Subscribe:   Posts   |   Email   |   Facebook   |   Twitter

Internet Marketing and Web Development in Higher Education and other tidbits…

Why Higher Ed Admission Offices Must Think Like a Sales Team

14 Nov 2011

written by Kyle James

Why Higher Ed Admission Offices Must Think Like a Sales Team

Higher education admissions offices too often think of their job as ushering students through the final stages of the enrollment process. But admissions counselors and marketing teams must think instead like a sales team. Focusing only on the end of the application and enrollment process means universities loose out on countless prospective students and promising contacts and ultimately, hurt their enrollment.  A while back I wrote about the concept of Marketing and Admission focused which I coined arkmissions.  This post hopes to take it a step further on exactly why this is so critical.

Think Strategically

Financial times are tough in education. Just as the economic recession has taken it’s toll on the private and public sector, a weakening economy has also affected the university system, especially public institutions.  Which school hasn’t seen a cutback of some sort or another in the past few years? In response, schools have raised tuition and worked to increase enrollment.

Higher education admissions offices should develop strategies designed to minimize marketing costs while maximizing marketing efficiency.There are several strategic steps admission offices can take to bring in more prospective students before they decide to apply for admission.

  • Increase inbound marketing strategies to provide prospective students with the information they want and need early in their decision making process.
  • Gain contact information from prospective students and nurture leads through email.
  • Effectively use social media including Facebook, Twitter, mobile-ready websites and geolocation.

All of these require a strong alignment with the Marketing/Communication/Web Office to pull off successfully.

Students = Revenue

Each student who eventually enrolls in a university equals a revenue stream. Higher education admission offices must analyze what portion of the school’s annual revenue comes from tuition. It is an admission counselors job to bring in revenue for the school by increasing enrollment. The best way to increase enrollment is to encourage more students to apply.  The best way to increase applicants is by increasing inquiries of all sorts.

Traditionally, admissions offices plan marketing by starting at the wrong end of the marketing funnel — the application. Instead, they should plan marketing by starting at the top of the marketing funnel, the stage where prospective students are just starting out their school selection process. The more students a university can grab at this stage, the greater the revenue the admissions office can produce.

Prospects Lead to Applications

Higher education admissions offices should think of the entire sales funnel as a path to application. When the admissions team catches more students at the top of the funnel, more students will ultimately end up applying for the school. Having more applications has several advantages for universities.

First, schools could choose to make their selection process more rigorous. With more applications, a school could increase its level of prestige simply because there are more students to choose from. Secondly, a school could choose to grow by accepting more students. Growing has the advantage of attracting even more students in the future as programs grow and gain in recognition. Finally, schools will increase revenue by bringing more students into the university.

Higher education admissions offices need to rethink their strategies in order to move their universities ahead into the 21st century marketplace. Implementing a sales strategy that recognizes the admissions process is really about selling the university and the benefits of a higher education will reap the benefit of increased enrollment and increased revenue. It’s time to start thinking different.

edu admissions webinar Why Higher Ed Admission Offices Must Think Like a Sales Team

  1. Student Workers in Higher Ed Web Offices Research Results
  2. Best Admission Uses of Twitter
  3. Admission Office Uses Twitter Promoted Tweets

The content of this post is licensed: The post is released under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license

About the author

Kyle James

Kyle is the CEO & Co-Founder at nuCloud and formerly the webmaster at Wofford College. He also spent almost 4 years at HubSpot doing a range of jobs including inbound marketing consulting, sales, management, and product management.  Kyle is an active contributor in the social media spectrum. Although his background is technical, he claims to know a thing or two about marketing, but mostly that revolves around SEO, analytics, blogging, and social media. He has spoken at multiple national conferences and done countless webinars on topics ranging from e-mail marketing to social media and Web analytics. He's definitely a fairly nice guy.

Ways to Connect with Kyle
Kyle's Blog Kyle's Facebook Kyle's LinkedIn Bio Kyle's Twitter AccountKyle's Last.FM Music Kyle's Flickr Photos Michael's YouTube Profile Kyle's SlideShare Presentations

This post was written by - who has written 248 posts on .eduGuru

  • http://www.facebook.com/louisjm Louis Joseph Martin III

    No offense, but this is admissions 101. There’s nothing in here that an outreach and admissions person doesn’t already know. Of course students equal revenue. Of course prospects lead to apps. The fact that an admissions team works like a sales team has been the model in place for pretty much every university in America for years if not decades. There’s nothing new about it, nothing to “rethink”. The only universities that don’t follow this model are ivy league schools, because they are so well established and secure.

    • http://doteduguru.com Kyle James

      Louis,
      I talk to schools each and every day.  You should consider yourself lucky for being in a place that actively accepts and adopts these practices. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=728046358 Frank Vastola

    We knew this in 1985 when I was a director of admission – No “new news” here.

  • http://twitter.com/mwkozak Mike Kozak

    The fact that you leave the issue of fit out of this article is unsettling. The thing that’s gotten the for-profits in so much trouble is running admission as sales operations. Granted, sales will always be part of college admissions as long as prospective students have so many choices, the issue of marketing fit should take equal (if not higher) precedence. While more students at the top of the funnel may mean more applications, if the students aren’t a fit they either won’t be admitted, they won’t enroll, or if they do enroll they’ll transfer or dropout. 

    • http://twitter.com/KarlynM Karlyn Morissette

      I completely agree with Mike, but I don’t blame Kyle for that. Look, Kyle has never worked in an admissions office…he’s work with admissions offices but not in  them. But his perspective that admissions needs to be run as a sales team is well-taken. He’s right that a lot of people who run admissions offices still don’t view it as sales. But things have gotten better. In the 8 years that I’ve been in this industry, I’ve seen a pretty dramatic shift in this direction, but there are still a lot of schools out there who are bringing in tons of leads, but aren’t considering the fit factor. And don’t even get me started on those companies charging hundreds of thousands of dollars for student search programs that could give two hoots about fit and only care about numbers. 

      At the end of the day, I think this post is for very very old school admissions folks who haven’t caught up with the times, not for the majority of folks out there who are trying to do smarter marketing…and I think that Hubspot probably owes us a few sponsorship dollars for the webinar plug.

      • http://doteduguru.com Kyle James

        Ha.  @twitter-6811832:disqus caught w/ the CTA.  You are correct that I haven’t worked with an admission department but I literally talk to them each and every day in my current role.  If these thought processes weren’t something that I didn’t daily run up against I wouldn’t be talking about it.  Also let me ask you this.

        You say that things have gotten better in your 8 years.  Is that more because of your change of schools instead of things truly changing?  Not to call anyone out but do you think those previous employers “get it” now?

      • http://doteduguru.com Kyle James

        Ha.  @twitter-6811832:disqus caught w/ the CTA.  You are correct that I haven’t worked with an admission department but I literally talk to them each and every day in my current role.  If these thought processes weren’t something that I didn’t daily run up against I wouldn’t be talking about it.  Also let me ask you this.

        You say that things have gotten better in your 8 years.  Is that more because of your change of schools instead of things truly changing?  Not to call anyone out but do you think those previous employers “get it” now?

  • Kylie Stanley

    My response on The Gateseeker http://thegateseeker.blogspot.com/2011/11/business-strategies-require-filter.html

    “Obviously, I think that transferring corporate models and strategies directly to higher education is a misstep. That’s not to say that higher education can’t learn from well-run organizations. Some of the greatest thinkers of our time are in business, educational leaders should pull strong ideas out.  I simply argue here that moving from business to education requires a filter; how can we best apply successful business strategies to our educational goals? That question is still up in the air.”

    • http://twitter.com/KarlynM Karlyn Morissette

      Kylie, with all due respect, I think in many ways Kyle’s post was written for people like you. In your response post you say flat out that you do not believe that students equal revenue – that is just WRONG and it is that point of view that will lead to many many colleges going under in the coming years. 

      Look, there is a happy medium between old school admissions, and a sales mindset. Schools have got to work towards not just marketing to more students and generating more leads, and making sure you’re targeting so you’re focusing on students who would succeed and do well. It’s not one or the other, all or nothing. 

  • http://doteduguru.com Kyle James

    There are a lot of good comments, follow-up posts and whatnot but I feel compelled to make one additional point.  Admissions and MARKETING are two things not the same thing. 

    I know that I’ve accomplished my job as a blogger when I’m getting a range of comments from duh this is basic 101 to you have no idea what you are talking about.  The fact that we have such a broad and not unified opinion on something this basic simply shows the need to continue talking about it.

  • Anonymous

    You’ve started out with the premise that higher ed is facing financial troubles: “Which school hasn’t seen a cutback of some sort of another in the past few years? In response, schools have raised tuition and worked to increase enrollment.” This is true across the higher ed landscape. We all know that higher ed is an expensive enterprise as currently delivered by traditional institutions.

    While that cost has many variables and underlying causes, raising tuition as a response is fueled, at least in part, by the goals you’re advancing- increasing prestige and growing enrollment. How? Well, increasing prestige is very much tied to attracting the cream of the crop kids each and every year. How does an institution do that? Among other things, by doling out scholarships, funding expensive labs/programs and providing lavish amenities in the form of pretty campus grounds, rec centers, new buildings, etc. All of those things, whether you think they’re worthwhile or not, come at high cost- costs that outstrip revenue from tuition (enter advancement with campaigns to donate to the school to make up the difference). On the enrollment front, traditional institutions are bound by their physical limits. They can only house so many students into their existing dorms and classrooms. To significantly increase enrollment requires capital expenditures for more buildings and employees and/or non-traditional routes like online learning which can scale at much more cost effective rates, but come at the cost of the traditional on-campus experience.

    On some level, you’re advocating to increase the efficiency of a system that’s currently unsustainable. I think the real opportunity is to rethink common institutional goals like greater selectivity and prestige.

  • Anonymous

    I think that transferring corporate models and strategies directly to higher education is a misstep.This is true across the higher education landscape.

Proud Member of BlogHighEd University Web Developers eduStyle

© .eduGuru - Internet Marketing and Web Development in Higher Education and other tidbits…. Powered by Wordpress. | Advertiser policy