Promoting your Scholarships: Embrace your Inner Marketer
Making the most of a scholarship program requires getting as many qualified applicants as possible. The first step is getting the word out to potential applicants about the scholarship(s) you have to offer. Higher education institutions, foundations, and corporations alike can all use marketing strategies to promote their scholarships, but each requires a different, tailored approach.
The first section below focuses on strategies to employ for our College & University partners. If you're at a foundation, corporation, or other organization, we've tailored idea for you further below. Regardless of your institution or background, the ideas across both sections may apply.
Strategies for College and University scholarship programs
Higher education institutions of all types usually have direct contact information for a pool of current and prospective students. This allows you to employ classic direct marketing strategies with this captive audience. We recommend that you embrace thinking like direct marketers by creating as many touch points as possible for prospects to hear about their scholarships.
Text and email campaigns
If your institution collects student and prospective student phone numbers and email addresses, you can (with students’ permission) send them messages promoting your scholarships. There is a lot of competition in the email inbox, so you’ll do best with a concise, intriguing, and informative subject line paired with a clear and simple call to action in the email body. You may also want to resend emails to those who don’t open, send regular reminders, and track email performance to see if certain days and times get better engagement than others.
Now, more than ever, we recommend you use text messaging. Text messaging generally garners better response rates, but it is important to be aware that using this channel too often can be bothersome to students and lead them to unsubscribe. There are best practices for writing messages in a way that prevents your outreach from looking like spam: be concise, point users to known resources (e.g., your Institution’s scholarship page), and mention direct benefits (more money for school!). If your organization isn’t utilizing AwardSpring’s texting feature, you can learn more here.
Social media
If you’re at a higher education institution, it’s extremely likely you have a social media presence on a variety of platforms. Before launching a new account, you should check to see what social media accounts already exist at your organization, who owns them, and whether there are policies in place about creating, managing, and using social media.
If you’re lucky enough to be somewhere that has multiple social media accounts across the major platforms (Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Instagram, and/or Snapchat) take advantage of these accounts that likely already have followers and engagement. Post and promote your opportunities across as many social channels as you can, and be sure to engage with students on those platforms regularly and transparently.
If you’re looking to start a social account from scratch, you certainly have a bigger hill to climb. Getting followers and creating engagement takes time, effort, and most importantly, patience. Start small (think, one account on one platform) and work to gather some engagement. If you’re starting from nothing, students love Instagram so we’d recommend making that a place to focus.
Once you have established one (or more) social media accounts, think about running targeted campaigns. The primary benefit of targeted social media campaigns is the ability talk to a very specific market in terms of age, location, and interests. Colleges and universities can also fine-tune promotions based on budget and need. Generally speaking, you can get in front of the groups you wish to speak to for low cost, allowing you to test a variety of ad types to lock into the ones that perform best. The key to a successful social media campaign is to check ad performance regularly and adjust to get the best results possible.
The world of social media is broad, complex, and can seem daunting. However, it’s a place where your students congregate, so being authentic, transparent, available, and open to trying social can create real opportunities to engage your students. We recommend you learn more about using social media platforms to reach prospective scholarship applicants from this insightful article published by Higher Education Marketing.
One last thing on social: it’s important to remember generational differences in social media use—Facebook and LinkedIn might be more popular amongst administrators and executives, while Instagram, Snapchat and X tend to attract more students.
Community outreach
Beyond online marketing, in-person community outreach can also be a great way to reach applicants. Senior Days and similar events in the community can provide the chance to talk to potential applicants face-to-face. Does your campus offer welcome programs for incoming students? These are terrific places to set up booths or information sessions about how you administer your awards. Finally, high school guidance counselors can also be a great resource to reach potential applicants and incoming students.
Institutional word of mouth
There are a host of individuals on campus that can be promotors of your program. Counselors work with students regularly to develop paths to degrees – they can also develop paths for great financial outcomes through relevant scholarship opportunities. Instructors have a lot of face time with students, so they’re well-positioned to promote scholarships if they know of the opportunities that are offered and how they align with their curriculum. It’s especially important to inform campus staff of scholarships that are available to part-time students, since part-time students often don’t qualify for financial aid and may be extra motivated to apply for scholarships as a result. Current and previous award winners could be your best champions. There’s no better way to promote your scholarships than by having prior award winners talk about how these awards positively impacted their college experience with their peers.
Word of mouth is also extremely important in cutting through all the noise—students get a lot of information through social media, emails, texts, fairs, and their classrooms in addition to school partners, potential employers, and other companies promoting products. Hearing about scholarship programs in person from a trusted source helps to support their validity and importance and quickly cuts out all the noise.
Strategies for Foundations and Corporations
For foundations, corporations, and other organizations that aren’t higher education institutions, there is often no list of current and prospective students to target (if an organization is lucky enough to have a comprehensive list, see some of the strategies above). Instead, we recommend employing tactics across a variety of marketing channels.
Word of mouth
Our top recommendation for creating awareness about scholarships is word of mouth. Foundations, non-profits, and corporations can target these three groups of people to help promote their programs:
Past recipients
By preparing a short message with important program details for previous recipients to post on social media and forward within your networks via email, organizations can make it simple to share scholarship info.
Local high school guidance counselors and major employers
Guidance counselors can shepherd their high school students through the application process, while local employers can help reach other students.
It is important to target those organizations that are likely to employ the students who meet specialized scholarships’ requirements. To get more applicants for a nursing scholarship, for example, focusing on local hospitals and major medical centers would be best.
Reviewers, employees, volunteers, and others within the organization
Scholarship reviewers can be enthusiastic supporters of your organization in addition to being knowledgeable about the scholarship offerings, making them great scholarship advocates. Don’t be afraid to ask them to spread the word to their friends and family.
Incentivize through early bird deadlines
After spreading the word about your scholarship programs, organizations can ensure that prospects complete their applications by incentivizing early submission.
One way to do this is by offering the chance to qualify for an additional small scholarship by applying before the early bird deadline. Motivated individuals will complete their applications early, which also allows for plenty of time to troubleshoot problems they have with the process.
When promoting early bird deadlines, you should put out consistent messaging in places that applicants are likely to see. You can create a few images or short messages that past recipients, local schools, employers, and volunteers can share electronically or as a printed flier.
Employ other direct marketing strategies
It never hurts to employ as many other marketing strategies as your organization can make time to execute:
- Social Media: social can seem daunting, especially when you consider how many different channels there are. Find a way to cultivate a presence in a single channel (e.g., Instagram) and build a presence there (and more importantly, engage with your target audience when they engage with you). As you get comfortable with a single platform, expand to others (or start to execute low-cost, targeted ads in your target demographic)
- Email campaigns: students may not be the most engaged with email, but their parents are. Put some simple messaging out targeting parent-aged recipients in the constituency you serve
- Get creative: find ways to put yourself in front of your potential applicants in your community. Booths at local events; floats in parades; whatever gets your name out there can drive traffic to your website or social pages where people can then find your scholarship offerings
What it’s all about: getting qualified applicants
Regardless of the type of organization you represent, employing these strategies can drive more awareness of your scholarship programs and increase the overall number of applications you receive. Of course, it is just as important to ensure that these applicants are well qualified. We’ve written this guide to increasing qualified applicants, too.
Do you have some marketing ideas that have worked for you not mentioned above? We’d love to hear about them. Tell us your experience and we’ll share great ideas with other, similar organizations.
AwardSpring Blog
