Universities miss one of their best branding opportunities every single day. Prospective students and their parents attend campus tours daily in small or, quite often, very large numbers. Admissions department do their best to create a welcoming atmosphere, providing engaging and entertaining information sessions and carefully selecting and training tour guides. The goal? To get the (right) students to apply, of course. Yet there is a bigger picture, one for which the marketing and admissions departments should collaborate. Through the visits of prospective students and parents you could develop an army of brand ambassadors. You already know that the majority of these students will NOT apply to your college, let alone attend your institution. Visiting campuses is part of the U.S. admissions ritual -- and it is clearly useful. As a matter of fact, in our work with helping universities create and refine their marketing for international students, we think about how closely we could recreate the experience of a college visit without ever setting foot onto campus.
But back to the idea of creating a large following of positively inclined brand ambassadors. Let's start with the mundane. Your visitors, students and parents, have selected you to take the time and effort to visit. Sometimes that's a 20 minute effort, but many times it requires an extensive trip, planning and a financial investment. Visitors are interested, motivated and positively inclined towards you.
Yet, I have to tell you that I rarely get a clear take-away from a college visit. Not only do I meet professionally with colleges, but my son is going through the application process and so I get to see the interaction first hand as a parent.
Letting consumers know, feel and remember what your brand stands for is really difficult. Think about all the brand associations you have in your head.
Automobile manufacturers spend hundreds of millions of dollars on brand marketing: Volvo equals safety, BMW is the ultimate driving machine, Mercedes stands for luxury and a safe car, and Cadillac - who knows ?
Universities are offering a rather similar product, a commodity at a non-commodity price: classes, safe campus, etc.
What can be your objectives beyond your immediate application goals?
1) Grow your brand awareness: Maybe encourage sales of your swag. In my entire history of visiting colleges, I found only MIT -- the Masschussets Institute of Technology -- a global education super brand -- encourage purchases by handing out a 10 % coupon (see picture). Furthermore, during the tour, it started raining and the guides handed out MIT branded rain ponchos for free. You might say, "Well we can't afford that!" You may want to think through the brand exposure of having 20 % of your visitors wear your rain poncho again and become a "brand ambassador" instead of paying for your next Chronicle of Higher Education ad (sorry, nothing against the Chronicle, but it's not the only way to brand a university).
2) What can you give parents for future use: "My kid didn't apply because of dozens of reasons, but it felt like a good place...which I will likely recommend to others." You want and need to have a clear positive brand association. Maybe you create a small, one page hand out addressing parents' needs and interests. You don't need more color brochures.
3) Use your university motto if appropriate or come up with a tagline that can be remembered by parents. Again, MIT does a nice job with "Mind and Hand."
4) Waiting periods: I am struck by the wasted opportunities to create a positive emotional bond during the waiting periods. We have waited extensive periods in more or less appealing conference rooms. Rarely, do I see a compelling video introducing the campus, the faculty, research, alumni with the right music to create a positive environment.
Colleges have these incredible assets and don't deploy them and position them thoughtfully. Carnegie Mellon was a master in creating the right environment at the beginning and ending of the presentations. Yes, the ending matters -- maybe a short video at the end, please?
I understand that universities don't want to become Disney World where professionals analyze every interaction, waiting period and move of their guests -- but remember, you are competing with many institutions -- and more schools are finding out that they will need to compete for survival.
The experience matters and it has to be appropriate and in the context of the entire school. You don't want to create the Taj Mahal of welcome centers and showcase neglected and run down dorms and classrooms. Yet, we have seen lots of schools upgrading their welcome centers. Northeastern University has a modern, open, efficient, welcome center. A small school, Baldwin Wallace University, created a beautiful new welcome center that is open and modern, with comfortable seating and refreshments, large graphics and streaming videos. (Disclosure: I used to teach as adjunct faculty and we work with BWU.) This welcoming environment will give you a different feeling about the college. Does it improve teaching, obviously not.
Let me emphasize that it is not about building new structures that may help but rather the thought process addressing the "total expeirence and take away from the experience." It is getting rather redundant to always tout Apple as the marketing standard. Nevertheless, if you have been an Apple customer and visited the Apple store, the Genius bar or participated in in-store training, all future retail experiences will be compared. The bar has been raised and there is no going back.
