The content options for marketing in education are seemingly endless and often overwhelming.
How do you know that what you’re allocating time and resources to will bring the results you need? How do you decide which education topics to focus on and which platforms to use?
What you need is a formula or a plan to help tie your education marketing strategy into your larger corporate strategy.
Let’s look at how the 30-30-40TM Rule does exactly that.
30% strategic development
Dedicate 30 percent of your time to strategic development. Where is your organization headed in the next 12 months? Does your brand reflect that path? How does marketing fit into your overall plan? What goals are you trying to meet, and how will you measure your progress?
With a clear path at the overall organization level, end goals in mind on a department level, and step-by-step milestones outlined along the way, it becomes crystal clear where content creation fits best.
If your company is in early growth stages, your education marketing strategy will be much different than an organization that has been around for 50 years, or a corporation that is rebranding or changing directions. Knowing your strategy plays a key role in dictating the type and quantity of content you create.
30% content creation
With a thoughtful plan in hand, get to work creating content. Free resources to warm up your prospects is a fool-proof way to show how “in the know” you are about your industry.
Content can be anything from a customer case study, or a research white paper, to a Facebook Live interview with an industry resource, or a weekly blog post. It can even be as simple as a batch of new testimonials for your website.
Your goal is to build credibility and be a reliable source that your customers and prospects can turn to with questions. Make them like you. Help them trust you. Before you know it, you’ll be a place they regularly turn to for guidance.
40% promotion
It’s time to take that content you created and promote it like crazy. Build a native advertising campaign around the content. Drive people to your blog with a LinkedIn post. Have a new case study or white paper hot off the press? Leverage these assets in a media relations strategy to secure credible, third-party coverage.
Strategize to avoid the trap of letting your content die. The unfortunate truth is that many companies create a piece of content, promote it for a week, and never talk about it again. Before you know it, that piece you spent so much time and energy on – while still very relevant – is buried on your website, five clicks deep.
This 40 percent promotion covers all your content. Don’t let the old go to waste just because it was written eight or 10 months ago. Remember, many of your readers may be new and were not around when a piece was first born. If it still fits within your education marketing strategy, there’s no reason to let it fade off into the distance.
Using this fool-proof 30-30-40 Rule, you’re guaranteed to have high-quality education marketing content that fits your customized, strategic development plan, to attract more relevant, qualified leads.
This article originally appeared on the C. Blohm blog; reprinted with permission.
