I’ve always defended the idea that higher ed websites should get a bigger part of their admission office’s marketing budget.
Not because I’d like to make more money — although that would be nice — or to have more to play with cool technological toys.
No, I really think that college websites should get their fair share of this budget to respond to the needs of some of their end users – prospective students and their parents.
This being said, I don’t believe websites should be the only marketing channel to be used.
Admission websites are used a lot during the whole college selection and application process, but, as you know prospective students and their parents don’t just go to a search engine, type “college” or “university” and apply to the first 10 listed institutions (anyway, institutions don’t usually show up on the first pages of this type of search).
To sift through the thousands of possibilities, they use college online directories (or their paper counterparts) compiled by or even the more traditional college fairs organized by high schools.
However, when it’s time to narrow down the selection of institutions, prospective students and their parents do rely a lot on the Web as shown in this excerpt of “Even With Internet’s Influence, College Fairs Continue to Play a Key Role in Recruiting”, an article by Jane Gordon published today in the New York Times:
Katherine Turrow, 16, a junior at the school, stopped at the Smith table with her mother, Linda Scacco.
“I see this as a first step,†Ms. Scacco said. “Some schools that she has seen here she never would have considered otherwise. So we’ll narrow it down, and then look on the Internet.â€
A couple of nights earlier and 12 miles east, hundreds of parents and students crowded the aisles of another fair at Glastonbury High School. Parking was chaotic, with visitors crowding cars onto the school’s lawns and in no-parking lanes to create spots.
Donald Otto and his son, Cody, 15, a sophomore, strolled the aisles, reviewing the long lineup of banners. “You can find a place you’re interested in here, and then go online,†Mr. Otto said. “This gives us the broad picture.â€
As a result, colleges and universities could even get an idea of the return on investment (ROI) of these other marketing channels.
That wouldn’t be difficult, but not totally foolproof as some might just type or search for the institution website on their own. They would just need to set up special landing pages with associated unique easy-to-remember web addresses publicized at every college fairs (could be done dynamically with a unique template) and provide a distinctive web address to the different online directories.
Anybody doing that already?
Absolutely, Karine, college and university websites are THE central plank in their recruitment marketing platform. Academica Group’s surveys of Canadian applicants (50,000 across Canada this spring) consistently show that the website is the number ONE used and influential source of information for applicants.
The more strategic thinking goes into the website, from architecture and interface to selection of photographs and continual streams of campus and research news, the more impact the website will have. And we’re starting to see implementation of what I call “Web 3.0” — university websites that can monitor the traffic patterns, interests and attention spans of applicants visiting their sites, as a form of market research in and of itself.
But, that being said, print is NOT dead, of course: viewbooks, program brochures, university fairs, and the whole assortment of other sources (yes, including the Maclean’s rankings) are also used by most applicants, and influence their choices as well…
Ken
Karine –
Sure, websites are central and need to be rich with content, but they can’t be seen as the “tip of the sword.” Websites are only useful to those students who either know your name or stumble on you via search. Unfortunately, not every student has a catalogue-like index of every college and their respective programs in their heads. There needs to be some marketing and information sharing before the first click. Pouring too much emphasis on the web as the singular communication tool narrows an institution’s funnel of prospective students.
Thanks for agreeing with me on this post, Ken and Charlie, although anybody is free to disagree too ;-)
Are you suggesting promoting the website at college fairs? While I agree with that, it seems essential to invite folks in as much as possible with e-mails to that direct them to the site, using addresses captured at the fairs. I’m not sure if we are doing this yet, but it be a good next step in the recruiting process. (If this sounds obvious, forgive me, as I’m pretty new to the field.)
Thanks for your comment, Christian.
To answer your question, I’m not suggesting promoting the website at college fairs for the sake of it.
You can and should collect email addresses at college fairs, but most high school students will probably go visit your website on their own without waiting to get your email.
So, what I think you should do is to direct them to a special web page made just for the college fair they attend (personnalization is key nowdays). When they are back home and type yourcollege.edu/mycollegefair, they get to a page where they are going to find info and links of interest to them. I see on your admission website that you offer programs to undergrads, grads and adults. You could create these landing pages so they just offer directly the information relevant to your target audience. By investing a bit of time setting up these pages, you’ll then be able to measure (via the number of visits to these pages) the results of your offline initiatives – college fairs in this case.
That’s what I meant. I hope this helps.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this Karine. I think all the different user streams that we encounter in our admission process have their unique pattern of when they approach what type of medium. I can for example imagine that there are a lot more high-school kids with college names in their heads that they then type into the search engines first, thus narrowing their search down. On the other hand, I imagine that parents work almost the opposite way, going to fairs first, and then pick a very small number of URLs to research them further on the web. Brochures will play a very important part, too (We recently conducted a survey with a bunch of 16-year-olds, and they stated that brochures were very important to them, as an addition to the web sites).
If I had a lot of money (and a lot of time), I would probably interview lots of people of the different streams, and put it all down in a graph (time of selection process on X, frequency of consultation on Y, and then a graph for every different medium). Would be very interesting to investigate the overlap.
By the way, we often create “landing pages” for our newspaper, to see how much bang we actually get for our buck. Obviously, factors like an increased brand awareness through the display of your university logo in a newspaper will never be able to be taken into account with something like this…
Having spent the past 25 years in marketing, the last 7 in higher ed, and the proud parent of a high school junior, I would like to offer my opinion.
There is a great deal of focus on channel, and not a great deal of interest in establishing and maintaining a dialogue with the individual.
There also seems to be a lack of database marketing basics – a process for capturing information in order to manage the relationship as well as report on key metrics such as original source of contact etc. (Think about the Ed Fair example – is the original source the Ed Fair or the $$ worth of direct mail and print ads you used to promote your attendance at the Ed Fair?)
I guess my overarching comment is this – don’t get so caught up in the channels. Remember, you need to develop a strong relationship with the prospective student and the key influencers in order to attract the student.
My daughter has received more than 2 dozen email accounts from schools. No value in it for her…but something the school can do.
Some of the mailers have been the equivalent of ‘War and Peace’ (Ithaca College) – how about getting her to respond and start a dialogue? Ask her what she’s interested in and then return the BRC or fill out the web form so you can either give her relevant information or point her in the direction of another institution that offers what she’s interested in?
Oh well, enough…time for morning coffee.
I think that our own admissions office redesign back in July 2005 simplified the mess for students/parents to wade through. Unfortunately, the political-ness of the university home page forced us to go it alone, so to speak. But based on SEO/SEM concepts we implemented, we’ve seen a huge uptick in our traffic. Coupled with the blog, we are making an impact out there and it seems that our university home page is seeing some bleed from our efforts (plus it is becoming more dynamic=Google indexed more often).
We have gone to using specific landing pages for different events/mailings/etc. that have simplified URLs or redirected from a simplified address (don’t get me started on the political nature of that!). It certainly allows us to see who uses the web and for what purposes. We use a campus-wide analytic and an admissions-specific one to track our own numbers which in this financial climate is necessary to convince those w/the purse strings that these actions provide viable ROI.
I do have to say that there is no way that internet/web is the only channel a school can/should focus on. But it has to be easy to use/easy to find/intuitive to students or else it’s just a missed opportunity.
Thanks for your comments Sardionerak, Pat and Blake.
Blake, you really have an interesting admission blog going on. Congratulations!