Authentic Conversational Marketing in Education

Much like seemingly every other industry, the world of higher education is continuously evolving. Today, universities must figure out how to attract prospective students while offering engaging and personalized experiences.

With access to more information at their fingertips, students are controlling their education journeys more than ever before. They want to communicate with schools on their terms and in their way. Conversational marketing is a useful approach for academic institutions aiming to increase their exposure and improve their recruitment efforts. Here, MassLive Media Group discusses the power of this marketing tactic further and explains why those in the higher education space should consider it.

The Current State of Higher Education Recruitment

The present landscape of higher education recruitment has significant flaws. Current university recruitment strategies have failed to establish effective communication amongst prospective students, creating the following drawbacks:

  • Academic institutions allow one out of every four inquiries to go unanswered.
  • Student leads are followed up only 50% of the time by educational institutions.
  • Only 20% of prospective students have reported positive experiences when attempting to contact universities via social media.
  • During the recruitment process, approximately 40% of institutions receive negative feedback due to poor service quality.
  • Promotion of programs by institutions is often ineffective due to poor communication persuasiveness.

What Is Conversational Marketing?

Conversational marketing has proven to be an effective marketing tactic for companies across all sectors. The method involves taking a dialogue-driven angle to market to an intended audience. It utilizes real-time conversations to engage users and improve their overall experience.

For education, conversational marketing can be especially powerful. Given the magnitude of their decisions, prospective students and their families crave an authentic experience. Conversational marketing, combined with other marketing strategies, helps to build this type of relationship.

The Advantages of Conversation Marketing for Higher Education

Many of the current pitfalls of today’s higher education marketing strategies can be improved with conversational marketing. The following are some reasons marketing professionals in the education space should consider conversation tactics:

Improved Response Rates

Universities and other educational institutions can significantly improve response rates to student inquiries. This ensures that no prospective student goes unnoticed or feels overlooked.

Build Trust and Enhance Approachability

Conversational marketing solutions are advanced enough to engage in warm, welcoming conversations with users. While still highly informative, these conversations bridge the gap between institutional formality and student expectations. This strategy fosters a sense of comfort and trust between prospective students and their desired higher educational institutions.

Opportunities to Showcase University

Prospective students or their families are communicating with universities for a reason. To get a better sense of campus culture without visiting the university, they will search for the answers to pertinent questions.

With conversational marketing, universities can leverage students’ curiosities by highlighting unique aspects of their academic programs and campus life. This is a great opportunity for colleges to showcase what makes them different from other higher education options. It helps universities to enhance their persuasiveness, thus improving their appeal to prospective students.

24/7 Availability

Universities must face that they are on students’ time. Many incoming students are recent high school graduates. These 17 and 18-year-olds may reach out with inquiries at various times. Through conversational marketing solutions and automated messaging systems, universities can provide constant support and information to students. This feature is especially beneficial for students spanning across different time zones, eliminating the frustration of waiting for responses.

Improved Personalization

Students desire a personalized experience during their higher education recruitment journey. While a FAQ section of a college’s website can supply students with the relevant information they’re searching for, it doesn’t necessarily cater to a desire to feel wanted.

Conversational tools allow universities to deliver more personalized experiences for students. Based on the specific interests and preferences of each student, conversational marketing creates customized interactions with users. This feature mirrors the level of personal touch of a campus visit.

Discover More About Conversational Marketing and Other Strategies

Accommodating prospective students and reaching a wider audience requires out-of-the-box marketing tactics. Conversational marketing is one of the most effective tactics for universities wishing to build trust and showcase their unique aspects.

MassLive Media Group serves higher education facilities across the U.S. by enhancing marketing efforts to increase the number of students who enroll. Our team uses advanced techniques, capitalizing on the most up-to-date trends, including conversational marketing. To learn more about our services and capabilities in the higher education marketing space, contact us today.

 

References

https://element451.com/blog/why-conversational-marketing

https://www.drift.com/conversational-marketing/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/enhancing-university-recruitment-conversational-marketing-guide-jieye

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/navigating-future-new-trends-student-recruiting-president-ceo-1s6oe

 

 

 

Manufacturing Recruitment Strategy

Worker shortages in manufacturing industry is real. Highly skilled positions remain open as a significant portion of the manufacturing workforce is nearing retirement age. For manufacturers, building and maintaining a robust and skilled talent pool is key for both short-term and long-term hiring success.

Recruitment Marketing as a Relationship Builder, Not Just Candidate Sourcing

Don’t wait to be present until a position is open – consistently position your brand in front of both passive and active job seekers. Consistent branding creates a talent pool who is familiar with your company, benefits, culture and therefore more likely to consider you when looking to make a career change. Top of the funnel marketing tactics such as video and display make your brand presence known.

Build A Connection By Understanding Your Best Potential Candidates 

Develop personas, marketing strategies and campaigns specific to your common open positions. Different positions attract different types of candidates. Understanding the nuances allows you to more directly content with job seekers, to communicate your company story and to welcome them into your culture with a personalized approach. Seek out a recruitment marketing partner with a deep data bench, capable of developing audience segments, media placements and creative to speak directly to specific candidate audiences.

Enhance Your Job Board Presence with Display & Video

Placements on job boards are effective in reaching those actively seeking a position. However, other traditional marketing methods like targeted display and video allow companies to share their full story. More visual formats let prospective candidates see your benefits and experience your culture. Both elements that can cause them to choose you as their next employer – over your competition.

SUCCESS STORIES

Healthcare Recruitment Strategy

A growing aging population, pandemic burnout and a ramp up of traveling nurse opportunities have put a strain on healthcare recruitment. Nurses are in high demand – with an abundance of employment options to choose from. How does your healthcare facility standout in this mad dash for employment?

Invest in the Community You Serve

Healthcare is essential to the community. Consider supporting the community you serve by sponsoring local events, job fairs and awards to keep your organization top-of-mind. Not only will these positive associations bring your organization front and center, it will also generate positive word of mouth among the community – reaching friends and families connected to potential candidates.

Showcase Company Culture

Give a glimpse of what its like to work at your organization on any given day. Show the people who work there, the halls to be walked and the benefits to be had. Video succinctly communicates positive culture through virtual tours, testimonials and more. Written testimonials and other content featuring current employees lend authenticity to your showcase.

Replenish Talent Pools with New Grads

New graduates are critical in helping to fill staffing gaps and to replenish talent pools. Utilize highly targeted strategies to reach new graduates, while still on campus, where they are spending their time. Hyper local mobile targeting puts your organization front and center among soon-to-be-graduating adding you to their consideration set for post-graduation employment.

SUCCESS STORIES

Education Recruitment Strategy

Like most categories of business, education providers are facing faculty and staff shortages. Finding experienced and passionate educators and faculty continues to be a challenge. Education institutions should look beyond salary and benefits to larger strategies to drive interest and applications for the upcoming school year ahead.

Build Your Talent Pool with Year-Round Strategy

Primary education recruitment season begins at the end of the previous school year, with many schools starting from scratch every year. Establishing a year-round recruitment marketing strategy, allows you
to reach faculty and staff considering a change throughout the school year, adding them to your talent pool as the year progresses. Having a year-round plan also puts your institution front and center, outside of the more cluttered traditional recruitment period.

Utilize Your Community As A Recruitment Tool

Your community has the potential to be a unique selling point for your institution. Consider highlighting the quality of life – showing prospective employees the community you serve. Community events, local activities, cost of living and more can have pull over prospective employees looking to make a move or to enjoy a way of life your community offers. Partner with local events, local organizations and even your convention and visitors bureau to generate content about your community.

Job Fairs Help Build Awareness of Your Institution

Passive and Active job seekers join job fairs to learn more about prospective districts and institutions. By merely being present, among your competition, you can ensure that your district or institution is in the consideration set for educators looking to make a career move. Both in-person and virtual career fairs provide additional visibility and awareness for your institution.

SUCCESS STORIES

Warehouse Recruitment Strategy

Warehouses are experiencing unprecedented growth thanks to a shift towards online shopping. As growth continues and timely shipping remains critical, warehouses face a continual shortage of workers.

Tout the Benefits That Make You Stand Out

Warehousing jobs are not historically known for good benefits and upward mobility. With changing demand and increased competition, more warehouse companies are adding long-term benefits and job training to their offerings. As an employer, tout benefits like 401Ks, employer matching and paid training as part of new hire packages. Talk about your openings more as long-term careers vs. short- term or holiday employment for additional appeal.

Get Connected In the Community

Grassroots community efforts and word of mouth tactics still hold strong in warehousing recruitment. Sponsoring local community events and job fairs raises brand awareness in the community, spreads positive sentiment about your organization and jump starts word of mouth. This simple activation makes your organization more likely to be noticed by potential job seekers and considered as a stable, future local employer in a future job search.

Local Jobs, Local Placements

Warehousing recruitment pulls most applicants and new hires locally. Very rarely to companies hire outside of their immediate market. Tap into the local job seeker scene through local job boards, job fairs and other local job posting opportunities. Local job seekers continually use these outlets to find new employment opportunities.

SUCCESS STORIES

Trucking Recruitment Strategy

Facing an aging workforce and increased competition for new talent, the trucking industry struggles to keep recruitment pipelines full and trucking routes staffed. Trucking industries should look to implement full-funnel marketing strategies to not only attract active job seekers but it keep talent pools fresh with new prospects.

Address Trucking Industry Myths

Increase top-of-the-funnel prospects by introducing the benefits of a trucking industry careers to passive job seekers. Address potential concerns head-on, including hours, mileage goals and living conditions while highlighting employment benefits such as 401K matching, healthcare and time off. Video and written content are both great vehicles to communicate this information.

Stay in Touch with Prospects

Deciding to change careers can be a lengthy process for passive job seekers. Keep your talent pool active with periodic communication about your business, job openings and career benefits. Set up an email calendar, reaching out to a list of emails from those who you met at job fairs, submitted an inquiry or sent a full resume. Frequently post about your culture, the trucking industry and openings to keep your followers engaged.

Job Boards Are Important

Trucking applicants remain tapped in to local and regional job boards. A presence on local job boards and job aggregator sites provide you business with bottom of the funnel presence – reaching those interested in the truck industry and actively applying now.

SUCCESS STORIES

Professional Recruitment Strategy

Finding outstanding talent that fits your culture is a concern for any business. Make the most of your time and resources by attracting qualified candidates that can hit the ground running and succeed within your organization. Identify quality talent and cultivate your talent pool with leading recruitment marketing strategies perfect for professional businesses.

Showcase Your Company Culture

Tell the story of your business, your history, your employees and more. The more a prospective employee knows about your operations and culture the more they are able to determine whether they are a match for your organization. Office tour videos, employee testimonials and other visuals can help to show daily life within your company.

Tailor Communications to Open Positions

Instead of deploying blanket recruitment ads for all positions in your company, consider developing custom creative and campaigns for each position. Messaging should focus on key benefits and operations of that role, showcase photos and videos of that segment of your business and speak directly to those candidates. Specific communication, drives more qualified applications – increasing your odds of finding a match while building up your talent pool - than general recruitment ads.

Use Job Boards to Reach Active Job Seekers

Job Fairs, local job boards and job board aggregators remain critical bottom-of-the-funnel tactics in securing applications for open positions. While other flashier tactics will fill the top of your funnel, these more nitty-gritty media elements provide a place for active job seekers to seamlessly apply for the positions they want – now.

SUCCESS STORIES