Table of Contents

Introduction 03

1. Understanding Your Audience 04

2. Optimizing Search Results 06

3. Building a Great Website 08

4. Engaging With Prospective Students 13

Conclusion 17
 Introduction

Its time to change student recruiting.

Most of its activities are centered around college fairs and campus visits. While this has been ef-
fective for years, its out of touch with the way students look for schools today.

Students are online and connected 24/7. When it comes to finding their dream school, they do
their online homework early. Their research goes beyond your school website - they learn about
your school culture and programs from search results and social media sites.

What you need to do is to shape their opinion early, while you still can.

Why recruit students online?

Since people changed the way they buy, businesses changed the way they sell. We like to do re-
search before committing, and students are no different. Schools are catching up and recruiting
students online.

The two biggest reasons to recruit students online

1. Students live online: Students no longer read a school brochure to make this important
decision. With 92% of teens going online daily and as much as 68% of students using
social media to research schools, it would be crazy to ignore this channel.

2. Reach a bigger audience: College fairs and on-campus tours are fun and effective. But
how many students can you meet face-to-face? With the internet, you can expand your
reach to different countries and recruit international students. You can also target your
marketing messages, tailoring specific campaigns and initiatives to specific demographics.

In fact, 97% of schools are currently using online tactics for recruitment, so you should start,
if you havent. This ebook will show you 4 ways you can boost your schools image and recruit
students online.

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 3

1 Understanding Your Audience

While most students go online to learn about their future schools, only 40% of those who visited
a college or universitys website found the information useful.

Like with any business, knowing your market is the key to selling. Prospective students are your
customers. Other schools are your competitors.

Listen to discussions Monitor your competitors

Learn more about your prospective stu-
dents by tracking their online conversations.
Through active listening on forums, social
media, and blogs, you can collect valuable
data, including:
Most students apply for more than one
schools. Schools within the same district or
with similar strengths as yours attract the
same group of students. To win, you need
to know what your competitors are doing.

Demographic information You can monitor your competitors brand

names and similar program to your own
Most popular programs
strongest offerings.
Students criteria for picking a school
Misconceptions or bias about your school Learn from:

How students perceive them

How they engage on social media
How they promote programs similar to
yours
What kind of students go there and why
What recruitment strategy they
implement

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 4

Adapt your strategy with data

With the insights collected through social liste-

ning, you can adapt your marketing strategy ac-
cordingly.

If you see that a lot of students from China

are interested in your program, you may
want to create Chinese content.
If you find one common objection to your
MBA program is the tuition fee, address that
by providing more scholarships and loan op-
tions to students.
If people have poor preconceptions of your
school, you can address them in specific
campaign pages and content. Say you found
your school has a reputation of recruiting
only the rich and spoiled. You can also use
a headline like Think X University is just for
rich and spoiled kids?.
If prospective students engage with a com-
petitors social media campaign, try similar
tactics.
If students prefer your competitors school
because they think you dont offer that spe-
cific course or scholarship when you actually
do, improve your website and online com-
munications to make sure information is ea-
sily accessible.

The key is to find what matters to your students

and focus on providing that to them.

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 5

2 Optimizing Search Results

When deciding which schools to apply to, the first place any student looks is search engines.
Thats where their impressions are formed and decisions start to take shape. The admissions
staff needs to make sure prospective students see what you want them to.

Optimize search results for your school name

When people type your school name into Google, your school website should be the first listing
they see. But thats not enough.

You want to dominate as many of the first pages results as possible to build influence.

Use search engine optimization to:

Structure your URLs

Separate your website in different domains
Optimize your social profiles

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 6

 Optimize keywords ranking

Even more important than optimizing the result page for your school name is ranking high for
key search terms. You want to reach students who have not made up their minds about which
school to go to.

Examples of key search terms include:

Best school for MBA in US

Best university campus in UK
School with scholarship for first college student in the family

The easiest way to make sure you have a top spot in a chosen key search term is by Google
AdWords.

Heres an example of the results for the search for best MBA in the US:

Tips for doing AdWords effectively:

Do keyword research
Write catchy and clear headlines
Create dedicated landing pages

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 7

3 Building a Great Website

Your website is your best recruiter. A great website

should provide all the answers to the questions a
prospective student would ask.

Heres what students look for on a college website

ranked by importance:

What do students look for on a college website? Source: Noel-Levitz

Most schools already have this information on their websites. But presentation makes all the
difference.

Here are five ways to optimize your website for recruitment:

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 8

 01 HAVE CLEAR NAVIGATION

Students researching a school want to quickly find specific information. Make sure all impor-
tant topics, such as admissions and funding, are included in the navigation bar for easy access.

02 OPTIMIZE THE ADMISSIONS PAGE

A lot of visitors will go directly

to the Admissions page instead
of your homepage.

The admissions page then

becomes a lot of students first
impression of your school. So
you might want to redesign it
to include important informa-
tion you want students to know
about your school.

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 9

 03 SELL YOUR PROGRAM

Every prospective student will be asking, Why should I choose you?

Answer them by showcasing your amazing alumni, career development programs, or course
catalogue.

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 10

 04 LET YOUR STUDENTS SPEAK

Young people are influenced by their peers. A

first-hand experience from a current student
are more effective than another admissions
officers presentation.

MIT features student blogs on their admissions

page, letting prospective students hear real
stories.

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 11

Heres a vlog by one of the MIT student bloggers, talking about campus life:

Theres also a comment section under each blog post to encourage visitors to ask questions
and engage with the bloggers.

05 OFFER VIRTUAL TOURS

If students arent leaving their house to choose their schools, go to them instead.

Offer virtual tours of your campus to give prospective students a better taste of the schools
environment.

Heres how Yale shows off its campus with a virtual tour:

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 12

4 Engaging With Prospective Students

Weve covered monitoring online conversations to understand your market. Now its about
leveraging social media, online communities, and other online media to become part of the
discussion.

Participate in online communities

As students research their dream schools and

majors, theyll have a lot of questions that need
answers.

Questions could be specific, about choosing

a major or living on campus, scholarship and
loan offers, or broad which university should
I choose.

Whatever the questions might be, you want to

be there to answer them.

Heres an example of a student struggling with

which law school to go to.

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 13

 Create social media content

Another great way to engage prospective students is to create engaging and informative content
on social media.

The University of Southern California (USC) uses social media content to reach out to and attract
prospective students.

One of the most successful campaigns was USC Dorms, a YouTube series about dorms and stu-
dent life in USC.

Each video in the series profiled a distinctive dorm room at USC, giving prospective students
a glimpse of campus living. They were able to vote on their favorite dorm, spurring additional
social sharing and engagement.

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 14

 Host live chats and webinars

Since live chats and webinars are real-time and interactive, theyre great for engagement.

Use an app to record and archive the live chat or webinar to watch later. You can also publish
the transcript for prospective students who missed the event.

These events can be held using text, video, or audio or a mix of all three.

Text chat: These could be done on social media (e.g. Twitter chat) or a live chat on your
schools website.
Video chat: Video chats are great for more in-depth conversations. You can showcase your
faculty by bringing them in as speakers . Students can ask admissions questions and get a
taste of your schools teaching style.

The School of Music at Yale recently organized a live chat about admissions, allowing students
to interact with the professor and ask questions live.

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 15

 Considerations before organizing live chats and webinars

1. Live chat or webinar may reduce travel cost and time, but is it cost-effective to achieve your
recruitment goals compared to other online or offline recruitment methods?

2. Find out what language your target countries use, and how Research internet use and lan-
guage choice in your target countries. This information is essential to deciding whether to
offer live chat or webinars. Internet use and language choice are also key to choosing and
configuring the software, finding suitable speakers, and scheduling events.

3. Dont mistake the global reach of the internet as barrier-free access to webinars and live
chat for all prospective students. You should consider time zones, language barriers, tech-
nological barriers, and other factors when planning the live chat or webinar support.

4. Limit the duration of the live chat or webinar in the invitation and leave sufficient time for
questions and answers. A webinar rarely lasts longer than an hour and can be as short as
30 minutes. Less is more.

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 16

 Conclusion

S
tudents are changing the way they research
and choose schools. You cant ignore the inter-
net as a recruitment platform. To keep up
with them, leverage online marketing to improve
your image, answer questions, and provide a new
way to engage.

4 Effective Strategies to Improve Student Recruitment Online 17

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