Leveraging Virtual Campus Tours as a Strategic Marketing Tool
With so many options available, colleges and universities must continuously refine their marketing efforts to stand out among potential enrollees.
Virtual campus tours have become an important digital tool for bolstering recruitment and engagement. These tours showcase your campus facilities, allowing prospective students to gain valuable insights into your institution's vibrancy from anywhere in the world.
By integrating innovative technology and strategic digital marketing, you can leverage these interactive virtual tours to increase your outreach and conversion rates.
The Importance of Virtual Tours in Student Recruitment
Digital campus tours are no longer just a temporary substitute for in-person visits—they've become a central piece of the college search process. More students than ever are relying on this interactive online experience to help guide their decisions, as they offer:
Accessibility and Inclusivity. Virtual tours ensure that geographic, financial, and logistical barriers don't hinder a student's ability to explore a campus. As a result, institutions can reach a broader audience, including international students and those from lower-income backgrounds.
Round-the-Clock Availability. Unlike in-person tours, virtual tours don’t have time or staffing constraints. Different audiences can explore campuses at their convenience, whether it’s late at night or during weekends, accommodating different time zones and schedules.
Enhanced Engagement through Immersive Technology. Many virtual tours now incorporate interactive elements such as 360-degree videos, virtual reality (VR), and multimedia content like student testimonials and lecture snippets. This immersive technology stimulates engagement, helping prospective students visualize themselves on campus.
As you continue to adapt to the ever-evolving digital landscape, incorporating virtual tours into your recruitment strategies will be essential for attracting, engaging, and converting top talent in an increasingly competitive environment.
Benefits of Virtual Tours in Higher Education Marketing
Creating virtual tours can elevate your educational marketing strategy and help you make a great first impression on potential students. You can highlight signature programs, your cutting-edge facility, and student life, providing a holistic view of campus life that’s accessible from their own homes.
Statistics show that online tours can be very effective in retaining inquiring students. Recent surveys from Medium suggest they can increase application rates by as much as 67%. This is a substantial influx you don't want to miss out on!
The interactive elements of virtual tours provide students with a deeper level of engagement than static photographs or traditional video content alone.
Features like 360-degree views, interactive maps, and embedded media help potential enrolees explore your campus environment in a fun way. When implemented successfully, this often translates to higher click rates and can also boost conversion.
From an internal marketing perspective, providing a tour link is also a cost-effective solution to many traditional recruitment challenges, such as travel costs, scheduling considerations, and capacity issues associated with physical tours. Even transitioning to a hybrid model, where both in-person and virtual tours are on offer, can help minimize costs while also boosting campus accessibility for students.
Marketing Virtual Campus Tours Toward Prospective Students
Creating virtual tours is more than just a technical project to put on your site—it's also a strategic marketing initiative that helps promote your school.
By marketing them to prospective students, you can showcase your facilities, faculty, and campus culture in an engaging and interactive way. These online tours can give potential students a firsthand look at what it would be like to study at your institution, helping them make informed decisions about their higher education choices.
Here are ten tips to keep in mind when designing a digital tour that both captivates and converts:
Set Clear Objectives. Define what you want to achieve with your virtual tours. Is it to increase applications? Enhance visibility in a specific geographic region? Showcase new facilities or programs? Clear goals will guide the design and functionality of the tour.
Focus on User Experience (UX). Consider prospective students’ journey from start to finish and aim to create an informative and engaging experience. A successful digital campus tour should be intuitive and easy to use. Navigation should be simple, and the design should be responsive and adapt to various devices, browsers, and social media channels.
Provide an Interactive Experience. Allow users to interact with your tour through clickable information points, quizzes, and virtual meet-and-greets with faculty and current students. Interactive elements can transform passive viewers into active participants, a crucial component of higher education marketing.
Use High-Quality Visuals and Content. High-resolution photos, compelling videos, and detailed descriptions help create a realistic and attractive portrayal of your campus. Authenticity is key, so highlight real student experiences and day-to-day campus life to represent your institution truthfully.
Optimize for Search Engines. Use relevant keywords in your tour’s content, meta descriptions, and alt tags. Using highly searched keywords, such as “virtual campus tour,” “online campus visit,” or specific SEO phrases that include the name of your institution and its popular programs, can improve search rankings.
Integrate It Into Your Website. Virtual tours should be easily accessible from your homepage or a prominently linked admissions page. Consider using QR codes for advertisements, making the tour directly accessible from a mobile device. High visibility can drive more traffic, increasing the likelihood of conversions.
Use a Social Media Strategy. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter) are invaluable for reaching prospects and garnering student engagement. Teasers, stories, or posts highlighting your tour's exciting aspects can drive traffic back to the full virtual tour hosted on your website.
Leverage Student Ambassadors. Current students can be engaged to share their experiences and promote the virtual tour within their networks. This adds authenticity to your promotions through peer-to-peer influence.
Remember Email Marketing. Personalized emails increase the likelihood of engagement, and targeted email campaigns to prospective enrollees who have shown interest in your school can include invitations to take the virtual tour.
Gather Feedback and Update Regularly. Continuous improvement to your existing content is essential. Gather feedback through surveys, marketing analytics, and user behaviour analysis to understand what's working and what isn’t in your tours. Regular updates, including those inspired by student feedback, are important for showcasing your school, its programs, and the community.
Key Metrics to Track the Effectiveness of Virtual Tours
As mentioned above, it's important to monitor your analytics to fully understand what marketing efforts are working and which ones need improvement.
To ensure that virtual tours effectively serve their purpose, you'll need to track specific metrics (if you aren’t already). This includes gathering and assessing data such as:
Visitor Traffic. Utilizing tools like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics can help you track the total number of visitors who view your virtual tour, providing a basic measure of its reach.
Engagement Rate. Programs like Hotjar or Crazy Egg can help you measure metrics like average time spent on the tour, the number of pages visited during the tour, and interactions (clicks) within the tour, giving you insights into how effective it is at retaining interest.
Conversion Rate. Using tools like HubSpot or Marketo can assist in measuring the percentage of tour viewers who take a desired action afterwards, such as applying to your school, signing up for more information, or contacting your admissions advisor.
Feedback and Surveys. Platforms like SurveyMonkey, ActiveCampaign, or Typeform can be used to create short surveys or feedback prompts at the end of your tour. These provide direct qualitative feedback on users’ experiences and suggestions for improvement.
Bounce Rate. Tools like SEMrush or Google Analytics can help you track the percentage of visitors who navigate away from your site after viewing only the virtual tour page. This is valuable information, as it may indicate a lack of engagement or unmet expectations.
Analyzing this data can help you identify patterns and trends in user behaviour, allowing you to make data-driven decisions to optimize your virtual tours and marketing strategies.
For example, if you notice that your virtual campus tour has a high bounce rate, you can investigate further to determine what may be causing users to leave the tour prematurely and make adjustments accordingly.
Additionally, tracking key metrics provides detailed insights into your leads and conversions, helping you measure the ROI of your virtual tours.
By understanding what areas and information points generate the most interest and engagement from potential students, you can allocate your marketing resources more effectively and create more targeted campaigns.
Navigating the Challenges of Virtual Tour Development
While a higher education campus tour offers numerous benefits, it can also come with its fair share of issues.
One of the most common pitfalls is not having enough tech integration to provide a seamless user experience. Creating a smooth and immersive tour can be complex, especially as technology continues to evolve, which is why it typically requires robust IT support.
Part of this is also ensuring that your virtual tours are accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. This involves adhering to web accessibility standards and making sure your overall web design is seamless.
This is important, as a digital campus visit can significantly affect a student’s interest in a college.
Campuses also evolve, and your tour must be regularly updated to reflect relevant changes. Information should be accurate and relevant to avoid confusion and increase your content's authority.
Lastly, avoid over-promising. It’s vital to balance showcasing your campus attractively and setting realistic expectations to avoid disillusionment when students visit or enroll.
Beyond Recruitment: Alumni Engagement and Donor Relations
Virtual tours can serve purposes beyond getting new students through the doors.
For alums, a nostalgic stroll through the new developments and changes at their alma mater can rekindle pride and foster a continued connection. This can also enhance their willingness to participate in alum events, sponsor initiatives, and/or make donations.
Virtual tours can show your potential donors the impact of their contributions and the ongoing developments they can support.
In addition, hosting virtual events or updating alums about new facilities, programs, or achievements through interactive tours can help keep them engaged and informed.
Get the Marketing Support You Need at Noetic
The success of your virtual campus tour hinges on its ability to engage your visitors meaningfully. With the right strategies, you can enhance your recruitment process and boost alum relations and donor engagement.
By employing strategic digital marketing, ensuring your tour remains up-to-date and accessible, and extending its use beyond recruitment, you can maximize the impact of your digital presence.
If you're unsure how to accomplish this or want to drive high conversions without sacrificing time, consider partnering with Noetic Marketer. We specialize in comprehensive digital strategy for higher education institutions.
Book a complimentary consultation with our knowledgeable and experienced team to discover how our services can support your school's growth by attracting high-quality leads and applications.
Book a Free Consultation
Implementing new marketing strategies requires a lot of planning and execution. If you need help, we offer customized, full-service higher education marketing services that will fill your pipeline with quality prospects and applications. You can schedule a free consultation with one of our experts to learn more about our services and how they can help your school grow!
Who We Are
Noetic Marketer is a higher education digital marketing agency that supports universities and colleges in many aspects. At the heart of Noetic Marketer is a team of strategists, designers, and analytic minds focused on achieving your school's enrollment and student and alums engagement goals.
Over the past few years, our team has created and implemented complete digital marketing solutions for higher education institutions across North America.
Our services include digital strategy consultations, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, social media advertising, content marketing, website design, email marketing, CRM implementation, and conversion rate optimization.
About the Author
With a keen eye for detail and a deep understanding of people's motivations, Jess brings her unique perspective and expertise to every project she takes on at Noetic.
With over ten years of copywriting experience, Jess is passionate about distilling complex concepts into engaging, accessible, and SEO-friendly content that resonates. Her mission is to craft written words and content strategy that brings your vision to life.
When she's not working on a project, Jess loves to explore the great outdoors, volunteer with animals, spend time with family, and game to her heart's content.