5 Tips For Marketing Your Scholarship
Creating a scholarship is a great way to give back and bring attention to your business, organization, or cause.
However, scholarships don’t just magically appear – there’s a lot of marketing involved to make sure they get the attention they deserve!
Here are five tips for marketing your scholarship successfully:
1. Utilize Email Marketing
Just because you already have tons of subscribers doesn’t mean you can ignore mailing them about your scholarship.
If you have an email list, utilize it by sending out a mass email announcing your scholarship to current subscribers.
Your email campaign should be the first place you promote your scholarship.
Use a professional email marketing software like MailChimp to send an email about your scholarship with a description, eligibility requirements, and application instructions.
If applicable, set up an email autoresponder that will automatically welcome applicants and then guide them through the entire process.
2. Promote Your Scholarship on Social Media
“Give people a reason to share your scholarship on social media – include hashtags for trending scholarships or the school name where the scholarship will be used”, says Maxim Gorin.
For example, if you have a scholarship for students at the University of California, Los Angeles, use #UCLAScholarship to make it easy for UCLA students to share your scholarship.
Promoting your scholarship via social media will help other students who are eligible apply for it.
3. Release a Press Release
The news is out about your scholarship!
Don’t let word-of-mouth marketing be the only promotion you have – write up a press release and distribute it to local news outlets, newspapers, or magazines that might be interested in the scholarship.
Let them know about your scholarship and why you created it, as well as how students can apply for it. Your press release should include a link to the application so they have all of the details available right away.
4. Utilize Link Building
Use high-quality, relevant links back to your scholarship application to give it more credibility.
These links will be especially beneficial for search engine rankings, so any links you can garner are invaluable when marketing your scholarship.
To build a successful link building campaign:
- Offer to write content for a website in exchange for a link back to your scholarship application.
- Share on Linkedin and ask if any of your connections can help build links to your scholarship application.
- Reach out to local businesses that may want to add a link from their site on their own accord.
5. Let Schools Know About Your Scholarship
Make sure that the school knows about your scholarship!
You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t realize that scholarships are available for their school until it’s too late and they’ve missed the application deadline.
Make sure to spread the word about your scholarship to students, faculty members, and administrators at your chosen university.
Many schools have a page dedicated to publishing third-party scholarships and would be glad to list it for you for free.
Conclusion
Marketing your scholarship may take a little work upfront, but the payoff is well worth it!
Your business will be introduced to current and prospective customers, you’ll gain name recognition, and your scholarship will be seen by more people than just those who apply for it.