• 76% of marketers use inbound marketing approach as their primary strategy

6. The Inbound Marketing Process
Develop personas,
Key messaging & a
comprehensive
inbound strategy
Create & deploy
custom content
Build meaningful
relationships on
social media
Nurture &
convert leads
Track & measure
for continuous
improvement

7. Persona Development: Identify your Target Audience
Segment prospects by: program, level, source country, etc. &
research their distinct characteristics:

8. Persona Development: Research Tools
1. Survey your admissions & recruitment team for their insights
2. Survey/poll your students & alumni directly
3. Use journey-mapping to track key touchpoints
4. Conduct market research to better understand what is impacting
decision-making

9. Persona Development: Background Information

10. Persona Development: Motivations
Your prospective students motivations should drive the
messaging of your inbound marketing initiatives

11. Persona Development: Concerns
Your messaging can be focused to overcome key
barriers to enrolment

12. Persona Development: Key Messages

13. Create Targeted Content

15. Poll #1
Does your school regularly create website
content that addresses your prospects’
needs, interests, or concerns?
YES NO

16. Blog Building Strategy
1. Provide career/study tips, industry news, and
other custom content your personas can use
2. Generate respect, trust and loyalty.
Become a thought-leader, never a salesperson.
3. Build your presence on social (as readers
“share” and “like” your posts)
4. Drive traffic to your site when students find
your posts during their online search process

17. Student-generated Content
• Invite current students to share their
personal experiences
• Ask students to contribute content in
multiple languages to recruit overseas
• Publish on website and share/promote
- social media
- “Boost/Sponsor” posts with high engagement
- Enewsletter

18. “Student Experience” Bloggers
• Current students chronicle
their journey through
various programs
• Offers inside access to
prospective applicants
• Provides motivation to
prospects who may be “on
the fence”

19. Repurpose Blog Posts
● Transform blog posts into
visual content and resend
to maximize their impact
✓ Infographics
✓ Email
✓ Newsletters
✓ Slideshare

20. Promote your Content

22. Poll #2
Does your school have a multi-channel social
media strategy that includes
a variety of content types?
YES NO

23. Social media amplifies your college brand, provides communities for
engaging personas, helps promote your content, & supports SEO
The Power of Social Media

24. Use Personas to Focus Your Social Initiatives

25. Social Content Sharing Workflow
Share on
Twitter
Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn
Publish content on your website

26. Prioritize Visuals
● Videos & photographs are
more engaging to students
& more “shareable”
than text alone
● Use across ALL social channels

27. Create Infographics
● Infographics make
complex info digestible
through images, charts,
diagrams, quotes, and
stats
● Interactive is the latest
trend

28. • Brand-building contests
✓ Campus photography/video
✓ Showing off college pride
✓ What you like most about your
school i.e. “What’s your favourite
study spot on campus?”
Create Social Media Contests

29. Monitor Social Activity

31. Poll #3
Do you strategically integrate keywords into
your website content and
follow SEO best practices?
YES NO

32. SEO & Inbound
• The process of optimizing
website content, design, &
performance to generate visitor
traffic from “organic” (versus
paid) search engine results
• SEO is vital for ensuring your
content and website get found
online by prospective students

33. Brainstorm Keywords
Potential keyword: English language program
Potential keyword: summer English course

34. Keyword Research

35. On-page SEO Example

36. Google Search Engine Result Page - SERP
Keyword
Google My
Business
Title
Meta
description

37. Measuring your SEO Efforts

38. Year over year comparison is very useful to measure the health of
your SEO Traffic and conversions from that channel
Measuring your SEO Efforts Year over Year

39. Evaluate Your Organic Search Queries

41. Poll #4
Does your school create automated email
workflows based on certain lead segments?
YES NO

42. • One-off emails to individual leads/students/alumni
• E-newsletters sent to your database
• Automated email marketing Workflows
Email Marketing Options

43. Address Persona Concerns in your Email Content
Address common concerns
Focus on different aspects of your
messaging as you move through the
lead nurturing process
Offer useful, practical
advice and solutions

44. 44
Personalize your Correspondence
Begin with a personalized greeting
Close with a personalized &
professional sign-off
Call To Action

45. Automated Email Marketing
• Automated Drip Marketing :
Sends a scheduled series of carefully customized messages over time
• Each message is crafted with your personas’ unique needs & goals in mind
• Start simple with an auto-response
• Build your relationship over time
• Include Calls To Action in every email

46. Create Automated Workflows

47. Measure your Automated Email Campaigns

48. Measure your e-newsletters
Measure the activity from your email efforts by effectively tagging your links with the URL Builder

49. • Understand your audience
• Integrate content, SEO, email, social media & analytics
• Create high quality, visual-rich, personalized content
• Leverage and amplify your content across social media
• Measure your results and continuously improve
Conclusion – Essentials of Inbound Marketing

50. Our Inbound Marketing Services

51. Free Inbound Marketing Consultation
Katharina Benecke
Archie Pollock
European Client Representative
UK Client Representative
katharina@higher-education-marketing.com
archie@higher-education-marketing.com
Tel: +34 681 129 792
Tel: +44 7957974939

52. Free Inbound Marketing Consultation
Scott Cross
North America Representative
514-312-3968 x 117
scross@higher-education-marketing.com
www.higher-education-marketing.com