Educational institutions often focus on increasing brand awareness that attracts students to their programs. While tapping into student personas and launching social media campaigns helps to spread the word about your school or academic institution, you’ll also want to consider what happens once someone becomes aware of the brand.
Mid-funnel marketing strategies are designed to capture the attention of prospective students when they are in the consideration phase of deciding on a school. Knowing how to nurture leads at this stage of the decision-making process helps your educational institution demonstrate how it will meet a new student’s needs, which leads to higher conversions and enrollment rates.
Capture Attention and Nurture Interest
With today’s technology, you can segment the target audience to deliver email campaigns and social media interactions that resonate with a prospective student’s interests and goals. This allows your higher education institution to go beyond the traditional brochures to demonstrate to students exactly what their experience will be like once they enroll in a program.
Keeping students and their families engaged on your institution’s website with interactive quizzes, infographics and webinars further helps to nurture interest when someone is eager to dive deeper before making an enrollment decision. As your team develops this portion of the marketing plan, try to remember that up-to-date content is critical for success. We can help utilize AI and augmented reality technology to create virtual tours that make students feel like they are actively walking around campus.
Deepen Student Engagement and Build Trust
Universities will also want to focus on nurturing leads by making them feel like they are already a part of the school community. Offering interactive campus tours is an effective way to help bridge connections between prospective students and established members of the academic community, including the faculty and alumni. Setting up a live Q&A event with current students allows you to showcase campus life and how it supports learning.
Personalized consultations are another option for giving prospective students tailored guidance from admissions counselors and mentors that can lead to enrollment conversions. Mid-funnel marketing should also include information about the end of a student’s academic journey. Highlighting success stories through alumni testimonials and showcasing career fairs and internships makes it clear that your institution is committed to seeing students succeed at each stage of their academic program.
Convert Enrollment Interest Into Action
Focusing on mid-funnel marketing sometimes reveals hangups that make it hard for prospective students to move further. Website analysis tools can help to identify areas where students struggle to move past, such as slow-loading pages. Creating a user-friendly website with a streamlined application process helps to smooth out the last few humps that students encounter while enrolling.
Establishing early decision deadlines is another way to generate action toward the end of the mid-funnel stage. With many students experiencing stress about their future, allowing them to plan for their higher education entices them to choose your school. Offering scholarships and priority program placements is another way to attract students to your institution while improving enrollment rates.
Students who are stuck in the mid-funnel are also likely highly focused on the cost of their education. This is the ideal time to include targeted information regarding financial aid packages, scholarships and tuition assistance programs in the communications with students.
Maintain Momentum and Foster Brand Loyalty
Once a student makes an enrollment decision, your higher education institution will need to shift its focus to maintaining their excitement. Sending welcome packages and personalized messages from current students helps to foster loyalty that prevents a prospective student from changing their minds at the last minute.
Encouraging online engagement helps to support a student’s integration into their chosen school, which makes it possible for them to immediately begin forming connections with peers and staff members that foster their future successes. You can also begin including more detailed information about upcoming events, such as new student orientations and social mixers that generates more momentum as the beginning of a new academic year begins.
As a final note, you’ll want to remember that tracking and analyzing data is essential for knowing how well a mid-funnel marketing campaign is working. Our team at Semgeeks leverages data analytics to identify how new strategies work to increase interactions at this point in the marketing plan. With the information we gather, we can make strategic changes and adjustments to marketing campaigns that resonate with prospective students and convert them into new enrollees that strengthen your institution’s academic community.
