Reinforcing your story to your prospects: by Jeremy Tiers
What are the most effective ways to reinforce your story to your prospects?
Here are three foundational ideas that have proven effective for our clients:
- Consistency. No matter what admissions staff we happen to be working with, the one consistent measure that we find important to today’s prospect is consistency. Your message to them has to be consistent, both in timing and in content.
- Keep it short. Our ongoing research with students continues to show that a shorter, more straight-forward message gets retained more often.
- Head towards the edge. When I advise you to “head towards the edge” I mean that you need to come up with a compelling story, told in a different way, and not be afraid to define yourself so precisely that some of your prospects will instantly know that your school isn’t the right fit for them. While you’ll lose a handful of students that would have said no eventually anyway, you’ll attract three times more who will gravitate towards your philosophy of being unique and different from every other college that’s communicating with them. I’ve seen it work numerous times for schools willing to take a leap and tweak their approach.