Spoiler alert: It is simply not ok to tell prospective students you have a vibrant campus community. You gotta show them.
Our goal: marketing messaging that resonates based on very real consumer connection.
Human beings rally around things. We rally around our families (biologic or chosen), our sports teams (Celtics, Manchester United), our celebrities (TSwift, Beyonce), our professions (cybersecurity engineer, IP attorney), events (Rio Carnival, Chinese New Year), crises (Gaza, Ukraine), political issues (don’t get us started).
It has a lot to do with shared experience over time. The connections we make with others who engage in a project, achieving a goal, together. As humans, we want to protect and bolster the things we love.
So, no wonder, people rally around their campus community. Having shared a period of time together and having a degree conferred by the same administrative body – these activities and achievements form bonds.
We eat in the same cafeterias, walk the same halls and pathways, endure the same exam schedules, and wear the same cap and gown as we walk the same stages to receive our parchment pressed with our school seal.
With the rise of online degrees, a new sense of shared experience develops.
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There is far less connective tissue to draw students together with the online experience. Yet, there remains a common set of activities and the earned degree creates that same sense of pride in achievement born of concerted effort toward a shared goal.
When we think about student recruitment from the prospective student point of view, as the university selection list gets shorter, the heart plays a larger and larger role in determining where they will enroll. In focus groups, the most common phrase is some form of, “After all the thinking, I felt this was the right choice for me.” (emphasis added)
Here’s the thing: it’s hard to build student evangelists within your community when they see their education and their community as entirely transactional.
Not rocket science. However, it takes the investment of dedicated time. This is more than a simple 90-minute brainstorming session with your team's marketing talent. There's trend data to evaluate, focus groups to convene, influencer affinity groups to build and manage.
Sounds like a fair amount of work, right?
And when you think about those institutions out there who just seem to be crushing it, what do they seem to have going for them? Sure, they have the product mix and the measured price point. But what hits you right in the face is the vibe. That is the thing that gets you thinking, "Oh, I wish we had that connection to our audience."
That audience connection doesn't just happen. It is cultivated by talented, thoughtful, invested people who believe in the opportunity.
Below we share a few pointers. Please be in touch if you'd like to dive into a deeper analysis of the specific opportunities for your institution (info@intead.com). This is about the consumer insights the Intead team is so very good at identifying and leveraging. Read on…
Today we share creative tactics to express your institution's characteristics to prospective students. Whether students are planning to study on campus or online at your institution, one of the factors they will evaluate is the community they are joining.
Important to recognize, as marketers, where community fits as students evaluate universities. Rarely a top-level evaluation criteria (attraction phase), community is a critical decision point for most students just a bit further down the funnel. After confirming more objective criteria like academic area(s) of interest and affordability, and in some cases, rankings, students turn to more heartfelt criteria asking themselves if they will fit in with your vibe. In many cases, students do not realize they are asking themselves this question, but ultimately, that is what they seek to confirm for themselves.
Again, that phrase: “After all the thinking, I felt this was the right choice for me.”
Those “feelings” are highly influenced by the sense of community conveyed on your website, social media presences, and word of mouth comments overheard during the selection process. Certainly a campus visit plays prominently. For most international students, the closest they get to that is an online video and the virtual chats/webinars with you, alumni, faculty, current students -- whatever you can put in front of them that gives them a sense of that all important, connective vibe.
On Campus Sense of Community
To start with the obvious example: those institutions with tremendously successful sports teams have an obvious selling point. And while winning championships builds community, the energy in the stands, year in and year out regardless of the win/loss tally, is what the prospective student sees and feels. Bonus points for those building community around campus intramural sports teams and informal activities (think informal, under the radar running, yoga, art, karaoke groups. The list goes on. What happens on your campus that shows how creative your student population is and prompts them to gather?).
Rising among prospective students: social justice causes, from environment to underrepresented/marginalized communities, represent important perspectives to students whether they get involved or not. An increasing number of students want to know that they will feel safe on campus and that the administration welcomes the conversations of the day and is taking steps to improve local, regional, and international social conditions.
Other obvious connection points: foodies and cultural food groups, specific student groups, academic majors, dorm communities, TA groups, you get the idea.
Online Sense of Community
Does your institution look at online certificates and degrees as simply transactional? As in, show up online for 3 hours every Thursday for the next 6 months. Read these pdfs, watch these videos, turn in your exams and papers and, as long as you paid your tuition bill, you’re good.
When building community among online learners, put significant effort into activities that help your learners get to know each other as deeply as possible. This is all about creating connection points.
Consider the art of building a group, from the initial icebreakers and fun orientation activities to the carefully guided, intense personal sharing exercises that develop cross-cultural understanding and connections.
Sure, class time is short and precious, but you just might be missing a significant growth opportunity by failing to build community. Current customers influence future customers. And as we’ve said above, the university selection process hinges on how your prospective student “feels” about their options. Not to mention the ongoing benefits of these connection points, from lifelong learning (more tuition in the future) to philanthropy (talk to development).
Common to Both Experiences
The alumni network, so rarely invested in from a marketing/recruitment point of view, represents a valuable affinity community that drives revenue. When administrations view alumni as a source for philanthropy without investing in the long-term development of future tuition revenue through lifelong learning and word-of-mouth marketing, well, we’re still scratching our heads on that one.
A word to the wise: pour $500K a year into this marketing channel and over time, watch the ROI percentage eclipse other recruitment marketing investments.
That figure sounds SO out of reach to your leadership? They might just be eternally stuck in short-term thinking.
Showing It Off
You know this work must include video and social media, right? And not from the administration’s point of view. Be sure the marketing messaging you put out there has the perspective and voice of your target demographic. Involve them. Empower them. Get them to generate the content you need.
This work succeeds based on researching and deploying consumer insights that are available right in front of you. Without them involved you’ll likely develop marketing that simply won't resonate.
Think: dull, lifeless, trite, surface, and basic (target audience’s words, not ours). Plastic messaging does not resonate and speaks to an institution that is simply out of touch. It is your connection to your audience that produces the important, joyful interactions in person or online. Those truly resonant connections, the messaging you need, comes from deep consumer insights.
What you are looking for is that truly resonant messaging per niche audience.
Build community and show, in vibrant, engaging ways, what you have. Tap into the student passion that exists. The more you build it, the more it grows. The more it grows, the more magnetic it becomes as you seek to build your enrollment numbers.
We are talking about long-term growth for an institution. The quick hit focused people on your team are not going to help you build a long-term future. Hard as it is, find the funding to do this well.
Be in touch (info@intead.com). We can help you develop the plan and let the world know. That’s what we are really good at.
