Increasing College Admissions with Audience Personas
There are thousands of colleges in the U.S., and the competition is fierce. If you’re working for a college or university on the development and marketing side of things, you’ve probably been stretched thin trying to target each one of your various audiences with your content marketing strategy.
Your priorities are widespread…
1) First you need to attract prospective students to your school, standing out amongst the thousands of options out there.
2) You’re current students need to see they made the right choice, keeping retention rates up.
3) You want to please your alumni, because they keep the college financially stable.
4) The college realm as a whole, and all the reviewers and “top 100’s” lists must know you’re a force to be reckoned with.
5) Don’t forget: with all those concerned parents out there, you must assert that your school is safe and perfect for their child.
So, what is the best approach for establishing and maintaining a positive online reputation for your school?
Through reading this post (and perhaps the full version in this ebook) you’ll soon be increasing your admissions with audience personas. By developing a more thorough image of who your ideal audiences are, you’ll have an easier time figuring out which piece of the puzzle you have to focus on and when. Let’s start by walking through how to learn about each persona and then where to reach them online. In the end, you can take this strategy and apply it to each distinct audience, so you can determine which persona is your priority and when.
If you’re just getting started with content marketing, before reading through this guide, take a peek at “Nonprofit Content Marketing: Metrics to Track & Tools to Get Started.”
Increasing College Admissions with Audience Personas
Step 1) Describe each persona
– Take the time to write down a description of the types of people you want to reach online. Since there’s so many different types of searchers looking for very different schools, you don’t want or need to speak to all of them. Ideally, the people landing on your content will also be the people that are the right fit for your school.
– You can start with the five audiences we listed above (prospective student, current student, alumni, the general public and parents).
– For each audience, make up a few fictional representations of who they might be. For example let’s start with our first target audience, students. Let’s also assume you’re a smaller liberal arts college in the midwest.
– Ask yourself why this persona would be interested in your school and what their concerns are. Here are two different examples that would both be a good fit for your school:
a) Prospective student Harry:
Harry is from a small town in the Midwest and has been nervous about school for awhile. He’s looking for a smaller school that challenges him in many different classes, but also has a strong biology program for when/if he commits to premed. He’s a little nervous about making friends so he wants a school that has fun extracurriculars like comedy clubs and club sports. A good financial aid package is also a top priority as he’s worried about paying for school.
b) Prospective student Julia:
Julia comes from a big city on West Coast, but craves a more intimate environment and to see a new part of the country. She is interested in so many different areas of study that she’s a little nervous she won’t be able to pick a major. Her other top concern is that she wants to be able to continue to dance and play piano, so she needs to find a school that has those programs.
Step 2) Determine content for each persona
– Now that you know who your content might actually be speaking to, map out what blogs, infographics, landing pages and the like would answer their main concerns.
– For each audience ensure you have a few pieces of content that seem specific to them.
– For example, our previous personas need content that answers their questions. For Harry, have a blog from a current student describing the financial help they received from the school, or a video showing club sports. For Julia, have an infographic that shows all the different classes and demonstrate that it’s okay for her to experiment.
– Depending on the time of the year, plan out your content and social media posts to make sure that they’d be in front of each audience at the right time.
– For example, Harry and Julia will likely start their search for school around the spring of the junior year of high school and be looking to visit the school in the summer and fall. Promote the appropriate posts especially around that time.
– Don’t neglect to test this process. Look at your Google Analytics data on your site (quick intro to analytics here) and which social posts are getting attention. Then document this strategy so you can improve it each year and better target your personas.
Step 3) Guide your audience to action
– A major detriment to content marketing occurs when the visitor is not guided to the right place for action. Moreover, a strategy is flawed when it has not been determined what that action should be in the first place. With each piece of content you have to determine what you want your visitor to do.
– Should a students Harry and Julia contact you for more information? Follow you on social media? Sign up for an overnight visit with a current student?
– Once you determine the answer to this question, point the visitor to the action with strong CTA‘s and by actually stating what they should do. If you don’t say it, they might not think to do it and will move on to the next school.
Need more help with your school’s content marketing strategy?
- How College Students Use Social Networking [INFOGRAPHIC], from Social Breaks
- Improve your content for prospective students – 10 Ways, from Caylor Solutions
- Increase College Admissions with Inbound Marketing, from Hubspot
- And as promised, the free ebook from ArcStone below:
