Introduction

Are you an educational institution striving for better online traction? If so, you have come to the right place. Meet Pankaj, a digital marketing expert in an education marketing agency that helps educational institutions achieve digital success. Today, he says, “Students are not your target audience; their parents are.” Are you frustrated with Pankaj because of his statement? But keep in mind that Pankaj is an expert in his field. Let us expand his arguments.

The Role of Parents

While Pankaj’s statement might be surprising, parents’ influence on decision-making regarding children’s education is of no surprise. According to a National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) study, 87% of parents are involved in their children’s education decisions. And even if these statistics are not choked your way, it is observationally evident how millions of students every year pursue either medical or engineering just because their “parents said so.” Still, conventionally and irrationally, educational businesses are married to the idea of targeting students incessantly, while those they should be targeting are making decisions without the impact of their marketing. Now that we are familiar with our target audience let’s scrutinize the transition we need to make in our marketing efforts.

Same Platforms?

When the target audience was (potential) students, gen-Z platforms such as Instagram or Snapchat were (assumably) being used. However, the reanalyzed audience doesn’t reside there. Their platforms are different; their platforms are time-worn. Parents use more personal and professional platforms like LinkedIn, E-mail, WhatsApp, and Facebook instead of the more attention-heavy platforms mentioned before. YouTube is another platform popularly used by older millennials and the gen-X alike. The content should be personalized, similar to the nature of the platforms used, more on which in the succeeding section.

Targeting Parents with Tailored Content

Humans are creatures of emotions, and all parents are a little more of those creatures, primarily when the subject is concerned with their children. This simple yet profound fact is what will influence all our marketing decisions. Let us understand this with an example. Suppose you, as an educational institution, are launching a new course and want some traction for your organization. If we target the previous audience, we might make a fast-paced, entertaining reel talking about them, considering their short attention span and the need for attention. However, parents don’t need all that. They need some personal treatment. A video talking about all the benefits their children would receive during or after the completion of the course is what will get the game going. While engaging the former is energetic, the latter prefers more laid-back content.

Organic & Inorganic is a Myth

There is a difference in the display of organic and inorganic results, and gen-Zs recognize that. They are resistant to clicking on the paid ads. However, they are ready to scroll a little for the organic results, so investing in organic optimization when your target audience is young is beneficial. However, the redefined target audience is different from that. They only scroll a little for organic results and are bound to click on inorganic paid results. In the case of parents ‘ audience, investing in paid advertising would redeem you far more rewards than any organic result could ever do for you.

Simplicity is the Road to Heaven

The new target audience doesn’t love jargon being sent their way. They love it when it’s simple, and the content speaks directly about their needs. Aligning with this statistically, the usage of laptops and computers for personal use keeps decreasing as people grow older. So, it is evident that most of our target audience uses smartphones to browse the internet for anything they need help with. All this concludes with only one piece of advice: optimize your website for mobile users and keep your content simple, and we are good to go. Optimizing your websites for mobile phones can also help you get better rankings in search results – win-win!

Creating a Super Brand Identity

If you take one piece of advice from this blog, be it this: a strong brand identity covers everything. Do you think celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan have never done evil deeds? It isn’t possible. We are all bound to make some mistakes here and there. But what makes them appear so holy in the public’s eyes is their brand identity. Or, as Kunal Shah remarks, “super trust” is a concatenation of trust in low-trust societies. Ask yourself, “Why do our parents prefer TATA and Mahindra so much? Or why Mediagarh is preferred to generate admission leads for colleges?” It is because of the same phenomenon. As an educational institution, you must know what the parents consider “trustworthy” and how you can leverage your particular skills to appear super trustworthy. A usual trend that follows through all the super trust identities is that they all care (or seem to care) about the common. Publishing such content can help you create a pool of trust with your new audience.

Conclusion

Educational institutions have traditionally been targeting students to market themselves. However, the real target audience has been parents; eventually, they must target them to attract more traction. The digital marketing space is growing, with new trends being introduced daily. Does it look like a struggle to manage all this? Consider hiring the best education marketing agency in India to manage all this, and you can continue creating an impact in the world by building the future generation.