The people behind the brand talk strategy for SRU recruitment
Slippery Rock University’s marketing and communications office is a couple months into reviewing the effectiveness of its messaging over the past school year, looking at what worked and what could be returned for future advertising to prospective students.
Ken Bach, senior director of University Marketing and Communication, said the university intermittently surveys its students and their families about their view of the school, its campus and its culture. This helps the university create an “evidence-based research-informed strategy” — a strategy that is updated annually.
And data is showing that the university is getting a good return on its marketing materials, Bach said.
“Our ads are compelling, our Google paid are compelling and in some cases we have a 10-time industry average request for information,” he said. “To really make sure Slippery Rock was telling the right stories … that has informed the advertising we do. It's the decisions of who we are as a university.”
According to Bach, Slippery Rock University being part of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education doesn’t affect the school’s individual identity or its messaging. He said “there's very little sort of trickle down, but there is alignment,” when it comes to its identity as a state school, however, but the marketing office has a lot of autonomy when it comes to building a brand.
Bach and Mike May, vice president for Enrollment Management, work together on recruitment messaging, which Bach said is built around three main criteria: the university’s programs, its cost and the value of a degree. He said these messages are conveyed through an informational identity intertwined with a visual identity, that together, help the communications office create the brand of SRU.
Bach explained that it is integral to the university that its signature color of green — dark green, light green and legacy green — appear in the school’s marketing materials, alongside real students and alumni of SRU.
“The visual identity is intertwined with the narrative and that is two pillars that are holding up the brand,” Bach said.
According to May, two-thirds of the students at SRU come from within a two-and-half hour radius of the main campus in Slippery Rock.
While it may seem rational to assume most of those students attend the university because it may be right in their proverbial backyard, Bach said it’s often actually more difficult to recruit nearby people to attend a local college. This is because research shows that students graduating high school and heading into college typically want to be “just far enough away” from their homes to feel like they are independent for the first time, Bach said.
But May said the proximity of many high schools within the county SRU is in — Butler County — means that marketing can take a familiar approach to high school students, especially those who are children of a SRU graduate.
“Oftentimes it's welcome back to campus for the first time,” May said, “because there are many alums bringing their college-bound student.”
May also said SRU has changed a lot since the rollover of the century. He said the addition of certain majors and programs has led to the university’s former claim to fame as a school for physical education and exercise science to become a little overshadowed. Programs like nursing and those in technology have grown, leading the marketing and admissions offices to pivot their messaging.
“Fifteen years ago you would not hear anything about nursing,” May said.
May also said the university admissions department is “trying to stress the types of academic programs” the university has, and why SRU is the place to go for those programs.
May said his office releases marketing materials through a variety of sources. The university has three major markets: Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Pennsylvania and outside of Pennsylvania.
May explained that his office aims to get Slippery Rock University in front of as many eyes as possible. However, the message that comes with the university name changes based on market research mainly conducted in Bach’s office. He said recent data demonstrates that appealing to prospective students’ emotions has proven to be effective.
“We're really trying to move from informative to emotive communication,” May said. “It's not changing who we are, it's communicating who we are and what we can do for you.”
Bach said the research his office has done has also led the university to focus on the students who are already at SRU, their relationship to the community and their potential relationships to prospective students. He said with so many high schools and cities represented on the college’s campus, the marketing department can use their experience to connect with students from those same communities.
“Some of the things we're doing differently based on feedback and research, we're using it as permission to be bold, we're changing the way we're talking about ourselves,” Bach said. “Aspirational identity can come into play. One of the things we've come into over the last year is we're making sure we are cataloging our county, as well as high schools where students come from.”
