As the world is under the curse of the pandemic, our lifestyle has changed. People, unfortunately, must shift to a new living style. All the businesses and institutions needed to change their style of operating. Online visitors, marketing, and sales have increased in this short period. People intend to stay safe, are working from home, buying from home, and businesses are operating from home.
In the same way, Educational institutions are teaching and managing student courses online. Educational institutions at this time have pressure to generate student leads. As students cannot visit the campuses and educational events, it has become vital for the student to search for universities and colleges online.
Today, students are finding and searching for universities or colleges, first visit websites, and search online. Universities and colleges need to generate good student leads. As today’s students have a broad portfolio of universities and colleges, and the pressure of selecting the right educational institution in this competitive market, it is essential for educational institutions to create an excellent student lead.
A good leader is the major pillar of any institution. Many applicant’s pools can be precious for universities to select students. They can shortlist the student’s bases of the information they have given, like educational records, extra-curricular activities, experiences, projects, and their interests. There are many ways in which universities can increase their leads like Google Analytics, social media ads, search engine optimisation, creating a good website, and using a third party. There are some websites for higher education lead generation companies who play the role of the third party and provide students with leads to universities and colleges. These websites collect student information and submit it to education institutions. Colleges and universities buy leads in exchange for a small fee.
OPTIMIZING WEBSITE
The leads you get through your website depend on two functions:
- Number of website visitors
- The ability of the website to convert these visitors to bring more leads
It is essential to know about your visitor to increase your website impressions. For that purpose, you can use Google analytics. It helps to tell you about your website visitors like interest, number times they visited, which page is more visited. Another way to maximise your impressions is by investing in on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO ranks your website in a higher position when students type relevant keywords in the search bar. It is essential to thoroughly research the appropriate words that your potential student can type during research.
On the other hand, off-page SEO uses other site links to your website. It helps to give your website higher search rank. Since creating leads highly depends on your website content, it is crucial to have such a website content that shows your college /university culture. There are few ways to develop content that delivers value to prospective and bring them closer to lead, having informative articles on further education, the publication of research papers of your university program, achievements of your alumni. Mobile functionality enables the website to be accessible from any smartphones, and it helps many audiences to visit the site seamlessly.
SOCIAL MEDIA
The study of digital statistics in 2020 shows that 3.80 billion people use social media. Social media strategy is very vital for higher leads. Get your Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter account set up and plan for a social media strategy. Spread your social media icon. You can also track your social media activities like which social media has visitors more and how often then focus on improving its content. You can also use social media for alumni advocacy. You can host a live session on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You can enable live chat among prospective students, alumni, current students, and admin to ask of any queries they have. This group conversation will show the transparency and honesty of your college.
CONVERSION EVENTS
The website must have influential events that lead to conversion. They need to have interactive videos, chat agents, newsletters, document downloads, information requests, e-book, and campus visits. Interactive videos can help to provide information to students about course programs. Chat agents enable the students to ask a question virtually and get immediate answers. A campus visit can be given with the help of a 360-degree tour of the campus.
RUNNING PAID CAMPAIGNS
A survey of 2013 showed 70% of business owners prefer to cast PPC campaigns. However, the PPC and AdWords campaign is a bit difficult and needs careful planning. AdWords campaign starts with customer research like what they want and what they are searching for, then uploads relevant keywords that they will be using during their search. But if your customer is not searching with the same words that you have targeted, your campaign will ruin. However, with the help of Google AdWords keyword planner, you can select the most suitable keywords.
Conclusion
There are a lot of ways to generate leads. With the help of these above tips, you can increase the number of prospective students and build leads. Planning with great thought is necessary. However, apart from these universities and colleges, they should also focus on other points like the infrastructure of the building, teaching faculty, and sports. These things also play an essential role in having leads.
