Social networking can benefit your business in multiple ways:

Engage with students directly and easily Create a buzz about your brand Send quick updates to your fans Connect with the millions of students who use social networks
College counselors worldwide lament their students narrow view of acceptable colleges, which typically include only that short list of names students hear from the media and their peers. It can sometimes be challenging to get students interested in new and different institutions. Many college counseling offices promote different colleges by hanging pennants or posters, or displaying collections of mugs from various institutions. Unfortunately, these college names can fade into the background and pass largely unnoticed by the students coming in and out of the office. When youre ready to broaden your students horizons, take a tip from your fellow counselors and get creative. Special dress-down days, fun giveaways and trivia contests can all be great ways to bring different colleges to your students attention. Dress down Cathy Curtis, counselor at the Shanghai American School in China, has T-shirt Tuesdays to raise awareness of institutions around the world. Ive collected hundreds of T-shirts from different colleges and universities, she says, and every Tuesday she wears a different one to school. The college on her shirt is also profiled on a bright bulletin board with information that includes that schools location, academic majors and extracurricular offerings. In addition, an announcement is made to the whole high school Tuesday mornings that briefly describes that weeks featured college. That way, kids from their freshman year on have heard about different colleges and universities, says Cathy. Share alumni pride If your school holds dress-down days during the year, asking the faculty and administrators to wear logo wear from their alma maters can be a powerful way to introduce students to different institutions. Not only will students see a range of college names, but they will have immediate access to alumni from those colleges. Seeing a familiar face who graduated from a particular college can create a safe environment for students to ask questions (and has the added benefit of improving student-faculty interaction). Brian Plautz, counseling department chair at Dakota Ridge High School in Littleton, Colo., does just that at his school. He asks faculty to wear a college shirt on PSAT and PLAN testing days as well as the day of the annual college and financial aid information program. I think the staff really enjoys it, says Plautz, Even our principal gets into it. Our hope is that kids will ask Whats that school? and talk to their teachers. In addition to these college-awareness days, Plautz posts a list of the high schools teachers and their alma maters on the counseling departments bulletin board under the heading Where did your teachers go to school? Hopefully, it fosters some more discussion about [different schools], Plautz says.

Make it homework If you hold counseling advisories or teach counseling classes, make it an assignment for students to research a college they dont know much about (based on some criteria like location or major) and present their findings to the group. As you cycle through each students presentation, the cumulative effect will be a group of students all hearing about a collection of colleges they may not otherwise have considered.

A. Open Days? B. Inviting Community Groups into the college? C. A Community newsletter delivered door-to-door in your county D. Invite local businesses into your college restaurant E. Distribute prospectuses in local library, job centres, high schools etc F. Set up a group on Facebook or Linkedin G. Posters distributed in local council offices H. Offer talks to local high school kids I. Local Radio campaign promoting your open evening J. Include testimonials of students in each course leaflet K. Include QR Codes on lamenated posters throughout Campus L. Upload video testimonials to your website, facebook page M. Get interviewed by local tv or radio station N. Issue online & offline Press Releases of student achievements O. Start your own award scheme or competition for schools P.Launch your own annual awards ceremony Q. Have an open surgery with panels of lecturers to answer questions R. Carry out a marketing audit to find out whats not working S. Local bus sponsorship - advertise on local buses T. Give sponsored diaries to students U. Promote short one day courses via local stationery coy catalogue V. Speaking engagement to local business clubs, chamber of commerce W. Get lecturers to do speaking engagements at women groups X. Put promotional leaflets in book rentals from college library Y.Organise your own networking events in lecture theatre or refectory Z. Have a kiddies open day or science festival inviting local shcools in Hope that gets you thinking... ;) Fraser
Links: http://www.theresultsacademy.com
posted May 2, 2011 | Report answer as...

Deepak Kumar Director at Nanosoft

see all my answers

You may have a superb educational institute equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure, fantastic courses, and excellent panel of faculty members; but still fail to attract many students. In this age of fierce competition its indeed not easy to attract many students, convince them to feel that you are the best education provider. Indeed just good qualit y isnt enough, you need a push, an extra effort towards marketing initiatives. # Follow the simple tips to generate an increasing popularity of your institute. ** First of all your institute should maintain good quality of education, at par with the global standard. Even good marketing effort cannot boost a weak educational institution for very long time. So if your institute falls short of

quality education, updated course curriculum, quality faculty members, placement assistance or infrastructure check them before getting into promotional activities. ** Unknowingly we all are exposed to millions of advertisements every day. And they actually sell. Advertise your institute in various media, which you consider your target audience is exposed to. You may consider educational journals, education column in dailies, educational portals, television channels youth and their parents are exposed to, outdoor media and the like. Keep a large pie of your marketing budget for advertising. ** If you are offering job oriented courses like management or computer courses and have a good track record of successful students, flaunt them in your communication. You may flaunt the success story of your ex-students, their work, awards. You could put their testimonies. If your placement assistance is good enough highlight that along with names of companies people have been placed in. ** Participate in educational fairs, exhibitions, meets; where lot of prospective students flock in, and even inquire, collect forms and brochures. ** Make institute appear more enthusiast and updated by sending good bunch of students to educational quizzes, talk shows, competitions, debates, seminars. Good name of your institute will attract many prospective youngsters. ** Create community, fan page for your institution in social networking sites like facebook, myspace, hi5, twitter. A growing number of fans/followers/members/friends will definitely boost image of your institute. ** To draw more attention of the youth you could put posters or distribute leaflets in and around areas where youngsters hang out like coffee shops, shopping malls, book shops, libraries, movie theatres, music shop. But dont do this activity for too long, as it may appear you are desperately looking for student s. ** Word of mouth sells the most and specially when it comes from passed out students. Treat ex-students with care. Make sure they pass out with good experience, so that they spread good words about the institute. ** While you advertise, make your institute look appealing from all aspects quality of education, faculty board, placement, and infrastructure. ** If you are a business school with ranking or an award winning school (be it in any aspect) flaunt your achievement in your communication. Put the source of achievement too. ** Sponsor educational seminars, quizzes, talk shows to generate good will of your brand. ** Keep good media relations. Press conferences, coverage of college events may look even better with a long maintained good media relation. There are many more ways to promote a school. You are just limited by your imagination.
Links: http://www.itlist.com/how-to-promote-your-educational-institution/

Using Career Goals to Promote College

Some students know exactly what they want to do in life at an early age. That provides you with excellent leverage for motivating a student toward getting a college education. Some careers like law, medicine and education absolutely require an advanced degree. Others are not so cut-and-dry. It's up to you to show how a student's career would benefit from postsecondary education. Promote higher education for ALL your students by helping each discover the ways in which his or her career (and life) would be enhanced by additional education. The following are ways to use a student's career interests to get him or her to consider postsecondary education:

Scanning the Want Ads Tape Measure Technique Career Fairs E-Mentoring Job Shadowing Work-based Learning Within My Reach (formerly Future Choices) (middle school students) MnCareers (high school students and adults)

Scanning the Want Ads

Provide the student with the employment advertisements from a major newspaper or go onine to a national job site like Monster.com. Encourage the student to find one or more jobs that look interesting. Then, help the student investigate the type of college education that is required for success in that job. top

Tape Measure Technique

Hand the student a tape measure. Explain that each inch represents a year of the student's life. Holding the body of the tape measure, have the student pull out the tape to five inches. Explain that this represents the first year he or she went to school. Now, have the student pull the tape out to 18 inches and ask what it might represent (that is, the end of high school, becoming an adult, and so on). Pull the tape measure out to 22 inches and explain that "At this point, you can do anything--get more education, go into the military, Peace Corps, and so on. It's up to you." Finally, have the student pull the tape out to 65 inches. Show the person how long that is compared to when he or she leaves high school. Get the student to articulate goals he or she wants to accomplish or interests they want to explore during that time. Then discuss how college might be helpful to accomplish those goals or exploring those interests. top

Career Fairs
Organize trips for all your students to attend career fairs. Have them investigate three different types of careers and discover: top Which aspect of each career would be most enjoyable to the student? Which aspect would be most challenging? Which type(s) of college education is/are required for each career? What is the salary range in each career? Can getting additional education affect the salary ranges? If so, how?

E-mentoring

An "E-mentor" is someone in business who is willing to answer career questions submitted via e-mail from students. It requires a teacher or counselor to approach businesses within the community and say, "I have a student (or students) who are interested in what you do. If they e-mailed you with questions, would you answer them via e-mail in a timely manner?" Getting one or more businesses to participate in such a program can be very helpful. It allows students to get insights into different careers without having to leave the school building. This might potentially lead to a job shadowing program. top

Job Shadowing
This allows a student to see what a particular career is really like. The student goes to work with an adult in a career that's of interest to the student, and spends part or all of that day at work "shadowing" the adult. top

Work-based Learning
Work-based learning includes internships, job shadowing, mentorship, practicum, work-site field trips, teacher externships, apprenticeships and service learning. top

Within My Reach (formerly Future Choices)

Available from the Office of Higher Education, this publication helps middle school students explore their interests and talents, relate those to possible careers options and discover how to use high school to achieve their college dreams. Download or request a copy of the publication. top

promotion & advertising strategy

Promotion is one of the key elements of the marketing mix, and deals with any one or two-way communication that takes place with the consumer. This article concentrates is a high level introduction to developing a promotional strategy for your business focusing on advertising and other 'pull' tactics.

developing a promotional strategy

Deciding on a marketing communications strategy is one of the primary roles of the marketing manager and this process involves some key decisions about how who the customer is, how to contact the consumer them, and what the message should be. These questions can be answered using a three stage process, which is equally relevant for all elements of the marketing mix:

Segmentation dividing the marketing into distinct groups Targeting deciding which of these groups to communicate with, and how to talk to them Positioning how the product or brand should be perceived by the target groups Messaging - delivering a specific message in order to influence the target groups

1. segmentation
Dividing potential customers into discrete groups is vital if you want to increase the success rate of any communications message. If you don't know who you are talking to, it's unlikely you will get much of a response. Who are the potential customers? How many sub-groups should you divide them into? How do these groups differ? Hopefully, most of this information will be readily available from your market research. Once you have an idea of the customer, you should further drill down to explore them in more detail. What are their media consumption habits? What are their expectations and aspirations? What are their priorities? How much disposable income do they have? What are their buying habits? Are they likely to have children? How many holidays to they take a year? How much money do they give to charity? How can you help them? This information can be obtained in a variety of ways, from commissioning a specialist market research agency, to examining sales patterns or social media interactions. Commonly used market research methods include:

Sales analysis and buying patterns Questionnaires Desk research Website statistics, especially social media Focus groups Face-to-face interviews Specialist market research companies

Once you have built up an accurate picture of your customer, it's time to get their attention

2. targeting
For the purposes of advertising, targeting is the process of communicating with the right segment(s) and ensuring the best possible response rate. The methods you use to target your audience must relate to your marketing plan objectives - are you trying to generate awareness of a new product, or attract business away from a competitor?

Related link: Writing a marketing plan

methods of marketing communications

Advertising is just one element of the marketing communication arsenal, which can be divided into the following areas:

Advertising a mass media approach to promotion

Outdoor Business directories Magazines / newspapers TV / cinema Radio Newsagent windows

Sales promotion - price / money related communications

Coupons Discounts Competitions Loyalty incentives

Public relations - using the press to your advantage

Press launches PR events Press releases

Personal selling one to one communication with a potential buyer

Salesmen Experiential marketing Dealer or showroom sales activities Exhibitions Trade shows

Direct marketing - taking the message directly to the consumer

Mail order catalogues Bulk mail Personalised letters Email Telemarketing Point of sale displays Packaging design

Digital marketing new channels are emerging constantly

Company websites Social media applications such as Facebook or Twitter Blogging Mobile phone promotions using technology such as bluetooth YouTube E-commerce

deciding which media channel to use

In nature, evolution occurs most rapidly when competition for resources is intense. The same process is now occurring with promotional media. All traditional media channels are now saturated, and competition for consumer attention is intense. At the same time, the impact of any one medium is becoming diluted. There are many more TV and radio channels, consumer have the ability to skip adverts and free information is now much more accessible. As a result, companies are becoming increasingly innovative in their approach to communications and a host of new media channels have emerged. As a result, media choice is becoming a tricky task, which is why detailed segmentation is so important - it's no use starting a Twitter campaign if none of your target market are regular users of the site. Highly targeted communications often lead to better results. You can usually expect a response rate of under 1% for a relatively generic mass mailing. However, personal letters to a handful of your most loyal customers would lead to a dramatically increased rate of return. When deciding which media to use consider the reach, frequency, media impact and what you can expect for your budget but most of all, ensure your target customer will see the message in the first place. Media choice is a matter of compromise between volume of people versus the personalisation of the message.

ensuring your message reflects the stages of the purchasing funnel

Once you have made the audience aware of your brand, work doesn't stop there. The customer needs to be guided through the purchasing process. This means identifying the key stages in the customer journey and ensuring communications messages are personalised and relevant.

More information: The purchasing funnel

integrated marketing communications

Once you have decided which media channel to concentrate on, the next step is to ensure an integrated approach is taken. Regardless of whether you are promoting a new product or raising awareness, it's important that all ads across all media work together towards a common goal by using similar messaging and 'look and feel'. An integrated approach can dramatically increase the effectiveness of any campaign and will help create your brand image.

getting the best response

To get the best response from your target market, you need ensuring the message is relevant and clear once you've managed to gain the valuable attention of your customer the last thing you want is for them to be confused about what you're saying. Determine the objectives of the advert and ensure these aims are addressed clearly. Think about the next steps you would like the audience to take, whether this is visiting a website, ringing a number, or being able to recall your brand when they are next in the shops.

3. positioning
Positioning is the process of developing an image for your company or product. This can be achieved partially through branding, but it's important to realise that all elements of the marketing mix combine to provide the full picture. You must ensure that all areas of your business live up to expectations in order to successfully position yourself in the way you hope. Positioning also considers the competition, and you need to explain why you are unique in the marketplace and better than the other products on the shelf.

branding and messaging

Branding is a powerful tool for positioning your product. Branding is used on almost all customer facing elements of a product, from the packaging design to the style of writing used on posters. Every communication a customer received adds up to form a mental picture of your brand and can influence the price they are willing to pay for your products. This ability to charge more due to the positioning of your product is known as 'brand equity'. Your branding also needs to consider your unique selling points (USPs) and ensure these are easily recognised through your messaging is your product the best value, longest lasting, sweetest smelling or fastest?

corporate identity
A corporate identity is a useful tool to ensure that your branding is used in a consistent way throughout the company. This detailed document runs through almost every conceivable customer touch point and provides guidance on the presentation and style which should be used. This could include use of logos, colours, tag lines, uniform and the type of coffee to serve guests. A CI guide is particularly useful if any creative work it outsourced to agencies or freelancers or if you have many offices worldwide. The most powerful brands can be identified by many elements of their communications material, not just a by their logo or slogan and this is due to successful implementation of a recognisable corporate identity. Recognition is a key part of any purchase decision so a corporate identity should for a core element of your advertising strategy.

4. development of the advertising message

Once you have determined the positioning for your brand, it's time to develop the message in order to influence your target groups. Advertising objectives should be directly linked to your marketing plan, and tend to fit into the following generic categories:

Inform - raising awareness of your brand & products, establishing a competitive advantage Persuade - generating an instant response (usually driving sales) Remind - to maintain interest and enthusiasm for a product or service

It's a documented fact that creative, well branded, distinctive advertising generates the best results so ensure you use the best possible creative team you can get your hands on, and give them a detailed brief. Remember that a message will only be successful if

it appeals to the target audience, so constantly refer back to the customer and tailor the ads to them.

final words
Almost every business in the world will deal in advertising at some point, whether it is a listing in the Yellow Pages, or a billboard in Times Square. Whatever you're planning, the strategic thinking behind all advertising is essentially the same get to know your audience, target them efficiently and position your brand in the way that will benefit your business.

Advertising on-campus with posters and flyers provides an economical solution that gives widespread coverage for extended periods of time at a cost that ensures the best value for your budget. Posters oncampus also provide a specialized and segmented way to get your material in front of specific students on campus (i.e. engineering students, chemistry students, etc). These bulletin boards are one of the best ways, at a "grass roots" level, to communicate with college students via student marketing and advertising promotions. No wasted advertising dollars here!

Email marketing campaigns for colleges will yield many more results than the traditional way of doing things and at a fraction of the cost-no small consideration these days, when state schools are feeling the budget crunch and even private schools are experiencing unprecedented belt-tightening. Schools can cut down on their publicity budgets by investing in email marketing software, because so many people learn about their courses and degree programs-both by initially signing up to receive information and then by passing it on to others.

Plus, the user-friendliness of email marketing software makes email marketing campaigns the intelligent choice for colleges and universities. With easy-to-use customizable templates and the ability to add, delete, or modify information stored in the database with just a mouseclick, there's no better way for a college or university to attract both new students and new benefactors, than with an investment in email marketing software. So start today, and see what a difference a college or university email marketing campaign can make!