Higher Education Marketing @ TYPO3 University Days 2023

The TYPO3 University Days are an excellent event that promotes exchange via the platform between colleges, universities and scientific institutions from the German-speaking region and strengthens the foundation for working with TYPO3 in the education sector. 

The +Pluswerk was live on site as a gold sponsor of the University Days as well as in the shape of board member Jens Krumm and our project and HR strategists from +Pluswerk Dresden Sonja Ziegenbalg and Carlos Meyer. We had a very good time in Darmstadt and were able to cultivate many valuable contacts and make new ones - many thanks at this point to Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences as the organizer. 

On the second day of the event, +Pluswerk board member Jens Krumm gave a presentation on "Student marketing and university branding", which included topics such as the increased competition for new students, the customer journey of people interested in studying, and the requirements of the target group for university and college websites.

Colleges and universities in German-speaking countries use their digital presences to reach specific target groups. This results in a multitude of websites, social media channels, and third-party platform content of varying quality. These differences affect the achievement of communication goals, such as attracting new students, communicating research results, or building reputation.  

The main online presences of universities generally offer high-quality content, an appealing design, and modern technologies. Away from this spruced-up core content of digital presences, other sites of the same organization quickly offer suboptimal user experiences, such as long loading times, unattractive design, and inaccessible content. 

In some cases, content is hosted on outdated systems and not securely updated. To ensure consistently high content and technical quality of educational providers' web presences based on TYPO3, merging university or multiport solutions onto a common TYPO3 instance is a readily implementable option.

A crucial component for the success of a university website is coherence. The various areas of a university should mesh seamlessly in terms of design, navigation and content quality. Thanks to the TYPO3 Higher Education Package, a common TYPO3 instance can be used to manage different portals with relatively little effort. 

The use of the Education Package on a common instance ensures consistent branding, as all university departments use the same platform. This increases user recognition and trust. It also significantly reduces administrative overhead because the sites are centrally managed. 

Administrators can share resources, apply software updates centrally, and streamline website management overall. This leads to cost savings and improved resource utilization. Even for sub-departments of individual organizational units, the "Department Kickstarter Module" provides an easy way to create template-based new content.

PDF DOWNLOAD OF THE PRESENTATION