You’ve got a serious problem.
You’re in a university marketing department and you’re supposed to reel in new students.
You’re also on a limited budget and out of ideas.
How can you keep and attract students to your school without spending a ton of money?
Well, there’s a game-changing digital marketing channel you must use in your mix; one that will increase engagement by prospective students and move them further down your prospect funnel.
(As a matter of fact, this one channel of marketing was used by 81% of all Internet users in the U.S. this year.)
And the best part is you can do it for free.
In this post, I’m going to reveal what this one social media channel is and how you can easily use it to engage and attract prospective students.
Reach Your Future Students with Video Marketing
Hey, if you’re straddling the fence on whether or not to use video marketing in your school’s campaign, look at these stats:
- Putting video on your landing pages increases your conversion rates by 80%. (Adobe)
- 48% of marketers plan on using video marketing in their content strategy. (Hubspot)
- Every day, 500 million people watch videos on Facebook alone. (TubularInsights)
- 8 out of 10, 18-to-49-year-olds watch YouTube in an average month. (ThinkWithGoogle)
- Businesses that embrace video increase their revenue 50% faster than businesses that do not. (VinYard)
So, how can your school’s marketing department make the best use of video marketing in their campaigns?
Incorporate Video Marketing on All of Your Landing Pages
Putting a video on your landing pages is crucial. It captures attention, engages the visitors, and if the script is written well, can convert watchers into buyers.
Ask yourself this question, “Would I enjoy reading an entire page of text, or would I rather watch and listen to an interesting and engaging video that explains everything clearly and concisely?”
No-brainer, right?
By including a video on all of your landing pages you can increase the time your visitors stay on that page by 105%.
I’m not talking about pages that visitors don’t land on much. I’m talking about all of the main entry pages.
There’s a tool a lot of marketers overlook called Google Analytics. Using this tool you can find out exactly which pages your visitors are going to.
Once you know what pages of content are crucial, you can start inserting videos into those pages.
But wait!
You don’t want to insert just any old video on those pages. You’ll want to insert video marketing that’s relevant to those pages. So, you’ll have to look at the content of those pages and create a video that’s relevant to those pages.
If you have a page about campus life that’s getting a lot of visitors, then having a video about your technology department won’t work there.
A video with students talking about the different aspects of campus life will work so much better there.
Create Student Endorsement Videos
A recent survey shows that 70% of millennial consumers trust endorsements by people their own age. Not only that, but this is far greater than the trust they would give celebrity endorsements.
When you think about it, this is marketing 101. People take advice and buy from other people they know and trust.
The best part is ― you don’t need a bunch of expensive video equipment. Any standard video camera will do and a video editor that you can use to trim any mistakes or unwanted material out of the video.
Here are the steps to making compelling student endorsement videos:
- Make sure you have specific interview questions prepared. These key questions will ask the students how they have benefitted from the school or one of its departments.
- If you can, have a student or someone who is in the approximate age range of your school’s students film the students and ask them key questions. (Remember, they will feel more comfortable talking to someone their own age.)
- Tell the target students what the purpose of the video is and that they will need to sign a simple disclosure that you have prepared so you can use the footage to promote the school. You will need to inform them in the disclosure that the video will be used on your school’s website.
- Once the video has been completed, thank the interviewees, and give them a time frame that the video will be produced so they can review it. Make sure that they have your office information and tell them that they can contact you if they feel you have misrepresented them in any way.
Produce Videos for Your School’s Different Departments
Ok, so you have a huge university with a lot of different departments, how do you create videos that will resonate with specific students?
You create videos that talk about those specific departments of your school.
However, the logistics and cost of creating videos for each different department are staggering. How will you get all of that work completed and done in a way that doesn’t break your video marketing budget?
Very simply, you can create branding clips that can be used in every department and then use short clips that highlight those different departments.
For example, let’s say you want to highlight your art department. You can have an initial scene that shows different scenes of the campus that can be used in every department.
Then you could have other clips that feature your art department inserted into the video followed by more footage that could be used by every department.
Also, a few short clips of student testimonials into the videos will make it look like the whole piece was created for the art department.
By using standard clips that can be used by each department you can reduce the amount of time, and money it would take to create them.
All that will need to be completed is a few student interviews, an editor, and access to the standard clips prepared for your school.
Make Video Course Trailers
This goes hand in hand with the section above on making department videos. When you create a video marketing plan, you should include videos that introduce what your courses are all about.
The best way to do this is to have each course professor create an introductory video for their own department. You no longer need to have expensive video equipment to create introductory videos.
Here is the list of what you can use to create one:
- The classroom where you’ll be teaching at
- A cellphone or inexpensive camera that you can mount on a tripod
- A tripod for stability
- Simple video editing software
- A video platform account like YouTube or Vimeo
Note: Make sure you have a professional YouTube or Vimeo channel that’s dedicated to your teaching profession. You don’t want to mix your professional videos with personal ones.
One thing to remember is to NOT ramble on forever about your course. Studies have proven that viewers will watch the entire content of a video if it is shorter. The ideal video length is around the 4-minute mark, but that’s just a measure, not a requirement.
(This is why, you need to sit down and write out a script, instead of “winging it” yourself.)
Here are a few other things you can do with your course video:
Ask students to share them.
The more shares, the higher they may rank on search engines. This means that not only will they be informative to students taking the course, but they will be seen by other prospective students looking for a school to attend.
You can also promote your school’s bookstore by having the professor mention the course materials in the video.
Format for Course Description Videos
If you want to create a powerful yet concise video, use the following format:
Intro Screen: 5 seconds
Show the course title, numbers, and department. (Include your university’s logo for branding.)
“About Your Professor” Section: 30 seconds
This is important because students will often talk about a course and refer it if they like the professor.
Have a short script that you can read which will highlight the course, your experience teaching the course and your background. You also want to mention any accolades you’ve been given by students and peers.
The more upbeat and genuinely excited you can be in the video, the better it will be received by students. (This is smart video marketing, too.)
What the Students Will Learn Section: 30 Seconds
Once again, a good rule of video marketing copy is to explain the benefits of what you’re selling. In this section, you’re going to tell the students “what’s in it for them”.
You can show them:
- How this course will prepare them for their major and career
- How it relates to the rest of their degree program and other courses
- What they will be able to do with this knowledge
- Other uses and relative pathways to related courses or career if applicable
- How long the course has been around and that it’s been a proven benefit to students. (If it’s a new course, explain why it was added and how it’s based on sound principles that have been around for years.)
How the Course is Organized Section: 45 Seconds
Break down the course material into bite-sized sections and use brief descriptions of what they will learn in each one. If you can, use images like graphics or photos that will help you describe the course.
A good idea is to show students how each section relates to the other and how they contribute to a beneficial class.
Course Workload and Grading Section: 30 Seconds
Students are usually worried about how much work they’ll have to do because of the other courses they’re going to be taking that semester.
It would help them out if they knew ahead of time how much homework, projects, research papers, etc. will be required of them. So talking about the course workload will be very useful to them in helping them decide if they should take your class at this time.
Closing Screen Section: 5 Seconds
Once again, having the course title, number and other important information should be displayed. Also, the professor’s name and office phone number should be shown as well.
You can have a sentence that encourages prospective students to call you that says something like, “Call today to find out more about this course.”
Here is an excellent example of a course video introduction from Duke University:
College and University Event Videos
One way to boost your video marketing mix is to create event videos. Almost every college or university has a loaded calendar of events, so why not use video to promote them?
Here are a few ideas on how you can create a great event video for your college or university:
Event Video Tip 1:
Keep it casual and on the level of your target audience. You must use the language of your students in a way that they can relate to your video.
This means using narrators and hosts that are either students themselves (most ideal situation) or someone who is in their age range. Don’t try to hype it too much, try to keep your script as natural sounding as possible.
Event Video Tip 2:
If you want event videos that’ll knock the socks off of viewers, use storytelling. The best copywriters know how a powerful story can hold the attention of readers in their ads and commercials.
Videos that tell a story are more likely to be shared by students and they have a better chance of being remembered.
Here are a few tips on how you can turn an average event video into a story.
- Tell the background of the event. Get someone on staff to tell how the tradition began as concisely as possible. Almost every event at colleges and universities has a historical tradition behind them, so this should not be hard to do. You should do a thorough research of your event and then write a script that’ll concisely explain the origins of it.
- Find out the most important parts of the event and plan to get clips of these parts. One of the best ways to do this is to have several cameras at different angles covering the different parts of the action.
- When you interview students that attend these events, try to get students that already attended the event a year or two before. Ask them to tell a short story of what it meant to them and something interesting that happened to them while they were there.
Event Video Tip 3:
Keep your event video short. If you plan this video out and use good editing, you can keep your video under the 5-minute mark. (4 minutes is the optimized time for viewer interest.) You do not want to ramble on and bore your viewers.
Event Video Tip 4:
Use a copywriter’s convention called a “Call to Action” or CTA. A call to action should be used in all of your video marketing. Basically, it tells your viewer what step to take next. You could have a very short message at the end of your video that says, “To find out more about Whodaman College, call our information office at 1-888-999-1212.”
Conclusion
You don’t have to create long, boring, and dry videos for your college or university. The main things you need to remember are:
Keep it concise – write out a script first, this will keep you from talking too much.
Oh, by the way, if you want a simple tool to help you read a script while filming, get some teleprompter software. This is software that scrolls your script on a laptop or desktop screen so you can read it. I highly recommend this!
Try to tell a story with your video whenever you can. A story will hold your reader’s attention far better than mere facts and information.
Finally, have a CTA for your videos. It will tell your viewer the next step to take after they finish watching your video.
While I’m on the subject of CTA’s here’s mine:
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