The Perfect Storm for Universities
With falling birth rates, there is increasing competition for the top talent by universities and countries all over the world. Universities are also faced with an AI Tsunami, as it reshapes the job market. The question and value of a university degree is being questioned in many countries.
Students are now engaging with and applying to an increasing number of institutions and have many opportunities including online learning and direct work options and apprenticeships. Students also have higher and higher expectations. The bar is continually raising.
Every student is doing the majority of their research online now, but one of the challenges university marketing teams have is the attribution gap. Students are researching for 6-18 months and using multiple platforms and resources. How do we know which activities are working and lead to actual results? Not knowing the effectiveness of different activities can lead to waste, and / or cutting successful campaigns before fruition.
This attribution gap is one of the biggest challenges universities have when seeking to attract international students, and unfortunately, there is no simple solution. While eliminating the attribution gap entirely is unrealistic given the student journey, we can improve visibility by improving tracking and analytics, and changing how we think about international marketing and recruitment.
Here is our playbook for growing a university and attracting right fit students in the fast changing AI age.
Defining Your Specific Focus
The last 200 years we saw universities growing larger and becoming more and more comprehensive. We now see this trend reversing. In some sense the attribution gap might not be a tracking problem but a sign of a lack of product market fit.
It’s increasingly essential to have a clear focus and to bring out the advantages of your institution and programs and ensure that it aligns with the needs of the market. To be the best at something and / or to be the best option for a specific someone, and align all communications and marketing with that. Clear communication of this makes marketing, and conversions much more effective.
Brand Gravity - Re-Engineering the Student Journey
The most effective strategy is to rethink marketing as building brand gravity, and a digital ecosystem. To extend reach by building digital assets, eg., webinars, videos, material, resources, short online courses or short term in-person programs that bridge the gap, meeting the students where they are and converting them between interested students and enrolments. This helps to attract students however they engage, driving your institution's long term success.
Building Brand Gravity
Brand helps to communicate values and differences and acts as gravity that attracts students. In the digital world it is no longer a sales process but more like attracting them and keeping prospective students in orbit by developing a strong and flourishing brand. Brand gravity is about optimising every touch point the student has with the institution. To be most effective, it is not a purely marketing function but fully integrated with the institution activities and community. One of the advantages of the strong brand is that it attracts the right fit students, increases student conversions throughout the recruitment funnel, and even improves their satisfaction and success when enrolled as the strong brand forms a part of belonging and identity.
The funnel is now more like the landing sequence as they come down to land from orbit.
Creating Digital Assets that Attract and Drive Conversion
Building Digital Assets - videos, guidebooks, reports, webinars and masterclasses are some of the most effective ways to attract students, and help them stay in orbit or move down the funnel to take action when they are ready. Content creation and building the ecosystem helps to bridge the gap and also to support AI and social discoverability.
Online Webinars
One of the most effective methods of attracting students is with online webinars and masterclasses. These are at a fraction of the cost of in-person fairs and can attract a large number of students at the top and middle of the funnel. The webinars also produces a reusable asset that can become part of the orbit of your university and can attract future students into your orbit. The transcripts are also accessible by AI, which helps with AI accessibility and social discoverability.
People are the Brand
Students connect more with people than brands. It’s extremely effective to elevate the people of the community - star professors, successful students and alumni. This also helps them become more successful which acts as a virtuous loop.
How we can help
Global Admissions helps universities by helping to develop your focused brand, we can share market data to help you grow and develop and find product market fit during this period of great change. We are a player that exist in our own orbit and can help to grow your awareness and gravity and help to attract students to your orbit. We can also help to develop digital assets that can develop your university long term brand.
We are working with a limited number of forward thinking focused universities. If this playbook aligns with your goals, please complete the form here to request a call.
