PR for the higher education sector
Students aren’t just looking for reputable courses anymore. They want the whole experience. To achieve growth in student numbers, a higher-education establishment needs buy-in from stakeholders and the wider student community.
Our higher education PR services use public relations, as well as other creative and digital strategies to attract students, funding from companies, and partnerships with schools.
Through education PR our team can not only raise awareness of your higher education organisation but position you as the academic ‘place to be’.
Why is education PR so important for academic brands?
Students are among our most sophisticated users of social media and technology – making it a vital sales channel for any University or college. Education PR enables you to own the conversation on the outlets they’re consuming media on.
This is a great way of not only showing your course benefits, but buzzing socials, campus, and societies – which students are looking for.
How can Prohibition help my educational institution?
We’re a specialist higher education PR agency – and don’t just take our word for it.
We’ve worked with a whole list of recognised brands in the education sector including Northumbria University, the University of Oxford, the University of Leeds, Kirklees College, Durham University and many more.
Our higher education clients
Our higher education PR services
Increased organic visibility
Struggling to rank higher on SERPs? It’s highly likely that a younger audience will be wanting to find out more information about your academic institution through online, visual or audio search.
Digital PR plays an important role in this. Digital PR involves creating proactive, planned, and reactive campaigns in order to achieve backlinks from strong online reputable sources.
Our carefully considered PR strategy will secure backlinks that indicate to Google that your content is trustworthy in the higher education sector – improving your site’s organic rankings.
Our ‘always-on’ approach makes sure we’re utilising every media opportunity to build an authoritative and reputable presence in this busy sector.
Long-lasting education media contacts
When it comes to outreach, we only target the publications that truly matter to the higher education sector.
Over the ten years we’ve been operating as a public relations agency, our team has developed strong relationships with key education journalists and this has resulted in a specialist understanding of the news agenda.
Whether it’s highlighting your expertise in a certain field, university research, or abroad placement opportunities; our education PR expertise will use media relations to put your brand at the forefront of news outlets and drive consumer interest.
Social media marketing
Social media offers a personal way of reaching several audiences through content marketing, whilst also allowing you to respond in real time.
Through a legion of communications, our team can develop an image of your brand and provide helpful information that audiences are wanting from educational institutions. For universities and colleges, this could consist of information on partnered industry bodies, research facilities, campus amenities, funding opportunities, or general student life.
In addition to this, we can also assist your social media campaigns with videography content such as testimonials from current or graduated students to make your brand messages succinct and easily digestible.
Paid advertising
Another way to amplify your organic efforts is through paid social advertising.
Paid advertising enables us to touchpoint users through behaviours such as location, demographic, and timings.
This allows our team to subject your content to a certain age group, for instance, targeting the 18-22 age bracket – which will be a large majority of the student population. This could even be broadened to later generations, such as post-graduates or even parents so they can recommend your higher education facility to their children.
To drive recruitment further, we can re-target people who have already interacted with your page and prompt them to re-engage through personalised content.
Influencer marketing in the Education Sector
Looking to shift your target audience? Wanting to target academics from a competitor’s campus? Influencer marketing should be a key part of your strategy.
Influencers have an active listening audience that respects and values their opinions. In the higher education sector, this could be figureheads from your alumni, celebrity endorsements, or popular student newspapers that can share your brand message.
From sourcing to vetting, our team will match an influencer to your business goals and needs – that will drive brand advocacy from not just students, but parents, teachers, and firms across the UK and beyond.
Supporting overall digital marketing strategy
Digital marketing is evolving every day, especially when it comes to SEO. Not only can methods such as digital PR improve organic performance, but social media marketing is now powering search.
Communication comes as second nature to us. By aligning your communications across your channels, you’re able to present more direct and authentic messages to your target audience – supporting overall employer branding.
Digital may be growing, but offline marketing and PR techniques should not be ignored. Raising awareness through events, billboard advertising, and newspaper coverage will create word-of-mouth and prompt users to visit your site organically.
Integrated PR
We’re a full-service PR and marketing agency, which means we can achieve comprehensive media coverage online and offline. Not every student is online, especially students that are older and are registering to follow their passion, so by reaching them through traditional methods we’re not leaving anyone behind.
This proves beneficial for education facilities as our media relations services can generate interest from local press offices, as well as national media – meaning we’re able to drive referrals from a number of sources.
Successful recruitment events
In a world where face-to-face interactions are limited, events bring genuine interactions that lead to a higher quality of lead – kicking them further down the sales cycle.
Higher education students are going to be spending several years of their life at an institution,’ so they need to feel confident they’re making the right choice. This is not only a sales tool to entice students but for schools, government departments, stakeholders, as well as large and small businesses, to highlight the benefits your education facility brings by partnering with them.
Events can take a long time to plan but don’t worry we’re event specialists. For Northumbria University, we developed a university-wide social media strategy to deliver a series of workshops and face-to-face training sessions with key stakeholders. We’re here to take this pressure off your hands, as well as deliver a fantastic job.
Content creation
Tuition costs don’t come cheap, so prospective students will want to make sure it warrants the investment.
Content marketing sells your experience and career opportunities, through captivating imagery and video content. Our creative team can provide a multitude of video services; co-operate, thought leadership content, TV adverts, or social media content.
Online video content consumption is only growing, with dedicated video platforms such as TikTok and Instagram enabling new ways to reach audiences.
Reputation Management
Reputation is everything in the education sector, prospective academics want to know they’re going to a reputable higher education facility that’s going to look amazing on their CV. And with the jobs market more competitive than ever, holding your business to the highest amount of integrity is where institutions can shine.
For stakeholders, it’s this reputation that will make them choose you over competitors. At the end of the day, a partnership needs to show the stakeholder’s business in the best possible light too.
It doesn’t matter what level your higher education facility is, we know the strategies to stand you out against your other counterparts through reputation management.
Crisis Management and PR experts
Is a story having a detrimental effect on your brand? We’re crisis management specialists, we’re here to make a bad story go away or prevent one from happening.
We provide professional consultancy services in crisis management and expert handling of complex media enquiries, so we can look after your best interests and business interests at all times and in all circumstances.
Education PR Training
Being able to communicate effectively and get your key brand messages across to the media is absolutely essential in order to build or maintain a reputable brand.
We run comprehensive courses on all aspects of media training, helping you make the most out of the media and make your team communications experts. Or even better, let us handle your comms.
Marketing and PR support
Our entire education PR team is spearheaded by expert strategists and specialists who are well-versed in brand positioning, design, tone of voice development, and creative communications strategies.
We’re here to offer support and guidance, no matter where you may be in the world. Prohibition’s press office is an extension of your marketing team, we’re your PR Director, providing ‘always-on’ PR support and solutions.
Why Choose Prohibition PR as your Higher Education Publication Relations Agency?
Specialist education PR agency
From training to reputation management, to public relations campaigns, to social media audits and strategies, we’ve helped a range of higher education clients that are recognised across the globe through education PR. You can trust you’re in safe hands with us.
What other sectors do we operate in?
Prohibition has been operating for 10+ years, working with clients from a range of diverse B2C and B2B industries, so we can help in any field.
If you’re looking for marketing and PR support beyond higher education, our expert knowledge covers a number of fields such as luxury PR, retail PR, travel PR, food and drink PR; to name a few.
Full service agency
We may look like a normal PR agency, but that’s far from the truth. We’re different from other PR agencies, we’re a paid and organic social media marketing agency, influencer marketing agency, video marketing agency, public relations, and advertising agency all wrapped in one.
This means we’re able to apply our arsenal of innovative strategies across all our services to gain maximum success and return on investment.
Multi-award-winning Higher Education PR Agency
There are a lot of award-winning PR firms out there, but we’re not just award-winning, we’re multi-award-winning and that is over more than 10 years – you know you are dealing with quality.
Our work has bagged us over 45 awards over the past 10 years; including being named as one of the best PR agencies in the North by Prolific North, as well as winning 30 CIPR Awards and multiple PRCA DARE awards.
Successful campaigns are of massive importance to us, we strive to create the best results for any client; every day.
