Author’s note: Based on our popular blog post: 4 Ways to Recruit Undergraduate Students, here are 4 more ways to recruit undergraduate students.
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Today’s recruiters need to find new ways of attracting a prospective undergraduate student who is now more skeptical than ever about whether a college degree is worth the time and money.
This shift in American public sentiment is reflected in the 1.4 percent overall declines of current higher education enrollments. What’s more, the prospective undergraduate student population is not expected to show any growth again until 2020. But how did the balance ever tip in this direction anyway?
Perhaps the biggest factor is that the national student loan debt will climb to 31 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016, as predicted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. So how do you grow enrollments during a time of public dissent and enrollment declines?
Recruiters simply need to tailor their recruitment strategies and marketing messages to the evolving preferences of today’s prospective students. This boils down to alternative strategies such as optimizing your search lists or creating personalized promotions. This way, you not only connect with prospective undergraduate students but you also demonstrate your value.
As an added bonus, many of these strategies are available to you at no upfront cost. Let’s take a look at the four strategies that you can implement today, taken from our new eBook: The Definitive Guide to Undergraduate Recruiting.
Whether you build your marketing lists through content and SEO or purchase your lists from a third-party vendor, there are three tactics you must implement to maximize your lists’ effectiveness: IP targeting, geofencing, and in-feed social media ads.
Promotion in higher education recruitment is a term that refers to increasing the prospective student’s awareness of a program or institution, generating enrollments, and building brand loyalty.
If you want to target prospective students—and make sure they take notice—then they need to know your message is worth their time. Enticing prospects with promotions helps to justify their investment of time in your institution. Promotions may require strategy and creativity, but you can learn a lot by simply examining some recent examples of promotions that schools used to attract new undergraduate students.
In the classic example of a freebie promotion, the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) provided free Apple iPads to all incoming undergraduate freshmen. Not only did this allow the institution to integrate new technologies into the classroom and foster education innovation, but it also generated buzz among prospective undergraduate students considering IIT.
In the first contest of its kind, National Louis University ran a promotion on the popular deal coupon website, Groupon. The promotion offered a three-credit-hour Intro to Teaching course for only $950, nearly 60 percent off the normal price of $2,232. “This is a way for potential students to say, Let me find out if this is really a profession that I want to pursue,” said Nivine Megahed, NLU’s president. While we don’t know if the Groupon promotion yielded the enrollment results Megahed was hoping for, we do know NLU received a lot of publicity from it.
Don’t forget about Facebook promotions in the form of contests—because who doesn’t love a contest? For example, Misericordia University gave prospects and incoming freshman gift certificates and prizes if they changed their Facebook profile photo to the school logo. By capitalizing on the networking functionality of social media, Misericordia not only increased interest from prospective new students, but also was able to build brand loyalty among their incoming student body. And isn’t that what promotions are all about?
Over one million international students enrolled in the U.S. during the 2015–2016 school year, so there’s no question that recruiting international undergraduate students can be a great source of new enrollments.
The benefits of recruiting international students includes cultivating your global brand and reputation, gaining potential revenue increases, and providing your domestic students with new cultural perspectives.
Here are five tips for increasing your international enrollments:
Although recent travel restrictions are affecting U.S. institutions, there are still enormous opportunities to recruit undergraduate students internationally.
It’s a multichannel marketing world, and the three strategies above work best when paired with active traditional recruiting methods.
The effectiveness of a traditional recruitment method such as hosting an open house or visiting high schools cannot be understated. And though there now exist live event college recruitment platforms that are more efficient than visiting high schools, you should never eliminate a recruitment channel entirely, since they provide marketing diversification, which can be used to shield your institution from risk. The methods listed above are to be used in tandem with traditional recruiting methods. When they are used correctly, you will connect with prospective students who would have otherwise gone unnoticed.
For example, printed communications may be more expensive, but they give you another avenue of communication with prospective undergraduate students when you combine them with a digital campaign. It’s best to reserve this higher cost method for the higher quality prospects who are most likely to enroll in your institution.
These four tips are only part of a complete undergraduate recruitment strategy. To learn more ways to effectively recruit undergraduate students, download our free eBook: The Definitive Guide to Undergraduate Recruiting.
