Using Facebook for Student Recruitment (still…)
The eighteen year old kids looking for the right study might not all use Facebook as their primary social network of choice anymore, they still all have accounts and often use messenger and the check-in options of Facebook. Therefore, Facebook should still be considered as a serious channel in communicating with potential students.
Many institutions seem to limit their Facebook presence to generating a page on the platform that they use in the same way that they use their company website. They just post some content from time to time and hope that that way they will collect some ‘likes’, although most of the time they have no idea what to do next with these likes.
However, Facebook offers a much more powerful way of interacting with target audiences. How about the following scenario?
A university of Applied Sciences wants to promote their program of Civil Engineering. A questionnaire among their current students learnt that playing with Lego and Architecture were among the favorite hobbies of those following the Civil Engineering program. Therefore they use the strong target definition of Facebook to promote an app that thy developed for the platform among people in the age range 16-20, in their region, having liked Lego and or Architecture pages. The app that the add leads to allows the prospective students to practice exam questions for their high school finals. But the most important thing happens when the students start the app. Then a pop-up appears saying that Facebook wants to have access to their profile details. Elder people might be very reluctant to do so, but most of the eighteen year olds today will directly accept. At that very moment a big trunk of their profile details will be send to the CRM system of the university. That way the prospective students are not only identified, but also a lot of information about them is collected, allowing the university to for instance find out that Meccano is also one of the favorite trademarks of this group of prospects, so as that they can fine tune the appearance details of their add.
What actually happens inside the app is of less relevance in terms of marketing. In terms of branding, however, universities should realize that using this app often is one of the first impressions that prospective students get from the institution, so it should be working seamlessly and look cool and attractive. This of course will also increase the chance that prospect students will share the app with their friends. It might even go viral!
So, even though Instagram might have bypassed Facebook in terms of numbers of users among the 16- 20 year olds, Facebook is still a social media platform of great impact, allowing many very powerful integration options. Investing is scenarios as painted above definitely still makes sense.
CRM FOR EDUCATION 