HE Marketing Tip 3: Application Farms and the risks they present.
How to ensure you get your applicants over the line at the final hurdle.
Imagine you sell footballs: you sponsor all the best teams, you advertise online, you do great direct marketing to interested people. You are amazing at marketing your footballs. You make your customers SO interested that they go to your website, browse your footballs, decide on the one they want.
Then they click ‘Buy Now’ and………….eBay opens up! The customer now surfs through a directory of all footballs from around the world and buys one somewhere else. Arrgghhhhhhhh!
So, what are ‘University Application Farms’?
Basically, you have done all the hard work, students want to apply to your course and you send them to a place where your competitors are listed…..that is an application farm.
Stop diluting your well spend marketing budget by allowing your applicants this weak customer experience.
An example of aplication of these sites is UKPASS. You’ll notice on these sites your hard earned applicants are exposed to banner ads from your competitors throughout the experience. Luckily in this screenshot it is one of our customers doing the advertising – Edgehill!
Your student recruitment solution should integrate the whole process from when interest has been generated until the applicant has paid their deposit to begin your course – from enquiry, through application and onto accept offer/pay deposit.
If you want to look at how I setup our postgrad recruitment service for our partners feel free to get in touch by phone, (+44 (0) 870 735 2888), email, Tweeting, LinkedIn or EVEN write.
Keep an eye on the blog for more weekly HE marketing tips. Talk soon,
Derek.
Related posts:
“Productivity and a better service to our applicants – two crucial benefits of CampusIT''s Interact online solution that make it easier for applicants to apply for our courses and make our process more productive.”