Here are four digital marketing levers you can apply (with details attached), to help widen your funnel and drive more registrations.

1. 4 Ways to Widen Your Recruitment Funnel
Slide 1
4 Ways to Widen Your
Recruitment Funnel

2. 4 Ways to Widen Your Recruitment Funnel
Slide 2
1) Recruitment Funnel
2) Increase your Website Traffic
3) Capture More Leads on your Website
4) Increase the Number of Students that Visit your Campus
5) Increase the Number of Student Applications
Overview
Source: Higher Education Marketing – 4 Ways to Widen your Recruitment Funnel

3. 4 Ways to Widen Your Recruitment Funnel
Slide 3
 Higher ed marketers do a lot of different things to keep their
higher ed institutions in business but at the core of our
responsibilities is student recruitment.
 For simplicity, we describe the recruitment process as a
funnel but these days it seems to be more like a labyrinth
than a funnel.
 Regardless of its complexity, when the word comes down
that you need more bottoms in seats, your challenge is to
efficiently and cost effectively widen that funnel and increase
its output of registered students.
1. Recruitment Funnel
Source: Higher Education Marketing – 4 Ways to Widen your Recruitment Funnel

4. 4 Ways to Widen Your Recruitment Funnel
Slide 4
 Your website is likely your very best source of prospective
students. Prospects coming to an institution’s site from
search generally convert at a higher rate than almost any
other type of prospect, so:
 Invest in search engine optimization so you get found by your target
audience.
 Implement a good all round content strategy to help feed and bolster
your SEO rankings
 Use Pay Per Click advertising to produce more traffic. Use it for
highly targeted campaigns, and to help you build your brand and
reputation in the market, managing it carefully so you don’t waste
money.
 Searches on education terms on YouTube grew by 25 % in 2013 Q4.
Get there now.
2. Increase your Website Traffic
Source: Higher Education Marketing – 4 Ways to Widen your Recruitment Funnel

5. 4 Ways to Widen Your Recruitment Funnel
Slide 5
 Some institutions spend a lot of money purchasing leads
from academic web portals. It’s time to take all the lessons
learned from those lead “developers” and apply them to your
own website.
 Position lead generation forms strategically within your content page
flow so that you are there with a lead form when prospect interest is
highest.
 Create different landing pages and forms to capture leads at different
stages in the recruitment cycle.
 Simplify your forms for optimal performance i.e. reduce the number
of fields required, and always ask for a phone number so you can
call them.
 Use value based calls-to-action, not just “Submit”. (When was the
last time you submitted to anything?)
3. Capture More Leads on your Website
Source: Higher Education Marketing – 4 Ways to Widen your Recruitment Funnel

6. 4 Ways to Widen Your Recruitment Funnel
Slide 6
 Campus visits continually rate as one of the most effective
recruitment strategy used by colleges and universities. So
work on increasing the number by promoting campus visits,
comprehensively across the funnel and:
 Have a robust campus visit program targeting students at different
stages in the funnel. For example, target juniors, seniors, admitted
students separately
 Add a virtual tour to your website. Research indicates that it
increases the number of students who come later in person.
 Roll out the red carpet digitally to get students to come in person.
Seriously invest in the content, design, and forms on your visits
page. A/B test variations to the content, calls to action, and buttons
to improve your conversion rate.
4. Increase the Number of Students who Visit
your Campus
Source: Higher Education Marketing – 4 Ways to Widen your Recruitment Funnel

7. 4 Ways to Widen Your Recruitment Funnel
Slide 7
 Students are submitting more applications today than they
have in the past so be careful how your measure overall
increases in the number of applications that you receive.
A recent survey indicated that 29% of students submit
applications to 7 or more institutions. Get your share by:
 Thoughtfully engaging prospective students with social media at
application time. It is at this stage in the process that social media
really shines and students are most likely to engage with advisors.
 Really optimize your application forms. Use plain simple English.
Eliminate requests for unneeded info.
 Break up web forms into multipart forms with progress indicators.
Allow prospect to start a form, leave it incomplete but able to log in
later to finish. Partial info is better that none, and you can phone
them if it doesn’t all come in.
5. Increase the Number of Student Applications
Source: Higher Education Marketing – 4 Ways to Widen your Recruitment Funnel

8. 4 Ways to Widen Your Recruitment Funnel
Slide 8
Questions?
1.514.312.3968
info@higher-education-marketing.com
Visit our Website: Higher Education Marketing
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