Five winning ways to reach students
Successful student recruitment campaigns go well beyond listing and promoting a school’s programmes – they inspire and encourage prospective students to imagine themselves living and studying on campus. Great campaigns tap into students’ passions and career goals, and they gain momentum when they’re so cool they get shared all over social media.
Here are five examples of schools doing recruiting right.
1. Jump past the limits of educational marketing and be bold!
Babson College, a business school in Massachusetts, oriented its marketing message around the general interests and popular culture of the students it wanted to attract. It used blockbuster Hollywood movie-inspired design to convey the message that its programmes nurture the talents and ambitions of entrepreneurs. The flashy, confident design concept and decision to appeal to students’ post-degree aspirations set the campaign apart from those of competitors.
A still from the Babson College video.
2. Show the link between your programmes and successful careers
Plymouth University in the UK leverages its alumni in a more targeted way than many schools do. Instead of posting a bunch of generic testimonials on its site, the university showcases the achievements of its alumni according to programme and interest area, from architecture and art and design to agricultural science and psychology. This structure offers international students a meaningful way to understand the careers enabled by the programmes they’re interested in, which is extremely important because so many students prioritise job and income potential when considering what to study.
When students click on a particular field of study, they encounter a high-quality photo of the graduate and an interview that begins with the questions every student is interested in: “Tell us about your career path since graduation” and “How has your degree helped/influenced your career path?”
An array of student testimonials on the Plymouth University website.
3. Students want to be happy and comfortable as they study
When you study abroad, you live abroad. Prospective students – and their parents – want to feel comfortable about student housing before deciding to apply to an institution. The University of Michigan runs an annual contest called “Dormspiration” in which participants first follow “UofMichigan” on Pinterest and then share photos of how they’ve decorated their dorm room or apartment via a Pinterest board called “My UofMichigan #Dormspiration.”
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