Programme Struggling with Enrolment? Try This Marketing Strategy

Frustrated that some of your programmes don't get the same attention from prospective students as others? It's not uncommon.

Most student leads have a good idea about what subject area interests them. And maybe even the type of programme. But with so many programmes to choose from, how are they supposed to select the right one?

We've heard students say the choices can paralyse their decision-making, since they can't be sure if their choice is the right one. So they end up sticking with what they know, rather than searching for a perfect match.

So next time you set out to attract more student leads, consider these tips to enhance your marketing strategy for those programs you'd like to see more enrolment in.

Too many choices - the effects of choice overload

Did you know? There are 35,000+ universities in the world, each offering on average 100 programmes each. 

• Without a TripAdvisor for schools, making an informed decision is no easy task. 
• Too many choices can lead to choice overload. And this has consequences.
• Prospective students make a trade-off between accuracy and effort. 

Your struggling programme might be exactly what they're looking for. But the chances are they're going to stop their search long before they find it.

Choice overload reduces the commitment to making the very best choice. As a result, great student leads will likely stop their research once they find anything 'acceptable'. And acceptable often means the traditional, safe-bets. Like Finance instead of the Business Performance Management programme with low enrollment.

Make it easy for potential students to handle choices

So, how can you make it easier for potential student leads to discover your programme?

You need to reduce the burden of choice.

The good news is that Gen Z is much quicker at processing whether a certain message is relevant or not to their needs.

So this is how we communicate the expected value of our Digital Advisor. 

We help you figure out if this programme is right for you! It only takes 4 minutes.

The prospect of discovering an entire programme in just 4 minutes is a walk in the park. Compared to what feels like an eternity scrolling through text-heavy websites.

Read this blog post to get some practical tips on communicating expected value in your Facebook ads.

Too much information - the redundancy effect

But say your programme does make it onto the radar of a potential student lead.

You've probably got a PDF brochure or website packed with all the information they would ever need. 

Because more information is better, right?

• Actually, no. With an average attention span of 8 seconds, Gen Z is even more impatient than their Millennial predecessors. (Who could stay focused for about 12 seconds).
• Plus, our working memory has a limited capacity, and irrelevant information can clog this up.

This phenomenon is called the redundancy effect.

A high-quality student lead may have come to find out if they can study entrepreneurship in your MBA. But first, they must sift through all sorts of other details that become distractions. Career prospects, campus facilities, corporate partners ...

The result? They remember the wrong information because their temporary memory storage gets filled up with irrelevant information. Which lowers choice quality.

Less is more 

A matching quiz can be designed to help a user find the right match among multiple programmes.

Take a university page with links to all of their finance degrees. There's Accounting, Economics, Corporate Finance and a long list of others. 

It's already confusing. And this is just one webpage among hundreds that a prospective student lead could include in their research.

But after asking about the user's interests and goals through the quiz, it's possible to narrow down their options to the programme that suits them best.

It's a simple, effective device to reduce the problem of choice. Plus, help navigate more students to your underperforming programme.

A versatile tool for any marketing strategy in education

The 4-minute quiz is a handy complement to your marketing strategy for higher education.

Whether as an introduction to your programme for a prospective student lead early in their research journey. Or, as a way to offer more in-depth information about the programme to somebody who is already interested.

The benefits of a matching quiz - the Swiss Army knife of marketing tools:

• Captures the attention of prospective leads and gets them fired up
• Sends more student traffic to the programmes you need help with (Up to 62% of users click through to the programme webpage after completing the digital adisor)
• Increases the confidence about making the right choice! 

Read this next: Increase Student Conversion with a Multi-step Lead Form