Marketing Strategy for Educational Institutions During the COVID-19 Pandemic Based on Social Media

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a big challenge in the marketing of educational institutions. Marketing strategies that were generally executed physically were forced to adopt remote and online methods. The present study examined the effectiveness of the social-media-based marketing strategy used by educational institutions for attracting public interest during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers conducted a systematic review by documenting and reviewing all articles related to education marketing published from 2015 to 2021. The study reviewed 23 national and international journal articles accessed from the databases of lens.org, Science Direct, and DOAJ. The results showed that the online marketing strategy utilized by educational institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic included following key steps: (i) promoting 7P excellence (marketing mix) packaged with interesting online content through social media; (ii) determining the target market and social media platforms through segmentation, targeting, and positioning; and (iii) optimizing organizational performance and ability to build good relationships with customers. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and websites are needed as effective marketing tools during a pandemic to increase public interest.
 Keywords: marketing strategy model, education marketing strategy, social media, COVID-19 pandemic