Student enrolment is at the heart of marketing strategies for education institutions. As times change, different career and education options have become available to students. So it is important to make sure you understand the audience you are trying to reach and what appeals to them, as well as boosting your school or college’s SEO.
What is a student persona?
By definition, a student persona is a semi-fictional profile of your ideal students which can help you create marketing strategies to appeal to their needs and interests. This can help you generate content, market on the right platform and understand the needs that your students may have.
A good student persona should include;
- A catchy name to make them memorable
- A summary or description of the ‘student’
- Demographic information
- Their goals and challenges
- Research from studies or interviews
You can go as in-depth as you like, the more detailed, the more understanding you will have when creating your marketing strategies.
Tips for creating data-driven personas
The more data-driven your student personas are, the more realistic and successful they will be. You can use your current student population to group into broad categories such as age, location and career stage. This will help you recognize what types of students you successfully target and you can look for gaps in your strategy. You could also speak with your students to try to understand their goals and motivations to make your personas more realistic instead of based on assumptions. You could also create surveys and questionnaires to reach audiences
How do I use a student persona?
As previously mentioned, student personas are really great when it comes to creating targeted campaigns on social media, editing landing page copy and creating campaigns to appeal to certain demographics. For example, if you know that a student struggles with choosing between courses or careers, you could create a tool that suggests the most suited course for them.
Examples of student personas
Secondary School Sophie
Secondary School Sophie is aged 16. She is in her final year of secondary school and is looking for her next steps in education. She is a hard-working student and has always achieved near-perfect grades, as well as having a rich interest in extracurricular activities in which she met her friendship group. She lives locally and relies on public transport
Her main challenge is she is conflicted between which A-Levels she would like to take as she is still undecided about what her career goals are. Sophie would like to go to university and has been talking to career guidance counsellors, her teachers and families about what course would be best for her.
Parental Paul
Parental Paul is 45 years old and is a family man with two children and a wife. He has always dreamed of gaining his undergraduate degree but did not have the opportunity when he was younger due to the demands of work and having young children. He works in a stable job that makes a comfortable life for his family but demands a lot of his free time and there is little money to find his qualification. He would like to gain a qualification to expand his career or even start his own business to free up some of his time as he will be able to choose his working hours. His main challenges are fitting the course around his job and family life, as well as his funding.
He has been talking to friends about his ideas to gain a qualification and they have encouraged him to look at evening or distance learning so he can manage his time. He has also been reading a lot of blogs online about adult education and funding options available. 
Career Changing Chloe
Career Changing Chloe has been working in business admin for a number of years but has decided she wants to pursue her lifelong ambition of being a social worker. She is in her 30s and wants to make her career change now she is settled down with a family. She is very active and social outside of work and constantly tries to push herself. Her biggest challenge is she is not sure what the fastest route into this new career is and she is concerned about being able to fund this. Having been to university to study business, she is eager to get back into learning and complete her career change.
She has been looking at job descriptions to look at what kinds of qualifications and experience she needs.
Summary
Student personas are a really useful way to create targeted campaigns, optimize your page content and recruit your ideal student population. It is important to have fun creating the personas and it is best practice to do this with a partner to bounce ideas off each other. You should also talk to your current students to build data-driven personas and to identify the key areas to target.
Author: Emily Johnson has a passion for music and film. She can be found at Tillison Consulting as a Digital Campaign Manager working with clients from different sectors and campaigns to help with all their digital marketing needs.
Link: https://tillison.co.uk/blog/10-easy-ways-to-boost-your-colleges-seo/