A recent video has been making its way around the higher ed backchannels. This video is of a group of high school students after taking tours of eleven local colleges and universities. This humorous video is something worth viewing as an important reminder to any higher education marketer. Before we continue here, you really should watch the video:
Did you pick up on the golden nugget that these bright young students are telling us? Colleges and universities really aren’t all that different!
Now I will say that if you watch the end of the video you will see the list of schools that they visited, and every school was located in the northeast (the majority in New York). This does show a limit in variety as students in Texas or Oregon might be interested in different things than students in New York. Despite this detail the items that are mentioned sound pretty universal.
Marketing Takeaway
The big takeaway here is to focus on the unique value proposition of your institution. Tell YOUR story. What makes your school special?
- Is it the history around campus?
- Is it a beautiful campus?
- Do you have a set of majors that are the best in the US?
- Are you located in an amazing city?
- Is your institution doing some amazing research on a specific subject?
I realize that telling campus stories is never this easy because each and every institution has pieces of each of the above that they could tell. The point is that prospective students are looking for a unique place that will fit them for the next few years. Your virtual tour can help tell this unique story while also handling all these “standard” features of a campus too. Don’t spend your face to face time on a physical tour going through the mundane things that make you just like every other school out there.