EDUCATION BLOG

Put yourself in the student’s shoes!

Gone are the days when you had to ‘order’ your own prospectus online and wait for two weeks for it to arrive. If the average teenager is anything like my little sister during her application process, they would have changed their mind five times in that time. If you think the 60-page PDF of your prospectus is any better, then you haven’t seen OFEC’s My Own Prospectus system- where the form and the content are responsive- and can be tailored to the students’ interests.

529, 645 students (or rather, their parents) apply for a space in one of the 24,372 schools in England, to form part of the 8.2 million-strong pupil populations in the country.

If you’re one of the 24,372 schools in England, how do you make sure you attract the best and brightest pupils?

Location is key in finding students

In UK, location plays a key role in determining which students you recruit. While private schools have the capacity to offer accommodation, it is still necessary that the school be marketed in order for students outside your local area to find and apply.  With the increasing integration of social media in our lives (with the collective social media accounts totalling 6.3 billion), there is a huge audience you can talk to.  What you say matters. A lot.

This does not necessarily stop at the social media marketing strategy that is demanded from more or less every institution around the technologically developed world, but it flows over to your whole identity on the net. From having a uniform branding, message and voice across social media, your website needs to rise up to the standards.

Is your university website UX friendly for the UK and overseas?

Gone are the days of static website (according to Content Marketing Institute), your site needs to be responsive and create a positive UX (user experience) to attract and retain your potential clients. But how far are you willing to personalise?

Education sites now offer separate links directed at parents and students, so that both may find a school best fitted to them. While the student wants to know about the school culture and extra-curricular activities, the parents want to know the procedures, forms and league table information.

Even unpersonalizable objects, prospectuses for your school, needs to attract both the parent and the child. You want to be inclusive to all potential clients so all these information has to be included, though to that one person, only 5 out of the 100 pages may be relevant. While the parent wants to read about everything related to medicine pathways, the child would want to know about the football team and the drama productions.  But to troll through the 120 page publication to get that information demands an avid reader and a school enthusiast.

You need to have the edge on every platform to create a positive experience and warm feelings to your institution, thus standing a better chance at attracting the best and brightest.

OFEC offers a personalised e-prospectus creator for your site. By using existing technology such as PDF pages you may have already uploaded, MyOwnProspectus™ offers a user-and cost-friendly platform to market the areas of your institution, all the while gaining insights into your site. With a stats dashboard you can see how many students have logged on to your site today, how many of these clients are international and what subjects are proving to be more popular. You can find out who has downloaded the prospectus.  MyOwnProspectus™ provides you with a dashboard to see who has logged on, and details of the visitor, whilst providing a personalised e-prospectus that the visitor may download 24/7. Have a look at this video explaining why it is important to look at the stats.

Does your paper prospectus cost a huge amount?

Saving you money and resources that would be otherwise spent on printing and posting our prospectuses, the pages can be modified as you wish, allowing you to add and change pages according to the visitor demands- this way, the child can ask for the drama department and extra-curricular activities while the parent can look for the medicine programme. It can even allow you to cluster your areas so that a person interested in Drama may also want to check out the Music and Dance classes offered by your institution, thus advertising relevant content based on visitor interests.

This personal approach provides a professional experience, which could result in a positive user experience and thus positive word of mouth marketing. Ultimately, MyOwnProspectus™ creates an extremely positive and personalised user experience at the pre-application stage, an area that is often overlooked by institutions across UK due to the location determining the majority of your student intake. Regardless of the area you are located in, and the primary schools you are linked with, a better student will do the research and will go to the better (marketed) school unless you rise up and embrace the technology.

If you want to know how this can benefit you the best thing to do is ask for a free demo to see how it works.

Feel free to get in touch on 01865 556070 and we can arrange to chat at your convenience.

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