Crafting a Great Marketing Strategy for Student Recruitment

Crafting a great marketing strategy for student recruitment is a complex project that involves learning about your audience, crafting messages to meet their needs, and using online and in-person strategies to reach students and parents through multiple channels.

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Looking to make your school stand out in the competitive world of higher ed recruitment? Let's transform your marketing strategy into a powerhouse that drives real results. Market trends continue to stack up against recruitment teams: fewer students, rising costs, more application volume, lower yield. But tapping into the world of your students with a strong marketing strategy can and does lead to increases in enrollment. Here are the essential components of a great marketing strategy, according to the experts at Enrollify.

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Know Your Audience

The first step of any marketing strategy for student recruitment is to understand your audience. What are their wants, needs, fears, secret hopes, most audacious aspirations? While high-schoolers may be looking for the full college experience (dorm life, clubs, and sports), transfer students are more likely to be focused on practical matters like credit transfers and accelerated paths to graduation. International students may be focused on visa requirements, feeling welcome on campus, and access to financial aid. But don’t assume any of this! 

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Use surveys, focus groups, and social media analytics to gather truly useful data on each community you want to reach. Pay special attention to the ways your prospective applicants prefer to search for and engage with information—be it email, video, text, or your website—so you can meet them where they are online. Social listening can help you detect trending topics, which you can then build off of to provide relevant information that your audience is looking for.

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Build a Strong Online Presence

You already know you need a strong online presence. This is a catch phrase used everywhere in recruitment and marketing. But where to start? We have a few suggestions.

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Using Social Media Effectively

Rather than taking a confetti approach to social media, sprinkling posts everywhere, use data analytics to identify where your target audience spends their time online and focus your efforts there. Are your younger audiences on more visual platforms like TikTok and YouTube? Are your adult students more active on LinkedIn or Facebook? Don’t forget that international students may be found on apps such as WeChat, which are less popular in the U.S. 

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Since most algorithms reward frequent posting, consistency and frequency count for a lot on social media. Design posts, like interactive surveys, that encourage engagement and interaction. Countdowns to important events and deadlines are a great way to keep your school top-of-mind, while providing actionable information that moves your students through the application process. We’ll recommend social listening again, which will enable you to respond quickly to questions and reward your users for interacting with you.

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Creating Engaging Content

Students are bombarded by so much content every day that they’re quick to scroll past anything they don’t find engaging. Every social media post, video, or page on your website should be designed to capture attention quickly and resonate with prospective students. Content that directly addresses their concerns—such as video campus tours, “day in the life” student segments, or deep dives into financial aid options—will appeal to the widest audiences.

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Your web content should also take a variety of formats, from blog posts about student life to interactive webinars about unique programs to video testimonials by graduates who have found success in their careers. Use eye-catching visual media such as infographics and explainer videos to communicate statistics that make your school stand out.

Involve Parents in the Process

Since parents play such an important role in the college search process, your student recruitment marketing strategy should speak to their concerns and engender trust. Many parents are focused on the whole college journey, from what it will cost to how to pay for it and whether it will help their student get a job afterward. Parents and families also have concerns about student safety and academic quality—and your marketing messages should anticipate those concerns. Parents with busy lives appreciate clear, transparent communications that cut right to the chase, especially when it comes to financial matters.

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Parent-focused events, online or in-person, can go a long way toward building trust. Host informational webinars and Q&As on financial aid and scholarship opportunities, and offer parent-specific sessions during on-campus tours or events. 

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Lean Into Technology

Luckily, technology can help you manage all these different engagement strategies. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems allow you to manage student interactions, track communications, and group your audiences into segments for more personalized outreach. With a CRM system, you can customize your outreach and recruitment efforts by tracking the interests and behaviors of prospective students. According to a study conducted by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO), schools that employed CRM systems for recruitment and admissions saw a considerable rise in enrollment rates and application volumes.

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AI-powered chatbots enable you to answer frequently asked questions twenty-four hours a day, and assist in guiding students through the application process. A student can get an answer to a question at 1 am and move on to starting an online application, instead of waiting for your office to open Monday morning. This can free up time for your team to brainstorm new ideas and boost productivity. That said, it’s vital that you provide a seamless transition to human admissions team members, come Monday morning. 

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CTA:

Get Current Students Involved

Because they can provide practical solutions that are more relatable than your typical marketing messaging, current students can be some of your most effective recruiters. Find and assemble a group of student ambassadors using campus-wide platforms like email and social media, and then train them to support your messaging objectives. These ambassadors can attend recruitment fairs, take over social media, and lead college tours. Student-led communication has the potential to significantly improve what potential students think of your institution—and it may foster a more memorable connection with your school as well.

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Student testimonials should be a part of your recruitment campaign. According to Nielsen’s Trust in Advertising Study, people tend to trust their friends' opinions more than they do any other source. Encourage your students to use blogs, short videos, and social media to share their experiences and stories. Be sure to offer a diverse representation by including voices from various on-campus communities.

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Host Engaging Events

The campus visit is the clincher of all recruitment marketing strategies. Prospective students and parents can emotionally connect with the university atmosphere while they are on your campus. Offer tours that concentrate on particular academic programs, as well as events led by current students who can offer an insider's perspective. A self-guided option is also important to give visitors a chance to explore at their own speed.

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For virtual events, interactivity is essential. Organize Q&A sessions, use breakout spaces for more focused conversations, and then follow up with participants. Record these sessions so they can reach more people who were unable to attend. Afterward, drive traffic to these recorded events through ads or buttons on your website and social media accounts. Virtual events save money for all parties and offer the opportunity to interact with a larger geographic audience, but there is no substitute for in-person interactions. The key to running a virtual event is to make it feel as if it is personal and intimate.

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Collect Feedback and Improve

To test whether your marketing messages are as effective and relevant as you hope they are, collect feedback! Yes, you can poll prospective students and parents using surveys, follow-up emails, and social media. You don’t have to rely on surveying what currently enrolled students thought of last year’s marketing strategies. You want to hear from those who ended up applying and those who didn’t. You may be surprised how many prospective students respond.

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By learning which messages and channels had the biggest impact, as well as those that flopped, you can hone your strategy. Identify the most crucial metrics to track as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will let you know what’s working and where you need to rethink your approach. Review these metrics at regular intervals, and adjust your strategy or messaging according to what the data shows.

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Stay Ahead of Trends

Staying ahead of trends in demographics and shifting student expectations that will enable you to design marketing messages to change with the times, rather than reacting to changes or lagging behind. For example, if today’s students place a lot of value on flexible scheduling or emerging academic areas, your marketing strategies must be able to adapt. For members of Gen Z, non-academic concerns like sustainability and community involvement are an important part of their decision-making process, so don’t ignore these topics. By communicating how your institution shares these concerns, such as highlighting efforts to reduce waste and energy use on campus, you can build trust, affinity, and alignment.

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Conclusion

Building a robust, effective marketing strategy for student recruitment is a multi-pronged effort that involves collecting much more data on your audiences than you might think. You need data to craft effective messaging and ensure you’re reaching students and parents with the right message at the right time. Be prepared to think creatively and adjust your messages to changing trends, feedback from your audience, and honest analysis of your own past performance.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

What is student recruitment?

Student recruitment involves promoting your institution, identifying communities of potential applicants, and marketing directly to these students and their families, with the goal of increasing the pool of applicants and, ultimately, enrollment.

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Why is digital marketing crucial for student recruitment initiatives?

On a macro level, digital marketing allows you to reach a worldwide audience. But data analytics and AI tools also make it possible to deliver focused, personalized messages that can drive more engagement and communication.