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February 13, 2016February 17, 2016

A Step By Step Marketing Guide for Your College/University-PART I

At present, India has a total of 700-degree granting universities and 35,539 affiliated colleges (Public or Private). With more than 85% of Indian high school graduates enrolling for a bachelor’s degree, the number of admissions post graduation keeps decreasing. Only 12% of graduate students enrol for a master’s degree while enrolment for doctoral and diploma courses stand at 1%.
Among the number of factors that contribute to the declining rate of admissions, the lack of effective marketing strategies employed by the education sector is one of them.
With the competition being huge among colleges, it is imperative the institutions take measures to diversify their approach to increase admissions every year, which goes to say that institutions must follow a healthy mix of traditional and new age strategies as a part of their marketing guideline.
Here’s a step by step guide to an effective marketing plan that schools and colleges can follow to increase admissions while creating brand awareness.

Identify Your Target
The first step to creating any market plan is to identify who the plan is being created for. Increasing admissions essentially mean selling your institution. Keeping this in mind, who do you think would be your buyers, students being obvious? Should you aim at high schoolers or go beyond? Do parents fall under your marketing purview? Are you looking at non-traditional students? What about a diverse student body?
In India, most parents actively take part in a child’s decision-making activities. They steadily contribute to their academic plans and together, the parents and the child form a strong team that decides the kind of college/university the child should attend. Thus, it pays off to create marketing strategies that appeal to students as well as parents but if you are specifically looking at increasing diversity or maybe the number of graduate students then your campaign should be modelled in a different way. What this means is, strategies should be target oriented to fetch best results and a general appeal should be avoided as much as possible. However, several other factors come into play here. Given the target audience, the campaign can be further personalised by defining the audience. For example, the strategy should consider their demographic, their background, their interests, goals, motivations, et al.
Once the target audience has been identified, it is important to discern where that audience can be easily approached. For example, if it is a student then may be the person would be found in one of the many digital platforms, if a parent, then perhaps a more traditional approach to marketing should be followed, if both, then maybe a healthy mix of traditional and digital.
Most Marketing strategies apart from publicising what the schools have to offer should also act as solution providers, hence, one must know their buyers in and out and only then move forward.

Build Your Digital Presence
A major population of the world today are natives of the digital world spending long hours there. So it goes to say, without a doubt, that a strong digital presence is of utmost importance in order to build a successful marketing strategy. So what are the essentials of the digital world and how can you maximise on them?

Create a Smart and Effective Website
Your website is the virtual front door to your campus. Not only should it be attractive in design, it should be user-friendly, add value to its different visitors like prospective students, parents, alumni, donors, etc, be easy to navigate, provide helpful information and much more.
Keep in mind that your website is the most crucial part of your inbound marketing strategy. Apart from providing content that promotes your brand, it is also the location that captures lead information sourced through various inbound tactics. If websites can be exceptionally designed keeping in mind all the little details that will help route the users easily, then it alone is enough for conversion.
So, how to go about creating a successful website?

Firstly, you must categorise your visitors. Who is most likely to visit your website apart from students? Maybe a parent researching courses for her child? An education counsellor perhaps?
Make a list of all their queries and present that information in a guided manner. At all costs, random pop-ups should be avoided as that can disrupt the user’s website journey. Actionable content should be strategically placed (more on that later).
Make it mobile friendly. Considering, mobile is the most used device for internet browsing, a website should be responsive. The user should not have to pinch in and out of the screen to read website content.
Use design and font that will resonate with your TG. For example, the University of Maryland in their website’s introduction page uses a typeface similar to the children’s book, “Where the Wild Things Are” which acts as a reminiscent of the childhood years.
Every institution has a key personality. Make sure that personality is reflected in the website visual. One should try to humanize their website as much as possible. For example, Rhode Island School of Design, whose aim is to inspire budding artists, in their home page showcase their students’ artwork.

Create Engaging Content and Calls to Action
The website content is a major driving force behind website traffic. When crafting content keep in mind your target audience. This is a great opportunity to relate to your buyers and write for them. With most people having short attention span it is important to be concise and clearly define who you are, what your purpose is and especially what differentiates you from other institutions that are out there. It is very effective to place your content through-

Blog posts– Blog posts are a great way to engage your audience. Provide relatable content and address your target’s queries through easy and interactive language. More frequently you blog about relatable content with proper use of SEO more your institution will appear in organic search results. Make sure your content adds value. Don’t write a blog just for the sake of writing it. For example, if you are planning to promote your college admissions, then a blog post like “10 Essential Admission Guidelines” or “7 Ways to Prepare for an Admission Test” will add value. It is important to note here that the titles of the blog posts reflect their content succinctly. Further, ask your readers to subscribe at the end of a blog post to confirm the leads and move them further in the conversion process.

Email marketing– Emails can prove to be very useful when nurturing leads. Once you have mapped your buyer’s journey, it is time for you to send emails containing information that will be helpful to them so they can take the next step towards conversion. For example, if your buyer is a prospective student considering enrolment for the coming session, the emails sent to him should contain information like application deadline, relatable courses, course highlights and benefits, fees and financial aids, etc.

Call to Action– Some of the content used in your website will contain calls to action. CTAs are buttons that urge the users to move ahead in their journey to ultimately become a customer by promoting offers, links and further information. CTAs appear as a button for downloadable content or act as gateways to a landing page. An effective way to use CTA is through blog posts. Let’s say, your university wants to increase the admissions for its summer courses for which you have put out a detailed educational blog post titled “The Ultimate Guide to Summer Courses” which discusses the top summer courses of your university, their highlights and benefits. A CTA, in this case, will appear as a button for your downloadable prospectus. CTAs are important as they help measure a buyer’s degree of interest which further helps in mapping the buyer’s journey through the conversion process.

Employ Engaging Social Media Strategies
More than 80% percent of high school students spend a majority of their time online on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Thus social media is a great place to engage with your prospective students and educate them about your institution through pleasant methods. Sites like Facebook and Twitter make for great places where you can promote your website content and important links. Social media as the name suggests is also the place where you can display the social side to your institution. For example, Keele University decided to generate interest about their university through a simultaneous Facebook and YouTube campaign called #NutsAboutKeele. The university known for the natural beauty of its campus is home to thousands of grey squirrels. They used a video of dancing squirrels on their YouTube page with the hashtag #NutsAboutKeele trending with the video on Facebook encouraging students and faculty members to talk about why they loved the university. The campaign turned out to be immensely successful engaging more 10,000 users across social media sites.

Analyse and Track Your Buyer Movements
With the help of analysis software such as Google Analytics, PPC dashboard, measure your buyers’ movements to further integrate your marketing strategies. Views, click rates, open rates, downloads provide critical information enabling you to track your buyers and nurture them accordingly. It is essential to tie analysis reports to your goals and compare them at the end of every month to draw a clear picture of where your buyers stand in terms of conversion.

However, as important as digital marketing is one cannot rely on it completely to achieve marketing goals. The ease of digital should be tied with the reach of traditional for best results.
In the next post, we will discuss effective traditional marketing strategies that can be combined with digital such that they both can supplement each other.

May 22, 2015November 6, 2015

Mumbai’s Online Advertising Solution – releaseMyAd

Today we are at the threshold of a global village, united by a single fiber of technology, the internet. Thanks to the internet, space has figuratively been compressed – how else can you interact with someone on the other side of the planet in a matter of seconds? The constraints of space have not been nullified, but it’s a great step toward further technological wonders that await us. The internet is a vast phenomenon that is as good as the one who employs it – someone might use it to infringe copyrights and hack into others’ accounts, and yet someone else might use it to donate money to a cancer victim. The internet allows it all, and has something for everyone. Fortunately, for advertisers, there is a LOT.

Online advertising is one of the most simplified advertising procedures available to advertisers, especially SMBs, who can benefit from this extraordinary platform. The top metropolitan cities in India record the highest number of internet users, both on desktops as well as on mobile devices such as tabs and smartphones. These cities, such as Mumbai, provide advertisers with a great opportunity to target a vast audience. The prevalence of smartphones has revolutionized the online advertising industry. Digital advertising in Mumbai is one of the most efficient ways to promote your brand.

The immense success of social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ have contributed significantly to the rise of social media advertising. This form of advertising is a great way to advertise to selective audiences, and contributes towards building relations with social media users and also helps broaden your customer-base.

Google’s AdWords is the biggest advertising vehicle on the internet. AdWords caters to the Search and Display Networks, and is employs Pay per Click and Pay per Mille (1000) models respectively. AdWords is a fair playground, a completely unbiased advertising option that provides equal opportunities to all those who wish to advertise there. releaseMyAd, one of the top ad agencies, can help you book your online advertising campaign in Mumbai.

Advertising over the internet is a cost effective and efficient solution for SMBs, as well as for larger organizations. To start your online advertising campaign today, you can contact top online advertising agency, releaseMyAd, by calling us on 09830629298, or by mailing us on book+mumbai@releasemyad.com.

April 28, 2015April 29, 2015

releaseMyAd’s Unique Online Advertising Solutions for SMB’s

Small and Medium businesses (SMB’s) unlike their larger business counterparts do not possess the resources to present themselves on a larger scale. They have to catch people’s attention and generate enough buzz in order to be recognised. Since their budget doesn’t ensure a large scale campaign, it is their priority to do everything necessary to make their presence felt.

Selecting an online advertising agency is the first logical option which every SMB must take. Traditional methods of advertising do help launching a brand in a cost effective way but when it comes to the scope and audience age group, online advertising companies are the preferred choice. One such online advertising company which provides effective output is releaseMyAd. It is a no nonsense advertising agency which caters to every kind of business house. For SMB’s it is a perfect tool to launch their brand effectively and cost efficiently. Below are few advertising solutions which help SMB’s is launching their campaigns:

Investing in Google Adwords: Google Adwords is a system developed by Google to help in advertising and marketing of a brand through Google’s search engine where a particular text ad appears when a user types a certain word or phrase of their preference. Selecting keywords which are relevant to your product enables greater search ability. releaseMyAd assists SMB’s by providing services such as Keyword planner, Negative keyword detector, Keyword cost estimator. This helps in generating necessary keywords for the business, deciding the negative keywords which can hamper search and deciding the cost of the ad based on the keywords.
Social media marketing: Social media marketing is a productive process for launching a campaign through social media. It provides businesses a prospective audience which enables specific targeting of consumers based on the product. releaseMyAd provides social media marketing through commercials on Facebook, Twitter, Google+. Through interesting quotes and informative visual ads, releaseMyAd peaks the interest of consumers which actually help in getting the advertisement noticed. Since social media generates such huge age demography, it is possible for businesses to opt for launching user specific products.
PPC (Pay-per-click) ads: releaseMyAd helps businesses prepare an effective PPC campaign.PPC or pay-per-click is basically a marketing process where the advertisers pay a certain amount to the search engine every time their advertisement is clicked. By assisting in the selection of appropriate and relevant keywords, deciding the cost, releaseMyAd makes sure the business gets the best value for their investment. To make a PPC campaign successful it is important to select right keywords, organize them well in the ad campaign, releaseMyAd helps the business in every way. They create relevant and useful campaigns which satisfy the users and this in turn helps in reducing the rates Google charge the business. Thus, enhancing chances of profit.
Content marketing: The basic purpose of content marketing is to attract and retain customers by providing them with relevant and valuable content, with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behaviour. It is a kind of non-interruption marketing where instead of pitching the products and services consumers are provided with content about the product, thus making the user more aware about it. releaseMyAd through its extensive array of Blogs inform potential clients about the brand. The blogs appear on the news section of the client’s website which in turn generates traffic for the client. Blog links appear on social media websites enabling a variety of people to go through the content and know about the product. It helps create a pertinent audience.

Small business houses need to work on a tight budget and can’t enjoy certain liberties. releaseMyAd gives them a chance to be socially relevant and allows them to push their business to new dimensions. For development and assistance in creating an ad campaign please mail us on online@releasemyad.com or give us a call on 09038015241.

April 27, 2015May 9, 2015

How can releaseMyAd Help Companies with Branding

Brands require masterful attention and care,inability to do so leads to failure and losses to the organization.Online ad companies are an effective partner for brands,they guide as well as administer the business in being the best.One such online advertising agency is releaseMyAd.

releaseMyAd is an online medium for advertising,which works with the basic objective of uplifting a brand and making it more approachable.Its efficient and dynamic working staff ensures that you always get the best value for the amount spent.Being an online ad agency and by covering fields such as Newspapers,Radio,Cinema,Online advertising releaseMyAd gives businesses a massive opportunity to launch their campaign at a very extensive basis.Below are few points which emphasize the relevance of releaseMyAd to businesses:

Online advertising is overall effective: Online advertising has become a trend now with the growing dependence on the internet.Businesses have the opportunity to introduce their brand to a wider audience base.Audio visual medium appeals to customers as it is able to deliver the desired message in an appealing way.releaseMyAd provides businesses assistance through online advertising as well as advertising through Radio,Newspapers,Cinema.This shows the massive reach it delivers to its proper target audience.It can be concluded that releaseMyAd is indeed effective overall.
Enhances word of mouth:Word of mouth is an effective medium to spread valuable information to potential customers. releaseMyAd through its method of social media marketing enables businesses to effectively launch their campaigns on social media like Facebook,Twitter.By creating dazzling creatives releaseMyAd ensures that the majority of people on social media do view their content and generate a positive word of mouth.This presents a good image of the brand and helps build a brand following.
Essential to reach to a relevant audience:For a brand to be deemed successful it is of utmost importance that the message is delivered to the relevant target audience.Irrelevant messages only cause rejection and waste,therefore to be effective the brand needs to be very focused on who their target audience is and plan strategies accordingly. releaseMyAd provides brands with the luxury of advertising in various formats such as Newspapers,Radio,Cinema,Online.Online advertising through releaseMyAd also enables monitoring the campaign so it gives a picture about the overall impact oft he ad.
Attractive content lifts brands:It is a known fact that visual medium is a very efficient method of portraying a particular campaign.Attractive content catches the eye and provides a good feel in the minds of consumers.releaseMyAd,with its quirky set of creative team develop eye-catching content which is bound to generate viewership and buzz.This projects the brand in a very good light and stays in the consumer’s mind.It only lifts the face value of the particular brand in a good way.

releaseMyAd is a potential saviour for brands with its wide array of options and effective creative team.It helps brands achieve recognition and following.With its wide reach among the general audience it ensures visibility of the brand and makes sure the campaign hits bull’s eye.For further queries on improving your brand contact us on 09830629298 or mail us at online@releasemyad.com.

April 27, 2015April 29, 2015

How to Measure Success in Online Advertising effectively?

A business entity’s sole purpose is to achieve success.They advertise & market in order to reach the pinnacle.However,its equally an important aspect to be able to measure the impact of the campaign.But the question remains,” Is it possible to measure success?”, that too for an online advertising campaign.The answer is a resounding “YES”.

Online advertising presents immense opportunities to advertisers for showcasing and enhancing their campaign.It also enables the business to properly monitor and check the progress of the campaign and the impact on target audience.Just launching a campaign are baby steps for businesses in order to reach their ultimate goal.Monitoring the progress and formulating ways to enhance the campaign enables them to actually reach that objective.A business house can efficiently monitor and measure their campaign’s success through these ways:

Establishing an idea about the business:Firstly,its very important to have an idea about the company,its products,its methods of approaching a campaign.This lets the business formulate efficient creatives accordingly which results in a strong campaign.Measuring CPC’s(cost per click) helps the business understand the latest trends of the market and it helps in allocating a budget,as costs can rise and decline anytime.
Measuring other parameters:The number of clicks a campaign generates does not necessarily correlate to success.Its necessary to heed to other parameters too.It has to be very clear as to what the business aspires to achieve from their target audience.The various parameters of CTR(click through rates) and Conversion rates also help a business measure the actual impact and effectiveness of the campaign.These factors enable businesses to rectify and optimize content as per the audience’s interest.
Communication through entire campaign:The success of a campaign is based on clarity.Be it clarity of the campaign or clarity between the business and the online ad agency.There should be a communication channel between them which will initiate bouncing of ideas.This leads to proper understanding of the campaign and the necessary changes it needs in order to be successful.Communication will come handy when the number of clicks on a campaign increases,as queries will increase substantially.
Honesty with the client:The need for honesty between the client and the ad agency is very important.Since the campaign is online,it ensures wider visibility,so a failure of a campaign should be put forward to the client instead of showing an optimistic picture.Being honest with what worked and what failed enables both to adjust strategies and creatives to make it a success the next time.Being vague or dishonest only disrupts the relation between client and the advertising agency.
Do not Over Analyze:Analyzing progress of the campaign is a very important chore.Testing and monitoring helps in understanding the progress of the product and valuable data with respect to the campaign’s performance against its rivals.However, excessive analyzing has its disadvantages.Testing numerous CTA’s(Call to Action),different creative executions and other technical aspects leads to a clutter of information which can be difficult to contain and organise.Focusing on one variable at a time leads to cleaner results.

Online advertising does provide a wide platform to advertise and market,so its the responsibility of the business and the online ad agency to make sure the campaign is a success.If all the parameters of rechecking,monitoring is done with utmost dedication the campaign can be made successful. releaseMyAd is an excellent choice for businesses seeking online advertising.It releases excellent PPC(pay per click) campaigns which can be easily monitored with the help of Google analytics,Google Adwords.Various tools like Keyword planner,Negative keyword detector,Keyword cost estimator ensures that the business can properly check every basic detail about their campaign,its cost,target audience.This can definitely assist in the success of a campaign.For further assistance contact us on 09038015241 or mail us on online@releasemyad.com.