Over 80% of students now start their college search online, but instead of going directly to your college website, they are visiting third party college search sites to find college information. Colleges can no longer afford to ignore these sites, but with dozens of sites promising to deliver interested students to your college, how can you decide which sites are right for you? In yesterday's webinar, we discussed exactly that. Check out this webinar recording to find out how to navigate your online college marketing options:
Over 80% of students now start their college search online, but instead of going directly to your college website, they are visiting third party college search sites to find college information. Colleges can no longer afford to ignore these sites, but with dozens of sites promising to deliver interested students to your college, how can you decide which sites are right for you? In yesterday's webinar, we discussed exactly that. Check out this webinar recording to find out how to navigate your online college marketing options:
Missed our webinar yesterday? Watch the complete recording of: A Secret Shopper's Report: The "Good" vs. the "Not-so-Good" College Admissions Advisors. At myUsearch.com, we're in the business of matching colleges to students who are more likely to enroll in their institution and we recently did a bit of research to find out how colleges process their student inquiries. What we found was VERY INTERESTING! We released some of our findings in two previous webinars, but one of the most interesting things we found was the difference in the quality of the admissions advisors. From our experience, we identified 12 factors that determine the effectiveness of college admissions advisors. Check it out!
Trouble viewing this college marketing webinar? Watch it here.
Missed our webinar yesterday? Watch the complete recording of: A Secret Shopper's Report: The "Good" vs. the "Not-so-Good" College Admissions Advisors. At myUsearch.com, we're in the business of matching colleges to students who are more likely to enroll in their institution and we recently did a bit of research to find out how colleges process their student inquiries. What we found was VERY INTERESTING! We released some of our findings in two previous webinars, but one of the most interesting things we found was the difference in the quality of the admissions advisors. From our experience, we identified 12 factors that determine the effectiveness of college admissions advisors. Check it out!
Trouble viewing this college marketing webinar? Watch it here.
Clear your calendar! myUsearch.com, the Honest College Matchmaker, will host a free admissions marketing webinar on Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time. A bit about the webinar:
College admissions advisors are your most important ambassadors, but what kind of an impression are they leaving on your prospective students? Join Elizabeth Kraus, the co-founder of myUsearch.com, the Honest College Matchmaker, as she shares her experience as a prospective college student. After secret shopping several leading not-for-profit and for-profit colleges, Kraus found there are a few common characteristics that separate the “good” from the “not-so-good” college admissions advisors. The webinar will discuss:
Clear your calendar! myUsearch.com, the Honest College Matchmaker, will host a free admissions marketing webinar on Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at 3pm Eastern Standard Time. A bit about the webinar:
College admissions advisors are your most important ambassadors, but what kind of an impression are they leaving on your prospective students? Join Elizabeth Kraus, the co-founder of myUsearch.com, the Honest College Matchmaker, as she shares her experience as a prospective college student. After secret shopping several leading not-for-profit and for-profit colleges, Kraus found there are a few common characteristics that separate the “good” from the “not-so-good” college admissions advisors. The webinar will discuss:
Ginnie had been accepted to five top colleges but in the end, she decided to go to Swarthmore. Why? Because when she attended a sleepover there for students who had been accepted, she had a really memorable late-night conversation with three Swarthmore students in a dorm.
Gill went through a similar thought process before he decided to attend Tufts. He was weighing several schools, but one event clinched his decision. While he was taking an admissions tour there, a group of students had come up and serenaded his tour guide with an a cappella song. That event made Gill think that the personality of the place was just right for him.
Stories like those tell us that many high school students pick the college that speaks to them on an emotional level. And those emotional ties are established through personal interactions which are often unplanned. Yet college admissions marketers can control some of that decision-making by applying some basic principles of guerrilla marketing.
Ginnie had been accepted to five top colleges but in the end, she decided to go to Swarthmore. Why? Because when she attended a sleepover there for students who had been accepted, she had a really memorable late-night conversation with three Swarthmore students in a dorm.
Gill went through a similar thought process before he decided to attend Tufts. He was weighing several schools, but one event clinched his decision. While he was taking an admissions tour there, a group of students had come up and serenaded his tour guide with an a cappella song. That event made Gill think that the personality of the place was just right for him.
Stories like those tell us that many high school students pick the college that speaks to them on an emotional level. And those emotional ties are established through personal interactions which are often unplanned. Yet college admissions marketers can control some of that decision-making by applying some basic principles of guerrilla marketing.
Guerrilla marketing uses imaginative events and happenings to surprise, delight and engage customers. It happens when a company dresses its employees like bears and posts them outside a store to hand out samples. Or when a company hires a professional chorus to surprise shoppers in a mall.
Colleges can use similar techniques too. The key is to capitalize on guerrilla marketing opportunities in key areas where you and your applicants are in touch.
Give guerrilla campus tours. You already select tour guides who are personable, quirky and interesting. And you have created tour itineraries that take visiting students and their families to appealing places on campus. But take it a few steps further. Review daily campus schedules and send your tours to places where interesting things are happening, such as presentations by guest lecturers, debates, musical rehearsals or intramural sports events. Also reward tour guides for offering memorable personal experiences to their groups, such as visiting the office of a favorite professor or walking into the coolest room in their dorm. Your tour guides know more cool stuff about your campus than you do, so make them your guerrillas.
Use videos to create a guerrilla feel on your website. Put up guerrilla-style videos that students who are visiting your site can relate to – videos of students playing, having fun, or engaging in club activities. You can invite current students to shoot and submit videos for you. Remember that you are not looking for high-level production values or “talking head” footage of professors. You want shaky footage shot with handheld cameras. Background noise is fine. Rough videos appeal to prospective students more than expensive films do.
Encourage your admissions staff to do guerrilla-like things. If a very interested and interesting student shows up in an info session or at a college night, an admissions rep should sit on a bench outside and talk with her for a half hour, for example, or invite her and her parents for a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Encourage your staffers to do surprising things that build personal connections.
Make strategic choices of which classes visiting students should attend. Don’t just hand out schedules of all the classes that are taking place. Ask your tour guides to recommend the classes that are liveliest and most engaging.
Offer lots exciting experiences at events for accepted students. If you are having them sleep over, you can offer some engaging “one size fits all” events like a performance by the college chorus or a play. But consider the distinct segments within the group you have admitted. If you will be hosting students who are athletes, artists, environmentalists, fundamentalist Christians, Jews, Musicians, Muslims, LBGT or vegetarians, connect them with campus organizations where they can interface with like-minded students. You don’t want anybody standing around feeling left out.
When you stop and think about it, campuses are a natural place to apply guerrilla marketing, because they offer multiple places to interact with prospective students and their families – places where your college can delight and surprise them, and forge that critical emotional bond that makes your school a student’s top choice.
If you missed our webinar yesterday, you missed some really great college marketing advice. Joe Head, the retiring Dean of University Admissions and AVP Enrollment Services at Kennesaw State University, shared some of the things he's learned through his nearly four decades of experience in college enrollment services. You can watch the full presentation below and if you have trouble viewing this webinar, watch it here: http://blip.tv/file/4741652.
And, P.S.: There is a bit of a delay at the beginning, so just be patient. Sorry.....
If you missed our webinar yesterday, you missed some really great college marketing advice. Joe Head, the retiring Dean of University Admissions and AVP Enrollment Services at Kennesaw State University, shared some of the things he's learned through his nearly four decades of experience in college enrollment services. You can watch the full presentation below and if you have trouble viewing this webinar, watch it here: http://blip.tv/file/4741652.
And, P.S.: There is a bit of a delay at the beginning, so just be patient. Sorry.....
If you're not familiar with Joe Head, he's a bit of a legend. He's been in the college enrollment services industry for nearly four decades and has a pretty impressive record. As the retiring Dean of University Admissions and AVP of Enrollment Services at Kennesaw State University, Joe and his team have acheived more than 85 terms of continued enrollment growth which has made KSU the third largest university in the state of Georgia. Joe will draw on his experience of nearly four decades in college admissions and enrollment to discuss:
The 20 most important lessons he has learned from 39 years in enrollment services
Insight on the future of college recruitment and enrollment
Innovative tactics adopted by Kennesaw State University including the university’s:
Admission scholar program – Recruit outstanding freshman with scholar outreach.
TRIED Registration Reporting – Real-time tracking to address registration bottlenecks
E-Brochure: Reduce waste and marketing costs with online brochures
Guidance Counselor Web Interfaces and In-Service Workshops to Retain Certification: Improve counselor relations through increased access and relationships
24/7 Admissions Transactional Website – Reduce staff time through the use of a freshman admission predictor, document imaging and tele-counseling
This webinar will be held tomorrow, Tuesday, February 8th, at 3pm Eastern. And best of all....It's FREE. Sign up now!
If you're not familiar with Joe Head, he's a bit of a legend. He's been in the college enrollment services industry for nearly four decades and has a pretty impressive record. As the retiring Dean of University Admissions and AVP of Enrollment Services at Kennesaw State University, Joe and his team have acheived more than 85 terms of continued enrollment growth which has made KSU the third largest university in the state of Georgia. Joe will draw on his experience of nearly four decades in college admissions and enrollment to discuss:
The 20 most important lessons he has learned from 39 years in enrollment services
Insight on the future of college recruitment and enrollment
Innovative tactics adopted by Kennesaw State University including the university’s:
Admission scholar program – Recruit outstanding freshman with scholar outreach.
TRIED Registration Reporting – Real-time tracking to address registration bottlenecks
E-Brochure: Reduce waste and marketing costs with online brochures
Guidance Counselor Web Interfaces and In-Service Workshops to Retain Certification: Improve counselor relations through increased access and relationships
24/7 Admissions Transactional Website – Reduce staff time through the use of a freshman admission predictor, document imaging and tele-counseling
This webinar will be held tomorrow, Tuesday, February 8th, at 3pm Eastern. And best of all....It's FREE. Sign up now!
The gym doors open. Parents and students rush in. The evening blurs as you stand behind your table wishing more people would stop by.
If you’re not getting enough college marketing value from your school’s presence at high school college nights, you may be experiencing three distinct problems . . .
The gym doors open. Parents and students rush in. The evening blurs as you stand behind your table wishing more people would stop by.
If you’re not getting enough college marketing value from your school’s presence at high school college nights, you may be experiencing three distinct problems . . .
The fluid dynamics problem – Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people stream through the event like flowing water. They pass by your table. How can you divert a portion of that flow to your location?
The targeting problem – There are students and families in the crowd who are either interested in your college – or who should be. How do you connect with them?
The college lead data-gathering problem – You would like to get phone numbers and email addresses from interested students. But let’s face it – in the flow of a typical college night, it’s all but impossible. All you can really hope is that you can put your card, or some brochures, into the hands of your prospects – and then hope they follow up with you.
These problems can be solved. But first, here’s some bad news . . .
It takes more than one person to hit those goals. You need to bring along at least one other person from your admissions marketing office or recruit local alumni to work with you. Another option is to bring some of your college’s current students along. If you stand behind your table all by yourself, you don’t’ stand much of a chance.
Solving the Fluid Dynamics Problem
To solve the fluid dynamics problem, position your extra person at the entrance to the gym. Equip him or her with some plastic bags that are printed with your college’s name. As families enter, he or she should hand each of them a bag after saying, “Would you like a bag to carry brochures?” Most people will take a bag. Your extra person should connect with everyone and offer a soft pitch like, “Which colleges are you looking for? Do you know us? I hope you will stop by table #32 to learn more.”
Another solution for the fluid dynamics problem is to position yourself or your extra person in front of your table - right in the middle of the flow. His or her job is to divert part of the flow sideways to you. That may mean delivering a soft pitch like, “Please learn more about XXX College here.” Offering plastic bags is also a good idea, but put them on your table top and let people pick them up there. You can then make sure they see your college marketing materials, and you can start a conversation.
Solving the Targeting and Data-Gathering Problems
These problems are tougher, but there are ways to tackle them too . . .
Have a local alum host an evening for students who are interested in your college. List the event with the guidance departments of high schools in the area – or advertise it with newspaper ads or inexpensive posters in stores. If possible, schedule these events when you will be in the area, so you can attend. Get contact information for the people who are there, invite them to visit your table at the college night or invite them to campus. If your alumni host is also an alumni interviewer for your school, he or she should sign people up.
Use a contest or give-away to gather contact information. People can sign up, give their phone numbers and of email addresses and win a prize. But beware. This strategy is a little risky. If you give away something big like a laptop, you are going to get a lot of entries from people who only want the prize, but are NOT interested in your school. Yet there are ways to use this college marketing strategy effectively. For example, you can stand behind your table and quietly invite only very interested people to enter the contest. And there are other incentives besides laptops. If your college offers special scholarships for engineering students, for example, you can invite people to sign up to receive a special packet of information.
Offer to connect students to coaches, faculty members, or other college personnel. Students will happily give you their contact information if you say, “I will have our lacrosse coach contact you” or, “Let me have the director of our drama program call you.”
So, can you wring more college marketing value from chaotic college nights? Yes you can. Be flexible, personable and energetic. But don’t forget to plan ahead!
Computer, iPad, iPhone, Droid, xBox, Wii - it doesn't really matter how they get there, but your prospective students are online. The vast majority of prospective college students and their parents are on the Internet every day, often for hours. So what better way to generate college leads than via the Internet?
If you are considering directing more of your offline college marketing budget to online, here are a few things to consider:
Computer, iPad, iPhone, Droid, xBox, Wii - it doesn't really matter how they get there, but your prospective students are online. The vast majority of prospective college students and their parents are on the Internet every day, often for hours. So what better way to generate college leads than via the Internet?
If you are considering directing more of your offline college marketing budget to online, here are a few things to consider:
Targeting Capabilities Offline college marketing places your message in the content your target audience is most likely to read. It puts messages in magazines, newspapers, television or direct mail, and can deliver it to targeted geographic areas.
Online college marketing also places your message in the content your target audience reads and can deliver your message to certain geographic locations. But here’s what else—online marketing targets your audience even more directly with keywords. Keywords deliver a more qualified college lead, someone more likely to respond, making your marketing efforts more efficient. No more wasted marketing dollars spent on those who are likely to throw out your direct mail piece, flip right past your ad or turn the channel on your commercial. Online college marketing puts your message in front of those who are seriously interested in the college market - they are searching for it!
Production Costs Offline college marketing requires significant time and money for production. A print ad must be submitted weeks in advance and few (if any) changes can be made once it's been submitted. Television ads require even more time and money.
Online college marketing campaigns can be produced in a matter of days. The "virtual" nature of the message significantly reduces production costs. The best part—online college marketing messages can be modified for better performance. Most online venues allow you to "tweak" your message to gauge and get the best response.
Response Rates Offline college marketing response rates are hard to calculate, but tend to be fairly low. Direct mail for example, generally sees a response rate of less than 1%, according to Brandwise, a brand strategy firm. Broader college marketing avenues like magazines, newspapers, television, or even billboards generally produce an even lower response rate.
Online college marketing campaigns are highly trackable and targeted. As a result, response rates are significantly higher. According to Fireclick, a provider of web analytics, advertisers receive an average 2.7% response rate when using keywords and an average 3.8% response rate for email campaigns. That's three or four times more college leads! The higher response rate may be due in part to the ability to access and "tweak" campaigns to obtain best results.
The Internet clearly has its advantages for the savvy and successful college marketer, but don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Both online and offline advertising is important, but you may want to focus more on one than the other.
With 2011 just around the corner, many of you might be wondering which college marketing tricks you should try this year. There are tons of new and innovative ways to recruit students, but sometimes we can be blinded by the sexy, shiny newcomers and forget to consider the foundational tactics that make the college marketing world go round. Here are just a few of the oldies but goodies you can't afford to throw out this year:
With 2011 just around the corner, many of you might be wondering which college marketing tricks you should try this year. There are tons of new and innovative ways to recruit students, but sometimes we can be blinded by the sexy, shiny newcomers and forget to consider the foundational tactics that make the college marketing world go round. Here are just a few of the oldies but goodies you can't afford to throw out this year:
Analyze What You Did Last Year. Do you know which marketing tactics worked last year? Do you know which types of students enrolled? Do you know which types of students actually responded to your marketing campaigns? By truly understanding your student population and the cost and benefits of your marketing tactics, you can start the new year ahead of the game.
Recruit Fewer Students. That’s right, you heard me. By identifying and focusing your efforts on students who are more likely to enroll in your college or university, you can recruit MORE students and BETTER students. Check out this post for more on focusing your college marketing efforts.
Understand Your Competition. By understanding and clearly defining what makes your college unique, you can better understand which students to target and how to convert those students to apps. Also, believe it or not, your competition might know a thing or two about how to recruit students. Secret shopping colleges can be a great way to hone your college marketing strategy.
Measure Your Results: If you don’t have a system in place to measure and analyze your marketing efforts, you need one. Anything you can do to understand what works and doesn’t work will help you produce better results. I know most of you know this, but just a friendly reminder........
And of course (shameless plug), if after you try these tactics, you are still searching for more qualified and invested student prospects -- consider using myUsearch.com as your Honest College Matchmaker. Happy Hunting!
Recently, there has been a big push in higher education marketing to encourage colleges to have an active presence on facebook and twitter. Many of you are probably using these college social networking tools, but chances are, you may still be looking for more qualified college leads to meet your university enrollment goals. Well, good news! There are several free online tools to help you and in the following presentation, we reveal ten free tools to take your college social networking to the next level:
Recently, there has been a big push in higher education marketing to encourage colleges to have an active presence on facebook and twitter. Many of you are probably using these college social networking tools, but chances are, you may still be looking for more qualified college leads to meet your university enrollment goals. Well, good news! There are several free online tools to help you and in the following presentation, we reveal ten free tools to take your college social networking to the next level:
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