PS&L Blog

In my last post about the big 3 – social media, mobile platforms and buying local – I focused on social marketing and in particular the power of Facebook for higher education marketing.

For this post I want to talk about mobile and how that will impact colleges and universities in 2011.

Let’s start with some facts.

There are 350 to 400-million cell phones in the US and that number is growing exponentially.  According to the cell phone industry trade press by the end of 2011 half of all cell phones will be smart. Add to this the fact that every two years most families buy a new set of phones. It’s not inconceivable to think that in 2-3 years almost all of your younger prospects will be reachable through their Smart phones. Even more immediate is the fact that already many of your non-traditional prospects are accessing your websites through their Blackberries, iPhones or Droids.

This is important for the college recruiters to know because more and more people will be accessing your websites through their mobile devices. If first impressions or usability of a school’s website were not critical, then this might not be such an issue. But consider this fact from a NRCCUA 2010 e-Expectations survey: 16% of prospects will drop you from their list and more than three quarters of them will be disappointed if they are not satisfied with your web presence and don’t find what they need.

If you don’t offer a website that reads well in a mobile platform, it will start working against you rather than for you. I am not suggesting that you sub-optimize your current website to make it read better on the smaller smartphone screens. Instead build a separate mobile site that focuses on key areas of your website.

When creating your mobile site, here are four critical considerations you need to follow:

• Use your web statistics to find out what most of your potential students are trying to accomplish when they visit your existing website. Then optimize your mobile site to support those pages.
• Keep your graphics to a minimum. For mobile users, information is king.
• Maintain your brand identity. If they are interested in your college, they will eventually look at your website on a computer. You don’t want there to be a disconnect between your mobile site and regular website.
• Prepare for multiple platforms. Because change is constant in this growing market, you need to use a mobile platform delivery service that can work on any device whether it be an iPhone, Droid, Blackberry on the next big thing.

Apps are becoming a bigger and bigger piece of the Smart market, and colleges and universities should consider how an app might benefit them. If you can’t afford to build your own, you should consider finding those apps that have a broad appeal to your target prospects and advertise on them.

But at this juncture, the first step is to create a mobile site. It’s easily doable.

In my next blog post, I’ll be talking about how you can apply the buy local principles to your college recruiting.

Marketers from all industries are talking about the big 3 for 2011 – social, mobile and local.

That’s as in social media, mobile platforms and buying local.

If those in higher ed marketing and enrollment don’t think this applies to them, they are surely mistaken.

Let’s start with the social marketing piece.

Facebook is about to reach the 600 million subscriber plateau. While Twitter (closing in on 200 million users) and LinkedIn (closing in on 100 million members) have also experienced substantial growth, for the prospective college student, Facebook and to a lesser degree MySpace are the social networks of choice. Facebook’s largest growth is coming from the 35 and older crowd – prime alumni donors.

Facebook is improving its offerings for marketers constantly. Any college or university that’s not taking full advantage of what Facebook can offer through is fan/company pages is missing out on a big opportunity.

In addition to the wall, info, and photo indexes, colleges and universities can create unique welcome pages that can guide visitors to a number of different locations, either on their Facebook page or to their website.

To give you an example, let’s go to where Facebook started – Harvard. When you search on Facebook for Harvard http://www.facebook.com/Harvard you are taken to a welcome page.

While there is a lot to view here, there are two things to notice. First, with its big image and multiple links, it looks a lot like a web page and that’s on purpose. Second, check out how many people “like” this page – 211,249! You might be thinking, well this is an Ivy League school and so on, but lets take a look at Yale http://www.facebook.com/YaleU. They only have 17,152 and all they offer is a wall and info. Princeton http://www.facebook.com/PrincetonU does a little more, but no branded welcome page. They have 30,713.

In addition to a branded page, you can:
• Create separate landing pages to promote unique events
• Create discussion groups
• Post YouTube Videos
• Create individual alumni pages and have them centered on your main Facebook page

And most importantly of all you can engage in ongoing discussion with those who signed up or who want to have a dialogue with you.

I’ve gone through countless Facebook college and university pages, and it’s amazing how unsuccessful most of them are at building their fan base. I would say the average ranges between a few hundred to two thousand. What’s disheartening is that colleges and universities are ideally suited for social marketing. They have an audience that ardently supports social media, and they can offer information to an audience that wants to engage.

For 2011, building a Facebook fan base should be a priority especially when you consider the looming threat of Facebook’s new messaging system. Email and social media companies like Blue Sky Factory are already talking about how Facebook Messages will be the first of its kind of whitelist email marketing where messages will bounce unless you are already friends. http://www.onlinemarketingconnect.com/frame/index.php?url=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheThinkingInbox/~3/uvjlJZbh9hU/&link=2

What that means is that if your prospects or alumni choose to use Facebook for their emails, and you want to reach them on their Facebook account, you will have to be already linked to them in some way.

There is a lot more to social media marketing than Facebook, but it has become a critical component in higher education marketing.

In my next blog post, I’ll be talking about mobile marketing and its impact on the college market.

As you know, the deadline for having a net cost calculator on your school’s website is October 2011 (less than a year away).   Whether you already have a calculator or are making a decision about which one to use, this is an excellent opportunity to review your messaging as well as the look of your tuition price tag.

In my last editorial about  
Value vs. Cost I mentioned the common pitfall of inconsistent messages about cost of attendance.  Consistency is key – not only with the dollar figures, but also with the messaging surrounding your cost.  Everyone involved with admissions and financial aid must be trained on how to explain facts and figures and convey the value of attending your school.  Now you must add a net cost calculator into the mix, too.

Theoretically, a calculator should raise positive awareness and help folks understand the complexities of net cost.  At the same time, the mere presence of a calculator will draw more attention to your price tag.  The value of the calculator can backfire if the process creates negative views and tuition sticker shock.  The metaphor “slippery slope” is appropriate here.

The action of a calculator involves the consumer inputting data – or answering questions that customize their data – causing them to focus on these facts before they get to the bottom line cost.  This is contrary to our tendency as consumers to zero in on the bottom line first and then read the individual parts of the sum.  Also, when calculating net tuition, the prospect will be considering all financial aid options and looking to apply these awards and entitlements to decrease their net calculation.  Interesting.  Will net price calculators make students and families more aware of the costs and financial aid options, or will it cause even more confusion and need for more personal attention?

I attended a presentation about this popular issue at the CCCU Enrollment Management Conference in Ponte Verde, Florida in January.  A representative from one school who has the calculator in place volunteered information about how they leverage the calculator to have more conversations about their value.  She said the conversations led to a better understanding of the value of that college and helped engender a level of trust between the admissions officer and the prospect.

What was a bit surprising was that most of the questions after the presentation were focused on the the costs of licensing or building the widget.  (Ironically it seemed there was nervousness about the price tag.)

What you need to do is assess how your net cost calculator will be integrated into your overall marketing.   Where is it on your website?  What does it say?  How will your different segments respond to the calculator?  Do you need a different approach for different segments?  Is your financial aid office in sync with admissions and are your students getting the same message from both offices?  Do you need to prepare for more customer service training?  Have you considered testing different calculators with sample audiences?

Having a net cost calculator is a federal mandate, yes, but successfully communicating your cost and your value always has been vital to enrollment management.  Let’s hope net cost calculators support the cause and not become a monkey wrench.  Be sure to keep all of your staff who interface with prospective students and families in the loop and make sure your recruiter training includes value vs. cost sales techniques.

In case you missed it – here is the November article about net cost calculators that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Social Parasite or Friend?

Did you see the article “Top recruit quits Facebook following ‘living nightmare’” by Cameron Smith, a Yahoo! Sports blogger?  The article talks about how the high school student, who has been dubbed the top football recruit in the country, felt he had to shut down his Facebook account because the assault on his pages “has made my recruiting experience a living nightmare.”

We are not all trying to recruit the top athlete, musician or science student to our colleges, but we are all working very hard to enroll our own top recruits. The Chronicle of Higher Education featured an article not long ago where prospective college students complained about text messages in the same way.  Too many texts, sent too frequently, and from too many people, many of whom they did not know made an unpleasant experience for the prospects.  Part of managing our social sites and communications has to focus on managing the access to the people with whom we are communicating.

Much of the talk in college admissions and marketing offices is in regards to protecting the institution.  We are careful to shut down chats when someone signs on and is inappropriate, condemns the college, or personally attacks a staff, student or faculty member.   Colleges are equally careful to monitor entries on social sites, and remove any posts on, for example, a Facebook wall, that is deemed unsuitable.  Some colleges have gone so far as to not allow anyone, other than staffed marketing professionals, to post on the college wall.

While the “top recruit” remarked that there was a lot of trash talking being done by both of the schools at the top of his list, it is interesting to note that this was not his reason for quitting Facebook.  So, I wonder, who is doing the trash talking and is there anything we can do to prevent it or stop it altogether?

It is not enough to integrate our marketing.  It is important to consider how we monitor access to our prospective students, particularly those we are most interested in enrolling.  So often when talking to admissions staff, scholarships representative from the college foundation, coaches, financial aid, faculty, alumni, student services staff, they openly say that while they own their own communications with prospective students, they are not fully aware of what is happening across campus.

The very first step is to coordinate across campus.  Do you want a prospect receiving 5 texts, letters, or emails in a day, or a week, from different organizations on the same campus? Is there a context where that is okay, or are you overwhelming the student?  Coordinated recruiting efforts, like an integrated marketing and communications plan will produce more enrollments of your institutions top recruits.

There is a distinct difference between creating an opportunity and forcing the connection.  To create opportunities we want to:

• Give the student the chance to personalize their own admissions page
• Provide the prospect with access to people who can assist in the admissions or financial aid process
• Ask the prospect if they would like a call or text from a faculty member or someone who shares a special interest
• Create live chats with current students
• Open  a dialogue about meaningful issues through a call from a student with similar interests or an admissions counselor
• Create social media spaces where like-minded current and prospective students can safely interact
• Ask  prospects how they prefer to communicate
• Provide  prospects with the opportunity to decline specific types of communications

Our end goal is to enroll the student.  As stated earlier, we are not all trying to enroll the top athlete in the country, or the top violinist, or the top science student, but we are all trying to enroll our own set of top recruits. If we choose communication means that offend them, allow too much access, or the prospects feels it is grown out of their control, we are not helping our enrollment goals.  The idea is to give prospects reasons to engage with the college and the people who represent the institution, not reasons to shut down communication altogether.  There is a line between feeling like people care about you and you have a connection, and feeling so overwhelmed with attention that you want to shut it all down.  We want to stay on the side of the line that enrolls the top recruit.

I hear it all of the time from admissions counselors. “Making the final decision on where to go to college is an emotional one. It’s based on factors that I don’t have any control over.”

Actually you do.

That’s not to say you can convince everyone that your university or college is the right choice for them. What you can do is determine from an early stage whether there can be an emotional connection between that prospect and your school.

It comes down to two critical elements.
1. Reading your prospects
2. Overcoming resistance

Reading Your Prospects

I’m not talking about reading anyone’s mind. However, there are signals that students and their families give off that can be read. For example, if they don’t talk to you without much effort on your part. If they don’t ask any questions at all. If they talk among themselves and hardly bring you into the conversation. These are all signals that there is a lack of interest or emotional attachment. Something has happened either before or during the interview or campus visit that has turned them off. Chances are they are going through the motions and you are not on top of their list.

You can prod a little by asking what other schools they are applying to. You can often tell by smiles or gestures which schools they most want to go to, and from that information you can determine whether it’s worth spending more time and energy on this prospect.

The important takeaway here is that there will be students who will not make an emotional connection to your college or university. Take note of who they are, and don’t count on them as part of your yield. That way you can project a more accurate yield.

Overcoming Resistance

Some prospects will engage with you but will react negatively to certain statements made on the tour or during an interview. When this happens you have an opportunity to win them over.

The main obstacle I hear about is cost. The reality is (and there is plenty of data to back this up), while cost is a barrier, if your school is the right fit students and their families will try to make it work.

When it comes to cost and other objections, your prospect and their family are usually acting emotionally. Your response should recognize their emotion by being empathetic to their concerns. Reassurance is something they are looking for since, for many, this is the first time they will be away from home.

The important takeaway here is that with an objection comes an opportunity to connect directly and emotionally with a prospect. As the admissions process proceeds, make sure that you personally address those concerns. A quick note that says something like “We’re going to see if we can make this work for you” can go a long way to cementing an emotional connection with your prospect, and that’s a good thing for your yield.

Let me know if anyone out there has an anecdote that demonstrates how to connect emotionally with a prospect who at first did not seem open to going to their school?