Your college’s website is one of the most powerful and influential tools in your student recruitment marketing toolbox. It’s the first place that most prospective students will look to find out more about your university, whether it’s the courses you offer, accommodation options, sports and other extracurricular activities, or life on campus in general.
Therefore, you want to ensure that the content you curate for your website is making the best impression on these potential future recruits. This is, of course, on top of essential technical factors such as being intuitive to navigate and optimized for smartphones. To help you out, here are four key types of content that you should be including on your site:
Key Information
Let’s start with the most obvious factor. You want to ensure that all the information prospective students will be looking for on your website is available, easy to locate, and presented in a manner that is simple to understand. These days, attention span and patience are both in short supply, so if people can’t find what they want in a short time, they will likely leave your website feeling frustrated.
Fact boxes on course pages that are easy to scan and digest are great for this. Of course, you’ll want to draw particular attention to statistics that are especially positive for your college but don’t be tempted to hide other important information such as course fees. Students will find these out anyway, but if they have to work to do so, they won’t be impressed.
Video Content
Nowadays, many young people prefer to get their content through video rather than text, so having this kind of media on your website could give you a real boost. It’s particularly well suited to college marketing because video can capture the feel of your campus, the passion of your professors, and the excitement of your social activities much more meaningfully than words can!
Of course, a bad video is worse than no video, though, so enlist the help of a professional Enrollment Marketing Agency if your team has little experience in this field.
Student Blogs
Content that is created by your current students is gold when it comes to student recruitment. Unlike official college marketing materials, this content comes across as authentic and genuine, plus it gives prospective students a real – and useful – insight into life on campus.
Longer content can also be advantageous for SEO purposes and generating traffic. Try recruiting some reliable students to blog for you on a regular basis, and see how much interest their articles create. You don’t need to have a comments feature, but if you do, it could be a great way to engage with your audience.
Calls to Action
Finally, in order to create a long-term relationship with prospective students and keep them moving through the recruitment process, you always want to have relevant calls to action visible. Whether it’s ordering a printed prospectus, registering for an open day or virtual tour, or signing up for an email newsletter, there should always be a simple next step for students to take to further build their relationship with your college.
Image: Mikeshouts.com.
