Enrollment Marketing for Higher Education

The higher education enrollment landscape is rapidly changing. With fewer prospective students and increased competition, now is the time to reassess and refocus on strategies that drive results. This means embracing real, meaningful conversations with prospective students and their families.

Despite shifting public confidence and potential FAFSA challenges, true impact comes from understanding and addressing student needs directly. Effective recruitment, when integrated into a comprehensive enrollment strategy, has the power to transform both experiences and outcomes. The key question is: Is your institution’s recruitment approach aligned with a broader, strategic vision for enrollment success?

Given these pressures, it’s time for more campuses to fully embrace the academic sales management model. You invested in lead gen and search to grow your applicant pool. You’ve ramped up your comms flow, messaging, and social medias. You’re monitoring your ROI on those investments. Systemically recruiting these students will ensure you maximize that ROI.

Students are informed and shop their options. You’re not the only institution reaching out to them, sharing your story, and inviting them to campus. If you want to differentiate your institution, differentiate how you work with these students.

Because students have options, it’s a sales environment. An academic sales management model prepares your team to generate, nurture, and convert students, fortifying enrollment and solidifying your financial picture.

Academic sales management 

To grow the prospect pool, you’ve polished your brand, redesigned your web, upgraded your facilities, and evaluated your academic programming. But if your recruitment team isn’t trained to capitalize on the effort, budget goals may remain out of reach.

Those initiatives are designed to fill the top of the funnel. An academic sales management approach empowers your people to convert and yield those students who have taken notice of your message. Following are the tenants of a successful academic sales management model.

Clearly define your enrollment goals 

Success starts with well-conceived goals — clear definitions of what you intend to accomplish. This could be by geographic territories, academic programs, or by audience. It could include goals for high academic achievers or athletes. But it’s not simply saying, “We want 10 percent more first-time, full-time freshmen.”

The model works best when you’ve established overall and segment goals: “We want to enroll 700 freshmen, and of those 700, we want 600 to be resident students. The in-state goal is 500. And of the 700, 300 will be student athletes and 50 will be honor students.” You can now align individual admission counselor goals with these overall goals.

Build a recruiting plan 

Create a list of actions that must be taken, including staff outreach. An academic sales management model goes beyond college fairs and visiting key high schools and community colleges. It is complemented by your nurture/drip campaigns. It brings a focus to pre- and post-event outreach, capitalizing on the resources you apply to host a memorable event.

A fully implemented academic sales management model is based on the relationships your team builds with students and families. Take advantage of the research that reminds us how important it is to humanize the digital environment in which we live and work. Build a plan that enables your admission counselors to know their students, identify and overcome objections, solve problems, and move them effectively through the selection process.

Provide training and support

Some of your initiatives may make certain team members uncomfortable, so help your team get better through professional development. It’s important to train them to become more effective academic salespeople. Small example: We’ve worked with admissions team members who don’t see the value of meeting with students during a visit: The focus was on the tour. Others don’t prep for the meeting, haven’t developed a plan, or clarified what makes for a successful meeting. Training can help them get better at these touchpoints.

Eliminating repetitive emails and texts — busy work — may require counselors to develop new skill sets and approaches. Understanding how to set up a close versus asking for a deposit can be learned with guidance from senior staff.

Training will help your team feel better about some of the more challenging aspects of their jobs.

Lead your admissions team to success

We cannot stress enough the importance of managing toward goals. Year-over-year numbers can be misleading. Instead, manage toward your established target numbers by assigning responsibilities, clarifying priority audiences, and holding team members accountable for their performance through regular check-ins. Managing and leading your team, and guiding and inspiring it with a focus on goals will produce the best outcomes.

Campus partners as recruiting drivers

Make sure your student- and parent-facing campus partners understand your plan and your goals. For instance, continue to encourage faculty members to meet with prospects. A potential biology major is much more likely to be persuaded by an engaged professor than by an admissions counselor. Let your campus partners see how they fit into the plan and provide them feedback on successes.

How to advance your academic sales management model

Paskill has professional development programs that will help your teams become more effective recruiters in an academic sales management model. We also have consultants with years of experience in helping institutions develop, implement, and manage strong recruiting programs. Contact us and let’s discuss equipping your team with the plan and skills necessary to successfully enroll students and reach your net tuition revenue goals.