When I look at different universities’ websites I find things like: News, Events, About Us and Athletic Highlights, but when talking with my newly acquired pen pal – who happens to be a campus recruiter for a private university in the region – she says that if there was one thing you need to tell people about your school it’s what the students are like.
She says that when she is talking to prospective students, “I try to describe the current students in one word and tell them why I used that word to describe them. I bring up stories and experiences that current students have shared with me.”
Painting a picture of campus life or the opportunities for success is a powerful tool for helping potential students visualize themselves at the university. It gives the organization a face, a story. It also makes the promises every university touts, realistic and attainable because others have been there before.
Student testimonials can spark excitement in a certain program, especially with the help of online video dramatizations or testimonials. Video is a powerful tool for many organizational websites, to learn why check out my blog on the growing popularity of video in the digital realms of marketing and healthcare.
The key is, you want to inspire and motivate the consumer (in this case, potential students) to go to the next step in the ‘purchase cycle.’ Highlighting student experiences, whether it is through video testimonials pictures or blog posts, students can get a good sense about a school through the eyes of others who’ve already invested in the school. This allows them to vicariously live through a current student in order to better visualize themselves at your school.
If you haven’t had a chance, take a look at my other blogs about an insider’s perspective on higher education recruitment – Part 1 & Part 2.
