TRUTH #1: Know Your People
This is the second blog in our Higher Ed Marketing Truths series with 5° Senior Vice President Ryan Morabito, a veteran brand strategist who has worked with over 100 schools. These blogs are based on Ryan’s LinkedIn posts, which regularly inspire high engagement among education leaders and marketers. Click here to receive each blog in the series by email or bookmark our blog to check for updates!
Picture this: you're cooking dinner when the doorbell rings. You answer it, and a salesman launches into a spiel about soundproofing for two-story homes. When he finally takes a breath, you say, "this is a one-story house." The salesman blinks and looks around, as though he's just now taking in his surroundings. Embarrassed, he leaves, and you return to your hopefully-not-burning meal in progress.
It's easy to judge this salesman's approach as silly, careless, and even unprofessional. But the truth is: these types of mistakes happen in marketing all the time. And higher ed marketing is no exception.
Colleges and universities too often waste time and money trying to recruit individuals who are never going to enroll at their school — or attend college at all. Rather than treating everyone the same, college and universities will see much more success when they understand exactly who their target student is and market directly to them.
Let’s take a look at three ways your college or university can achieve your recruitment and retention goals through increased focus in your outreach strategy.
Market Your Majors
“We have something for everyone!” may seem like a compelling marketing strategy at first glance. But the truth is, it doesn’t give prospective students the information they need to make a good college decision. Rather than trying to appeal to the broadest population of potential students, consider what it might look like to choose a few specific groups and market as effectively as possible to them.
In other words, don’t be scared to get specific. The Anthrozoology program at Carroll College excels at this specific approach. The first undergraduate Anthrozoology major in the nation, Carroll confidently markets the program as a unique selling point for their school. Their social media posts feature dogs from the Collar Scholars program, in which students assist in raising puppies who will eventually become assistance dogs. The campus has a state-of-the-art Canine Center, a work-study program in which students work with horses, and meaningful partnerships with zoo, conservation, wildlife, and ranch settings where students can conduct research and internships.
The Anthrozoology program won’t be a fit for every prospective student, but it doesn’t need to be. Carroll College markets in a way that makes clear they understand the point isn’t to draw every student but to draw the best students for their programs. By heavily promoting its emphasis on equipping leaders in human-animal professions, Carroll increases their overall brand presence and memorability.
Show your prospective students how your school is the step that will get them where they want to go.
Highlight the Heart
In a culture that’s rife with post-pandemic stress, political conflict, and rapid changes in society, people are looking for a place to belong. Prospective students feel this perhaps even more deeply than others, as they are in the exciting yet vulnerable place of making a major decision that will affect both their professional and personal life. That intersection of excitement and vulnerability is a powerful place for your school to plant a flag in the ground.
Generic messaging that indicates everyone would love your school isn’t likely to be effective, which results in wasted time, money, and effort. In order to narrow the scope for the sake of an effective marketing approach, ask yourself the question how do we let our students know they belong here? You might poll existing students or speak to alumni to develop a sense of the way your school meets (or met) their felt needs. Consider segmenting, in which you identify the personas of students who are most likely to feel as though they belong at your college or university.
Some answers could be that your school:
Prioritizes later-in-life learners by offering evening or online coursework
Has a low faculty-student ratio so professors can function as true mentors
Features dynamic student housing accommodations that cultivate community
The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor (UMHB) serves as a shining example of highlighting the heart. The university’s student activities staff makes every effort to create opportunities for belonging for students on campus. Their list of activities runs a mile long, and they aren’t randomly chosen by administrators. Instead, the school surveys students to discover their interests and then provides opportunities for pursuing them on campus. When staff members noticed that the students were beginning to play pickleball on the tennis courts, for example, they built a fleet of pickleball courts.
This devotion to on-campus engagement and support provides UMHB with remarkable marketing opportunities that show prospective students exactly what it could look like to belong there.
Whatever your school’s heartbeat might be, identifying it and finding ways to share it with prospective students who resonate is a meaningful way to focus your outreach efforts.
If your institution is faith-based, think about the ways that commitment shapes a positive student experience. If you have a strong cultural heritage, that could be a meaningful aspect to put in the spotlight. In doing so, your brand awareness can increase and prospective students can begin to think of your school as a place where they could belong not simply as academic students, but as whole people.
Pursue Powerful Partnerships
In our personal lives, one of the most common and enjoyable ways to get to know someone is through a mutual friend. This is often the same in the professional context, where networking leads to greater connections and possibilities than a cold call ever could.
The same can be said for reaching prospective students. By building relationships with people and institutions who are important to your school’s recruitment base, your school can catch the attention — and earn the trust — of college decision-makers. For example, if your institution offers a strong art education major, consider how you might form connections with high school art teachers who are likely identifying and advising students interested in pursuing art professionally.
Additionally, When it comes to individuals who have just graduated from high school, parents tend to have a profound influence in their children’s college decisions. In fact, a recent EAB (formerly Education Advisory Board) study found that 48 percent of 2021 high school seniors named parents or guardians in their type five sources of information on the admissions process. That’s up from 37 percent in 2020 and 34 percent in 2019.
This high degree of influence makes parents a key partner in identifying and attracting the best students for your school. How might your school tailor your marketing approach to reach parents — especially mothers, who tend to have the greatest influence — with a clear message that helps them ask (and answer) the question could my student thrive there?
When it comes to later-in-life learners, think about building and marketing institutional partnerships with employers and access to professional networks.
Whether you’re marketing to high school seniors or professionals years into their careers, building relationships with the people and places they value can go a long way in your marketing strategy, saving you time and money as you market in ways that are much more likely to see returns in the form of recruitment and retention.
The bad news: your school may be spending money unnecessarily in order to recruit students who aren’t the right fit.
The good news: your college or university is already doing great work for existing students, which can be the very thing that recruits more students who will thrive at your school.
The great news: by marketing your majors, highlighting the heart, and pursuing powerful partnerships, you can hone in on effective strategies that help students and your school reach their goals.
Let’s make these truths part of your institution’s unique marketing strategies. Contact us to chat about how 5° Branding can partner with your team.
