Recruiting Students with Digital?!?

The journey of the student from high school to college or university has changed. I mean it has seriously changed, in some ways Institutions of Higher Education need to comprehend. I'm going to keep it simple, and start a discussion.

First, the potential student is looking for an experience more than a message. It is good to have a loud, clear and compelling message, yet that simply is not good enough. Potential students live in a constant interactive world. That's how they roll - even the quiet ones! Students recall funny, crazy or emotional, information from their day and share it. These are experiences. How does your school create an experience the students can engage with?

A recent study I read, Mythbusting Enrollment Marketing, said that 80% of students that take a campus tour will also apply to those campuses. Creating fun interactive ways via digital that students can learn more about campus life, take a VR tour, see it through the eyes of other students is an example of meeting the students where they are and utilizing the technology.

Students themselves are already playing a bigger role in building affinity for their school with social posts. Often this is not learned from, organized or grown in organic ways. Understanding the student experience is critical for recruitment purposes and for understanding what's on the minds of existing students. Harnessing the creative social media experiences of students for potential students to learn more is greatly under utilized in my view.

Often within educational institutions are silos of operations. This is not a blame thing but a reality that is typically overcome with time. On the other hand, communication is very fluid these days between students themselves. This is a disconnect when departments of higher learning are walled off from each other or not able to share information, and pivot to meet the students needs.

SMS marketing (text messaging) is a crucial, effective and easy way to stay engaged with students on an informational level. I.e., dates, deadlines, events etc. This is an example of engaging students in real time while building affinity. Students who wish to opt out of text can, but most prefer to communicate via texts.

In reality, there are hundreds of "tactics" to recruit students and many more compelling creative messages. All good. The digital age provides the ability for conversation like never before! Most get it. The critical question for schools is not are you speaking the language of students, but are your engaging them on the virtual experiential level that they exist in.