As the fall admission cycle is fast approaching, there are a few things you can do to make sure you are getting the most out of your marketing and recruitment efforts. Here are six tips to a more successful fall that you should consider:
- Check your Google Analytics: If you don’t have access, either get it or ask for a report from someone who does. GA can tell you so much about where your audiences are coming from, how they’re behaving, and how effective the different pages are on your site. Also, take a look at GA data from last fall to see what can be addressed.
- Audit for mobile: More than ever, prospective students are using their mobile devices to not only conduct research but request information, sign up for events, and even apply. Do a quick test of all relevant pages on your site from your mobile device, especially those that involve calls to action. How do all of these pages appear and function on your mobile device?
- Do a Google search: Put yourselves in the shoes of your prospective students (and their parents). What searches might they be conducting on Google as they approach their senior year? Try those out on Google and see how you come up. And even when you appear, is there more real estate you can own? For example, Wikipedia pages about your school should not beat out your social media pages.
- Give yourself a competitive advantage: Do you think your prospective students are visiting your site and your site only? No! They’re also going to the sites of several other potential college choices. Make sure you have a leg up on them by setting up Retargeting on the admission pages of your site. This will keep you front and center and top of mind virtually anywhere else they go online, driving them back to your site to increase their chances of converting.
- Fill in the gaps: How does your current prospect pool look? If there are any areas that need improvement, or if an overall boost is needed for your student pipeline, then now is the time to generate some new leads. Services like PC&U and CollegeXpress offer access to more college-bound students than any other company, a large portion of which are rising seniors. Generating thousands of leads each year for all of our clients, they are both great ways to effectively increase your top-of-the-funnel pool in a targeted way.
- Call Carnegie Communications: Carnegie works with over 400 colleges and universities to help them achieve their enrollment goals every year. From digital marketing to Student Search to lead generation, we offer services that can help any school at any point in the year—particularly these critical fall months.
We hope this sparks some ideas and gets you excited for the coming cycle. If you have questions or just want to bounce some ideas off one of our enrollment marketing experts, let us know.