Hundreds of years ago, the great prophets of the world predicted all the things that would happen in the future. Unfortunately, they completely missed a significant one. In 2018, universities and colleges across America wouldn’t be harnessing the full power of digital marketing. As college enrollments continue to decline for the sixth straight year, it’s no time to be taking chances on traditional recruitment tactics.
If you’re a VP of Enrollment or a Director of Admissions and you’re looking for the ‘secret to college recruiting’ or ‘digital marketing hacks,’ you’re probably feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information out there. However, a successful college recruitment strategy is simple: think like a high school senior. That doesn’t mean you should binge watch Netflix or start preparing for Coachella, but it does mean having an engaging and meaningful digital presence. Competition among colleges is fierce. Therefore as your admissions teams prepare for battle, we want to make sure you’re armed with proven digital tactics for a successful recruitment campaign.
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Increase recruitment with engaging and meaningful online experiences
First, we’re going to start with virtual experiences because it’s what we know best. YouVisit is a platform that creates engaging and meaningful experiences using 360 virtual reality, which has proven to be a winning point of difference for the high schools, community colleges and top tier universities that we service. Institutions that have virtual experiences on their website see a 22% increase in applications. Again, if you want to find prospective students you have to be where they are, and where they are is online. As you read this about 2.2 million high school seniors across America are researching potential colleges online. So, if your tours aren’t virtual you’re risking almost your entire market to the hundreds of other institutions that are.
While virtual experiences are a sure fire way to increase applications, there are a few things to consider when selecting a provider. Firstly, I want you to repeat after me; Thou shalt not choose the cheapest option. As with anything in life, you get what you pay for, and if you go down this path, what you’ll end up with is likely an expensive version of google maps.
Convert website visitors at each stage of their journey
Now, you have an amazing, immersive virtual experience and you’re staring at your screen waiting for the applications to roll in. Here’s where your digital strategy comes into play. Let’s talk about the three key calls-to-action of a high converting website:
Inquiries
Not every visitor to your website is ready to make a long term commitment, and they’re likely playing the field with several other institutions. You worked hard to get them there, so having an inquiry CTA button is going to help capture their data and answer any questions they might have. Generally, we use our muscle memory to navigate websites. Therefore keep it simple by placing your inquiry button in an expected place like the main menu, footer or contact us page.
Applicants
This seems like an obvious one, but your institution’s application CTA are arguably the most important. After all, what good is a recruitment campaign if there’s no way to apply? Placing a static application button on the main menu will make it easy for visitors to apply and navigate your website. Likewise, adding footer placement will increase visibility. What your visitors experience on the ‘apply page’ is what will make or break your conversion numbers. Make navigation as easy as possible by laying out the application process, deadlines, FAQ’s and any last minute value propositions in a simple format. Be sure to test your data capture forms and website speed frequently.
Physical Tours
If you have a virtual experience on your website you’re already ahead of the game. By this point it’s no surprise that institutions who have a YouVisit experience on their website see a 27% increase in physical campus tours. Think about it like real estate. You begin your renting or buying journey online. The homes with the best visuals are the ones you physically inspect. It’s the same for prospective students who will live, study, and play on your campus. Thus, make it easy for them by placing a static ‘Book a Visit’ CTA button on the menu of your experience.
Social promotions will put you front of mind
Virtual experience – check! Lead generation website – check! Website traffic – crickets…
Here’s where we see a lot of institutions get it wrong. While going digital can seem a little daunting, it’s a lot easier than you think. Gen Z is the highest social media users of any generation. They will likely make up a majority of your future cohort. Therefore, don’t be afraid to show up on their Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat feeds! There are a few ways to target the right people, at the right time, with the right message and get them to your website.
Don’t let the numbers fool you. While there are less Gen Z Facebook users than other generations, it’s still a great place to target prospective students of all generations and their parents. Video advertisements generally outperform all other ad types on Facebook, so try promoting your virtual experience in their feed. Also, you can add a Facebook pixel to re-market to website visitors who haven’t applied. Lastly, re-market to existing applicants during summer melt or save up to 40% of your budget by excluding your existing applicant and student database.
As a visual social platform Instagram is an obvious one. You can promote images or virtual experiences of your school. Use a strong CTA in your audiences feed or add a paid Instagram story showing off-campus life. Specifically, target athletes with videos of your stadium or show off your local area to out of towners. You can set the ads manually through the platforms (Facebook owns Instagram) or you can use several different advertising platforms that will do the heavy lifting for you like ad creation and budget optimization.
Nurture prospects throughout the applicant life cycle with email
So you completed steps 1 to 3, and you have an endless list of applicant data, now what? The last piece of any great digital campaign is an email nurture strategy. Think of the leads you have as seedlings; they need to be loved and nurtured to grow into a healthy tree or in this case, student! You can branch your email campaigns off the different stages in the enrollment journey to promote your overall institution, open days, and deadline reminders.
Once your email lists start to grow, you will want to start segmenting them. This tactic helps market to each list effectively. Just like you would on social media, you can segment your emails based on course type, interests, location, etc.
If you’re in the higher education space more than 700 of your competitors are already implementing these tactics. Therefore, it’s the perfect time to consider how a YouVisit Virtual Experience can ramp your conversion metrics. What digital tactics are you considering this recruitment season? We’d love to hear your thoughts, email us at marketing@youvisit.com.