Numbers matter significantly in enrollment and admissions marketing, from increasing the applicant pool to lowering student acquisition cost. However, numbers can distract colleges and universities from their primary focus—making meaningful connections with prospective students-and ultimately hurt recruiting efforts.
NAM Youth Marketing, a college and youth marketing company, understands college students’ wants and needs, and is utilizing this knowledge to reinvent higher education marketing using a human-centric approach. NAM believes in the necessity to create 360-degree engagements that build brand awareness, resonate with students, and inspire action.
“Many companies and agencies have a shotgun approach with non-effective and disjointed marketing tactics. They use different non-specific agencies—out-of-home advertising, digital, print, pay-per-click—which are not college experienced,” says Marc Sorel, President of NAM Youth Marketing. “In return, there is a real barrier of sharing intelligence and communications between agencies.NAM creates a well-balanced and managed platform that looks at all marketing aspects and collects data throughout the process.”
Part of NAM’s lead generation strategy involves targeting graduating seniors on college campuses using peer-to-peer marketing. This technique allows professional schools and continuing education institutions to spread the word about their programs using highly-networked students, who interact with their peers, faculty members, and student organizations on campus in order to build excitement and interest. This initial contact introduces the program to students, allows personalized conversations with potential applicants to develop, and connects the university with a face—all of which humanize recruiting efforts.
They take a human-centric approach to social media marketing as well. They identify key influencers at the colleges where the promotion is taking place and connect with them. For example, if a medical school is trying to recruit applicants, NAM will go onto various social media sites and find the administrator of relevant student organizations—such as the Aspiring Medical Professionals, Pre-Medical American Medical Student Association, Pre-Medical Student Association-and connect with them. They will provide information about the medical program and available scholarship opportunities that the administrator will then share with students.
NAM focuses on niche subsets of the student population that would be most interested in the client’s professional or continuing education program. This personalizes the message, which generates more qualified leads and reduces the waste of advertising dollars.
“NAM has provided a fantastic ROI by putting up signage, handing out flyers and collecting data cards on college campuses, each of which have generated quality leads,” Lauren Loschiavo, Regional Marketing Manager for Hult International Business School stated. “NAM caters to the school’s need to target globally aware and business-minded students by focusing on international dorms and business school buildings as well as by suggesting marketing copy that will be most appealing to prospective students.”
By using a human-centric approach and their knowledge of the college marketplace, NAM is reinventing enrollment marketing online and on college campuses.
