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Inbound Marketing for

Student Recruitment

SuccessWhat higher education

admissions professionals need to know

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Inbound Marketing: The Basics

The phrase “inbound marketing” is sometimes used synonymously with “permission marketing” and is connected to the concept of content marketing. According to marketing strategist David Meerman Scott, inbound is a way for marketers to “earn their way in” to customer’s attention by producing quality content that people really want to pay attention to -- rather than trying to “buy, beg, or bug their way in,” as in traditional marketing.

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What Inbound Isn’tTraditional, outbound marketing is all about buying, begging, and bugging the potential customer merely to bring them to the top of the funnel: awareness that your higher education institution exists.

It involves cold-calls, direct mail, purchased email lists -- staples of student recruitment strategies that, to rising high school juniors and seniors (and their parents) are interruptive, irritating, or even irrelevant.

Think about it: do you get particularly excited when the phone rings during dinner to let you

know about an exciting opportunity

to change oil company providers -- when you’re fully satisfied with what you’ve got?

On the other hand, if you’re looking for ways to go greener with energy usage at home, you might search for and find a worthwhile blog post and sign up for a newsletter, and be much more inclined to take the solar panel company up on that offer of a free consultation.

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Outbound marketing is all about the marketer: the marketer’s agenda, what the marketer is selling, the numbers the marketer needs to make, and so on.

With inbound, the customer’s needs come first -- even before they’re a customer. It’s about them -- what they’re looking for, what they need, what they don’t yet know they need. Inbound marketing lets you, the marketer, meet them in that exciting space.

According to Brian Halligan, CEO and founder of HubSpot, the marketing platform, outbound marketing is, well, on the way out: people today are, he says, “inundated with over 2000 outbound marketing interruptions per day and [are] figuring out more and more creative ways to block them out.” Data suggests that most young people -- potential students! -- click away from websites because of annoying or distracting ads.

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What does that mean for the student recruitment professional? Concentrating on sending out the glossy viewbooks, buying email lists, paying for billboards, direct mail, and sidebar ads isn’t likely to give you the return on investment you need. And because these efforts tend not to be targeted, they’re not likely to offer you great conversion rates -- or a good return on your investment.

According to data from the Custom Content Council, 7 out of 10 consumers would rather learn about a company through a collection of articles than through an advertisement. That’s a number worth paying attention to. Consumers want to know about you on their terms -- and they would rather be shown what you’re all about than told what you’re all about. Don't just buy ad space -- tell a story worth listening to.

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What Inbound Is Inbound Marketing is all about creating great content that’s relevant and valuable to the audience you’re trying to reach -- relevant enough and valuable enough that they’ll seek you out for more.

Content can include things like newsletters, podcasts, videos, memes, ebooks, guides -- even an eye-catching Instagram or Pinterest account tailored to the needs and interests of the people you’re trying to reach: prospective students and their parents.

Knowing what those needs and interests are takes research. It takes knowing who those prospective students and their parents are -- and what they want. But when you know who you’re trying to reach -- and what they care about -- you’ll be on your way to creating the kind of content that will have them coming to you.

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What makes content great?

You know more than you think you do about what makes content great.

We’ve all read an article and immediately shared it across our social networks, thinking “everyone needs to see this.”

There’s a reason that certain blog posts “go viral” organically

on Facebook without anyone spending a penny on promotion: they’ve got that special something that resonates with people, and people can’t help but share.

(And, okay: sometimes the same thing happens with an especially cute or funny YouTube video featuring puppies or cats or baby goats in pajamas. Or the brilliant “bark side” Volkswagen ad featuring dogs dressed like Star Wars characters barking the Darth Vader theme music. But you get the idea: when content is worth noticing, it gets noticed, and shared, and noticed some more.)

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In higher education marketing, “great content” is not synonymous with “classy website.” Yes, a beautiful website -- optimized for mobile! -- is indispensable, but relying on your website as your 24/7/365 billboard is basically a high tech version of, well, a billboard: another thing out there on the highway, waiting to be noticed.

Instead, great content is relevant to your target audience’s needs. For example, can you offer an SAT/ACT prep checklist or free study guide? An interactive quiz (one that’s fun) on choosing a college or major?

Great content is also timely and tailored: offering the right content to the right people at the right time. Prospective students’ parents might like to read an ebook on affording a college education when their daughter begins her junior year in high school; a high school student might like to get a free SAT study guide in late fall of her junior year.

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It should go without saying, of course, that great content is also professional. A couple of faculty and student blogs on your institution’s website does not an inbound strategy make. What you’re offering should be carefully and professionally written, keeping in mind the following:

• The identity, reputation, and ethos of the institution• The research-based personas of prospective students• The terms your ideal prospective student will use to search

the Web• The needs of your prospective student at each stage of the

decision process

In creating content, bear these things in mind.

You want people to want your content

you want them to read a great blog post, watch an inspiring video, or download a truly helpful study guide so that they’ll opt in, give you their contact info, and become a lead.

These days, prospective students don’t wait for the college to contact them -- 97% of them go looking for the college. Your marketing team needs to make sure that when they go searching, they’ll find you -- and want to stick around for more.

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Where does all that content go?

So maybe you’ve got a fabulous institutional website and maybe even a couple of blogs that are search engine optimized and that garner a respectable number of page views: that’s a great start! But that’s not where a comprehensive inbound strategy ends. Are you able to make content offers that invite prospectives to opt-in using a creative landing page and the kind of call-to-action that’s most likely to convert a prospect into a lead?

And there’s no reason to keep your content all to yourself. Can you write guest blog posts for external websites that drive traffic back to a landing page with a call to action? Perhaps there’s a story from your college or university that’s worth the attention of a national audience -- can you get it picked up on a national publication’s website -- again, driving traffic back to an optimized landing page where people can opt-in?

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Be sociable Let’s not forget that today’s “screenagers” use social media -- a lot. Creating the kind of social media presence that prospective students actually want to pay attention to is an art (admit it: you hide posts from the ‘friend’ who posts nothing but the stats of his daily workout) but it can be done, and optimized social media accounts -- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and more -- are an essential part of a comprehensive inbound strategy.

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Why inbound for higher education marketing?

For one thing, it’s where the kids are: prospective students now do most of their research about college online. While the traditional mailings and phone consults certainly have their place, the fact remains that “kids these days” spent a lot of their time online -- so that’s where student recruitment professionals need to be as well. They’re not checking the mailbox in front of their house -- they’re checking the one on their phone, and browsing their social networks. You need to be there with relevant, worthwhile, timely content.

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A time for information-gathering

College-bound juniors and seniors (and their parents) are also at a crucial point in a long process of decision-making and preparation. There are the SATs and ACTs, and the application process itself. For the student, there’s the anxiety and anticipation of leaving home, perhaps for the first time, concerns about those standardized tests and application essays, and about what it’s going to be like adjusting to college life and college work. For the parent, there are questions of finances, of financial aid, and of dealing with a new role in life as the parent of a college student. All of which means that

they’ll be looking for information -- most likely on the web -- and that they’ll truly need the

content you’re offering,

making inbound the perfect strategy to connect with prospective students and parents at the top of the funnel.

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Keeps You Current and Responsive

A national news story comes out that offers a possible hook for raising your institutional profile among your target audience? Good luck seizing upon that opportunity through traditional methods -- it’ll be old news well before the next glossy gets mailed out. But with an inbound strategy in place, you can be effectively leverage that news hook within a couple of hours.

When you’ve got a nimble inbound strategy, reaching prospective students becomes a two sided-conversation. Student recruitment on Twitter and Facebook, even Instagram? You need to be ready for it!

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Cost-Effective and Environmentally

Friendly: what’s not to love?

Not only is it greener to forgo those unsolicited direct mailings -- they’re less and less likely to give a good return on investment! Inbound Marketing can be remarkably cost effective when implemented strategically, and most inbound marketing channels (blogs, ebooks, whitepapers, etc.) cost far less per lead than any outbound channels (telemarketing, trade shows, direct mail.) According to HubSpot data, inbound marketing was found to be 95x more effective in terms of ROI than direct mail campaigns.

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But is it possible to do all this?

In a word? Yes.

Going inbound doesn’t mean you have to scrap whatever content you already have. In fact, it’s a good idea to look again at your marketing materials, and see how they can be retooled to focus what your prospective students (and their parents) are likely to be looking for -- and to focus less on your own selling points. We’re not saying it’s easy:

you need

a plan.

You need to know what your institution stands for -- what you’re all about -- and to be able to communicate your unique value effectively.

You need to find and create (and sometimes, to curate) quality, compelling content -- and, on a college or university campus, the raw material for fabulous content is there: look to your faculty, your students, the labs, the galleries, the theater, the outreach programs. And don’t limit your stories to one category or another

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-- again, it’s all about knowing who your students are, and what will draw them in.

(You also need to know where they’re getting most of their content and how they’re consuming it. And since the answer is likely through social media and on their smartphones, you need to make sure your content is optimized for mobile and promoted through those channels!)

We’re not going to tell you that implementing an inbound marketing strategy for student recruitment is easy, but new marketing automation platforms make it a lot easier. We can help you find and set up the best one for you. No, you can’t just schedule a bunch of blog posts and tweets and Facebook updates and then put your feet up and wait for students and their parents to volunteer information about themselves. Today’s students expect you to be responsive, and you need to be. But with the right strategy and the right tools, and an adequate investment of time, you’ll find that managing inbound marketing is more than worth it (and maybe even fun!)

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Checklist for Inbound Strategy for Student

Recruitment:✓ Know your institution and what you stand for✓ Research your prospective students and what they care

about✓ Create quality content that students come looking for✓ Optimize for mobile and for organic search results✓ Strategize and schedule your online content across

multiple platforms to reach students at just the right time✓ Extend compelling offers for which students will exchange

information -- turning them into leads✓ Create exciting calls-to-action and optimized landing and

thank you pages✓ Follow up with well-timed, customized emails and convert

leads into applicants

You can do this.

C. Grant & Company and SearchRight™ can help.

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The SearchRight™ program from NACCAP and C. Grant & Company brings Inbound Marketing methodology and technology to member schools to advance their recruitment success. Our platform is used by enrollment management professionals at more than 400 schools including leaders like Harvard, Yale, and Notre Dame. Inbound Marketing combines web search, digital content, social media, and database technology to open new ways to reach Christian students and parents as well as graduate and online students. Participating schools report:

✓ New leads from outside school or rented lists✓ Increased web visits✓ Improved landing page conversions ✓ Consolidated reporting✓ Automated contact workflows✓ Increased conversions from current lists

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