Put Millennials on a mission

Ford has come up with a creative marketing plan to sell the new Fiesta to Millennials.  A mere 100 Millennials were chosen to borrow and drive the sleek, tiny vehicle. And there’s a catch. They have to go on a number of “Missions” in their fiesta, and post their experiences on social networking sites such as YouTube and FaceBook.

Basically, Ford has recruited Millennials to do something interesting and fun. Is there a way to apply this to your institution? Maybe.

Create a “mission” for potential applicants, ideally something that they can do in their own home town. Give them a forum to report the results online, such as a blog or a FaceBook group. Make sure the event is somehow tied in with your institution.

It’s your job to get creative with this, but here are a few mission ideas off the top of my head:

• Build a team of people with similar academic goals and challenge another team to paintball, ultimate frisbee, or some other competition (English majors vs. Business School, and so on).
• “Find the Alumni.”  Post clues on your website to help Millennials locate someone who recently graduate from your institution. Once you have people involved, your graduate could post online videos that taunt the seekers until they succeed
• Chat room record breaking.  Set a regular time for highly-publicized live chat sessions, and try to set a record for the number of attendees. You could compete with other schools for the highest number of attendees each week, and come up with creative and unusual topics.

All of these are unusual tactics, to be sure. This is thinking outside the box, and it could flop. But Ford has turned this new way of thinking into something really cool (over 3,000 applicants competed to drive the 100 Fiestas, and there were over 580,000 YouTube views of their video submissions).

If you’re willing to stretch the envelope, you may be the founder of a new tradition that will win you a lot of “cool” points.

We’re number one!

According to MarketingCharts.com, the United States has overtaken the UK as the #1 source of web browsing through mobile devices such as iPhones.

There are a lot of implications for this, but at least two are directly relevant to admissions officers.

First, this data reinforces the need to direct more of your marketing/recruiting resources towards text, chat, and other online, real-time recruiting efforts.

Second, it raises the question of whether your institution’s website is mobile device-friendly, or at least has components that are.  Consider a user with a very tiny screen, who has to do a lot of scrolling and maybe some squinting along the way.  Are they likely to notice your most important links and announcements without a healthy amount of enthusiasm and effort?

Or will they just do what Millennials do, leave your web page after 3 seconds, and post another tweet about lunch?

Do you Twitter?

Twitter, Twitter, everywhere, Twitter, Twitter here and there.

George Stephanopoulos (@gstephanopoulos) interviewed John McCain via Twitter. Senators like Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold and Claire McCaskill use Twitter… and so do tons more people in the government. Even Lance Armstrong takes take from cycling to tweet.

Even the blogger at higher ed marketing uses it.

So what is Twitter? It’s a micro-blogging service that encourages people to post short messages no longer than 140 characters and answer the question “What are you doing?” That’s really, if you can believe it. Just a service that lets you post short phrases and follow other people who use the service.

So why do you need to know about Twitter? Well, besides that tons of your prospects are twittering (and you can read their Twitter feed to get a better idea of who they are), you can use it to bring your message (your great program and school) to a medium where willing people will listen.

Give it a try. Here are a few ideas for getting started:

1. Sign-up, it’s free.
2. Name your account for your program, like “upennmed” or “ucdavisbio”.
3. Ask your work studies if they use Twitter. I’ll bet that you will find some that do. “Follow them” in your Twitter account.
4. Link to your Twitter page from your admissions home page.
5. Start writing tweets! Mention stuff like upcoming deadlines, simple anecdotes that you encounter as an admissions officer and news about your program.
6. Decide on a schedule — maybe three tweet a day — and stick to it for three weeks.

After three weeks I’ll bet that you have lots of prospects following your feed and you will be engaged in an exciting conversation with your inquirers about your programs and your admissions process.

Why “advertising” to Millennials doesn’t work

Email is for old people.

The results of two interesting studies came out this week. One, conducted by Participatory Marketing, yielded many discouraging numbers such as the fact only 28% of Millennials feel the email they get from companies is relevant.

“Ahah!” says the marketing expert, “we’ll just advertise on FaceBook!”

Sorry. The other discovery of the week was that 81% of social networking ads are “not relevant” to Gen Y.

What does work? Well, the Participatory Marketing study reveals an enthusiasm and wish for “innovative ideas” that involve, well, participation. And even when a company’s social networking ads don’t work, a group started around the brand will attract enthusiastic members.

The upshot of all this shouldn’t be surprising. In a world of constant chats, text, and instant messaging, Millennials want interaction. They’re just not receptive to traditional, static forms of marketing.

New Millennial survey shows education as valued asset

A recent survey from experience, a provider of career services for college students and alumni, contained some interesting data on Generation Y attitudes during the economic downturn.

My two favorite statistics from the survey results are:

• Fifty percent (50%) of college students and recent grads feel the job outlook is still positive, and a nearly quarter (24%) believe the job market is stronger than depicted by national media
• Seventy five percent (75%) of Gen Y says the value of their education will increase or remain the same in this market

The first statistic, where 1 in 4 surveyed felt the job market was stronger than was predicted by the media, is interesting. It looks like Millennials are skeptical of the media’s presentation of the facts. In a bad economy you always want to optimism, so this is a good, long-term sign.

But the second stat is what is most interesting to me: three-quarters of those surveyed feel their education was a great investment. This is great news to recruiters. Play up the investment value of your education in a downturn and get more prospects interested in your program!

Distribution of words from our Recruiting Millennials Whitepaper.

This graphic is a visual representation of the frequency of words that appear in our free whitepaper, “The Millennial Environment: New Recruitment Strategies for the Next Generation.” (Full-size image is also available.)

The graphic was created using the easy-to-use and fun, Wordle application, available at Worlde.net. If you need a quick graphic for a report or website, Worlde is a great way to quickly generate and customize word art, such as this example.

Five ideas for great web chat events

There are lots of ways to use web chats to recruit millennials. So I thought I would list a few ideas for different kinds of chat events you can use to help in recruiting.

(Note: We offer a free webiner that is packed with tips on using web chats for more information.)

Chat event idea #1: Scheduled chats

Scheduled chats are events that you setup to reoccur, say once a week on Tuesdays @ 10 AM. You can then advertise this time on your own web site and materials and assign an admissions counselor to open the room for one hour at the designated time.

Prospects can stop in during this time and get their questions answered. You can keep the weekly chats going for your entire recruitment cycle.

Chat event idea #2: Themed chats, expert chats

A themed or expert chat is where you arrange for several faculty and/or current students to co-host a chat with your admissions counselors. These chats are a great way to show off your great faculty and allow students to engage in conversations related to their interested degree.

These work really well for graduate-level programs.

Chat event idea #3: Current student chat

Similar to the expert chat, this event combines current students and your admissions team to host a more informal chat event for prospects and admits. These work really well at the undergraduate level as younger prospects are more comfortable asking questions related to actually attending college to current students than an “adult” admissions counselor.

Chat event idea #4: Help chats

A help chat is a session designed to provide information and assistance with tricky application or matriculation issues. These can be really helpful for US-based programs with high foreign enrollment where prospects need Visa application assistance. Think “FAQ” chat.

Chat event idea #5: Open house chats

For those students that can’t make an actual open house visit, you can offer a virtual open house chat event where you can share images, videos and first hand accounts of your program and school.

United States of Facebook

Ernst & Young Careers Facebook fan page

Writer and millennial Courtney Barnes offers her observations on how to use Facebook for corporate recruiting. While she acknowledges tremendous opportunity to reach millennials “in the places they spend the most time”, like Facebook.

However, she offers words of wisdom about the type of online persona that many millennials are developing on Facebook and other social networks, for the world to see:

“Rather, their “resumés,” for lack of a better word, now exist in the most raw, unedited formats: Facebook profiles, where photos, testimonials, likes and dislikes shape these individuals. Granted, many choose to keep this online portal into their psyches private, but a surprisingly large number of people now read like open books.”

Courtney also cites the Ernst & Young Careers Facebook fan page (with 27,000+ fans) as an excellent example of how to use Social Networking for corporate recruitment.