3 Digital Marketing Strategies to Reboot Your Healthcare University’s Recruitment

Healthcare services — even those that were previously running like clockwork — have taken a massive hit in the last year. And it's not just COVID-19 that is disrupting our well-being; healthcare is also facing organizational crises. For example, the WHO predicts that by 2030, there will be around 18 million fewer health workers globally.

These losses are already felt in educational institutions. Enrollments in healthcare universities have been falling, and they're continuing to fall this year. As the grip of the pandemic eases in some areas and students once again plan for their futures, healthcare desperately needs a marketing plan for university recruitment.

3 Marketing Ideas for Universities Looking to Boost Recruitment

Healthcare universities in particular are in need of marketing strategies right now. They don't need disparate ideas, but rather a cohesive, creative strategy that combines the diverse channels and mediums where potential students are spending their time. Here are three ideas that you can adapt to your university and mix together in a balance that makes sense for your student body:

1. Blend digital and traditional in a multichannel strategy.

Your audience makes increasingly complex journeys online. They check in to multiple places, frequent various social platforms throughout the day (all on different devices), and though they have habits, their patterns also shift often. To build the best experience you can online, then, you need to be able to follow how people are actually moving in real time.

A multichannel, multitouch approach is great for finding potential consumers where they are. Send a message via email, follow up with a vivid image on social that amplifies the email's key theme, and post on Twitter with a link to a super useful student resource. All in all, blend the channels and mediums that speak most clearly to your audience.

2. Measure and tweak to make it a science.

With limited budget and time to turn this digital marketing plan into new recruits, you need a methodology that doesn't leave clicks to chance. You need to see where your potential students are online and send content to them in a way that will encourage them to reach back to you and make a connection.

An attribution model allows you to zero in on the moments of the funnel where inspiration can lead to intention, and intention can lead to action. A multitouch attribution model is especially useful; it doesn't just analyze the first or last point of contact with a user, but instead checks in at points throughout their journey so you can get a clear picture of where your digital marketing is working and where it's failing.

3. Put it all together with an ROI dashboard.

Once you're measuring attribution and scientifically improving the efficiency of your marketing messages, you'll want some way of managing all this action. It's helpful to pull all the right data into one place so you can see how particular strategies are succeeding and how others might need to be replaced.

Keeping a dashboard can also connect you to the return on your investment. How is your university's social media marketing plan putting dollars back into your budget? Which techniques are most correlated with ROI? Just check your dashboard, and you will be empowered to make smarter budgetary decisions.

Why Work With CMG Local Solutions?

From our work crafting strategic marketing plans for universities, we know that your student body is everything to you. Your identity is dependent on who is walking through your hallways. With that, you need a unique approach when it comes to your university's strategic marketing plan. We know your audience, so our strategies are tailored to the best ways and means to reach them directly — all without wasting your budget.

This is what we did when AdventHealth University got in touch with us. As a small private institution, AHU needed our help to target programs to potential students interested in medicine. After struggling to meet enrollment targets, it began measuring KPIs and ROI with an attribution model. Since then, its budget has increased year over year, and it has set new, more aggressive enrollment goals.

Connect with CMG Local Solutions to discover how these strategies could help you in similar ways.