A unified marketing strategy is key to building student engagement.
Very few of our community colleges rely solely on CareerFocus for their marketing campaigns. Instead, while CareerFocus may be the main initiative for some, almost all have other projects running at the same time.
Unfortunately, it is easy for these projects to become siloed. While one member of the marketing department is organizing content for the CareerFocus magazine, another is working with the faculty to improve brochures for student services, and another is working on PR with a local newspaper.
While each of these projects is important in their own right, all benefit from a coordinated effort. This is especially true for CareerFocus, whose multi-media content platform is especially effective at integrating diverse campaigns. So, if you’re looking for more ways to help your marketing campaigns work with each other, here are five strategies to use.
1. Use the content library for short social media posts.
Most of our clients use the content library for the CareerFocus magazine, but that’s not it’s only application. Articles from the library can also be used to create content to supplement social media strategies.
Many colleges under-utilize their social media channels due to lack of content. Even though posts are short, finding interesting topics to share can be challenging. However, articles from our content archive can easily be edited to create multiple social media posts. Simply find the facts most useful to your students, and schedule your updates to last the whole week.
2. Send articles to an email mailing list.
Email marketing is still one of the most effective strategies for many colleges. Prospective students are more likely to sign up for an e-newsletter if they believe it will contain important information about upcoming programs, events, or seminars.
Email lists also allow for segmentation, meaning you can direct specific kinds of content to different audiences. If you have a donor list, for instance, you might direct content about the regional economic benefits of a community college to that list, while sending course information to potential students.
If your college already runs an email mailing list, articles from our content library can be an excellent means of providing more value to your subscribers. You can share articles in full or in part within the body of the email, or use the list to direct subscribers to the article online. Either way, with only a little extra effort time-wise, you deliver significantly more value to your email list.
3. Drive traffic to your micro site.
Of course, both email lists and social media campaigns can serve the purpose of driving traffic to specific areas of your website, or to your CareerFocus micro site. This serves your overall content strategy by exposing visitors to information that is more pertinent to their interests.
For instance, you could use an article on IT careers from our content library to create a week’s worth of social media posts, with each post directing students either to a piece of related content on your micro site, or toward specific course information on your official community college web page.
Similarly, many community college students aren’t aware of their own eligibility for student aid. A feature piece on student services in your email mailing list can direct potential students toward information that might help them learn more about their financing options.
4. Feature current marketing initiatives in your CareerFocus magazine.
Our direct mail print magazine isn’t just a platform to distribute articles from our content archive. It also provides community colleges with a way to share other important marketing programs with their readership.
As an example, if you’ve recently redesigned a student lounge area on campus, a custom article in the magazine full of beautiful images of the new space is a great way to publicize this new amenity to prospective students. Inset articles on upcoming events, teacher profiles, or charity drives are also a great way to use this resource.
5. Print digital tracking codes in your magazine issues.
One common struggle of marketers lies in the difficulty of tracking the effectiveness of print publications. While digital marketing campaigns come with many helpful metrics, judging the effectiveness of print often relies on trying to interpret cause and effect without hard data. Many marketers are left with a sense that the print magazine is working, but without exact numbers to prove their hunch.
Although print can never be tracked as effectively as digital, there are ways to learn more about audience reach. Including a landing page link to a specific webpage is one tactic. If you create a special link only to be used in the magazine, then any traffic that comes in through that link will be as a result of the magazine.
This also means you can use the magazine to drive traffic to specific pages on your site. For instance, if your current PR campaign directs readers to one of your career pages for more information, you can use that same copy in the CareerFocus magazine to boost the reach of your PR initiative. It’s a great strategy to help your marketing projects build off each other.
Your marketing initiatives accomplish more when they work together.
Separate marketing strategies don’t just lead to a fractured message. They’re also a lost opportunity to amplify the efforts of each team member through coordination with the others.
No matter what marketing initiative your department is working on, it has a place in our Campaign Builder. By uniting print, digital, and web marketing tactics, you can boost the reach of all your marketing campaigns.