Implicit Marketing: Understanding Your Target Prospects (part 2)

The first step in reevaluating your implicit messaging is understanding your prospective students more fully. Each group of likely students will view your school through a different lens. First-generation high school graduates with immigrant parents may need to see more students like themselves represented in your materials, while a “some college, no degree” entering student may be more impressed by the range of flexible options that allow them to change their course load to accommodate their family and work lives.  

Identifying and segmenting your audience gives you the tools to become more involved in the psychology of your target students. Then, you can consider their needs, fears, concerns, and stage in life to take a fresh look at what your overall website and marketing efforts may be telling them.  

Some of the concerns for underrepresented students expressed in two recent surveys, one by the National Humanities Alliance and another from ECMC and VICE Media, give some insights into students’ thinking. Highlights include:  

• Curriculum needs to resonate with students and include topics beyond the Western perspective that appeal to more modern, global realities. 

• Students don’t feel fully prepared to decide what to do after high school. 

• Concerns about the basics of life—how to feed themselves, stay housed, and maintain their health—are top-of-mind for underserved students. 

• Worries about job prospects are especially important for programs that are not entirely career-focused, such as humanities subjects.  

• Return on investment (ROI) is a concern for all students, but it is more so for students from groups that have often had less access to higher education.  

• Fears about cultural isolation make faculty diversity important. Students want to know that they will be able to find a “sense of belonging,” which can be heightened by seeing faculty, students, and campus programs that resonate with them culturally.  

Maximizing the success of all marketing channels can help colleges attract the most promising prospects from underserved groups. Sending texts, emails, and targeted ads directly to students, parents, and counselors is undoubtedly part of an effective strategy, but the subtle messages about your school from your website and overall presence can provide psychological support to address anxieties students have about college. 

With DEI Increasingly Blocked, Implicit Messaging Gains Importance 

As states move to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and programs on campuses, explicitly welcoming messages for BIPOC, LBGTQ, and other groups can be problematic. Encouraging students from these groups must rely more on implicit and subtle messaging. Campus leaders want all students to feel included, but the research shows that underrepresented student groups often need to know they won’t be alone even as they also encounter people from a wide variety of backgrounds.  

Think like your target prospects, and try to understand the implicit messaging your marketing may be telling them. It is an exercise that can help you hone your marketing. Here are some questions to ask yourself: 

• What specific groups of students or personas are the most likely prospects for enrollment, and what are their concerns? 

• Does my overall marketing reassure students about some of their fundamental fears and emotional pain points? 

• What aspirations do my target prospects have that are not represented in my messaging? 

• Do the values of my institution come through in our messaging in ways that particular groups can understand on a deep level? 

• Does the enrollment marketing response plan give students a visceral understanding of the types of support our institution offers to students from underserved groups?  

• Does my overall messaging reduce friction as students struggle with the college decision? Does my institution seem accessible for students to begin the application process and/or enroll? 

Time to Reflect on Enrollment Marketing 

Reinking your implicit messaging can give you new perspectives on your overall branding and marketing. At a time when every enrollment counts, maximizing your appeal to underserved and non-traditional students can help you boost enrollment to keep your institution strong. As the world changes, the subtle impressions prospective students receive about your institution need to change, too. Investing the time to analyze your implicit appeal can pay off for your institution’s enrollment numbers. 

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.