Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | March 16th, 2022

Moving prospects from awareness to application using personas

Each step of the admissions and enrollment process represents a different stage of the customer journey. So, it makes sense that marketing messages should change based on where your prospects are in their decision-making process. Creating personas and using the data about your target audience can help you stay attuned to their motivations so you can address their needs and guide them through the different stages of the funnel.

In a past article, we examined how to create personas and how they can help you gain insight into your target audience. Here, we’ll take a look at how you can use your personas to target your digital advertising, pull prospects through the funnel with communications and encourage action and enrollment.

Top of the funnel: Interest and awareness

Activity at the top of your funnel is purely interest based. Your goal here is to create top-of-mind awareness and affinity toward your school and program. Here, you can use insights from your personas to shape:

Your audience segmentation: What “types” of prospects are you targeting?
Marketing strategy: What is your target seeking? How can you address their questions? How can you create brand awareness?
Your media mix: Where is your target searching for information?
Your messaging: How can you personalize your message for their career stage and where they are on their journey?

Middle of the funnel: Conversion

When prospects have made it past the initial “I’m interested” phase, it’s your job to make them feel welcome and give them all of the information they need to take the next step. You want them to learn more, engage by coming to an event or talk to a recruiter about the admissions process. Here you can use insights from your personas to address barriers and motivations and shape:

Your CRM strategy: How can you create an automated communications flow that maps the intended journey from “learn more” to “come to an event”? How can your present your program’s benefits in a structured way that your prospects will relate to?
Your event mix: What is the best way to engage with prospects? Are they ready to come to campus for an event, or do they need more information before taking the next step? In addition to preview days, would it be helpful to provide webinars, a phone call, an informal luncheon, etc.?
Your recruiting outreach: Based on your prospects’ barriers to entry, how can you help them feel more comfortable? Can you personally communicate with them or provide them with alumni contacts?

Bottom of the funnel: Taking action

Based on how your prospect’s journey has gone so far, this can either be the easiest or most difficult stage. Here, you want them to hit the “submit application” button, put down a deposit and commit to your program. At this phase, you can use insights from your personas to encourage action. This is your final push and staying attuned to their barriers will be critical. What will your personas tell you here?

What is holding them back?
What do they need to take action?
How will they convince their boss, their spouse or their family that their time away will be beneficial?
How will they justify the cost against ROI?

As you can see, there are many benefits to creating personas that extend past the initial insights. Not only can they help you craft your marketing strategy, but they can also carry you through all stages of the funnel to convert leads to enrolled students.

If you are looking for an experienced partner that’s skilled in creating personas and using those insights to craft marketing strategies at all stages of the customer journey, look no farther than GPRS. We have worked with over 150 programs to seat students and optimize marketing and recruiting processes. Let’s start the conversation today.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | February 28th, 2022

What to look for in an agency partner for your school

There are many reasons you might seek out an agency to help enhance and bolster your marketing department. Maybe your team is small or you’re facing new challenges. Perhaps you’ve had budget cuts and you need ideas on how to do more with less. Before you begin your search, you’ll want to have a shortlist of criteria to consider. Here are a few ways you can narrow the field to find an agency partner that can have a big impact on your school.

Higher ed institutional knowledge

Why is marketing higher ed different than other industries and why does education experience matter when you are selecting an agency?

Audience segmentation: The decision-making process for prospective students is complex. Select a partner that can help you develop personas to properly focus not only on demographics (who they are) but psychographics as well (why they buy).
Price point: Creating a strategy that aligns with that of a luxury good can take finesse.
Knowledge of the sales funnel: The sales process in higher ed looks different than in other industries, often with marketing and admissions operating in lockstep. Find a partner that can provide insights at all stages of the funnel.

A focus on lead generation and enrollment

In many organizations, marketing may be responsible for filling the funnel while sales take the hand-off to close the deal. In higher ed, the sales funnel behaves a bit differently and can benefit from both marketing and admissions working together throughout the process. Having an agency on board that understands enrollment targets and the flow of prospects from initial interest to a seated student can be critical. Seek out a partner that has the capability to interact at different stages of the funnel with strategies that can dislodge stalled leads, encourage submitted applications and integrate with your CRM to facilitate the yield process.

Agility and flexibility

Higher ed programs often have defined recruiting cycles. And while it may be tempting to repeat strategies and tactics that worked in a previous cycle, it’s important to maintain a level of flexibility and continually assess what is working (and what isn’t) in real-time. What worked last year may not work as well this year. It’s important for your agency partner to strategize with you to build out your marketing plan, but also be prepared to track data and pivot at a moment’s notice if the plan is not generating the activity required to meet your enrollment goals. Having digital lead generation experts that can shift, test, monitor, and react is invaluable.

Tracking ROI

What if you were able to track every seated student back to a specific marketing campaign, ad or message? And what if you were also able to assign a cost per lead to each student and find ways to optimize your marketing spend so you could attract more students? Partnering with a digital firm that has powerful analytics capabilities with custom dashboards and integration with your CRM can give your school actionable insights and justification for every dollar you spend in your marketing budget.

If you are looking for an agile partner that is an expert in higher ed lead generation and enrollment, look no farther than GPRS. We have worked with over 60 institutions to seat a growing number of students and have our own proprietary tracking platform called GPInsights™ that can optimize digital campaigns in real-time and give you a window into how your marketing is performing. Let’s start the conversation today.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | February 26th, 2022

Lincoln University “knocked the socks off” their enrollment goals

Challenge

Lincoln University is the nation’s first degree-granting Historically Black College and University (HBCU). Despite this unique distinction, Lincoln faced challenges with enrollment at the undergraduate and graduate level. The COVID-19 pandemic compounded an already tough situation for a small university trying to survive and remain relevant to today’s college student.

Solution

Lincoln hired GPRS to be its Agency of Record (AOR) – to assist its leadership in developing and implementing advanced enrollment marketing processes for the university, as well as increasing its brand recognition and enrollment numbers at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Through this comprehensive relationship, we were engaged to deliver our full portfolio of marketing and enrollment support services, as well as technological solutions, to aid Lincoln in maintaining healthy and steady enrollment.

We started by performing an Enrollment Growth Assessment to define their ideal students and determine the key drivers in selecting Lincoln over other competitive institutions. We also examined why admitted students decided to enroll in other institutions, especially those that were not HBCUs. Our comprehensive report and recommendations became our action plan and the foundation of our partnership.

Among a lengthy series of initiatives we completed over just the first year of our multi-year partnership, these are a few that stand out:

Working in conjunction with the Lincoln I.T. team, we developed a roadmap to optimize www.lincoln.edu to improve its ranking in search engine results. Performing SEO was an important and necessary step in ensuring that Lincoln was positioned to outrank their competitors, increase the volume of organic leads, and improve the Cost Per Click (CPC) of the digital marketing campaigns – by improving quality scores.
We launched a coordinated series of branding and enrollment marketing campaigns, focused on attracting African-American, college-bound students from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. In addition to digital tactics like Email, SEM, Social, Display, and advanced forms of retargeting and CRM remarketing, we also launched radio spots, billboards, bus shelter/interior ads, and direct mail campaigns.
In order to help prospective students along their student journey, and get a higher percentage of the inquiries to apply (and ultimately enroll), we designed a sophisticated Communications Lifecycle, integrated into their CRM, to nurture prospective undergrad and grad students through their decision-making journey.
To help improve undergraduate enrollment yield, our creative team launched a “Missing Something?” campaign where admitted students received a single branded Lincoln University sock via direct mail. They were informed that they would receive the other sock when they arrived on campus for registration. The campaign was a viral hit, and created excitement and anticipation for the new Lincoln recruits.
Our Contact Center (Call Center) was also deployed to help build relationships with high school counselors, to schedule campus visits, dramatically increase Open House attendance, and keep Lincoln’s value proposition top-of-mind in a very competitive market.

STATES STRATEGICALLY TARGETED FOR ENROLLMENT GROWTH

SOCKS FOR EVERY ENROLLED FRESHMAN

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | February 15th, 2022

Using hyper-targeting to drive event attendance and applications

Filling a room with prospects at your next recruiting event is your objective. But beyond the numbers, it’s important to make sure that the people in the room are qualified and likely to apply. So how do you ensure that prospects you identify through digital marketing are a good fit for your program? You can start with hyper-targeting.

What is hyper-targeting?

Hyper-targeting is a way to deliver highly personalized messages to a specific audience segment. Whereas an awareness campaign may be referred to as “casting a wide net,” a hyper-targeted campaign will instead focus indirectly on one type of student and deliver a message aimed specifically at their motivations. The thinking is that the more relevant the message and placement of that message is, the more likely they will be to interact or take the intended action.

How can you use hyper-targeting to optimize your digital marketing?

Hyper-targeting can help you further define the path that your digital marketing will take. For example, if your program aims to attract more women, you may begin with creating an audience segment based on age, career or title, and gender. However, hyper-targeting can take it several steps further. What is your ideal female prospect’s stage of life? What are her motivations, challenges, and career goals? Asking these questions early on in the strategy process will help you meet your prospects where they are on their journey. By developing messaging that is meaningful to your target’s goals and selecting focused media, your marketing will have more impact because it is connecting with the target in the right place at the right time.

What are some ways to begin crafting your hyper-targets?

All solid marketing strategies rely on some form of audience segmentation to define ways to attract the right leads. What hyper-targeting allows you to do is articulate the exact points of a prospect’s consideration set and create messaging that is tailored to their behaviors. There are a few ways to begin this process.

Develop personas. This process involves breaking your audience into segments based on personality traits, characteristics, motivations, and activities.
Create specific messaging. Focus on the needs and wants of your target. This may involve developing ads and content with an extremely narrow focus.
Research your delivery method. Finding the right channels and mix can be challenging, but it’s important to start with the end goal in mind.

If your team needs help developing personas or creating an audience segmentation strategy, contact GPRS today. We can help you develop a plan to optimize your communications based on your school’s strategy.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | February 2nd, 2022

The University of South Alabama achieved success without breaking the bank and compromising quality

Challenge

The University of South Alabama needed help creating awareness and demand for its PhD program in business administration. Their initial investment in a digital campaign with a local vendor delivered only 63 leads over a 12 month period. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, creating an economic crisis that increased uncertainty for higher education recruiting. Given these factors, coupled with a limited market of prospective PhD candidates, South Alabama had an immediate need for help improving their enrollment marketing efforts.

Solution

Working closely with the South Alabama PhD program, GPRS crafted marketing messages and designed ads focused on targeting and attracting the highest caliber, and most interested candidates. We selected the most promising platforms, determined the optimal timing, and identified affordable keywords to maximize the program’s visibility to its target audience in search engines, social networks, and digital media channels. Using our proprietary optimization platform, GP Insights™, as well as proven lead generation techniques, we were able to match the same 63 inquiries in just the first month, followed by 88 the second month. Within 6 months of our engagement, the qualified inquiry count had topped 400 qualified leads.

Results

Through careful research and planning, as well as micro-targeting, GPRS was able to deliver a 535% increase over the previous year’s results… and in half the time. More importantly, South Alabama received 81 applications from PhD candidates excited to join their program.

YOY increase in PhD program inquiries

Number of applications submitted in first 6 months

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | January 31st, 2022

A content marketing strategy playbook

Content marketing. It’s the current buzz. It’s defined in many ways. It’s absolutely critical for your school. So how can you integrate content marketing into your recruiting plan? Let’s dig into defining content marketing and formulating a plan to include it in your admissions strategy.

Defining content marketing

Content marketing means many things to many organizations. If you ask any marketer on any given day, you may get a different response. That’s because the term itself is so broad. In general, start by asking these questions:

How can you optimize your current content to get as much mileage out of it as possible?
How can you proactively plan and create content that can go the distance?

Cohesive content marketing can enhance your brand and support your strategic pillars. When it’s done well, it can help build smooth customer experiences as you focus on creating, testing, editing and constantly improving digital content that spans multiple audiences and channels.

Optimizing current content

When you think of developing a content marketing strategy, start with what you have. Find out if there are ways to make your existing assets work harder for you.

For your website, this means optimizing for SEO, evaluating your customer experience and the flow of information on each page, determining if your landing pages spur action and if your content is generally organized in a way that makes sense to the reader.

For your assets, this means inserting them in multiple places for a cohesive messaging strategy. Assets could be any piece of content you’ve created that aims to resonate with a prospective student—infographics, videos, blogs, employment reports, alumni stories, news articles, viewbooks, the list goes on. It can also apply to past social posts that you can aggregate into meaningful collections. Start by grouping your assets by theme—for example, ROI, program benefits, faculty, and alumni success. Next, create a planned editorial calendar to deploy themed content by month in a coordinated effort via social, email, features on your website, and any other channels you are using.

Planning new content

As was mentioned above, an editorial calendar of the themes you’d like to promote can be extremely helpful in creating a consistent message for your prospects. Start simple by planning one theme for the next 6 months based on both your marketing strategy and the benefits of your program. After you’ve assessed what exists for each theme, you can determine where the gaps are and where you need to create something new.

Another way to plan new content is to brainstorm about the story you want to tell and decide on creating a hero piece that can be disseminated in multiple channels. Hero pieces are the kinds of content that may cost more but make a big impact. For example, a video series about distinguished alumni, a compilation piece of ROI stats, etc. When marketing and admissions are aligned on creating pieces like this, everyone benefits.

If your team needs help assessing your current content, creating a plan to get more mileage out of your assets, creating new pieces, or planning themes, contact GPRS today. We can help you develop a plan to optimize your communications based on your school’s strategy.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | January 19th, 2022

Use 2021’s trends to inform 2022’s strategies

After another uncertain year of admissions, program changes, and market ambiguity, you may be having difficulty re-establishing benchmarks, planning for the upcoming admissions cycles and even evaluating success. Although you may be ready to move forward, taking stock of recent trends can help inform your next steps.

A recent article in Forbes outlines a few of the top learnings that emerged in the education industry in 2021. We’re commenting on a few of these as it relates to higher ed admissions and marketing so as to carry the lessons of last year forward into our planning.

Pandemic life

The pandemic has continued to dominate headlines. Although this year may have given way to a bit more normalcy, there were still multiple disruptions that created uncertainty. Whether it was offering hybrid options, shifting policies on in-person learning, masking, or modifying events for students, your staff has been required to continuously shift to match the ups and downs of pandemic life.

What lessons can we take forward? Flexibility is king and communication is critical. While business schools herald change management as a key component to successful leadership, it can still be difficult to incorporate these elements into the admissions process, especially when it feels like you are chasing a moving target. But remaining aware of graduate recruiting trends, adapting quickly and communicating clearly can go a long way in validating your transparency to your current and prospective students.

Testing changes

With many schools modifying their admissions testing policies or making tests optional, the value of testing has been called into question for some prospects. If your school made decisions to suspend, amend or eliminate testing requirements based on limited accessibility, you may be facing questions today like when or how to re-instate testing, or what type of test will be your new standard.

What lessons can we take forward? Regardless of what your testing policy is or will become, be as clear as possible in all of your materials – website, digital advertising, emails, events – and make sure your updates are made in real-time to eliminate confusion. If you decide to change a rule, giving your justification for that decision can help avoid confusion. As a higher ed institution, you can feel confident in modifying your policies to fit the current business and economic environment and to ensure the best fit of students in your programs. Just be sure to clearly state your intentions and be transparent.

Enrollment changes

While a downward slide occurred in almost every area of post-secondary education, enrollment in graduate programs grew by 2.1%. In fact, GMAC states in their Application Trends Survey 2021, that, “..as candidates hedged their risks and schools introduced more flexible admissions policies, the application volumes soared in 2020. The 2021 application cycle is set in the context of this dramatic growth in applications in the preceding year.”

What lessons can we take forward? The value of an MBA and post-grad Master’s degrees persists. And during a time when professionals are rethinking their priorities and reconsidering their career paths, graduate school remains a timeless way to add evergreen skills to any professional’s resume. With the “great resignation” upon us where employees are leaving their jobs in droves, the network students can gain through post-grad programs remains extremely valuable. In your marketing and admissions materials, be sure to tout the skills earned in your MBA or master’s programs as valuable going into the next phase of life.

The past couple of years has been difficult at best. And no one knows what 2022 will hold. But with the tools of flexibility, transparency, and clear communication, your school can stabilize admissions and even increase enrollment

If you need help with a new marketing strategy, selecting the right digital advertising channels to reach your target audience and personalizing communications for your prospects, contact GPRS today.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Techteam | January 11th, 2022

The University of Pittsburgh wakes up dormant leads to boost enrollment

Challenge

Like many higher education institutions, the School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh has multiple graduate business programs. Each program has a large database of historical leads that have never turned into applicants or students. These aged records or “dormant leads” have been retained and marketed passively through ongoing CRM email campaigns. Yet, direct outreach is a challenge due to limited budgets, personnel, and the inability to make the volume of calls, per lead, necessary to actually connect with someone in this day and age.

Solution

To reactivate potential students for the Katz Graduate School of Business EMBA programs, GPRS recommended leveraging our Call Center. The contact center is state-of-the-art, and includes technology that enables real-time monitoring, as well as recording capabilities, to ensure that our team is always a consistent extension of our client’s recruiting and admissions departments.

After an in-depth analysis of the program’s dormant records, GPRS developed a comprehensive, outbound calling campaign with the goal of setting up one-to-one calls with the Program’s Director in hopes of moving the interested party further down the enrollment funnel. Additionally, the secondary goal was to update all of the contact records, and identify those who were still interested in the program and wanted more information but were not yet ready to commit to a meeting. Customized scripts were developed to accentuate the value proposition for the programs and a full range of Frequently Asked Questions were created for those who had immediate questions.

Results

Utilizing GPRS’ Contact Center Solution, the University of Pittsburgh, Katz Graduate School of Business was able to convert 22% of their dormant EMBA prospective student database into interested, and active appointments with the Program’s Director. Additionally, the EMBA program received qualitative data on each contacted lead, which enabled them to update their CRM records, as well as identifying “warm” prospects who were not yet ready to enroll, but were genuinely interested in joining a future cohort of the program.

STATE-OF-THE-ART CALL CENTER

PERCENTAGE OF DORMANT LEADS CONVERTED INTO ACTIVE APPOINTMENTS WITH EMBA PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | December 21st, 2021

Focus your marketing on the student, not your school

When you are developing a marketing strategy, there are several steps you might take before arriving at a fully-fleshed out and integrated plan. Of course, finding your unique selling proposition (USP), determining your competitive advantages, outlining the accomplishments of your faculty, and highlighting your distinguished alumni are all important. But how do you avoid this blatant boasting, or listing your accomplishments in the hopes of impressing your leads? Start by focusing your go-to-market strategy on the student, not your school. Although this may seem counter-intuitive, it can make a difference in the way your leads interact with your admissions process.

Start with your student in mind

Where are they at in their journey? What barriers do they have in their decision-making process? How long is their consideration cycle? What do they value? These kinds of questions can serve as a jumping-off point for creating valuable personas for your prospective students. They can help you focus your marketing messages and even determine where to place your media. Additionally, using keywords and phrases that relate to the questions students may be asking themselves during the research and application process can improve your website’s SEO capabilities and make your school more searchable.

Merge features and benefits

Can you find a way to connect your program or university’s unique features to benefits for the student? Doing this could be the difference in converting a lead. It’s one thing to list all of the great offerings of your school, but directly tying them to benefits to the student can be both challenging and rewarding. Here are some examples:

Features-only statement: Our Executive MBA program offers hybrid learning.
Features-benefit statement: Our Executive MBA program offers a hybrid learning model that allows busy professionals convenient class times so they can maintain their career momentum.

Features-only statement: Our MBA faculty are nationally recognized in their fields.
Features-benefit statement: Our MBA faculty are nationally recognized in operations and give our students unique insights into career fields that focus on supply chain, logistics, process management and product design.

Use alumni success stories to create a connection

While high-profile alumni showcase your impressive network, keep in mind that success can look different for different people. While some prospects may be pursuing an MBA to solidify a path to the C-suite, others may be focused on creating their own business or shifting their career completely. Be sure that any alumni success you highlight is aimed at a personal and relatable story. Also, aim to include a wide variety of industries, paths, and demographics. Prospects need to be able to see themselves in the stories you tell — and focusing on personal connection can go a long way.

If you need more ideas on marketing strategy, selecting the right digital advertising channels to reach your target market, or personalizing communications for your prospects, contact GPRS today. We can help you develop a plan to fit within your strategy and budget.

Insights from the Higher Ed Experts

BY Anthony Campisi | December 14th, 2021

It matters where your digital campaign lands

When was the last time you were interested in a product or company and clicked on an ad hoping to learn more, but the final destination didn’t offer what was promised? Maybe you were directed to a company’s homepage or a general page with very little information. Or maybe you were required to fill out such a long form to get to the next step that you gave up. This can be so frustrating, especially for people who are seeking specific information about a particular degree or program. You don’t want your prospects spending too much time searching for what you promised them in your ad — and you certainly don’t want to lose them once they’ve shown interest.

Where you send people in your digital campaign matters. Here are a few tactics we’ve employed over the years of working in the higher ed industry.

Make sure your call-to-action is clear

When the call-to-action (CTA) of your school’s digital campaign is to “learn more” or “request information,” it’s important that your landing page facilitates that process. Think of your landing page as a win-win for both prospects and your program because they get to learn more about you, and you get to learn more about them. First, be sure your CTA is prominent on the page. Some people may want to go straight to filling out a form, while others may want to read a bit more before committing. Include clear direction on what the form is and what they will obtain by filling it out. While it’s recommended to stick to 4-5 fields in an information capture form, be sure that you’re getting what you need to fully be able to communicate with them.

Apply a solid content strategy to build your page hierarchy

When you’re constructing your landing page, think about it from your prospective student’s perspective. What are the 2-3 key takeaways you want them to know about your program? Lead with strong features and benefits and then present them with additional supporting media. If you can vary the type of content you’re using, like videos, infographics, photos, or alumni spotlights, that’s a bonus because it keeps readers engaged and gives them a sneak peek into your program. And remember, the CTA should always be displayed prominently both above and below the fold.

Keep it short and sweet

For digital campaigns, keep in mind that many people will be viewing your information on a phone. Plan to include content that doesn’t require your readers to scroll for too long. Try using short sentences, bullet points, and clear directions for what you’d like them to do. Make sure your forms are mobile optimized and can quickly and easily be filled out on a phone or tablet.

Require them to give you some information, but keep it casual

There’s a possibility that your prospects are looking at multiple schools at different points during their selection journey. Keep in mind their barriers to commitment and realize that asking for too much information upfront can scare people away. With most digital campaigns, you’re beginning at the top of the funnel which means your goal is to get qualified leads to subscribe to your list, not submit an application. Assuming your campaign is targeted properly, you’ve already done the initial step to find the right candidates. Now, make sure your landing page draws them into giving you enough information for you to contact them.

With these few simple steps, you can optimize your campaign landing pages to make sure your prospects make it to the next step in the funnel.

If you’re looking for an agency that is well-versed in digital campaign planning, set-up, tracking, and real-time optimizations, GPRS is your partner. We can help you create a strategy to collect data and track leads so you can fill your funnel with qualified leads. Give us a call to start the conversation.