How To Attract Underserved Students with Implicit Marketing (part 1)

Enrollment marketing is more challenging than ever with the changes rocking higher education and the demographic enrollment cliff. Plus, with the changes to diversity recruitment brought on by the Supreme Court decision about affirmative action, it is incumbent upon higher education institutions to find ways to ensure that underserved students—low-income, BIPOC, and first-generation—continue to enroll.

Some underserved students who are just graduating high school may share characteristics of “non-traditional” or adult students. They have family responsibilities and need to work to help their families and pay for college, so college must fit within a busy life. Yet this age group of students can also struggle to decide what to do with their lives. Trying to understand if the cost of college will pay off when they don’t have a career path identified may be another factor in making underserved students uncertain about higher education.

Reaching underserved and non-traditional students through marketing involves not just direct outreach but also more subtle messaging that will help them find their place at your institution. Explicit appeals to students are great, but sometimes, the “vibe” your marketing gives off can make the difference for certain students. Reexamining how your implicit appeal may work to reach every potential student can help you fine-tune your messaging to keep your enrollment as strong as possible in a difficult higher education enrollment market.

Implicit Marketing Relies on Emotional Connection

A direct ask, such as, “Our college is affordable, our students succeed, and you should apply today,” can be effective explicit messaging. However, implicit marketing—the indirect signals or underlying messages that a prospect gets from your marketing materials—influences college decisions in less obvious ways. The contextual clues of implicit marketing build emotional connections without directly stating your school’s advantages.

Your marketing contains many types of implicit messaging, such as student testimonials telling stories of how they struggled but were able to find their way, your team’s responsiveness to inquiries, and the photos featured on your website. Looking at how your marketing may resonate with the values and beliefs of your target market can help you hone the wide variety of materials that represent implicit messaging about your institution. The subtle authenticity that comes through from your branding can help students feel aligned with your school on a more primal and emotional level.

Implicit marketing often reaches for psychological associations, allowing prospective students to make subconscious and intuitive connections to your institution. Explicit appeals usually promote more logical thinking, answering students’ concerns about affordability, career prospects, and the likelihood of completing your program. Rational factors may make a difference for students considering many schools. However, prospective underserved students may be choosing your college or no college at all, so the emotional connection of “it feels right” can be the deciding factor. Finding the implicit messaging that supports that feeling is the tricky part.

Contact us for help with your enrollment targeting, segmentation, and automation to boost your enrollment efforts. Our expertise can help you identify and capitalize on opportunities to increase the effectiveness of your enrollment marketing strategy.