Updated: April 2025 - We’ve refreshed this article with the latest statistics and inbound marketing trends for schools.
We can’t help but “Google.” And brands are leveraging this knowledge by using search engines as platforms for leaving breadcrumbs. Leading consumers right to their doorstep, and converting them into loyal customers.
This strategy, known as an inbound strategy, focuses on creating valuable, student-centric content to attract prospective students and their families. While outbound marketing calls for pushing out ads to large groups of general consumers, hoping that they’ll be interested in your products, inbound marketing creates a buzz around your company by highly focusing your audience targeting - so that people looking for your products find you quickly and trust that you’ll meet their needs.
So, what does that mean for education-based marketing, and how does it work? You need to create valuable, compelling content and position it in a way that reaches your ideal student audience. This way, you can drive traffic and quality leads, and then convert them into delighted students, parents, sponsors, etc.
Paid media in years past had been considered predominantly an outbound marketing method. However, this method can easily be incorporated into your inbound marketing strategies today.
We are going to look at five ways that schools and universities can use paid search tactics to accelerate their inbound marketing campaigns. But first, let's take a deeper look at what inbound marketing is.
Introduction to Inbound Marketing for Schools
Inbound marketing is a methodology that focuses on creating content and experiences to attract and engage prospective students. Unlike traditional outbound marketing, which pushes messages to a broad audience, inbound marketing aims to draw in the right audience by providing relevant information that addresses their needs and interests. For schools, this means crafting content that resonates with prospective students and their families, guiding them through the decision-making process. Think, answering all the usual questions before they even ask.
By leveraging digital mediums such as social media posts, landing pages, and email marketing, schools can nurture prospects through the inbound marketing funnel. This approach not only helps in building trust and credibility but also ensures that the content reaches those who are genuinely interested in what the institution has to offer. These strategies enable schools to create a personalized experience for prospective students, providing them with the support and information they need to make informed decisions about their education.
Understanding the Inbound Marketing Funnel
The inbound marketing funnel is a critical component of the inbound marketing process, representing the journey that prospective students take from their initial awareness of a school to their eventual enrollment. The funnel is divided into three main stages: attract, engage, and delight.
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Attract Stage: At this stage, the goal is to reach prospective students by sharing content that addresses their pain points and interests. This could include blog posts, social media content, and informative videos that provide valuable insights and information.
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Engage Stage: Once you have attracted prospective students, the next step is to engage them with more targeted content. This could involve personalized email campaigns, webinars, and interactive content that encourages them to learn more about your school and its offerings.
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Delight Stage: The final stage focuses on delighting prospective students by providing exceptional experiences throughout their experience researching your school. This makes them feel valued and supported throughout the admissions process.
By understanding and optimizing the inbound enrollment funnel, school marketers can create targeted content and experiences that not only helps in nurturing prospects but also increases the likelihood of converting them into enrolled students.
Now let's get into the tactics.
1) Utilize social media advertising
Maneuvering social platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook's algorithms can be difficult, and you can never be sure that you’re reaching your target, regardless of how hard you work to optimize your content.
By leveraging social media accounts, schools can monitor engagement and optimize their advertising strategies to better reach their target audience.
Social media paid advertising can cure this by using ad tools to create, schedule, and post targeted ads geared to reach a specific audiences. It also ensures that your posts get undivided attention from your the audience you define.
Assume you are trying to increase enrollment in a nursing or film program, and as users search fir those types of courses, an ad about your school starts appearing on their feed. This is how timely and laser-targeted paid social advertising can get. It helps you meet your audience where they are so you can achieve more out of your inbound enrollment marketing campaigns
Additionally, since GenZ and millennials make up 68% of people who use social media to discover a product, advertising on these channels is the perfect way to build brand awareness with prospective students.
2) Search engine marketing
Your position in SERP’s (search engine results pages) results is highly telling about the health of your content. And while employing organic strategies pays, you can’t give your inbound marketing content the best shot without spending money.
An effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is crucial for ensuring that your content ranks well on SERPS like Google and Bing as well as AI chatbots like Open AI's ChatGPT. All of this making it easier for prospective students to find your school.
Search engine marketing (SEM) helps you appear on SERP results through pay-per-click advertising (PPC). These ads reach users with your message when they most need it, making them ideal and less intrusive than most digital ads, and you only pay for impressions that turn into visitors.
Plus, Google processes 255,600 search queries every second. SEM gives you a chance to be the answer to these queries.
3) Utilize programmatic & connected TV (CTV)
Programmatic and connected TV advertising enables you to buy ad space in connected TV and take advantage of what Forbes describes as the fastest-growing video advertising platform. Programmatic CTV advertising includes serving ads on gaming consoles, computers, mobile devices, and over-the-top devices.
Essentially, for higher education inbound marketing meant to garner new enrollments; this form of advertising takes your content right into family living rooms - and even when that’s not the case, everyone interested can get the message on the device they prefer.
More than 80% of TV households already have at least one connected TV device, with a mean of 4.1 devices per connected TV household. Also, 39% of adults watch streaming video content daily, and 60% watch weekly.
Hosting an open house can be a powerful conversion point, encouraging prospects to engage more deeply with your institution.
By utilizing programmatic and CTV advertising, you can precisely identify viewership, browsing, and buyer behavior patterns, among other individual traits, and programmatically serve ads in real-time, exclusively to the individuals and households who are likely to explore your school or offerings.
4) Retargeting campaigns
Unfortunately, 97% of your website visitors only tour it and leave without converting. Instead of crying foul, retargeting lets you show them what you’re offering again, even when they visit other websites.
A well-placed call to action can significantly increase the effectiveness of your retargeting efforts by guiding visitors towards taking the next step.
Retargeting works in two ways:
Pixel-based: When someone comes to your website, a piece of JavaScript called a pixel that works like a cookie is placed on their browser. This pixel sends notifications to retargeting platforms to display ads based on the page they visited on your site.
List-based: List-based retargeting uses contacts you have. You can upload a list of contacts you have on a social media platform - such as Instagram or TikTok – and the platform identifies users using those addresses to serve them ads.
Take, for example, someone comparing and contrasting different schools. Even though they check you out and walk away, retargeting enables you to continue engaging them where they go.
You can also select users to retarget based on unique data points - for example, based on courses they browsed and update the ad by attaching statements on how the course can help or how easy it is to enroll, etc.
5) Content distribution services
To maximize your content’s potential, you need to combine it with stellar distribution strategies. The oldest yet best strategy is finding your audience where they are, even if that means getting on ten different channels.
To maximize your enrollment marketing dollars, it's essential to create content that resonates with your target audience and addresses their specific needs.
Each content type has suitable distribution channels. For example, e-books do well on website landing pages where visitors can share their contact information in exchange for the e-book.
Interviews and podcasts do well on channels like Google podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc. On the other hand, putting videos on YouTube helps leverage the giant video platform to reach audiences who learn better by video.
Each of these content types falls into three categories of content assets: paid, owned, and earned. Paid media requires buying ad space on different platforms and websites relevant to your brand and running ads.
Earned media involves using people like employees to share content on their networks through feedback, likes, mentions, and shares. Owned media is content like webinars, industry reports, case studies, and infographics that place you as a thought leader in your space.
Keep in mind that content strategies aren’t eternally tied to a particular channel. You can repurpose content throughout different channels, thereby giving Google a chance to crawl the content again. For instance, you can repurpose an article on your website for LinkedIn and make a video for YouTube.
Don't Forget Effective Calls to Action
Calls to action (CTAs) are a critical component of just about every marketing strategy, particularly when it comes to converting visitors into leads. A CTA is a prompt that encourages a website visitor to take a specific action, such as filling out a form, downloading a brochure, or attending an event.
Effective CTAs are clear, concise, and prominently placed on your website and other digital platforms. They should be designed to stand out and make it easy for visitors to take the desired action. For example, a CTA could be a button that says “Request More Information” or “Schedule a Campus Tour.”
By using CTAs effectively, schools can guide prospective students through the admissions funnel, increasing the number of conversions and improving the overall effectiveness of their inbound marketing efforts. It’s important to test different CTAs with your lead generation forms and analyze their performance to determine which ones are most effective in driving conversions.
Measuring and Evaluating Marketing Results
Measuring and evaluating the results of your efforts is critical to the success of any inbound marketing strategy. By using analytics and tracking key metrics such as website traffic, engagement, and lead generation, schools can assess the effectiveness of their marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions to improve their strategy.
Regularly evaluating and refining your inbound marketing strategy is essential to ensure your school is effectively reaching and engaging your target audience. By analyzing data and making adjustments based on performance, schools can continuously improve their marketing results and ultimately drive more enrollments.
In conclusion
Getting your content seen is just as important as creating quality and attractive content. A focused inbound education marketing strategy is the best way to ensure you don’t spend millions of hours developing content but never reach the right prospective students.
And as siloed as inbound marketing for colleges and universities may seem, the people who align with your programs frequent the same channels when they’re looking for nail polish, shoes, or a baseball cap. Your job is to develop content that sets you apart from your competitors and use the methods of advertising we’ve discussed to rise above the online scramble for attention.
Sonority Group specializes in higher education marketing, and we have the experience and insane technology needed to run these targeted marketing campaigns for you. Let’s chat!
FAQ Recap:
What is inbound marketing in education marketing, and how does it differ from outbound marketing?
Inbound marketing focuses on providing content tailored to specific audiences, attracting them naturally to your brand or institution. The inbound methodology focuses on attracting prospective students through valuable content and strategic engagement, transforming traditional enrollment strategies into more effective practices. It involves strategies like content creation, SEO, and social media engagement. In contrast, outbound marketing involves pushing messages to a broad audience, often through traditional advertising methods like TV commercials or billboards.
Why is inbound marketing important for educational institutions?
Inbound marketing allows educational institutions to attract prospective students, parents, and sponsors by providing relevant and valuable content. By targeting prospective families early in their decision-making process, institutions can build strong relationships and position themselves as valuable resources. By targeting specific demographics and addressing their needs, institutions can build trust and credibility, ultimately leading to increased enrollment and engagement.
How can social media advertising benefit educational institutions?
Social media advertising enables schools to target specific demographics and reach potential students where they spend their time online. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn offer powerful ad-targeting tools that can help institutions showcase their programs and offerings to interested individuals. Learn more about building a social media strategy for schools.
What is search engine marketing (SEM), and why is it important for schools?
SEM involves using paid advertising to appear in search engine results pages (SERPs). Appearing on the first page of the search engine results page (SERP) is crucial for attracting prospective students actively searching for educational programs. This allows schools to target users actively searching for educational programs or information, increasing visibility and driving relevant traffic to their websites.
How can programmatic and connected TV (CTV) advertising benefit educational institutions?
Programmatic and CTV advertising enables schools to reach potential students through targeted ads on various devices, including computers, mobile phones, and smart TVs. By leveraging data-driven insights, institutions can deliver personalized messages to specific audiences, increasing the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.
Independent schools, in particular, can benefit from these targeted advertising strategies to overcome their unique marketing challenges around highly niche programs.
What is retargeting, and how can it help schools convert website visitors into leads?
Retargeting involves displaying ads to users who have previously visited a website but did not take a desired action, such as filling out a contact form or enrolling in a program. Retargeting can help re-engage users who did not convert during their first contact with your website. By keeping your institution top-of-mind for these users as they browse the web, you can increase the likelihood of conversion.
How can schools effectively distribute their content to reach their target audience?
Schools can distribute their content through various channels, including social media, email newsletters, podcasts, and video platforms like YouTube. For instance, a well-crafted blog post can drive significant traffic to your website and engage prospective students. By understanding their audience preferences and behavior, institutions can tailor their content distribution strategies to maximize reach and engagement.
Why is content repurposing important, and how can schools utilize this strategy?
Content repurposing involves adapting existing content for different channels or formats to reach new audiences or reinforce key messages. Repurposing relevant content across different channels can help extend its reach and impact. Schools can repurpose blog posts, articles, or videos into social media posts, podcasts, or infographics, extending their content’s lifespan and visibility.
How can I get started with inbound marketing for my school?
To get started with inbound marketing, schools can begin by identifying their target audience, creating content that addresses their needs and interests, and leveraging various marketing channels to reach and engage prospective students. Developing an effective content strategy is crucial for attracting and engaging prospective students through inbound marketing. Partnering with a reputable agency like us here at Sonority Group can also provide valuable support and guidance throughout the process.