Surefire Ideas to Recruit Students Most Likely to Succeed

April Clark -?CAS

We are finding there are so many channels available to reach prospective students that it is harder to find the best ways to communicate.? This means that institutions are struggling to find the most effective channels while trying to stay competitive and still meet enrollment goals.? Managing your school?s marketing mix using data-driven methods helps the targeting, recruiting and retaining student processes to be more efficient.

Here are four ways to enhance your marketing strategies in the quest to influence those students most likely to succeed at your school, and then to maximize outcomes.

Utilize Market Research

The body of students comes from many lifestyle segments.? By targeting the types of students your school needs to recruit, you can be successful in finding them by using events throughout the student lifecycle to determine whom to recruit.? This process of using market research to define your piece of the multifaceted landscape of students starts with categorizing your target audiences through research-based trends, demographics and psychographics.? This data can often be found by reviewing government reports on student enrollment and through third-party research firms.

Workforce and Program Coordination

As in all marketing and sales, degree programs must change based on the supply and demand of workforce needs and our ever-changing business landscape.? It is important to monitor and measure current success rates in particular academic programs by following up on graduates? job placement.? The upshot of monitoring placement is the inevitable need to explore updating, or perhaps even removing, certain programs that are no longer relevant in the workforce.? This information is also valuable in the quest to focus marketing efforts on those prospects best matched to your school programs ? an important goal.

Academic Analysis using Predictive Models

The process of building a model to improve marketing efforts involves input from data analytics software, historical information, and a targeted base of data to define the parameters.? All of this information contributes to developing new and improved recruiting methods.? The previous workplace data plus the modeled data work together to help your job placement department to inform prospective students of the labor demand in the school?s area, or of places where demand for their degrees exists.? The so-called big data incorporated into the process of your institution?s marketing efforts generates the best outcomes for students.

Build the Focus of Student Outcome into Your Curriculum

Student retention continues to be an increasingly important topic for both universities and colleges.? In recent months, significantly more attention is being paid to the role that higher education institutions play in achieving student outcomes, and the students are counting on necessary improvements to enhance their education.? Gone are the days where education of students was the end of the school?s responsibility.? These days the school is taking on more responsibility in the success of their students.? The incoming freshman more often than not are not prepared to study independently or be able to exist in the college environment without support.? Both gradual large-scale changes and smaller reforms will lay the foundation for a reinvigorated, modern school system that ends in a successful student matriculation.

As everywhere else in our new world, government?oversight and regulation have created their own challenges for today?s colleges.? The press has highlighted several for-profit schools that were fined and remain in the public eye for non-compliance to legislation.? As a result of negative press and government action, for-profit schools have been stigmatized unjustly as entities that rely on deceptive marketing and recruiting tactics.? The first priority needs to be the assurance that institutional improvements happen soon, and this begins with understanding the student lifecycle from initial contact to job placement and the importance of that relationship.? It is clear that utilizing and combining external marketing strategies with student data is instrumental in determining where improvements should be made.

The student lifecycle data collection includes all marketing channels, school tenure and employment outcomes.? Schools, along with their partners, must ensure marketing tactics are transparent and straightforward.? Marketing strategies need to be nimble and easy to revise on the fly, allowing the school to respond to changes in public interest and demand.? Coordination across all marketing channels allows school marketing departments to execute superior brand experiences that deepen student loyalty and provide?the support they expect.

After inspecting marketing strategies and updating them, the other side of the coin says that there is not enough data being shared among the schools and their marketing partners to make informed, data-based decisions and optimize the information.? Schools can partner with their marketing agencies to leverage that big data and analysis to make those improvements needed for the flow of information.? This transparency aids the understanding of success, events and factors between school and agency for future success.

As the industry continues to focus on reviving our existing education system, there are many alignments that schools and marketing partners need to consider.? Improved marketing tactics, utilizing external sources and consolidated partnerships will lead to better understanding and improvement upon the success of the student lifecycle.

These methods help you to understand the student landscape and the relevancy of your marketing to student opportunities.? It relies heavily on market research, constant measuring and using data to optimize your school?s relevant enhancements to programs.? Incorporating the above suggestions into your marketing approach will allow recruiting efforts to focus on targeting students that are most likely to succeed, and make the student experience the best possible scenario to maximize outcomes.