Influential Impact: How to Tailor Your Recruitment Campaigns for Parents and Guardians
While an effective marketing campaign targeted at prospective students can do wonders for your recruitment yield, HE marketers would be hard pressed to argue that their work can beat the influence of parents and guardians in the student decision making process. A 2018 report by The Student Room found that 74% of prospective undergraduates saw their family as very or quite influential when it came to choosing their university. The same report concluded that this influence starts around Year 11, and continues throughout the whole student journey until graduation.
So, if parents and guardians are key stakeholders in student decision making, then marketing and recruitment campaigns need to account for their influence. Developing campaigns that specifically target this demographic and their motivations and preconceptions about providersd and courses can build a whole army of brand advocates for your university, with opportunities to grow interest and increase conversion rates.
In this article, we highlight some top tips for marketing to parents in your recruitment campaigns and explore a number of examples of effective efforts from across the sector. By making a concerted effort to engage parents and provide them with excellent support and guidance through the admissions process, you can increase conversions and create influential advocates for your brand.
Start Early
Parents are likely to start thinking about their children’s futures before the children themselves, whether that’s as they enter secondary education, select their GCSEs or work towards their A-levels. So, putting out content that they can engage with early in the decision-making process can be impactful. It can also help to build trust in your brand over time, especially for parents and guardians with children considering moving further afield for university.
This early content should be informative and accessible. Making sure the parent information pages on your website are optimised for SEO will be key. Research keywords that parents of prospective students are likely to search. These will likely correspond to concerns such as:
Student finance
University facilities
Accommodation
Subject career paths and graduate outcomes
University support services, such as mental health support
If you can demonstrate an ability to clearly and helpful answer important questions from the outset, parents and carers are more likely to develop trust in your brand and even return to your content throughout the decision-making period.
You can also use this as an opportunity to gather contact details for future communications and follow ups. For example, you might put together a brochure with useful explains and tips for parents that is accessible through a data capture form.
Create Multiple Parent Personas
While ‘parents and guardians’ are a key demographic in your recruitment drive, they are not a monolith. Recognising the diversity within this group and responding to those differences to deliver highly impactful and effective content will be key to a successful campaign.
The most important distinction within this group will be their previous experience of higher education. Marketing a higher education experience to the parents of a first-in-family prospective student, of course, will require different tools to communicating with parents who attended university themselves.
Key questions to consider when developing your parent personas include:
What kind of content will this audience find useful or informative?
How acquainted are they with the university admissions process and where will they require support?
Are they likely to be able to attend on-campus or in-person events?
What aspects of university life will they be most interested in learning more about?
What aspects of teaching and course content will they be most interested in learning more about?
How and where are they likely to conduct research about university study?
What prior knowledge or preconceptions about university do student parents have, and how might this impact how they guide their child through the application process?
What kind of professions or roles do student parents have? Will they require further information about the graduate labour market to help their child make informed decisions?
The University of Portsmouth’s Parents and Supports Information content appears to have taken these differentials into account. They’ve constructed a list of key questions parents might ask when it comes to decision making under the to-the-point title, ‘Should your child go to university?’. This answers some key objections parents coming from several different perspectives may have. For example, for those who consider getting a job straight after school to be a better option by signposting to degree apprenticeships and explains why university study differs significantly from GCSE and A Level study; meanwhile, the page dispels myths about partying and the student lifestyle and indicates how students will be safeguarded and supported at the institution.
Aside from this, the resource hub also offers guidance on preparing your child for university, navigating Clearing, and what to do if you’re worried about your child at university. Resources such as these respond to the diverse concerns different guardians will have over their dependents’ future. The page also encourages visitors to sign up for further resources, which allows for sending impactful email marketing campaigns later down the line.
Finally, when creating your resources, it’s worth considering how you are checking all the bases for the personas you’re targeting. For example, parents who are less well versed in higher education because they did not attend themselves may seek support and guidance on different questions to those parents who have been through the system themselves and acquired a graduate job at the end. Be careful about the kind of language you use to communicate and make sure that it is not off-putting to parents who may lack prior experience or knowledge of university.
By creating detailed personas that respond to the concerns and interests of different parent groups, you’ll be able to tailor and target your marketing content for greater impact.
Communicate Value
In the context of a cost-of-living crisis, prospective students and their carers are taking decisions about their future seriously. A significant concern for many parents will be whether a university degree is a good investment that provides value for money.
Your communications about value directed at parents should focus on the following areas:
Student finance and how it works
Maintenance costs, especially accommodation
Available financial support
Contact hours and teaching provision
Additional support and opportunities, such as clubs and societies and student support services
Graduate outcomes and employment opportunities
Testimonials from former students
The University of West London’s branding speaks closely to the value for money concerns many guardians will have. Identifying themselves as ‘the career university’, the institution lays out information about finance and funding on their Value for Money page. This includes information on how money is invested in the university, with specific details on the funding of student facilities, resources and services. Combined with their focus on graduate employability outcomes, this branding is persuasive for guardians who want to know whether a university degree is a worthwhile investment for their dependent’s future. Many universities will also cite their outcomes in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), National Student Survey (NSS) and university rankings to demonstrate their value.
Edge Hill University takes this one step further by breaking down exactly how tuition fees are spent. As many parents are from different generations, likely when tuition fees were much lower or didn’t exist at all, they will be curious to know where money as being allocated. By providing a clear explanation, like Edge Hill, you can demonstrate to prospective parents the inherent value of a university education for their child.
By tackling value head on in your communications to parents, you can indicate that your university understand their concerns and interests and build solid trust in your brand.
Contact Parents and Guardians Directly
As is the case with most marketing campaigns, data capture is king. Having a bank of parents with whom you can communicate directly will be a huge benefit – especially as research shows that those from older generations are generally more likely to click on targeted ads and links in email marketing campaigns.
Ways you can engage with parents and guardians include:
Asking prospective students who have expressed interest in your university or attended an event to share their carers’ details
Providing a resource accessible through a data capture form, like Portsmouth’s Parents and Supporters information
You should also make sure that your website consistently offers parents the opportunity to sign up for a mailing list
Collecting parent contact information at university open days
Running events targeted directly at parents
Setting up a group for carers of prospective students to connect with one another and access information, like the University of Birmingham’s Parents and Carers Network
Parents will appreciate the opportunity to ask questions and connect with other guardians, so capitalising on the ‘social’ element of social media will go a long way. Research shows that older generations value good customer service, so being responsive and able to answer questions is important.
By creating the opportunity to connect with parents and guardians directly, you can ensure that you deliver timely and impactful content to them throughout the decision-making process.
In-Person Events
Finally, it’s worth considering how the traditional methods of student recruitment, such as in-person events, can appeal to parents. More traditional and less tech-savvy and their students, the tried-and-tested Open Day is likely to appeal to parents. It gives them a chance to see the campus, meet students and staff, and actually imagine what their child’s university experience might be like.
When planning your Open Day events, make sure to attend to the needs and interests prospective parents will have. This will include covering things like:
Safety and wellbeing on campus
Accommodation
Living costs
Teaching and contact hours
Extra-curricular activities and student life
You might even consider running sessions or events dedicated specifically to parents, like the University of Portsmouth does. This doesn’t have to be the whole ordeal of a regular Open Day – something along the lines of an information evening will be enough to get parents through the door and give them the opportunity to contact with other parents, too.
If you’re offering these kind of events, be sure to keep in mind parents’ timetables and commitments. Making them as flexible and accessible as possible will be key to ensuring you engage a large and diverse audience.
The Future of HE Marketing
Marketing to parents and guardians is just one of many moving pieces in a recruitment drive. To further explore the latest ideas and innovations ins delivering distinctive, high impact and engaging student marketing campaigns, HE Professional members can join us for our upcoming events covering the latest innovations in HE marketing. Click below to find out more.
