5 Marketing Strategies for Recruiting Undergraduate Students
Every year, universities and colleges worldwide face the same problem - at one point or another, every student graduates.
Here are five marketing strategies for recruiting undergraduate students and keeping your cohorts full:
Meet Students Where They Are
Whether it’s social media or high schools, you need to go to where your students are and be consistent about it.
Remember the Parents
Parents can be a massive influence on a student’s decision to apply. Don’t forget to target parents and get them on board.
Create a Brand
Ensure your brand is memorable, unique, and authentic - all things that will help your school to live in the back of prospective students’ minds.
Consider International Students
International students make up a sizeable portion of the student population. Your marketing campaigns should reflect that, directly targeting these individuals.
Organize Events
One of the best ways to let students know they are valued is to get them involved! Organize seasonal open houses, departmental mixers, student panels, and more for prospective students.
Why and How You Should Market to Gap Year Students For decades, students have opted for the gap year route, taking time off from studies to travel, work, volunteer, or simply indulge in passion projects.
In fact, 43% of Ontario high school students take more than 4-months off between high school and post-secondary education. That’s a lot of students, and you are losing out on a sizable number of potential enrollments by overlooking them.
Here are steps you can take to better market to gap year students:
Talk About the Gap Year Path
Provide gap year students with information about their enrollment path and how your institution can accommodate them. With this information generally lacking, your institution providing it will make you stand out from the crowd.
Start a Gap Year Association
It sounds drastic, but schools like Harvard have found success with their Gap Year Association. If your institution seems to be attracting a sizable population of gap year students, starting a club or society would be a great way of marketing to them.
Make Changes to Accommodate Gap Year Students
As an institution, you could make a point to have more events, seminars, and resources tailored towards gap year students. Host an online tour for someone who might be backpacking, organize virtual information sessions, or alter your financial aid programs so that they aim for a diverse range of potential enrollments.
You can read our blog post to learn more about marketing to gap year students!
The Power of Video and How to Incorporate It Into Your Marketing Strategy
Are you using video in your marketing strategy? If not, you should be! Here’s why:
Video increases organic website search traffic by 157%. A website is 53 times more likely to reach the front page of Google if it includes a video.
59% of executives say they would rather watch a video than read text, and 72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service through video.
85% of consumers want to see even more video content from brands.
Viewers retain 95% of your message when they consume it by video and only 10% when reading it in text.
One of the best ways for higher education institutions to utilize video content in their marketing strategy is via student testimonials! Here are some tips to help you get started:
Use high-quality equipment to capture good video and sound.
Keep it short, so your audience remains engaged - roughly 1-3 minutes.
Have the student be prepared but not too scripted - you want to establish trust and authenticity with your audience.
Have a clear goal for the testimonial - showcase a program, campus, event, etc.
Add text or graphics to the video to highlight keywords and main points.
Have the video professionally edited to maintain a polished production level.
You can read our blog post to learn more about student testimonials and how best to incorporate them into your marketing strategy!
Email marketing can be a time-consuming and soul-sucking endeavour. But it doesn’t have to be! With automated email software, you can save hours each week while increasing your engagement, conversion rates, and most importantly, sales. This blog post will help you choose the best email marketing automation tool for your business and show you the many benefits of using such powerful software!
Every year, universities and colleges all over the world face the same problem - at one point or another, every student graduates. Higher education institutions must find ways to continually attract new students to their programs. In this blog post, we’ll outline 5 tips that higher education institutions can use to make their recruitment process a little easier.
Are you tired of spending hours on end working on your marketing campaigns? If so, you're not alone. In this blog post, we'll introduce you to three AI marketing tools and explain how they can help you save hours of work. Read on to learn more!
