How to brand higher education institutions online

Branding universities online and increasing brand awareness can be a key challenge in international student recruitment. To help overcome this issue, institutions need to start seeing prospective students as customers who want to make use of its services. Before you get started, it’s important to find out which kind of students your institution wishes to attract. For example, if you wish to attract ‘start-up’ minded individuals, then you will need a different design and message than when aiming to recruit more research-minded individuals. Furthermore, it’s important to define what your institution stands for and separates you from others so you can use a consistent story, tone-of-voice and visuals that support this identity. As a brand is more than just a logo and marketing materials, your brand identity should also be presented in everything offline. From classes and events to interior design. That’s why it’s important to define who you are and stay true to that, which ensures that you communicate a consistent and honest message across all touch points. Eventually, when (prospective) students confirm your brand identity, that’s when you can tell that your branding efforts have been successful.

“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.” –
Jeff Bezos (CEO and founder Amazon)

But what are some ways for institutions to build a strong brand? We compiled some useful tips that help you to brand your university online.

Finding your brand identity

Developing a clear and distinctive brand is the first step to stand out in the higher education market. By defining your identity, you lay the foundation for branding your institution.

Be different, be consistent, and be relevant – these three key guidelines help you to shape your institution’s brand identity. By differentiating yourself from competitors, you demonstrate prospective students the distinctive characteristics of your institution. However, finding the university’s niche doesn’t mean finding a one-of-a-kind characteristic; it means that your uniqueness needs to be communicated online effectively. Show whether your university conducts excellent research, is internationally focused or practical orientated. Make sure that everyone working in your institution knows about the newly designed brand identity and embodies it externally. When talking to prospective students, aligning your exclusive characteristics and values can give you a clear advantage among your competitors. Having defined your differentiation and consistency strategy, you should ensure that the brand identity truly reflects you as an institution. In that way, you increase the institution’s relevance to prospective students and can influence their perception.

Part of a university’s brand value is the student experience, characterised as the student journey ranging from being a prospect to becoming an alumnus. The student experience should focus on covering three aspects: academic integrity, future employability and campus life. However, it’s not only important to give prospective students the right impression of the experience, but also to guide and support them along the way to make sure your university meets their expectations. Investigating on the influencers that shape the student experience gives you the ability to impact how your students perceive the brand.

Meet Sun – a fan of Aalto University

When our colleague, Katerina Rogova, was on a trip to meet with clients, she met Sun who studies in Finland. When Sun was comparing universities online, he – and many other students – narrowed down his selections by selecting those where he felt that the brand and online identity corresponded to his personality. As a social and entrepreneurial individual, he soon felt he could relate to Aalto University. Its vibrant, colourful and student-focused website made him want to explore his options at the institution more in-depth, by researching reviews, study programmes, career options and student activities. But it was the successful first impression that made Sun want to further explore Aalto University.

Building a strong online brand

When recruiting students from different countries in the world, the Internet is a crucial touch-point between institutions and students. Building a strong online brand can be a key challenge in international student recruitment efforts. But where to start?

The ultimate brand statement for a university is its website. It’s the heart of your online branding and marketing activities. Thus, a structured website that provides clear information on the three aspects of the student experience – academic integrity, future employability and campus life – helps to engage students. Our research among 500 websites revealed that the majority of universities don’t provide student testimonials which can be valuable for communicating all three aspects. A vivid and positive student testimonial adds credibility to your claim and institutional message and gives the prospect a strong impression that allows him or her to consider applying for your university. In addition, we found that the value of university degree programmes lacks clear explanations. What can students achieve with your degree programme in the future? Which careers can they expect to break into? How high is the graduate employment rate? By explicitly stating the answers on your website, students have something tangible to rely upon in their decision-making process.

Using a mix of online channels helps you to strengthen your brand identity across platforms. Some popular tools are social media and email marketing that all link to your website. Involving a third party to increase your brand awareness provides you with several advantages and professional advice.

Taking advantage of online search platforms and resources

All of this advice is easy enough to say but isn’t necessarily easy to implement. For this reason, relying on online platforms– as well as the expertise of digital marketing professionals and recruitment specialists – can enable you to put your brand to use. Platforms and systems are built to not only create brand awareness; they also allow to track and verify the impact of your brand. Moreover, you’re encouraged to make use of the online tools and campaigns that are easy-to-use, accessible, and customisable – wherever you want to reach students, or wherever you want your brand to be recognised, the online marketing world has channels for you to utilise.

That’s where Studyportals comes in. We, as global study choice platform, provide online listings and campaigns that show you how to reach and capture the interest of millions of students worldwide. An exclusive feature of having a premium-listed profile is a prominent placement on our search results page, allowing visitors to find your university’s programmes and get direct access to your website. Our job is to make sure that we develop the ideal campaign – working with you, not for you.

Finding your brand identity and embedding it on your website and social media channels are the first step in branding your institution online. Once you have found your niche, it’s time to start increasing your brand awareness among prospective students and communicate your message through the channels that work best for you.