What Is Higher Education Marketing?
COVID-19 and the new generations coming into adulthood have formed a new reality dominated by highly digitized environments, online learning opportunities, and a dedication to social media. These developments birthed new digital marketing trends in higher education that marketers must follow if they want to attract more enrollments for colleges. Instead of handing out brochures and putting ads on buses, content marketing experts direct their attention to more effective techniques, including TikTok advertising and virtual campus tours. College trends show that prospects invest a lot of time searching for study programs and universities online instead of asking their peers for advice. This means that to generate new leads and increase signups, you must create a powerful online presence that instills trust and shows why your institution is worth its money.
However, don’t limit your submissions to a national level. Education marketing can help you appeal to students from all over the globe. Universities already have remote classes and entire degrees. And since learning has now gone global, you must listen to learners’ needs and try to approach international students as well. Stay with us as we reveal the top 12 digital marketing trends for higher education in 2025.
Since 2024 is over, are you prepared to build a new marketing plan?
Download our detailed marketing plan template and help your business stand out.
12 Higher Education Marketing Trends In 2025
1. Personalization
How can you market educational content? This is a question many marketers may be asking. Well, we have quite a few stops to make, so buckle up. According to a study, 81% of Gen Z students appreciate personalized ads more than earlier generations. How can you prepare customized and highly targeted experiences? Let’s start with building your ideal buyer personas. For every major you offer, you should create a specific character you wish to attract. For example, if you offer IT, education, and law degrees, you should craft a different persona for each major, as each one targets a different type of student. Dive deep into their needs, motivation, and goals to understand what keeps their engine running and what demotivates them.
Once you do that, find out what types of jobs typically hire graduates with the majors you offer. Where can a young lawyer work, and what knowledge do companies require from them? Then, center your content marketing ideas and higher education advertising around this sentiment and create material that explains in detail where a graduate can work after completing their degree. Diversify your content production, using different formats to engage learners with various preferences.
2. Video Engagement
Digital marketing for universities can’t go anywhere without creating short-form and long-form videos. Gen Z students are already on their phones browsing reels and videos on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. And since their attention span has decreased severely, short-form videos are a one-way street and a pressing higher education digital marketing trend. This means that you should create a powerful social media strategy, producing compelling videos that educate and entertain prospects. You may interview other students regarding their campus experiences and what they like about life at your institution. Encourage them to share the challenges they faced and how their teachers helped overcome them. To make your digital marketing strategy for educational institutions more engaging, add interactive elements in your videos, including polls and clickable links.
Make sure to add your branding to every piece of content you produce to ensure recognition and brand awareness. If you want, you can create longer versions of the same videos and upload them on YouTube. This way, whoever wants to learn more can do it by watching a video instead of reading a long text.
3. Social Media
When the majority of Gen Z students are on social media, digital marketing for the education industry becomes integral. Social platforms are not used only to share personal images and updates. They offer educational institutions the opportunity to meet their prospects, engage with them, and answer simple inquiries. Analyze all platforms to understand where your audience is and what types of content they like to consume. For instance, 97% of people between 13 and 17 are on YouTube. This means that a YouTube marketing strategy can boost brand awareness and attract potential candidates. Invest in user-generated content (UGC) that shows learners what life is really like on campus. This is especially valuable for those wishing to live on the college campus.
Stories and reels create a “cozier” feeling than long-form videos, which may feel rehearsed and staged. Don’t disregard TikTok, as it’s a platform filled with younger demographics. Additionally, follow the current trend in higher education and set up group chats on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Viber to create communities where you’ll answer common questions and provide updates. Lastly, you may use LinkedIn to publish useful insights, studies, and thought leadership pieces, proving why your institution is the best.
4. Micro-Influencers
Influencer marketing is still at the top of higher education marketing trends. However, it’s not only famous figures and largely popular influencers that can help you with your social media marketing. Micro-influencers may have a smaller following, but they tend to be more targeted and engaged. Consumers’ preferences have now changed, and people don’t want staged celebrity content. Instead, they prefer honest and authentic material that comes from lesser-known individuals who offer their unfiltered opinions. Who should you contact then? We have great news for you! You don’t necessarily have to look for outside help from established influencers. Take a look inside your institution. Chances are you have enrolled students with decent followings on social media platforms.
Ask them to share their honest opinions regarding your college and overall campus experience. This is a genius lead generation technique, as future learners don’t want to hear only about classes and study groups. They also want to learn how life inside the campus is. How close is the library, and how great is the university cafeteria? You really shouldn’t ignore this marketing communication trend.
5. Virtual Tours
Back in the day, students would travel with their parents all over the country to attend campus tours. However, this past reality isn’t always feasible now. Why would a student spend hundreds of dollars on transportation just to check out 2–3 colleges when they can do it online? Virtual tours are a rising higher education online marketing trend that allows individuals from all over the globe to attend university premises from wherever they are. Augmented Reality (AR) in education shows students that you have embraced technological advancements, so it’s easier to engage them. Campus tours are more than showing facilities—your goal is to communicate your atmosphere and culture.
A good content marketing tactic is to create different tour formats. For starters, you can record your facilities while students proceed with their daily activities and upload it on YouTube or as a pre-recorded webinar anyone can access by giving their email address. Additionally, you can host a few live events for students who can’t attend on-site tours. This way, they experience the event just like everyone else, without feeling left out. These methods attract international students, too, who have even more significant hurdles to attending your campus tours.
6. SEO And PPC
SEO will never stop being a digital marketing trend in higher education because it helps you grow your organic results. Let’s say someone searches for colleges in a specific geographic area for a major you offer. Utilizing SEO skills helps you appear at the top of result pages and increase your enrollment chances. Don’t forget that most people don’t go beyond the first results page, so appearing there is essential. However, SEO isn’t a fast-acting pill. It’s a long-term investment that takes time to fully work. That’s why most institutions hire content marketing agencies with extensive experience in the eLearning sector. Inbound marketing for higher education brings more website visitors, increasing click-through rates and engagement rates. You may need to ask a digital marketing firm to perform an SEO audit and check where you stand.
Moreover, PPC is another trend in higher education, although a costly one. Building a PPC strategy takes time and organized thinking so you don’t waste your resources. Nevertheless, it’s very targeted and typically has a positive ROI since you pay only when someone clicks on your ad. You basically pick the keywords you want to target based on your audience’s preferences and online behavior. You can monitor your results and customize your campaigns accordingly.
Don’t try to choose between SEO and PPC. Instead, incorporate them both into your content marketing strategy to increase your ROI and boost brand awareness cohesively.
7. Mobile Optimization
Most successful content marketing strategy examples prove that content should be optimized for mobile use. The majority of teens have smartphones and use them to search various things online, including potential colleges. Education marketing campaigns, whether they are articles, videos, or webinars, should be suitable for mobile viewing. SEO also benefits from proper mobile optimization since search engines take it very seriously and require a great mobile experience to give great rankings. There are various things you can do to optimize mobile views. For starters, ensure your web design is responsive, with user-friendly experiences across different screens. Also, compress images so pages load quickly and reduce bounce rates.
Additionally, you should create a website that is clear to browse via mobile, with easy-to-access menus and concise CTA buttons. If you want to take this digital marketing trend in education a bit further, why don’t you create an app? Learners can find everything they need about their major, enroll, and receive push notifications regarding the latest news.
8. Email Marketing
Although a staple in almost all industry sectors, email marketing is now a higher education marketing trend. Institutions should treat their learners as leads and leverage the benefits of email marketing to nurture and convert them. So, we return to your buyer personas. You can’t send the same emails to everyone. You should segment your list based on the interests of each prospect. If you do that, it’s super easy to set up automatic email drip campaigns informing learners about your programs, faculty, and campus features. But nurturing should be strategic: you must create a series of emails depending on the actions people take.
For example, if a student downloads a campus guide, they are probably thinking seriously about enrolling in your institution. Your next email may provide even more free resources that will put your programs at the top of the list. If, on the other hand, someone watches a snippet of your tour and leaves early, maybe they are not convinced yet and need retargeting.
9. Success Stories
According to research, Gen Z students care a lot about the cost of a college degree. So, they want to receive practical skills that will help them succeed in life and find a job that they love and that pays well. This means that education sector marketing should focus on the success rates of their programs. How successful have your past students been? Have they received any special job titles after graduating? How did your major provide them with everything they needed to succeed? Case studies would be the perfect option for B2B companies to showcase such feats. But with Gen Z students, this might be fruitless as they prefer to watch and listen instead of reading.
So, you can create videos with past student testimonials. Let the learners do the marketing for you by mentioning what your programs offered them and how this knowledge translated into their professional pathways. You may also join popular podcasts and talk about these achievements with the hosts. Or you can publish your own podcast, inviting past students on every episode.
10. Chatbots
We’ve known for a while that chatbots and AI would be the top marketing industry trends, and this development affects higher education as well. Chatbots are, in fact, one of the top applications of Artificial Intelligence in the marketing industry, as they allow users to navigate websites and find answers to simple questions. Some institutions have invested in this enrollment marketing trend by introducing chatbots. Every time someone enters your domain, they are greeted by a bot that asks them about their needs. During work hours, you can have an administration employee answer complex queries when the bot can’t provide a clear explanation. But what happens on Saturdays and Sundays when no one is there? You can simply train your chatbot to direct complex inquiries to employees who will answer first thing on Monday morning.
11. Humor And Memes
Young learners don’t want to read utterly formal language with no personality. They want to feel connected to an institution, like you care about their needs and understand them. One good way to build rapport is through humor. Your promotional campaigns should poke fun at what bothers and worries learners. For example, many individuals care about high tuition fees. Instead of defending yourself all the time, join in on the joke and make light of the situation. Or you can simply study their sense of humor and the memes they use to understand what tickles them. Use this knowledge to create engaging posts that are intriguing.
12. Live Streaming Platforms
These higher education digital marketing trends seem unusual, but let us explain. Gen Z is a tech-savvy generation, and these people will make up about 30% of the entire workforce in the US. So, to attract them with your lead magnet ideas, you must approach them at their preferred locations. One thing this generation loves doing is streaming TV shows and movies and watching popular figures on their live streams. So, how can you join in the fun and promote your digital marketing for schools? You can create ads specifically for streaming platforms. Since traditional TV is on the decline and fewer Gen Z people watch it, you should direct your attention to live streams. This over-the-top (OTT) marketing tactic allows you to reach your audience efficiently.
Key Takeaway
No matter how many higher education marketing trends we mention, there is one thing students will always require: learner autonomy. Not only do they want to receive personalized content to convince them to join your institution, but they also care about their learning journeys once they enroll. To reach your enrollment goals, you must build a lead generation website that is mobile-friendly, user-friendly, and easy to navigate. If possible, take advantage of the benefits of AI in marketing and incorporate a chatbot in your domain to help ease the administrative workload. At the same time, social media, email marketing, and content marketing for higher education are still more relevant than ever.
Invest in videos, preferably short-form, student success stories, and micro-influencers to get your message across. Virtual tours can attract prospects from all over the country as well as all over the globe. Try to think outside the box and reach your young audience on platforms that were once completely discarded by digital marketers. Finally, don’t forget to cast your vote on SEO and PPC, as their combined benefits will improve your Google ranking and boost brand awareness.
