Nic is skilled in scaling start-up edtech and education organizations to growth-stage success through innovative marketing. A former journalist and copywriter, Nic holds a postgraduate certificate in digital and print publishing from Columbia University School of Journalism's publishing course.
The Super Bowl isn’t just a night to determine the National Football League champion. It’s also known for smart and creative ad campaigns. Sure, those companies have multi-million dollar budgets to help them come up with creative marketing ideas. But, you don’t need to spend a fortune to do some creative marketing of your own.
The adult learning market is projected to grow 12% by 2028. With a little innovation, that increased demand could turn into more interest in your offerings and more students in your classes.
Informal ed may not have a Super Bowl-esque event that brings competitors head-to-head in the ultimate marketing challenge. But social media, print media, and in-person events offer opportunities to show off your program. Here are 7 inventive and low-cost creative marketing ideas that will help promote your courses online and off.
Today’s digital world offers plenty of options when it comes to choosing the best marketing channels to promote your program. You could write emails, compose a blog post, post flyers around town, draft a Tweet, take out ads in your local paper, choreograph a dance for TikTok, curate a Pinterest board, design a LinkedIn ad, record a video for YouTube, go live on Facebook…
Even if you had unlimited time, energy, and money, creating content for all those marketing channels might not be a good idea. Why? Because every marketing channel is different. Some may be more or less helpful in promoting your classes. Let’s look at how to experiment and find the best marketing channels for your classes.
If you’ve been handling course marketing on your own for a while, you may wonder if it’s time to bring in some experts. Building a course marketing team, or even just hiring a marketing professional, can help you save time and get better results.
Not that you aren’t doing a great job so far, it’s just that marketers are specialists. They’re pros at understanding your students, choosing and using marketing tools, and helping programs navigate the wide variety of digital platforms that can help market your courses.
We’ll help you understand the many different marketing specialties and uncover what you need to know to get the best marketing support.
Imagine you need to buy a new washing machine. It’s been a while since you purchased one and you don’t have any strong preferences for which brand to choose. How do you narrow down your options? Most people will either get recommendations from friends and family, or go online and start reading reviews. Both approaches use the principle of social proof: looking at what other people are doing to decide on a course of action.
The principle of social proof can be a tremendous marketing asset because humans are social creatures. We tend to be influenced by the opinions and actions of those around us, both consciously and subconsciously. Your students are no exception. Let’s take a closer look at how you can use the principle of social proof to recruit students and sell classes.
The holidays can be hectic, especially if you have something to market. The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are a prime time to promote classes as gifts or get students lined up for the new year. But what about the holidays themselves?
As you plan your holiday marketing strategy, you may tend to avoid scheduling messages to go out on the days just before Thanksgiving or in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The thinking goes that people are focused on holiday celebrations and spending time with family. They probably won’t want to engage with marketing messages, right? But there’s one big problem with that logic — it doesn’t reflect how people actually behave.
We’ll show you how to plan a holiday marketing strategy that makes the most of people’s shopping and social media habits around the holidays.
When it comes to marketing your informal ed programs you have lots of options. From classic solutions like email to up-and-coming social media sites like TikTok, the opportunities seem endless. Unfortunately, your time and energy are limited. You don’t want to spend hours a day marketing on every channel, you want to focus on the one that works. So now you’re wondering, what are the best digital marketing channels for informal ed programs?
Great question, and the answer is more straightforward than you might think. As part of our State of Informal Learning Report 2022 (SOIL), we dug into the marketing channels that moved traffic to sites using CourseStorm as their registration platform. With nearly 1 million registrations under our belt, we had plenty of data to explore. Our research revealed the three best digital marketing channels that informal ed programs can use to promote their classes.
Read on to learn what they are and how you can put them to work for your programs.
You want to maximize registrations and use your marketing budget wisely. Timing your advertising well can help you meet both goals. Start too early, and you’ll be advertising to people who aren’t ready to make a decision. Wait too long, and their calendars will already be full. So when is the best time to start advertising a class? The short answer is:
You should start advertising a class at least 40 days before the class starts.
That’s the general answer, but there is some nuance to it. Your goals, the audience, and even the time of the year can impact the best time to start advertising a new course. Let’s get into the details so you can time your advertising with confidence.
Do you still distribute a printed catalog of your courses? These compendiums of course offerings have long been a staple of the education industry. Of course, in the modern world, when many of your course registrations likely come through online forms, you may be wondering if it’s still worth printing and shipping a physical course catalog.
The short answer is, yes. Printed course catalogs are still valuable in the modern world. In fact, if thoughtfully designed, they’re an integral part of the course marketing and registration process.
Before we dive into our best tips for creating and sharing high-quality printed course catalogs, let’s take a look at why print is still a powerful medium for course marketing in 2022.
While you may not usually think of your education program as a business, it can still benefit from a Google My Business account. In fact, any local organization that has direct contact with the public can claim a free business profile on Google. Your profile can help people discover your organization, quickly answer common questions, and offer social proof about your classes.
Since Google searches account for more than 83% of all internet search volume it’s worth your time to stand out in Google search. A business profile can help you:
Take control of your business information
Make sure no one else claims it
Interact with students and respond to reviews
Share photos and updates
Access information about how people use your profile
Below we’ll show you how to put a Google My Business Account to work for your education program.
Email helps you market your classes and share essential information. You may already be sending marketing emails to students and potential students, but are you taking full advantage of what different types of email can do for your program?
Emails about upcoming classes are just the beginning. You can also let students know when a class is in danger of being canceled or set expectations and help them get oriented. You can reconnect with students who haven’t registered for anything new in a while, or get feedback from students who have.
We’ll walk you through the five types of email you should be sending and offer some templates to help get you started. If you send all five, you may just find that students stay more engaged. That leads to higher satisfaction and more enrollments. You can also download the full package of program communication email templates.
