Is your current strategy for attracting students not working? There's still time
First, put yourself in their shoes
Think of your institution's marketing as if you were giving someone a gift. If you know and understand that person's interests, tastes, and preferences, it'll be very easy to give them something they'll be happy to receive. The same goes for the content you create and publish on your school's social media and blog.
If you're able to understand your ideal customer, or as we call it in Inbound marketing terms, your buyer persona, you'll be able to develop content with the specific goal of getting your prospective students interested in becoming part of your institution.
Here are some tips that will help you attract students with the profile you're looking for for your school or university.
1. Create a link between their interests and your institution's curriculum.
You need to understand what each student is passionate about to know which of your study programs is the right one to help them grow and prepare for their future. The goal? For their happiness and professional success to go hand in hand.
The influence of a trade passed down in the family for generations, or the opinion of parents and teachers, could help a student make a decision, but at the end of the day, they're the one who must feel captivated by your institution.
Targeting the content of your website, blog, and social media to their main interests is an excellent recruitment strategy.
Today, social media has reinforced the idea that success in life comes from doing what you love, what makes you happy, instead of doing what others think is a good idea.
“Let what you love become what you do”
2. Speak to them on their level
Avoid the classic mistake of applying your own college experiences to today's students, even if your college days were only five or ten years ago. The way students access and interact with brands is constantly changing.
For many marketers, Facebook didn't even exist when they were in college, but students born after 1994 have never lived in a world without the Internet.
The trend of talking to students as equals will keep growing as more educational institutions learn to speak to young people on their level. However, they still make similar advertising mistakes with very common phrases that lack imagination, such as: “Your future starts here,” a common line that devalues the student from the start. It implies that without a place at that institution, someone's future hasn't started yet.
Students arrive with a dream, an existing passion; the school's role is to accelerate it, develop it, and turn it into a career.
3. Put your messages on multiple channels
When targeting students, success comes from knowing how a young, connected user behaves across multiple channels and how they mirror the behavior of their favorite brands. Just because they're not on Facebook doesn't mean they're not on social media; on average, young people create their first social media profile at 11 -12 years old.
Today's students are bombarded with messages (at the movies, on TV, on Spotify, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter), and since there's no longer a 'first medium,' we must try to reach them through their preferred media.
Schools should try to communicate with students in the places where they're likely to be: it's no longer enough to trust that the prospective student or their parents will automatically visit your institution's website.
Good marketing shouldn't interrupt prospective students by buying their ears and eyes, but attract them with meaningful, relevant messages bought in the right spaces.
4. Use creativity to catch their attention.
Students tend to form groups, small social circles, when they arrive at a new school, whether through sports, music, or other interests. Institutions that find a way to make prospective students feel they'll fit in will go far in the task of recruiting them.
For this, you'll need good marketing ideas that align with current influences in student culture. Go where your prospective student is and deliver added value in their own space.
When the medium you use is determined by the message, and not the other way around, the result is even better.
5. Don't fall behind. Anticipate the future.
Different institutions offer different formats and perks, scholarships, extracurricular activities, etc. Both competition in the sector and students' expectations have increased.
If you haven't already, it makes sense to review the value proposition your institution offers, so you can get a clear idea of what you're offering students compared to other institutions, and communicate it across all channels.
Colleges in the United States are leading the way in using new technologies to attract and retain new students.
So now you know the way to make it happen: lean on all the possibilities technology gives you to connect with your buyer personas and ...
Let's fill those classrooms next school year!
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