When thinking about new ways to market their company, many businesses invest in social media ads, PPC ads, or maybe content marketing if they feel like taking a long-term risk. However, more and more businesses decide to run a scholarship program instead. So, is this another way to burn money or can you actually get some good return on investment from using scholarships as a marketing tool?
Let’s find out.
You get to help students with their education
There is no better investment than that in the future. Nowadays, getting an education can be pretty expensive, regardless of where you are in the world. In the United States, college students have to pay off their college loans years after they’ve finished their education.
By establishing a scholarship, you’ll make it easier for at least one person to complete their education, while getting seen by thousands of other students. No matter where in the world you are, there are few causes nobler than helping someone fulfill their dreams and become what they desire.
SEO benefits
You probably know a little bit about SEO, even if you’re clueless about digital marketing. In essence, having a properly optimized website means that you can get more customers and improve your bottom line. Getting to the first page of search engine results for your desired term can make a world of difference for your business.
While running a scholarship won’t make a direct influence on ranking for “lawyer in Boston”, it does make a huge impact on your website’s SEO. You see, once you establish a scholarship and the word gets out, it will attract some attention, which translates to links to your company website.
Links are the most valuable asset in the world of SEO, and if you have a scholarship, you can get quite a few from popular websites and scholarship aggregators. By the time you actually award the scholarship, you’ll have gathered dozens of links from reputable websites telling all about your good deed. If you’re lucky, you may even score a link from a website with an .edu domain, which scores pretty high in terms of SEO value.
PR benefits
In the era of digital marketing, getting some publicity for your brand can feel incredibly easy and difficult at the same time. While it’s easier than ever to boost your post on Facebook and get a few more likes on your favorite social media page, getting genuine engagement is incredibly difficult. Since there’s so much noise out there, your target audience ignores most of it coming their way.
Scholarships mean genuine PR. As mentioned, once you launch your own scholarship, you will get quite some attention. Whether it’s local news stations, magazines, educational institutions, you will get others to do your PR work for you. No more wasting time on social media and wondering if it will get the desired reach!
New talent pool
Hiring is one of the biggest challenges of the modern era. With unemployment rates dropping to historical lows all over the world, it’s becoming more of a challenge to find any employees, let alone good ones. Once you put out a job ad, you’ll get hundreds of applicants, but very few of them actually qualified.
Launching your own scholarship is an opportunity to find new talent for your company. Since you’re in charge of the requirements for the scholarship, you can set your own conditions on what it takes to win. That way, you get to set the bar as low or as high as you like. Without even knowing it, students will apply for a job with your company. Not only will they get the scholarship, they also get an opportunity for employment all at once.
Plenty of tax benefits
Depending on where you live and what kind of organization you’re registered as, you can benefit greatly from running a scholarship. In the United States, scholarships for universities reach millions every year for a variety of reasons. However, one stands out frequently – money given for a scholarship is tax-deductible. In other words, whichever amount you give out as a scholarship, it can be deducted from your annual income, provided that the fund it goes into is tax-exempt.
Even if you know exactly what kind of scholarship you want to launch and what kind of results you’re hoping to achieve, where do you get started? From the initial idea until the moment you award a scholarship(s) to a student, there’s a lot of hard work involved. You can tackle it all on your own or use a dedicated scholarship management platform such as Scholarship App.
Wrapping up
Join us today for free so you reap some of the many benefits of running your own scholarship!
