Marketing to Your Whole Portfolio – Part 1: Prospective Student Sub-markets
Between the changing demographics, the increased closures and mergers of institutions, and the frenetic pace of competition, things are not likely to get easier for most sectors of higher education in the near future–especially smaller schools in smaller markets.
Many institutions would be well served to borrow a foundational principle from financial planning to bolster their own financial well-being – diversification. When planning for retirement, we build portfolios, a mixture of investments that buffer us from over dependence on one market that could go south. The healthiest institutions also follow this principle. They are not dependent on just one audience, but have spread their financial risk across multiple audiences and revenue streams to build a strong foundation that can weather the ups and downs of the market.
A varied recruitment portfolio requires a more sophisticated, segmented marketing approach than just focusing on one traditional market. In this blog series, we’ll take a look at how marketing teams can support their institutions by speaking to multiple audiences in ways that resonate with each and bring them all together for the overall health of the institution.
Not all colleges or universities have the same audiences. Some focus primarily on undergraduates. Some include graduate students. Some institutions recruit heavily from other countries; others do not. Some colleges are in two-year markets, while others are focused on four – or more. While the enrollment operations may reap the fruit of these audiences, it is the task of the marketing office to plant the seeds that make the harvest possible. Let’s begin by analyzing ways we can engage varied prospective student audiences to help our institutions achieve better results.
Audience 1: The Prospective Student
For enrollment-driven institutions, prospective students are rightly your first target audience. At some institutions, this is the total focus. In future posts, we’ll discuss how wooing other audiences is also an important endeavor, but let’s start by talking about how to work with this primary part of the portfolio. Diversify your strategies for market segments within the prospective student audience.
CONSIDER GEOGRAPHY
Begin by breaking down your audience geographically:
Primary market (your local territory, where you are a well-known choice for many students and have broad name recognition)
Secondary market (where you are one of several choices within reasonable travel distance and where you have a history of enrolling students)
Tertiary market (where enrollment is hit-or-miss and name recognition is low)
In the primary market, you are likely either reinforcing what students already know about you or trying to debunk popular mythology. Your marketing can be targeted at a few feeder schools. You do not have to raise awareness, but you do have to position yourself as a desirable product that should not be taken for granted.
In secondary markets, it is incumbent on you to prove yourself as an institution. You need to know who your primary competitors are within the region and be able to provide compelling evidence for why you are different (better). Your team should conduct head-to-head comparisons with your primary competitors and think about how to best position your institution against each one.
In tertiary markets, the goal may be as simple as getting into students’ choice sets. Or perhaps they’ve heard of you from an idiosyncratic source – a family connection or unique program or sport you offer. You may be located near their favorite vacation spot or they may have a relative near you. The challenge with these students is to keep them interested long enough for the admissions team to figure out what that reason is so that it can be reinforced. Often, the goal is to get the student to campus for a look.
BRAINSTORM SPECIAL POPULATIONS
Beyond geography, there are many sub-groups that you can develop strategies to reach. These might include:
First-generation students
Athletes
Transfer students
Children of alumni
Students from underrepresented backgrounds
Largest majors
Non-traditional aged students
Graduate students
Your institution likely has other important audiences that are unique to your context, as well. Strengthen your marketing approach to each of these by speaking to the unique needs of their segments. This personalization not only helps the student feel seen and supported, it also will put new messages in their path that may resonate more deeply than your general marketing talking points.
ANALYZE YOUR MESSAGING
Look at your primary comm flow with each sub-audience in mind. Do your messages apply to all audiences? Can you add messaging specific to each group? Your email marketing platform or CRM may include automation features that can systematically populate these specific messages to decrease the ongoing legwork of this kind of content strategy.
MONITOR AND ADJUST
If you can track performance data by segment, you can make the adjustments necessary to be sure that your institutional message is resonating with all of your potential pipelines. If your overall funnel of students is not strong enough, try these steps:
Analyze the conversion and yield performance of each subgroup.
Identify underperformers.
Look at competitor tactics.
Conduct a focus group
Try some A/B testing of alternative messages with this audience
Adjust your segmented marketing plan based on what you learn.
KEEP THE BIG PICTURE IN MIND
Building a strong and balanced portfolio of submarkets will contribute to the overall strength of your enrollment and provide resilience in the face of market changes. Remember lessons from the corporate world: businesses that rely on just one product line go out of business when the market changes. Focus on diversifying and speaking as effectively as possible with each part of your audience, track the responsiveness of each submarket, build a segmented marketing plan, and maximize the health of your institution.
Do you need help refining your university’s differentiators or developing a consistent brand message? Let’s talk about how 5° Branding can help.
