Using Recruitment Videos as a strategy to Increase Student enrolment

Video marketing is a great recruitment strategy for your school, college or university, giving audiences a deeper insight into your institution's ethos. Are your videos optimised for student recruitment? Do you answer your prospect's questions and drive conversions?

Recruitment videos in education marketing are targeted messages and information given to prospective students or parents that are interested in your education or higher education setting. School and college recruitment videos can feature anything that feels relevant and current to the identity of your place of study. They are an excellent way to engage your audience, allowing them to sit back, relax and enjoy getting an amazing preview into your school or college.

Why?

So what makes marketing videos an excellent recruitment tool for you school or college? In our highly digital age tools like video have increasing levels of engagement.

78% of education marketers find that student recruiting videos are a positive return on investment when used as a tool to attract students. Videos show off the best parts of your School or College experience and give a visual insight into what studying there would be like.

Audiences are increasingly drawn to videos as they are able to engage with them and with minimal effort, having questions answered they didn’t even know they had. Video drives important messages about your school or college and allows for creativity when communicating your brand. This is a great tool to show your school or college vision, ethos, and unique selling point.

How?

How you make video targeting student recruitment will vary depending on what you wish to communicate. Research is always a good place to start when creating a new video. Look for what your key competitors have done for their recruitment videos and what other schools or colleges across the country have created. What have they done well? What have they not done well and what is missing that you could use in your own? Take inspiration from these videos and use them as a springboard for creativity.

It is important to work on this with your marketing and admissions team, and other relevant staff. What is their perspective on what makes your school or college great and what is your unique selling point? Look for ways to show off your school or college in a creative way that is true to your brand. Your video doesn’t have to be a big expensive production, but you should research and plan ways to make the video as captivating as it is informative. Plan out what will be shown and who will be speaking during the video. It is a good idea to use alumni or current students that can speak on their own perspective of what it is like to study with you.

Depending on your school or college, you may already have access to camera equipment and a team of staff that are well experienced in video production. However, this is not true to all schools or colleges so it is a good idea to research and hire a team that can help with this. Make sure you review what this team has made previously and communicate to them the style of video you wish to create. Budgeting will be a consideration for this but there are opportunities to create an effective recruitment video that won’t break the bank. You could even compromise on the length of the video if necessary. It needn’t be a documentary length video, something short can still be highly effective in recruiting students.

Alternatively, there are lots of great online courses from beginner to expert on creating video content. Check out this HubSpot Academy course for some video marketing knowledge. 

Once the video is made it is then time to show it off! It may be worth posting an announcement on your video prior to releasing it across your platforms, creating intrigue and a fulfilled promise so audiences trust in your school or college. Make sure that the video is posted somewhere that is easy to find such as your school or college website homepage. There is also an opportunity here to use this video in an email marketing campaign to potential students that have signed up to your mailing list.

New to video email, heres a brief introduction. 

Video Content Ideas

If you're stuck for ideas on what to include within your recruitment video, this list below can get you started. Keep in mind the key message you wish to communicate about your school or college. Do you want to show off the history behind your place of study? Or perhaps the community ethos? Maybe you wish to create a fantasy version to excite potential students on studying there? All can work very well, it is just about deciding what works best for your brand.

• A day in the life of a student at your school or college: following a narrative that shows the student's day. What will their experience be like when studying? What other opportunities do they have access to outside of the classroom? Where can they go to study or relax with friends?
• Alumni interviews: where are they now and how they achieved this from your school or college. Return visit with alumni, reflecting on what they gained from their time studying.
• Montage video: slide reel showing the best bits of your school or college. This can be something that is included within any video or can stand alone. The montage style is highly popular as it gives a quick snapshot of your space and shows students learning and having fun in it. There are plenty of examples online of how to do this.
• Focused message campaign: addressing wider themes around study and success. The video can also highlight the potential students themselves and address concerns they may have around succeeding within studying. Students come from all backgrounds so show how your school or college can help anyone succeed.

Video works especially well as part of a wider inbound marketing strategy, find out more about inbound marketing and the marketing flywheel.

Looking for a tool to manage all of your marketing efforts - including video - in one place? Use the button below to arrange an education-specific HubSpot demo.