Digital transformation has been a widely discussed topic in recent years, but especially in 2020, it has been one of the hottest topics at any business event or in any WhatsApp group. Of course, we’re living through a unique moment in history, where social distancing has prevented us from engaging in a range of in-person activities and forced us to do them digitally—and to make the shift from in-person to digital, we need a… Digital Transformation!

But have you ever stopped to think about or research what digital transformation is?

I’d like to explore this topic a bit before discussing Educational Marketing. It’s hard to pinpoint the origin of the term “Digital Transformation,” but we know that this concept has three pillars, also known as the three laws:

• Moore's Law – A 100% increase in processing power every 18 months
• Butter's Law – A 100% increase in data transmission capacity every 9 months
• Kryder's Law - A 100% increase in data storage capacity every 18 months

It is because of these three laws that we have solutions like Uber, Netflix, iFood, and online banking right at our fingertips, thanks to devices like cell phones—which we carry in our pockets and which have more processing power, storage capacity, and transmission speed than the computer that helped NASA send a man to the Moon in 1969. 

Digital Transformation

Now that we've discussed the three laws, let's wrap up the concept of digital transformation:

Application of digital technologies across all company processes to improve the customer experience, optimize results, and transform the organizational culture, always with a focus on delivering value to the market in which the company operates.

In other words, digital transformation means reviewing your processes and incorporating as much technology as possible into all of them, while always keeping in mind that you can only change processes if people are open to it (culture). Most importantly, process changes should focus on improving the experience of your customers (students, in our case), optimizing the results of the company (your educational institution), and generating more value for the market—that is, the students who will graduate from your institution.

I recently read an article about the impacts of COVID-19 on education, titled“The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning,” which includes the following sentence (free translation):

“We are living through a period of forced disruption in which the methods and techniques we used before can no longer be employed—for reasons we could hardly have imagined, but which have placed us in a completely different situation. Perhaps the 21st century—and everything we thought about this new millennium—is just beginning now...”

And how does this forced disruption play out in educational marketing?

Digital Transformation in Education Marketing

If we apply the above concept of digital transformation to the field of educational marketing, we can identify a number of actions that can be carried out by the marketing and sales teams at educational institutions, such as:

• Digital Test
• Admission via ENEM
• Online Registration
• Digital Contract Signing
• Virtual Tour
• Online meeting with the academic or program coordinator
• Omnichannel for Handling Leads and Candidates
• Using Artificial Intelligence for Lead Scoring (Probability of Enrollment)
• Among so many others...

One example of where to find all these technologies is the software offered by CRM Educacional, which is available to any educational institution that understands the importance of undertaking this transformation.

But what matters most is a shift in mindset—not just in marketing, but across the entire educational system—recognizing that the world has changed, people have changed, and the new generations entering high schools and colleges were born into a digital world.

Without this vision, it will become increasingly difficult to attract and enroll new students at your educational institution.

To read the full text on the CRM Educacional blog, click here.

 

Did you like this content? Share it on your social media: