If the Covid pandemic taught us one thing, it’s the importance of our nurses. And the key to great nurses is attracting the right students to attend your nursing school. However, a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy simply won’t cut it in today’s higher education marketing landscape. When it comes to marketing your nursing school, your team needs to be laser-focused, highly strategic, and have an in-depth knowledge of cutting-edge marketing tactics.
So how can your team attract the right students to your nursing program? We have the answers!
1. Identify your future nursing students
Access to audience databases is really key—and it’s why Thinking Cap excels at generating quality student inquiries. Thinking Cap has invested in cutting-edge education marketing data science tools and expertise that applies your nursing student persona attributes to anonymized Personally Identifiable Information with the TC Student Data Center. We have access to 97+ million mobile device IDs, 175 million email identities, 82 million postal addresses, 100s of 3rd party data sources, extensive platform data, and university data integrations.
All that to say? You can easily skip the step of identifying your future nursing students, because Thinking Cap Agency already knows who they are. We have them in our database already.
Read next: 4 Strategies to Optimize Your 2021 Higher Education Lead Generation
2. Optimize your website and SEO
Research has shown that 78% of nursing students find your nursing program’s website “the most helpful” resource as they’re trying to make the decision. This is a key piece of information, because it means that your website should be easy to navigate, answer all your prospective nursing students’ questions, be optimized for SEO, and act as a persuasive tool in their enrollment journey.
Additionally, our research has indicated that your prospective students are researching your school between six months and two years in advance. That’s a lot of search queries! SEO for higher education is the practice of implementing a number of SEO best practices so your website comes up in your prospective students’ relevant search queries.
Read next: 5 SEO for Higher Education Tips to Boost Your Traffic
3. Use higher education CRM to track nursing student journeys
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a kind of software that acts as a communication tool for teams and individuals. In today’s enrollment marketing world, a good CRM tool is the backbone to student recruitment efforts. And with a good CRM in place, you can actually keep track of your prospective nursing students and build relationships with them along the way.
Think about the student enrollment journey—an ideal series of interactions with a prospective student. You would want to reach out to the student as soon as they express interest and influence the decision-making process through strategic messaging. This also can help students through any roadblocks they may encounter. Achieving these types of prompt, thorough interactions with students manually would require constant monitoring and an enormous effort from your recruitment team.
Read next: Your Complete Guide to CRM for Higher Education
4. Utilize targeted video storytelling
Video is an incredibly powerful medium that makes it easier than ever to evoke emotion and forge human connections at scale. With an estimated 82% of site traffic being driven by videos in 2021 and 80% of prospective students listing video marketing as an influence on their application, higher education institutions can’t risk falling behind the curve.
That’s where U-SOCIAL™ comes in. In today’s short attention span world, engaging your prospective nursing students quickly and effectively has never been more crucial—and challenging. U-SOCIAL delivers your university’s custom messages to future nursing students in bite-sized, episodic video segments right where they already are—on social media. Thinking Cap’s precision targeting capabilities delivers engaging video content directly to your prospective nursing students.
Read next: Video is the Future of Enrollment Marketing
5. Emphasize nursing school outcomes
Nursing students are highly practical—they chose their path for a reason, with a specific outcome in mind. They’re looking to achieve specific goals by enrolling in your nursing school, so make those outcomes clear. Highlight alumni stories, real-world outcomes, advanced degrees earned, passing rates for certification exams, and job placements that have resulted from your program. Using a mix of statistics, lists, and anecdotal evidence will build your program’s credibility and instill confidence in your prospective nursing students.
6. Deploy omnichannel marketing campaigns based on student intent
Once you’ve identified your students, you need to deliver the right messages at the right time—which is easier said than done. But it’s an important part of your marketing strategy, and worth it. Today’s students are accustomed to highly personalized marketing, and a one size fits all approach won’t work. To remedy this, use intent based marketing — marketing that relies on personalization and real-time responsiveness to student behavior. Students will send digital signals that they’re ready to go back to school, and you can respond with messages that show you truly understand where they are in their journey.
In today’s competitive higher education marketplace, you need the most effective higher education lead generation strategies to attract qualified students and meet your enrollment goals each year—especially in the crucial enrollment year of 2022.
Are you ready to increase your qualified student inquiries? Thinking Cap Agency is here to help. We leverage our 30 years of experience, data-driven omnichannel solutions, proprietary research, team of specialized experts, and proprietary social media video marketing solutions to drive exceptional campaign results. Contact us today to get started.
