Three new strategic perspectives

to re-energise your recruitment campaigns

As the student recruitment market gets ever more competitive, creating meaningful connections with your audience is crucial if your organisation is to survive and thrive.

This isn’t about wholesale shifts in positioning, but about ensuring that your positioning is as strong as it can be in reflecting the demands of this changing audience cohort.

Here we share three new perspectives to consider as part of your own student marketing and communication strategies to help build the relevance and appeal of your offer to a rapidly evolving target audience.

Reframing the concept of investment

With the focus on cost, there is a temptation to double down on the presentation of a University qualification as an investment in the future.

The prevailing narrative tends to present the value of a University degree in overly simple terms of cost vs earnings premium. It’s a compelling narrative for a headline writer, and because of this it is difficult to defend in the same terms.

Variances in graduate earnings premiums are huge depending on the type of employment, and value of the experience to an individual is impervious to easy measurement. And as we have seen, the concept of an abstract financial reward in an abstract undefined future is a tricky sell to many sixth formers.

So, what to do?

Grasp the nettle: return on investment is not something to ignore. Employability rankings and industry partnerships are an important part of your story and the financial outlay in fees and cost of living is a big concern for many students and parents. Think about every aspect of your offering that impacts on the value equation and lay it out clearly and accessibly to give people the real picture of what return on investment looks like for you. Even building in individual references to relatable little daily costs such as cup of coffee in the student union can help make a point about your affordability

Emphasise the long-term returns: beyond simply getting a job. Aligning the skills and experiences of University to the achievement of individual ambitions can help move the conversation beyond the one-dimensional graduate employment premium. Building a bank of testimonials based on graduates’ achievements as entrepreneurs or digital nomads, as well as in more traditional jobs, will help reframe the value equation.

Often the concept of investment holds a lot more meaning for parents. They have the maturity of perspective to understand the long-term implications, and not to be unduly sidetracked by short term excitement or ungrounded anxiety. Consider when and how you can connect with this influencer audience through your suite of communications to help them understand the rationale of investment as it applies to your University, so they can be a positive voice in the decision making.

Seizing the power of now

For the prospective student, the experience University will give them is a powerful driver. Respondents in our focus groups spoke about the mix of anxiety, nerves and excitement they were feeling: it’s a big step and it feels like it!

For our ‘Undecideds’, there is a real concern about missing out on this unique opportunity should they opt out. For both groups the emotional focus is on the anticipation of what the next three years will bring. Leaning into that excitement with a focus on the immediate rewards they’ll see helps your proposition connect with what they want now.

So, what to do?

Be specific – paint a picture of the real reality of life at your university. Talk less about generic night life and name check the gyms, coffee shops, bars and cool shops that your current students love. Focusing on the detail helps give an authenticity to your story, so have a real listen to what your students talk about and how they talk about it, then use those details in your marketing.

Think hard about how to make your student testimonial films go beyond the standard ‘tour guide’ format. Mix up the creative approaches and dig deep in some ‘gloves off’ research with your current students to get to the anecdotes and insights that will bring your unique offering to life.

Really get under the skin of the current priorities of your prospective students: the importance of wellness and mental health to young people is not going to diminish any time soon, so think about how your university supports this holistically. From formal support to informal student communities to discounted gym memberships, reassurance that wellness is as big an issue to you as it is to them can really make a difference.

Reflecting the fluidity of students’ futures

We are currently living through a period of uncertainly that is beyond the lived experience of most of us. From global political and economic unrest through to the potential of AI to totally upend the way we work and live, we cannot rely on the relative stability of the near future as we once could.

For prospective students this is an even bigger issue: projecting three years into the future to imagine exactly how you will be making a living is a near impossibility.

So, the argument for a University degree as a vocational passport to a particular career is fast losing its currency.

So, what to do?

Focus on the potential of your University to deliver the skills that allow individuals to recognise and take advantage of whatever opportunities come their way. In contrast to diving straight into employment or an apprenticeship where they are fixing their path to some extent, it becomes about the freedom and confidence to navigate an uncertain world.

Call out the specific ways in which you can support students in developing their entrepreneurial skills. Even while they’re studying, many students will be actively pursuing side hustles and many more will be cultivating ambitions to work for themselves, so think about what resources you have that can help support them in this. Making the payback on this immediate, rather than just in three years’ time adds to the potency of the benefit and helps your recruitment proposition.

Statistics point to this generation struggling with anxiety to a greater degree than any that has gone before: A recent report by the Resolution Foundation found that in 2022 more than a third (34%) of 18-to 24-year-olds said they suffered from anxiety or depression, up from 24% in 2000.¹⁰ Clearly there is a balance to be struck in your recruitment messaging here, but the support you can give to students (both formally and through the resources you have available) is an increasingly important consideration for many, so making it part of your narrative can only be a good thing.