TikTok’s Future Delayed
In an era where digital platforms shape countless decisions, TikTok remains a dominant force, captivating millions worldwide. While a U.S. ban loomed — and the app even went dark overnight for 14 hours on January 18th — sending shockwaves and outcry from millions, an executive order has postponed any restrictions for 75 days, granting higher education institutions more time to leverage the platform’s marketing potential. The show of support and fevered loyalty toward the app shows how influential TikTok is as a tool in higher education marketing.
For now, TikTok offers a valuable opportunity to connect with prospective students from Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Here’s how colleges and universities can maximize TikTok’s influence to enhance recruitment and engagement efforts during this extended window.
TikTok’s unparalleled reach, vibrant content culture, and robust analytics tools provide a proven blueprint for engaging Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
TikTok: A Gateway to Engaging Gen Z and Gen Alpha
TikTok’s rapid growth, particularly among younger audiences in the U.S. — 41% of its users are aged 16 to 24 — makes it an excellent marketing platform for colleges and universities. But it’s not just about the numbers; TikTok thrives on vibrant, immersive content that fosters deep engagement. Prospective students from Gen Z and Gen Alpha aren’t merely passive viewers, they’re active participants spending an average of 9.31 hours per week on the platform. This makes TikTok a prime tool for driving event registrations, generating leads, and building meaningful connections.
Best Practices for Enhancing Visibility and Engagement
Showcasing campus life, academic programs, and student experiences helps colleges attract a broad range of prospective applicants. To create standout content on TikTok, a mix of creativity, strategy, and execution is key. Here are some effective strategies:
- Day-in-the-Life Videos: TikTok thrives on creativity and authenticity, urging educational marketers to craft campaigns that connect with students. Our partners stand out by using TikTok to share real student stories, campus events, and daily college life. These videos offer genuine snapshots into student life, helping prospective students connect emotionally with the institution and envision themselves as part of the community.
- Highlight Unique Aspects: Showcase the elements that make a campus unique—renowned faculty, cutting-edge research facilities, or dynamic student life activities—to differentiate the institution.
- Leverage Challenges and Trends: Participating in challenges or trends can boost visibility, especially when tailored to educational themes or campus life. TikTok’s algorithm amplifies engaging content, increasing the likelihood of ads going viral and expanding reach for branding campaigns.
- Collaborate with Influencers: Student influencers and alumni lend credibility and authenticity. Influencers viewed as peers can more effectively persuade and engage prospective students from both generations.
- Optimize Calls-to-Action: Strong, clear calls-to-action are essential for encouraging prospective students to explore the institution, visit virtually or in person, or apply. Investing in TikTok reaches a highly engaged audience, driving recruitment and event results. TikTok’s analytics offer key insights into performance, helping marketers refine strategies, optimize resources, and adapt to audience preferences in real time.
TikTok’s Continued Lessons for Higher Education Marketing
Despite the uncertainty surrounding TikTok’s future, it remains a goldmine of opportunities for higher education marketers. The unwavering support and dedication from TikTok’s loyal user base reinforce its undeniable value as a platform for meaningful engagement in higher education marketing. Its unparalleled reach, vibrant content culture, and robust analytics tools provide a proven blueprint for engaging Gen Z and Gen Alpha. The 75-day postponement offers a chance to double down on your TikTok strategy. By crafting compelling narratives that resonate with prospective students, institutions can maximize visibility and build lasting connections.
As the future of TikTok in the U.S. remains uncertain, now is the time to make the most of its marketing potential. The digital media strategists at Spark451 are here to help you navigate this dynamic platform, refine your tactics and approach, and achieve your goals. With a forward-thinking approach, we’ll ensure your institution stands out and remains competitive in the evolving digital landscape. Reach out today to get started.
Dive into January
Welcome back! January is a busy month, but luckily, we get to stay indoors with fewer on-campus events and visits this time of year. So, sit back, get cozy, warm up a beverage of your choice, fire up your CRM, and crank through the work ahead.
To get you started, we’ve outlined a few actionable tips to help you streamline your processes, personalize your outreach, and make the most of the tools at your disposal. Something tells us this will be your best year yet!
Application Review
It’s application and essay reading time! Get yourself and your team ready for the assortment of deadlines that comes with this time of year. From internal deadlines to the all-important regular decision deadline, does your team have what it needs to tackle the tasks at hand? Here are a few tips that may help:
- Have you sent reminder emails to students with missing materials? Don’t let missing materials hold up your application review! Even if your campus hasn’t started the spring semester yet, high school students are probably back in school and admissions counselors can follow up with a phone call or text to get those materials in.
- How does your duplicate record count look? Make sure your team is merging duplicate records, whether they are inquiries or applicants. (Slate users: Visit Consolidate Records. Element451 users: See the Deduplication Module.)
- Are you following up with students who started an application, but haven’t submitted it? Don’t let your institution fall off their radar!
Pro Tip: In your CRM, get checklists prepared and tested well ahead of time. That means properly configuring materials and testing checklist functionality before the arrival of student résumés, recommendation letters, and transcripts.
Interviews
If your institution conducts student interviews, you know the drill — schedule, interview, repeat! Whether these interviews are in-person or virtual, leverage your CRM to schedule these conversations. In your CRM, log notes on student records and make it so that any admissions counselor can quickly find your notetaking later.
Food for Thought: Add a personal touch when following up with students. Did you learn they were going to a band competition or competing in a state basketball tournament? That could be a meaningful personalization to mention in your communications with them!
Yield Management
It’s time to start converting admitted students into enrolled students for the fall. Plan how your team will be organizing admitted student events in your CRM. Here are a few questions to consider:
- Do you need any new templates built?
- How are your event communications looking?
- Do you want visit reports that show year-over-year goal progress from this year to last?
- Where is your admitted student checklist?
- Are the forms you’ll be asking students to complete accessible and easy to navigate?
- Do you have a plan in place for recruiting dual enrollment students?
Food for Thought: How eye-catching are your reports? Some color, visual illustrations, and interactive elements are sure to impress every member of your team.
Financial Aid
There’s no better time than now to get financial aid packages prepared and proofread. This holds especially true if your institution has early deadlines or priority deadlines for submitting the FAFSA. Get ahead now and enter the spring term with less stress than last year!
Applicant Questions
No matter how perfect your website, pamphlets, FAQ documents, and information sessions are, students and parents will have many questions. How will you be triaging these types of questions this year?
We have some creative solutions in mind. Let us help you optimize your inbox configurations. Reach out to learn more!
Let's Cross the Finish Line Together. 🏁
Need a hand? With our flexible SparkAssist service, you can learn with us and become an expert on all things Salesforce, Slate, and Element451. Or, hand us a project for one-time completion. No project is too small or large for us!
- Drip campaigns development and automation
- Responsive HTML email templates
- Querying and reporting
- Database efficiencies
- Lead generation and strategizing origin sources
If you’re interested in learning about Spark451’s SparkAssist options, please reach out to us!
Harness the Power of Sophomore/Junior Search
Month: January 2025
|January 9, 2025Working in higher education right now can feel like the floor is lava and you’re not sure where to stand. With institutions rethinking pricing strategy, an increase in faculty and student burnout causing schools to refocus on supporting the mental and physical health of their communities, and outdated marketing materials that don’t match updated brands, it’s time to rethink how you plan to communicate with a new crop of eager young minds.
It All Begins With an Effective Sophomore/Junior Search
In our recent College-Bound Student Survey for the Class of 2028, 60% of students indicated that they began to look seriously at college before the summer entering their senior year.
Building early brand awareness is the foundation upon which you can expand your funnel and attract a wider pool. Being familiar with your institution is a prerequisite for students’ curiosity: When surveyed, almost 40% of the Class of 2028 said they would not open an email from a college if they had never heard of it. So, how can you make sure they’ve heard of your institution — and know how to feel about it?
60%
of students indicated that they began to look seriously at college before the summer entering their senior year.
40%
of the Class of 2028 said they would not open an email from a college if they had never heard of it.
Step 1: Figure Out With Whom You'd Like to Connect
What kind of students do you want to enroll? Where are they? What are their interests? Answering these questions might seem like a daunting task, but using tools like Spark451’s Purchase Modeling and Predictive Modeling can help you prioritize where to invest your budgets and efforts. By analyzing your institution’s historical data and comparing it with national enrollment trends, we can help you make a strategic name purchase, and then, assign a score to those names ranking the likelihood of their enrollment.
Step 2: Plan for Where You'll Reach Them
Multi-channel communication plans are the most effective tools for building brand awareness. To start, introducing yourself through digital media is an excellent way to gain passive engagement. Having a presence on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat — or even better, running ads on these channels — is an excellent way to be noticed and remembered.
Of course, email will be the primary vehicle to tell the story of your institution and what it has to offer. 98% of students noted that they used email for their communication during their college search, with mailed materials (68%) and texting (65%) coming in as the next most popular channels. Reflective of this, students ranked email as their preferred communication method, with traditional mail coming in second and texting coming in third. (Also, 37% of respondents noted they were OK with receiving texts anytime!)
Once you’ve established which channels you’re going to cover, it’s time to lean on your admissions counselors. High school visits and college fairs are the best time to connect with sophomores and juniors in their natural habitat. To get the most out of those visits, pair data insights from your communications with the student names you purchased (and potentially scored) to get a better idea of where your team should be traveling. And don’t forget to equip your counselors with a list of students from each school who have received and/or engaged with your communications. Doing so will help them make personalized connections and leave a good impression on the students you’re looking to recruit — a recipe for success! (When was the last time you updated your giveaway and travel materials? We can help with that, too! Read more about that here.)
Another way to build relationships is to offer specific on-campus visit opportunities for sophomores and juniors. After all, 28% of the students we surveyed indicated that they knew their chosen school was right for them upon visiting campus, so any way you can get students to your campus will likely result in a boost in enrollment. A “Tips for College Admissions” workshop could be a great way to garner interest from sophomores and their parents/guardians. For juniors, focusing more on your campus, scholarships, academic opportunities, etc. may be more appropriate.
Step 3: Determine How to Engage Them
Our College-Bound Survey indicated that 27% of students did not click through an email from a college if it was too generic. Digital natives know you have data on them, and they want it used to serve their needs. While keeping branded information simple and clear is important, adding personalization makes your message relevant to your audience. This is the Instagram/TikTok generation, where everyone has their own page, their own individualized timeline, and uniqueness is often celebrated. Leveraging segmentation and personalized messaging is a great way to show these students you not only know what they want, but you can offer it. Make sure you’re talking to them as individuals so they feel that any email, text, or postcard you’ve sent was truly meant for them — it can really make all the difference!
Once you’ve managed to capture their attention, providing easy ways for them to indicate their interest is very important! Make sure you have a user-friendly lead form that is easily accessible in all of your communication channels and has been optimized for mobile.
Step 4: Engage Stakeholders
We know parents/guardians are a huge factor in a student’s college search, with 87% of surveyed students indicating that their families had an impact on their college decisions. Engaging parents/guardians through their own specific campaigns (separate from their students) is a very effective way to build brand recognition and establish relationships with these key influencers. Tailoring these messages to make them feel personalized is paramount, as the way you’d engage with a first-generation family may sound very different than how you might speak with a parent who is an alum, for example.
At Spark451, we have the ability to append parent/guardian data to purchased names, making it easy to include them in your communication plans. Remember, if students and their families feel that your school genuinely cares about them and their academic future, they’re going to be more likely to enroll.
In a nutshell, running a successful sophomore/junior search comes down to playing a strategic long-game in a thoughtful way. We know there are plenty of students who would be a great match for your institution — the challenge is finding them early enough in the process so that they are excited when it comes time to apply.
To discuss the details of your college or university’s sophomore/junior search further, please reach out. We’ll be happy to help you refine your strategy and deliver a campaign that will support your goals. Trust us: Future you will thank you!
