Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | January 28th, 2021

The power of personal connection for recruiters

In a previous post, we explored how schools can alter admissions criteria to focus more on personal stories while typical screening methods are being challenged. As a second installment in this series on personal connection, we’ll examine how recruiting staff can use relationship building in different ways to pull prospects through the funnel.

While in-person events are suspended or re-invented, campus tours are altered based on states’ gathering requirements and safety restrictions are limiting travel that would have normally been key to recruiting, admissions staff are having to get creative. Are you searching for ways to connect with leads and prospects, but you can’t employ your usual tactics? Here are a few successful strategies we’ve seen from working with different graduate and undergrad institutions.

Pick up the phone

You may be thinking that listing phone calls as a top strategy would be obvious. But when was the last time you talked to a good friend – instead of texting or posting on social media? While many people consider themselves to be “connected” 24/7, a constant stream of emails and texts can be lonely and often overwhelming. If your prospects have signed up to take an admissions test, or started researching schools, their inboxes are full. A personal phone call or voicemail can cut through that clutter. Hearing from a real human being can make a huge difference to prospects who may be on the fence. You can be there to answer questions in real time and also provide a window into the personal side your program offers, and find ways to forge a connection with them. Tips for a successful conversation:

Keep it brief. You don’t have to discuss anyone’s life story, but you can stick to a few talking points and ask them if they have any questions.
Take notes. You’ll want to show you’ve taken a personal interest in them so you can bring it up in future communications. It can be a note about their current employer, or even their dog’s name.
Follow up in a timely fashion. Send answers to their questions right after your chat and take this opportunity to engage them in your CRM.
Focus on the real leads. Be sure to dig through your list of leads and prioritize the ones that are the most likely to be interested in your program. You can also create a re-engagement strategy for stagnant leads.

Use video to your advantage

While many videos you may be using are pre-recorded, they are still personal and can strike a chord with prospects. You can try producing video ads as well as longer-form videos for your YouTube channel. Topics can range from campus tours, student testimonials or even a look inside the classroom. To be more socially aware and relevant to today’s educational landscape, you may consider altering current videos with new footage that reflects social distancing. Or you may even post a Q+A with current students about how school is going with safety standards in place.

Webinars, podcasts and live events

You don’t have the be intimidated by podcasts, webinars and live events. In fact, creating them and leveraging them may be easier than you think. Try these tips for finding the tools you need, developing content ideas and using these digital assets in your marketing.

Be sure to engage a variety of thought leaders throughout your school’s community. Since these events are a relatively low time commitment, you can interview faculty, create a student panel, or hear from admissions directors. You can even broadcast live from a favorite campus spot to give prospects a view of the surroundings.

If you’re looking for ways to integrate new recruitment strategies into your enrollment plan, GPRS can help. With years of experience working in the higher education industry, we are skilled at customizing your message for your unique audience to increase enrollment. Contact us today to start the conversation.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | January 13th, 2021

New year. New strategy. Go back to the basics.

A new year often comes with a new energy, new goals and a new mindset. While many of us eagerly awaited the end of 2020 and a fresh start, we also knew that we would likely still be contending with a complex landscape (especially in education) that would require flexibility, creativity and resilience.

Although there is still much uncertainty surrounding the virus, the market and the state of the country, there is one thing that remains steady – the need to educate the next generation and create stable leaders who can address challenges like these head on.

Armed with the learnings of the past several months, your recruiting team can begin to plan for the future, however fragmented it may appear. You may be wondering how you will generate new leads and how you will seat your classes. Although so much has changed, our perspective is to go back to the basics.

What is important to your target audience?

One of the most important pieces of any strategy, after identifying your target, is to focus on what is important to them. What makes them tick? What are they looking to achieve? How do they view their career path? By doing research and creating personas for your prospects, you may find that although their values may have stayed the same, the way they pursue their goals has changed. Although you may have created personas in the past, it might be time to update them given the current state of the job market. Since your target’s career stage, ambitions and mindset on advancement may have shifted drastically in the past year, it’s important to address these alterations by shifting your communications.

How will you find your target audience?

A qualified firm can help you determine the right strategy to uncover quality leads for your school. Right now, your prospects are spending an inordinate amount of time online—couple that with a constantly shifting digital advertising landscape and it’s hard to know where to start. Choosing the right platform is key, and it helps to start here:

Talk to current students – they can give you an insight into what their like-minded counterparts are thinking and where they’re spending their time online.
Do some research into digital trends. Find out what platforms and social media are trending for students in your demographic and decide if they are right for your programs.
Always buy media through reputable sources.

How will you communicate with your leads?

At the moment, your message is competing with a constant stream of news and your prospects are being barraged with 24/7 advertising and social media. While many are still working from home, they may be burnt out by the end of the day, so making sure your message cuts through the clutter is imperative. How can you focus your communications so that your target will tune in?

Be transparent and authentic. In the age of mis-information, your prospects want to know they can trust you to have their best interests at heart.
Focus on the benefits. Alter your messaging to be direct and “cut to the chase.” Showcase the strength of your programs with specific success metrics.
Give them something to look forward to. While the market is shifting, your target can quietly be positioning themselves for career advancement and leadership to prepare for the future.

How will you nurture your leads?

Once your leads are in the funnel, the real work begins. How you walk them through the process of applying and becoming a student may take more work this year. They may need more reassurance than in years’ past. Although your CRM can do a lot of the work for you, don’t underestimate the power of personal connection during this time. Your prospects need to know you are watching out for them, you are cheering them on and that your program will offer them hope for their future career ambitions. Utilizing a nurture strategy can help you keep tabs on your prospects, track their activity within the funnel and follow up with them if they become stagnant.

If you need more ideas on generating leads, selecting the right digital advertising channels for your target and personalizing communication for your prospects, contact GPRS today. We can help you develop a plan to fit within your strategy and budget.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | September 12th, 2019

The Power of Personas: Why do personas matter for higher ed?

If you’ve ever advertised or sold a product or program, you’re familiar with how important your target audience is to your marketing strategy. Personas are target audiences on steroids, a kind of hyper-targeting to help you dig even deeper and uncover the key motivations behind buying behavior. If you’ve heard the buzz about personas and are interested in how to create and use them to enrich your marketing, and communicate more clearly with your prospects, find out more below.

What is a persona?

A marketing persona is a partially fictional sketch of a key “type” of ideal customer. After creating it and re-reading it back, it will sound like you are talking about a friend or family member because it will include very personal and specific details on the person’s background, mindset and motivations. It will be based on market research and real industry data, but goes deeper than a traditional target market assessment that only includes demographic information. It might visually look like a resume, or a social media profile page with a name—and many times a photo or quote from the person.

Example Student Persona

Sarah Johnson, age 38, married with 2 children, lives in Chicago

Background

Full-time HR director at a retail company, on the path to become CHRO in 5 years, mom with demanding dance and soccer schedules, has undergrad in political science and secretly wonders if an MBA would help her advance in her career.

Motivations

Leading and mentoring a team, being at all of her kids sporting events, traveling to her weekend lake home more often.

Goals

Balancing time with her family and a blossoming career that could land her in the c-suite in her early 40s.

Fears

That her non-traditional degree is limiting her earning power but that she will miss her family’s important events if she decides to pursue a degree.

Online habits

Sarah is busy. She can typically be found browsing Facebook or Instagram at 10pm after her family has gone to bed and she’s replied to a few pressing work emails. She uses the Gmail platform and shops on Amazon because she doesn’t have time to run her errands during the day.

Quote

I’d love to get an MBA so I can gain a seat at the executive table, but it’s also important for me to balance my time so I can be there for my family.

How do you build one?

Although you can see samples of fields in the included example, it’s important to tailor your persona to what you want to know. Since there can be many different types of people even within the same market segment, you’ll want to cover your bases with 2-3 per demographic group with male/female counterparts, and areas to address all of the decision points for someone considering your brand. Using general market research, past data from your organization, google analytics, personal interviews and industry benchmark data can all help you build the type of persona you’ll need to enrich your content strategy.

How can personas enrich your marketing strategy?

When you do a deep dive into what your audience is thinking, it helps you address the barriers to their decision making process. For example, if they’re worried about balancing time you can present the benefits of your flexible online and weekend programs. If ROI is the question, make sure you provide factoids on how long it might take to recoup the investment. Developing personas can also help your internal marketing and admissions teams collaborate to prioritize your messaging, media strategy and tactics.

Why do personas matter more in higher ed?

In marketing, anytime you are asking someone to spend money the connection to values, motivations and mindset are critical. But for your prospective students, investing in a degree and educational experience carries a larger price tag and much higher emotional commitment than a cup of coffee, a couch or a lawnmower. Digging deep into goals, fears, frustrations and media habits will not only help you develop your messaging more clearly but also prioritize your channels and strategy for connecting.

For schools looking to build personas to enhance your targeted marketing strategy, GPRS offers custom solutions. With deep insight into the mindset of degree-seeking students at all levels, we can help you pinpoint your audiences and reap the benefits of hyper-targeted communications. Contact GPRS today to learn more.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Alicia Lyons | February 28th, 2019

LinkedIn InMail: Hyper-Targeting Prospects for Enrollment

How LinkedIn Can Benefit Your Recruiting ROI

LinkedIn is a platform often overlooked by most schools, as they prefer to lean towards SEM or Facebook, but LinkedIn can be a viable and essential medium for marketing graduate programs. LinkedIn is a networking platform that targets working professionals. It is also the number one platform for B2B marketing.

Statistics show that

61 million LinkedIn users are senior level influencers
40 million are in decision-making positions
44% of LinkedIn users earn more than $75,000 a year

Sound familiar? This audience demographic is precisely the target market for graduate programs. Some of the benefits of targeting this demographic through LinkedIn are:

The majority of users interact with LinkedIn while at work. Also, some employers will contribute to on-going graduate education. Therefore if your prospective student sees your message while at work, this may spark an exploration or conversation with their employer about professional development.
Users on LinkedIn are looking to increase their skill sets and worth in their employer’s eyes. A majority are also looking for new career opportunities.
LinkedIn users treat the platform as a social network, following thought leaders, consuming content and forming personal/professional connections.

LinkedIn offers two forms of paid advertising:

Sponsored Content which is much like Facebook’s boosted posts. They are images, ads, and blog content that will appear on the users’ news feeds.
Sponsored InMails are specific to LinkedIn. InMails are messages that include the member’s name that will appear in the user’s LinkedIn messages. They are a personalized form of both awareness and remarketing ads.

How does InMail work?

InMail is simple and effective and works much like an email campaign. First, determine your budget and audience demographics. InMail can be pricey, so it is important to target well and develop compelling messaging. Audience demographics should be determined by location, education, and career background. Messaging needs to include a clear call to action and should be personalized.

How to write a good InMail

Write a brief but pointed message — 3 paragraphs of no more than 100 words each. Introduce yourself, why you are writing to them, what you are offering, the benefits to them, and why they should contact you. The message will be sent to a user’s inbox. The message will only be sent to users that are currently active on the platform, and there are strict frequency caps (a user can only receive an InMail every 45 days from any organization, not just yours specifically) to ensure that users don’t get inundated.

How does InMail generate leads?

InMails employ a combination of awareness and remarketing tactics. When a school introduces their program through an InMail, they are starting the awareness process. This tactic is at the top of the marketing funnel. These users are just becoming familiar with your programs. However, within that same InMail, the school can start encouraging the user to connect by advertising upcoming events, admissions deadlines, and calls for more information. Therefore, through one message a School has the opportunity to appeal to multiple points in the decision making/funnel process.

Beginning a Dialogue: When Leads Become Conversations

Engagement is much higher with InMail campaigns. The average open rate for most of our clients is 94%. A well written InMail with a solid CTA and a sense of urgency can quickly turn into a conversation or a request for more information on the program.

For more information on social marketing for graduate programs or other topics discussed in this article, please visit our blog.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | January 22nd, 2019

An Open Letter To Graduate Level Administrators And Deans

INTRODUCING A STRATEGIC PARTNER TO HELP MAXIMIZE YOUR CURRENT MARKETING, RECRUITMENT AND ENROLLMENT RESOURCES.GPRS

Each year, do you wonder how you’re going to fill your cohorts and hit your net tuition revenue goals? Have you been watching online programs and competitors syphon off what was once a reliable channel for new students? Is your current marketing budget not providing the return on investment it once did?GPRS

You’re not alone.

The market has been changing and it’s brought with it a multitude of challenges unique to Graduate Programs. Instead of competing with the few colleges in your region, you’re now locked in battle with schools both locally, and online. The marketing and lead generation tactics that have been a mainstay in higher ed are becoming more difficult to justify with the ever-increasing costs and the lack of strategic thought provided by most vendors. With the shrinking pool of candidates, and fewer employers footing the bill, it’s difficult to know how to navigate this new landscape and hit your graduate enrollment goals.

Over the past 17 years, I’ve had the privilege of working with over 100 graduate programs at my marketing firm, Annodyne, and saw this challenge first hand. While there was no shortage of companies offering tactical lead generation services, marketing, and enrollment management, very few were able to step in as a strategic partner and consult with in-house teams so they would be better equipped to handle this challenge. In talking to Deans of graduate programs across the country, I realized this was a real problem and one that wasn’t being addressed by traditional providers. This has led me to our new venture, Graduate Program Recruitment Solutions, or GPRS.

I started GPRS because I believe there is a gap in the marketplace; one that after nearly two decades of providing measured results to graduate programs, we are uniquely qualified to fill.

So what does this all mean for your graduate programs? Well, it means you can exponentially improve your ROI by keeping your in-house marketing team or your current marketing agency. How? By utilizing our team of highly-experienced higher education business leaders as subject matter experts (SMEs) to provide strategic insight, guidance, staff augmentation services, and tactical advice on your marketing, lead generation, and enrollment strategies. You don’t need more people selling you the latest media platforms, technologies, and trends. You need help making the most out of the resources you’ve already committed to, and that is where GPRS can help.

Of course, what’s our advice, strategy, and tactics without being able to measure the outcomes? That is why we provide our clients a way to measure every interaction with every marketing campaign – to track inquiries back to not just an email, or an ad, but going beyond that to granular data points related to imagery, messaging and ad size. That is where the true value of GPRS is realized – seeing a direct line from your dollars spent in marketing to your dollars earned in tuition revenue.

We know that this market is challenging, and we know that you and your team are dealing with issues you never could have anticipated ten or even five years ago. We know because we’ve been there and we are ready to help.

To learn more about GPRS and our solutions, please visit www.gprsolutions.org. Or better yet, reach out to me personally at 215.769.9900 x202 and we can talk you through how GPRS can help you and your team get ready for the next enrollment deadline.