Doing It Right: Marketing and Admissions Communication

Proprietary school marketing is no longer a one-size-fits-all approach.

With the IT boom, our sector had a great deal of success across the board in the '90s, irrespective of the size of a school's market and program offerings.

Today there is more competition, and there are concerns over what works best.

The answer is different for each campus and each market. What will work best is based on what the school offers, its competition, the time of year and the price of the marketing campaign.

Segmentation and Messaging

To reach more students, marketers need to roll up their sleeves, do better with segmentation and more with their messaging.

Analytical information is available on buying habits of different segments of the market, and it's up to marketers to deliver the right message over the right medium to the right people at the right time.

The right message is going to change quickly. What works today might be very different a year from now.

Most direct response mechanisms set up with Generation X in mind, and still work very well. However, schools can have problems with students scheduling appointment and asking questions when they're at those appointments.

Students in the millennial generation make a lot of assumptions, but don't inquire as much because they don't have to.

Students in Generation X were raised in a cynical world. Everything we saw was a deception. For example, we grew up with the highest divorce rate in the nation's history.

Millennial's are more confident that things will turn out as they expect. They're used to succeeding and are optimistic.

They know they're going to win, and to them knowledge is success.

Don't Be Too Eager

Technology offers many ways to connect with millennial's, but it can be misused and hurt a school.

Just because a lead isn't converted into an appointment right away doesn't mean that it won't be converted 30 or 60 days from now. However, if a school calls a potential student 18 times in a week and four other campuses are calling 18 times that week, that student becomes resistant.

When he is open to making that change 30 days from now he has checked you off simply because you bothered or harassed him.

People are going to make decisions with our assistance, and it's important to provide them a pathway for buying, but a school can't have a mentality that you're in or you're out.

Everybody has the potential to be in, but they're just at different levels at different times. The challenge we have in marketing as well as admissions is to continue the communication process that keeps a potential student feeling like this educational opportunity is still an option.

We still need to provide that pathway for students, but as soon as we burn that lead they're never coming back to us.

Asking the Right Questions

To convert that lead, admissions people need to communicate, listening, speaking correctly and asking questions correctly are all important tools.

Suggestions to admissions counselors may be:

Understand a student's needs. Some counselors are thinking about what's in it for them, rather than what's in it for that potential student.

A counselor who's thinking about what's right for him will talk about things that may not apply to the student. A student interested in getting into a career field may not care about getting a degree. Yet the first thing the counselor may ask is why they are interested in getting a degree.

People aren't always interested in going to school, they're interested in going through an experience that will lead to something different. It's the experience, rather than the credential or the degree that's important to them.

The potential student is wondering how much knowledge he is going to get.

Ask open-ended question. Too often we talk about things that are important to us, such as getting the student in for an interview or a tour.

We ask how long they've been interested in a program rather than how long they've been interested in simply making a change in their lives.

When a student checks a box on a Web site, that may be the first time they've ever thought about that career. It may not be their lifelong dream, and when an admissions counselor asks only about that specific program he's not reaching that student.

A student may be interested in graphic arts, nursing and business management all at the same time.

Asking a series of open-ended questions leads people to respond. What do you want to do in the next 60 days? If you could choose anything to do in the next two months, what would it be?

When we ask them how long they've been interested in a specific program, it gives the perception that we're just interested in things that are important to us.

If you ask people things rather than tell people things, they will communicate all day.

Follow protocol. Sometimes admissions counselors fail to gather basic information.

The right question can be as simple as who am I speaking with? Where do you live? How long have you been in the community?

These simple, common protocols in communication are often overlooked.

A Proprietary Attitude

Having the right attitude can help an admissions counselor connect with students. It often starts with a school's entire staff having the attitude of a proprietor.

A proprietor encourages people to be part of a campus' mission. When an admissions counselor has that attitude the communication between the staff member and a potential student has a sense of pride and purpose, a sense of "spirituality."

Everyone who works at a school should take ownership of that institution, but many people don't understand the mission, or the mission is so generic that they can't buy into it.

If the leadership in the organization lets them become proprietors, they'll take a much different approach. The passion will come through, and this will bring commitment and trust from students as well.

When campus staff members have a proprietary attitude you see a lot more personalization. They take full ownership of that campus and everything they do leads to people's respect for them and what they represent.

That's why you've seen a tremendous amount of success over the last five to six years with many smaller school groups in percentage increases in student population, revenue and graduation rates.

They're not perfect, but if you look at their institutions they're beautiful examples of putting back into the school and giving back to the students. There's pride in the school, and this shows in how the admissions counselors speak with people.

You see a lowered staff turnover rate and better outcomes because there's a great deal of personal ownership within each employee. They feel they have a stake in the school's success and they're in an environment they can flourish in.

Students First

This sense of ownership can be found in larger school systems as well.

Consolidation has been a wonderful thing when people in leadership roles have built systems around people.

It all stems from the top level leadership and what kind of environment and culture they've created. The one thing that makes an organization successful is a students-first mentality.

If an organization has a students-first mentality, then everything else takes care of itself. Employees buy into that because they're educators, and educators by nature are giving people. They want to be a part of that.

But if it doesn't start at the top, it'll never happen on a campus level.

This is a personal business. The entire reputation of your college rests with each contact an employee makes with a student or a potential student.

Understanding Culture

Creating a sense of ownership often starts with understanding a school's culture.

People who have come into our sector with success building organizations have understood that the culture they create with employees has a direct impact on student enrollment, student retention, graduation and placement rates. Inevitably, it affects the bottom line.

Those who come in and do not pay attention to the culture within a school may have success and take a school from 600 to 1,200 students in four years.

They may think that process improvement will take them to another level, but that sometimes upsets the connectivity and the emotional bond that those employees have with the institution.

When employees's emotions are affected negatively, they have a negative impact on their customer directly.

Even though it's meant with the best of intentions, if the process improvement does not strategically encompass the culture that already exists it can have a negative impact.

That's blown up in a lot of people's faces and it's had a negative impact for the institutions, the employees that work for those institutions, and more importantly, students.

If you dig underneath it and investigate, you'll find that there was turnover that came about because there was a tremendous amount of immediate change implemented without explanation, without buy-in and with the students' best interests at heart.

When faculty members don't see the school acting in the best interests of the students, they tend to distance themselves. They lose connectivity with the students, and when students don't feel connected, they don't stay in school and graduate.

Training Challenges

Group training in schools that want to improve admissions counseling and marketing, the biggest challenge is the politics within the groups.

People get territorial and often don't want to change. When things aren't going well they aren't willing to admit that and also aren't willing to admit that change is necessary.

When people aren't willing to look at their faults or needs for improvement, it's harder for them to understand and absorb any new training that will benefit them.

Pride gets in the way.

To overcome this obstacle in training, break it down into a way that's digestible, a way that fits within the culture of that school group.

People have to believe in who they are, what they represent and the positions they fill. They need to understand the importance of those positions, and buy into the overall mission of that institution and that group.

It becomes very easy to work through training techniques on things such as communication and improving retention.

Don't Backslide

The education sector as a whole also needs to remember what sets it apart.

It has gained ground in the last four or five years. It is no longer looked down upon, but it's important for us to continue to differentiate ourselves from traditional colleges.

We need to stay grounded with who and what we are, where we came from and why we're there.

We were built on people being proprietors, being innovative, customer-focused and employee centered. Because of that our sector has grown, and it's important to maintain that and not to lose our identity.

Companies that have lost their identity have failed. IBM lost track of where they came from and gave up the market share in the PC market to Dell.

Gap used to own the casual clothing market for young adults; they have given up market share to Abercrombie and Fitch.

Many companies have lost track of their history, where they came from and the pride on which they were built. Our sector has been built on the backs of many proprietors and many people out there who tried to do the right thing for many different students.

It's very important that we maintain some of those qualities that helped us build our schools and allowed us to differentiate ourselves.

Our sector as a whole was built on independent owners, small owners, who grew their organizations over a long period of time.

These organizations were built on the students-first ideology. The sector has changed a lot over the last 10 years, but it needs to maintain its individuality and remain student-centered and graduate-driven to continue growing.

The greatest satisfaction comes from inspiring people, making them feel connected and engaged in what they're doing, seeing them have passion for their work and growing in it.

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