Currently, the education marketplace is very crowded. It is not sufficient to offer programs and degrees that the students want. The need of the hour is to entice attention to your university. You need to bring into the limelight the tangible benefits that the university provides and the intangible benefits that set it apart. You need to understand that the public image you generate and foster is crucial for recruiting students.
Optimum PR Strategies for Universities
Universities’ marketing requirements differ from those of other businesses and organizations. The goal is to augment student enrollment. Pearl Lemon PR employs great tactics to offer successful marketing solutions to education clients. This PR for universities include effective strategies such as B2B PR, social media PR, consumer PR, CSR planning, crisis management, and influencer management.
Promotional Events
These are the optimum methods to expand your reach to Gen Z and millennials. Students of these generations provide special value to the experiences of events. The two vital strategies to raise student enrolment are hosting on-campus open houses and participating in information nights. To optimize attendance, you need to offer free food and foster your events on social media.
Influencer Marketing
The growth of social media has paved the way for the explosion of influencer marketing. Sites such as LinkedIn, TikTok, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have shares and mentions that reach many users. Sometimes high-profile influences write something favorable about your university. In other cases, individuals share content with their peers. The outcome of this marketing is that you increase engagement with your target audience, construct positive brand awareness, and gain exposure. The influencers who do this marketing are industry experts, consumer advocates, reporters, and bloggers. Initially, create connections with some influencers and then maintain the connections for continued coverage.
Media Coverage
An effective PR method is to expand coverage using print media (magazines and newspapers) and broadcast media (radio and television). This is to be supported by coverage on popular blogs and internet media sites that can reach both the general public and the influencers. The types of news that you can share are upcoming events, university research, college surveys, new program offerings, athletic wins, institutional attainments, graduate success stories, and student news.
Optimize Your PR Campaign
PR specialists leverage tools such as social media campaigns, crisis communications, online content creation, networking, market research, sponsoring or hosting special events, and pitching journalists, speeches, and press releases.
You have to create unique and motivating shareable content. This content must inspire your existing followers to share it and experience it with their contacts without prompting. A clever PR specialist analyzes the university, detects the positive messages, and converts these messages into positive stories.
Members of Gen Z and millennials are not in search of salesmanship but are looking out for authenticity. As compared with insights from paid sources, they incline insights from peers. Thus, build trust in your brand through your fans who should spread the word about you.