Higher Ed Recruitment On A Smaller Budget

There are more options for higher education than ever before, so you can no longer just rely on campus tours and paper brochures to attract prospective students. Maintaining and expanding your enrollment numbers is even tougher as a small team competing with larger institutions, which have far more resources.

As a result, every action taken, every dollar spent, and every strategy employed in higher ed recruitment needs to be re-evaluated for its efficacy and return on investment (ROI).

Why is it Hard to Recruit Best-Fit Students on a Smaller Budget?

Digital tools are effective at scaling messaging to broader audiences. However, they are equally beneficial for your competition, so you need to constantly defend your traditional student pools from being siphoned off.  

The pressure doesn’t end there. Breaking into new student audiences, nurturing practices, and diversifying student demographics are other challenging aspects for teams with tighter budgets. For grad schools, the challenges are manifold – smaller teams, specialized roles, and the daunting task of digital engagement.

Related: Mapping Student Personas to Higher Ed Funnels

Smart investments in effective digital tools, however, can provide better ROI without overstretching existing resources.

How to Recruit University Students, Including Grad Students, on a Budget?

The essence of higher ed recruitment, whether at university or grad levels, pivots around understanding and reaching out to your target audience in an engaging and authentic manner. Amidst budget constraints, the key is to employ edtech tools that resonate with students while providing substantial returns on investment. With 95.52% of institutions now utilizing social media to connect with students, the digital space has become central to recruitment strategies.

This shift is largely due to the evolving expectations of Gen Z students, who are looking for more immediate, authentic, and personalized interactions. In fact, 53% higher education professionals anticipate that adapting to these changing expectations will be the most significant challenge they face in the next five years.

Prioritizing Value on a Smaller Budget

The value of edtech Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) tools comes from their ability to deliver results without escalating workloads. You should be meticulous when selecting SaaS tools to find those that are easy to use and offer seamless implementation. Unibuddy, for instance, epitomizes such value by enabling authentic interactions between prospective students and student ambassadors, making the decision-making process for prospective students easier.

Related: How to Fit Unibuddy Into Your Higher Ed Marketing, Admissions, and Recruitment Programs

Unibuddy’s effectiveness is reflected in the broader trend towards peer-to-peer engagement in higher ed recruitment strategies. It aligns with the overarching shift in recruitment dynamics where direct student-to-student connections are becoming increasingly pivotal. In fact, in a recent survey 78% of respondents agreed that providing student-to-student contact opportunities was critical for the prospective student experience. This underscores the integral role of student ambassadors in contemporary recruitment efforts.

Leveraging Authenticity and Data Insights Over Excessive Tech

More tech doesn’t always translate to better outcomes, especially when working with limited budgets. The challenge for smaller grad school recruitment teams is to do more with less.

Understanding Gen Z Expectations

Gen Z has grown up amidst a digital revolution, and their expectations are aligned with instant, authentic, and personalized interactions. Competing with companies boasting billion-dollar marketing budgets to meet these expectations can seem like a herculean task for smaller recruitment teams.

Authentic Conversations Over Impersonal Interactions

University students, including grad students, seek authentic interactions that provide a real glimpse into the academic experience awaiting them. Platform solutions like Unibuddy excel in this domain by fostering authentic conversations between prospective students and existing student ambassadors or faculty. These genuine interactions build trust and guide students along their journey.

Initiating the Journey: Sourcing Edtech Tools and Envisioning Next Steps

Adopting a structured approach toward evaluating edtech tools is crucial. A framework like Gartner’s tech selection criteria can be tailored to suit the edtech domain and ensure that selected tools align with specific objectives and offer genuine value for money.

When analyzing the effectiveness of edtech tools, Unibuddy emerges as a leading solution for student recruitment. It enables institutions to make authentic and effective connections with prospective students.

With Unibuddy, you can:

• Personalize Your Brand: Add student ambassadors to the institution’s website to provide authentic information and capture prospective students’ attention.
• Enhance Student Onboarding: Keep admitted students engaged and informed, reducing the nervousness between enrollment and arrival.

But what really sets Unibuddy apart is its ability to back your engagement and nurturement tactics with data features and backend insights. These include:

• Conversational Insights: Using data from conversations, you can gain valuable insights into prospective students’ concerns and themes. 
• Tracking Student Engagement: By analyzing how student engagement with student ambassadors changes over time, you can create internal guides for future use.

With its user-friendly interface, multifunctionality, and proven results, Unibuddy empowers smaller teams to achieve more with less.

Discover Unibuddy: Your Companion in Student Recruitment

Empowering the next generation of students to make the right choice for their future is the core ethos behind Unibuddy. Our platform has served over a million students, with 15 million+ messages sent across 500+ institutional partners worldwide.

Unibuddy’s values are rooted in peer growth, thriving amidst challenges, and creating a significant impact. We are all about achieving together, growing amidst uncertainties, and focusing on impact. 

Book a demo today to ensure the next generation of students make informed decisions about where to study higher education.