How to grow enrollment in your specialized MBA program
Specialized MBA programs remain a popular option for graduate school students, but growing enrollment can be difficult. It’s no secret that competition for prospects is fierce and finding the right recruits can be tricky, so higher education institutions need to implement the right strategies and best practices to grow enrollment in your specialized MBA program.
Here, we’ll take a closer look at some of them to help you boost your enrollment. With these strategies, your institution can leverage tried-and-true ways to help attract and retain the right graduate school prospects for years to come.
Take a digital-first approach to marketing
When it comes to marketing, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve.
Many higher education institutions still don’t utilize digital marketing and advertising to their full potential. Make sure that your institution fully embraces digital marketing, including various social media channels to attract and engage with prospects, personalized email communications, a frequently-updated blog, and paid search and social ads targeted specifically to your audience.
Emphasize all of your flexible learning options that are available
These days, specialized MBA prospects value flexibility and choice. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic made online and hybrid learning the norm in many ways for students nowadays. Embrace this change by highlighting any flexible and remote learning options your program offers in your marketing content, as it can pay dividends over the long-term.
Create detailed personas
Data-driven, detailed personas can play a key role in your marketing efforts too.
As specialized MBA prospects differ from traditional graduate students in a number of ways, understanding their specific demographics, pain points, and goals is crucial. To that end, creating personas can help you craft the right marketing materials for your audience. This can be done by carefully analyzing your current student database and conducting surveys and focus groups to obtain the data you need before creating in-depth personas tailored to your specialized MBA audience for your marketing campaigns.
Stress the value of a specialized MBA
It’s also a good idea to emphasize the value of a specialized MBA from your institution.
Stress that a specialized MBA is worth a prospect’s time and money as an investment in their future. This can be done by leveraging data available on statistics like lifetime earnings, job prospects after graduation, career satisfaction, and the like in your marketing content.
Data-driven infographics and short-form videos work especially well in this regard since they convey large amounts of data in a visual and engaging way, though longer, more in-depth content like blog posts can also work. Whatever marketing channel you choose, be sure to demonstrate the value of your program to prospects clearly, concisely, and effectively for maximum impact.
Humanize your marketing with student testimonials and alumni success stories
Finally, humanizing your marketing with testimonials and success stories can help create better engagement and personalization with your prospects, boosting conversions.
This is a great way to tell a story and communicate the value of your specialized MBA programs in a unique way that helps connect prospects with their peers in your programs. Blog posts are a good marketing channel for these, but the most effective way is generally through video marketing. Videos can easily be distributed via social media, email newsletters, your website, and even paid ads, greatly amplifying their reach to your target audience.
Grow enrollment in your Specialized MBA today for success tomorrow
Specialized MBA programs face tough competition for students, but with these tested strategies, you can successfully grow enrollment. When implemented, they can help supercharge your marketing funnel and bring in a steady stream of prospects over the long run.
