The importance of keeping up with digital marketing trends in the education sector cannot be underestimated.

To help show you how your school, college or university can shine and stay ahead of your competition, we have compiled the main education marketing trends we’ve seen throughout 2024; with a look ahead to what we believe you can expect to see next year.

Education sector marketing trends 2024

Whether it’s school, college or university marketing trends that you’re looking for more information on, the following can be applied across the entire education board.

1. Personalised experience
The trend of customising content to the needs and wants of each individual prospective student – or their parents – has intensified throughout 2024. Emphasis remains on tailoring all forms of content so that it appeals to, and resonates with, its intended audience; ultimately to increase admissions. There are many ways to do this. Numbers 2-6 show you some of the more popular ways, currently being used.

2. Personalised video content
Short-form video is a great way to capture the attention of younger audiences. With many students falling into this category and attention spans getting shorter, short videos are more likely to appeal. Do all you can to make videos eye-catching, so they pique your target audience’s interest. Think bird’s eye view, spanning your grounds and premises, close-ups of exceptional work and engaging teacher comments. Shorter videos will also appeal to busy parents who want a brief overview of your offerings. They are very likely to be making comparisons, so it’s important to give the right impression instantaneously.  

3. Mirror your target audience
Your current students will almost certainly indicate who you will want to attract. If you are using actors in your videos or photos, make sure they’re of a similar ilk, i.e. age range and style. For example, if you are promoting a fashion designer course, you’ll want it to feature someone with a fashionista-style flair.

4. Maximise interactive opportunities  
Engage prospective students and parents by way of dynamic experiences. Quizzes and polls, or more immersive experiences such as virtual tours or events, will involve your audience, encouraging them to stay on your website for longer. This can bring many benefits. Depending on your chosen method (s), you could:

• learn more about them and their views on important educational matters
• impress them, subsequently influencing their decision-making and increasing conversions
• improve your search engine optimisation (SEO)
• reduce your bounce rate – the percentage of visitors that leave your webpage without taking any action

5. Introduce student-focused blogs
Whilst a blog for the sake of a blog is very unlikely to create interest among Gen Z, a useful one can be incredibly effective. A well-crafted blog, that provides potential students with important information they can’t get from a short video, can be referred to easily, making them a particularly valuable resource.

6. Customise email marketing
In today’s digital world, emails that are addressed to recipients by name, and tailored to their academic goals, interests or demographics, have replaced generic blanket messages. They give a personal touch, but a professional feel. 
Research indicates that segmented campaigns increase email marketing revenue by no less than 760%.

7. Use Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an extremely powerful marketing tool which collects and analyses data. It gives invaluable insights into your website traffic, enabling you to better understand your website visitors. This information can be used to adjust your marketing strategy to target your audience – students and parents – better.  

8. Be mindful of Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE)
As Google continues its SGE experiment – AI-generated answers to search engine questions sitting at the top of results – it’s important to keep an eye on its impact. If it’s here to stay, it’s expected to affect both organic and paid traffic. Getting on top of Google’s SGE at this stage is wise.

9. Ensure your Google Ads are operating effectively
AI has been featuring in Google Ads for some time. This is expected to grow. Make sure that your Google Ads are set up in line with your own education marketing objectives as opposed to Google’s.

10. Social media strategy
Leveraging social media to reach students takes planning and continual reviewing. When choosing platforms, consider YouTube. Loved by younger audiences, it’s great for longer videos which can give prospective students vital decision-making information.
Dynamic ads, or banners, adapt their content to fit with a user’s behaviour.

11. Consider using micro-influencers
Micro-influencer marketing has become a thing for education marketing. Often, it’s where a famous graduate promotes or endorses their former school, college or university.
This is an easier to tap into initiative than you may think. As more are turning to real information from ‘real’ people, it’s not so much about the celebrity aspect.
The chances are, if you are running a college or university, you already have plenty of micro-influencers around – those who are very active on social media, just like the potential Gen Z students you are aiming to attract. Establish partnerships so you can expand their reach and strengthen your school or college brand at the same time.

12. AI and chatbots
Perhaps unsurprisingly in this digital age, the younger generation expect answers at the tap of a screen. AI continues to grow and develop and chatbots are becoming the norm. They are a way of operating 24/7, without actually needing to.

13. SEO
SEO has become increasingly recognised as fundamental in ensuring visibility on search engine results pages. So much so, that we’re not even sure we can call it a trend. However, 2024 has seen its continued growth, so we feel it deserves to be featured. Think keyphrase research, optimised content, descriptions, meta tags, localised content, frequently updated content and good backlinks.  

14. Mobile optimisation
Reaching potential students and busy parents means grabbing their attention and keeping it, while they’re on the go. Make things as easy as possible for your intended audience, use responsive ads which adapt to different screens and devices.

With personalisation seeing such an upturn in 2024, it’s worth noting that there is also a shift towards privacy by both Google and Apple. You may have noticed it becoming easier to submit privacy preferences on websites. This is as they are looking to eliminate or limit tracking cookies. So, personalisation won’t necessarily always be the right approach.  

Thankfully, contextual ads can add value, based on website content as opposed to user behaviour, and can be very effective.

There are times when generic content is more appropriate. Here at WEBPRO Education, we anticipate that clever marketing, tapping into the above trends, will see education marketing boom as we head into 2025.