Education is one of the biggest sectors online, with over 4.8 billion people having taken the virtual learning plunge. This makes it a potential goldmine for marketers.

However, marketing for online education can be tricky, as many people see it as a safe space for consumers to learn how to educate themselves. Therefore, marketing for online education often focuses on product comparison or features related to cost and quality. While these are important areas to cover, marketers should also explore other angles to reach potential learners.

In this article, we’ll discuss six tips for online education marketers to reach consumers in a non-traditional manner.

1. Tailor Your Content to Attract a Niche Audience

If you’re writing content for the world at large, you might want to consider creating material that’s specific to a general audience. For example, if you’re writing about nutrition, you might want to include some tips for people with dietary restrictions (e.g., vegans, vegetarians) and some general tips for everyone (e.g., eat more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains).

You can also create additional content for more specific audiences, like the vegan or vegetarian community. What’s important is developing content that appeals to the intended audience without being too targeted or preachy.

2. Use Video To Its Full Potential

With the rise of TikTok and other platforms where videos can be uploaded, there’s no question that video content is growing. More and more people are using video content to learn, with over 92% of people using some form of video to learn something new or follow a course.

Whether you’re just beginning your journey into video or you have experience, this is a space where you can really explore and grow. You can also integrate video content with other digital platforms, like blogs, forums, and social media.

3. Foster Social Media Confidence

A crucial element of any educational marketing campaign is getting people to engage with your content on social media. To do this, you need to establish credibility on social media by consistently posting interesting and useful content. In turn, your audience will become more engaged with your content, and you can start to see the benefits of this channel (e.g., likes, shares, and retweets).

To encourage people to share your content on social media, you can incorporate a range of tactics, from building a community through various platforms like Twitter to encouraging people to spread the word about your educational content through social media contests and giveaways.

4. Establish Your Authorship

An author’s byline is an important part of any journalistic article, but it’s especially crucial when it comes to an educational piece. To establish credibility and add authority to your content, include a byline with each piece of content you publish. Even better, develop a writing style that’s distinct from the journalist you typically work with. This will help establish your content as legitimate and encourage people to trust your work.

5. Measure The Effectiveness of Your Campaign

Although we touched on this a little bit above, it’s important to consider how effective your online education marketing campaign was. To do this, you’ll need to set a benchmark for success, determine what changes you made as a result of the campaign, and set these changes into motion. Then, you can determine if this is the direction your organization needs to head in.

For example, did you increase your social media presence? Does your content get read more often or shared more frequently? Did you see an increase in registration for an online class or a surge in the number of people who signed up for your newsletter? Or, did you see a significant rise in website traffic as a result of the campaign?

If you can track these results accurately, you can determine the true effectiveness of your efforts. Additionally, you can use this benchmark to determine if you need to adjust your strategy or if it’s time to celebrate your success.

6. Be Creative

As we mentioned above, people are often put off by marketers and advertisers who try to pressure them into buying a product by shaming them with statistics or comparing product features. However, it’s crucial that you utilize different methods to attract and retain learners. This is often where creativity comes in.

What’s important is developing content that provides value and encourages people to learn more without being aggressive or trying to sell something. Instead of using the above-mentioned methods, explore methods that could potentially blow people’s minds, like when you describe in detail how a scientific principle works or when you creatively explain something using everyday examples and analogies. People love when educators are able to tie educational content into something they’re already familiar with, and when presented with creative content, they’re more likely to pay attention and retain what they learn. Moreover, you can utilize various platforms, like TikTok or Instagram, to develop creative content for your educational marketing strategy.

Hopefully, this article has helped illuminate some ideas for marketers who want to dive into the lucrative world of online education. The key takeaway is that marketing for online education can and should be personalized and adapted to fit the needs of each unique audience. Moreover, this is a space where marketers can really shine by being creative and utilizing various innovative methods to attract, engage, and retain learners.