PS&L Blog

Small class sizes. Great faculty. High academic achievement. Wonderful facilities. The list goes on. I could place this list of features onto countless colleges and universities. I call them the “vanilla features.” On the surface they look alike.

Five years ago you could tout these features as differentiators and it might have been enough.  Not now.

Maybe you learned how to build benefits from features earlier in your career.  But most likely you were building the benefits of those so-called differentiators I mentioned above.  So yes, it is better to talk about the increased learning possibilities – the benefit – rather than the small class size, but those features and benefits are so ‘90’s.  Now we need to tackle the really hard ones like; what is the value of a Jesuit or Franciscan tradition, how does a Christ-centered education help you find a job, why does a multi-cultural student body really matter? How do you build a case for the value of values?

Dr. Bob Cialdini, the author of ‘Influence – the Psychology of Persuasion’ and one of my favorite business authors, offers two concepts that we can apply to growing enrollment.

In a recent article Cialdini talks about how the current economic climate makes people feel uncertain and, as a result, they freeze. “They sit on the fence. They just don’t want to move because they’re just unsure of what they should do under those circumstances.”

When people are in this state, there are two principles of social influence that work powerfully. The first is social proof, or what we can call “consensus” and the second is the principle of authority.

With social proof, people who are unsure look outside themselves for answers. But not just to anyone, but to people like themselves.

In the world of college admissions, you can apply this principle by showing how others have benefited from your advice. Cialdini states that this influence “comes from the side, rather than from the front, and it’s dramatically more powerful as a consequence.”

The concept of using “like people” is nothing new. It’s been a part of advertising for decades.  What is new is the need to be much more granular in what we describe as like.  Millennial like me isn’t enough. Now it is Millennial, close to the edge of GenZ, who is Hispanic.  This takes a lot of work and imagination to develop all these stories, but this hard work is what we need to do.

With the principle of authority, people who are unsure “look to legitimately constituted authorities — true experts in the arena — because that’s another way to reduce their uncertainty and allow them to get off the fence and take a step that is in everyone’s best interest.”

Who are these experts?  They are the faculty, your alumni, even your current students.  More than ever you want to have those people speaking for you.  When these people, your experts are speaking in blogs, or news articles or video make the effort to link to that information.  Make the effort to learn their stories and tell them yourselves.  Cialdini says that if you can get that evidence you will be able to bolster the power of your desired message.

To read more from Dr. Bob Cialdini and for some ideas outside Higher Ed that you can apply to your enrollment go to http://www.power8marketing.com/Cialdini/.   If you are interested in applying these ideas to the work of your admissions staff, consider setting up a SMART seminar on your campus. During the two-day, on campus seminar SMART 2010 goes over these principles and many others, all in the hopes of maximizing the effectiveness of your recruiters. Find out what’s covered and how to schedule a SMART 2010 at your campus