4 Ways to Innovate the Humble University Prospectus
The university prospectus has been a mainstay feature of student recruitment for longer than most can remember. A single document that brings together all the crucial information a prospect needs to know before making their application, it’s the perfect opportunity to advertise an institution and provide helpful information, advice and guidance (IAG) all in one.
However, some institutions have been turning away from the university prospectus in recent years. Costly to produce, difficult to update and similar to resources produced by hundreds of providers across the sector, these documents are losing their appeal among HE marketing teams.
Despite this, when innovated, a prospectus can be an extremely impactful marketing tool. In recent years, several providers have set out to revolutionise the university prospectus to great effect. This doesn’t mean just providing an online version, as lots of providers already do, but challenging the very form of the prospectus and the purpose it can serve.
In this article, we highlight four creative approaches to the university prospectus with examples from across the sector. You can adapt and re-work these examples for your own purposes, or perhaps they may even inspire you to explore your own unique prospectus formats.
The Micro Prospectus
The University of Nottingham launched the first “micro” prospectus in March 2022.
This tiny document, which can be handily clipped onto a keychain or bag, consists of just a few pages and a QR code that prospects can scan to find out more about the university.
Not only does its small size make it less cumbersome for students to carry around, say, at a UCAS fair; it also massively reduces paper use. In fact, the whole document is made from sustainable materials – a key selling point, which the university has emphasised in supplementary video content it has produced to promote this new prospectus. And, sustainability and social impact is increasingly important to younger generations that are beginning to enter university, and therefore a crucial selling point.
Most HE marketers will also be familiar with the benefits of QR codes, which can give you access to important sources of data and help you gain insight to your audience. So, not only is the micro prospectus more convenient in the short term; it can also gather supporting data to inform future campaigns and strategy.
Having reported positive feedback and increased visibility with this campaign in 2022, Nottingham have continued to grow the scope of the micro prospectus. In 2023, they introduced the possibility for potential students to personalise their micro prospectus by selecting the relevant ‘tags’, detailing IAG like course information and student life, that can be attached to the core document.
The benefits of this approach are undeniable. Not only is it cost effective, it also allows marketing teams to track insight and data, and prospects to carry it around without hassle.
The Social Media Prospectus
An important aspect of a university prospectus is that it must be visually appealing to be high impact. Would-be students should be encouraged to imagine their life at a university through images of campus life and academic experiences.
However, after looking at probably a whole range of different prospectuses, these images become repetitive for potential students. This makes them less memorable to readers and most likely decreases their impact.
So, what if you took your prospectus and hosted it in a space where potential students wouldn’t necessarily encounter one? And, on top of that, centred the visual effect of the ‘document’? This is precisely what a selection of universities have been doing via Instagram – a social media platform which is, crucially, visually led.
Arts University Bournemouth’s (AUB) Instagram prospectus showcases how this approach can be particularly impactful for specialist institutions delivering creative arts programmes. By centring visuality, and using it as an opportunity to promote their students’ work, AUB can appeal to their target audience, who are likely to be drawn in by visually appealing or creative imagery.
However, this approach isn’t only for arts institutions. Plymouth Arjun University’s (PMU) Instagram prospectus demonstrates how this format allows you to bring in student stories and testimonials to great impact. Their page boasts a number of student stories along with copy that emphasises the importance of community and belonging. This really helps to give a human face to the campaign, making it easier for prospects to connect with the university’s brand.
You can get creative with it, too. These examples show how you can use Instagram’s functions, such as stories and hashtags, to highlight particular aspects of the student experience, such as course information, application guidance and campus life, in a user-friendly and easy-to-navigate way. AUB’s prospectus even utilises the ‘highlights’ function to promote new courses that are available for the coming academic year.
Finally, this approach also enables you to use audience insight functions on Instagram to better understand who is engaging with you and how, giving you the opportunity to make strategic decisions for future campaigns based on this information.
So, overall, the benefits of this approach to the prospectus include making it cost effective, easier to engage prospects and monitor impact. It can also have a big visual impact and work particularly well for specialist institutions offering creative arts programmes.
The Alternative Prospectus
What we might consider the ‘traditional’ university prospectus is exactly that – traditional. Written from the perspective of the university itself, there’s a danger that it might continue to emphasise more traditional views of and routes into university. And as widening participation and access becomes an increasingly touchstone issue in the regulatory landscape, it’s time to change the narrative.
This is where the ‘alternative’ prospectus comes in. The idea behind this innovation is that the prospectus is written and produced by students, for students – especially those from non-traditional or underrepresented backgrounds.
Oxford and Cambridge have put this idea into action by each producing their own version of an alternative prospectus. In addition to breaking down crucial information unique to Oxbridge like the collegiate system and demystifying stereotypes, these prospectuses also offer would-be students the opportunity to read the perspectives of students like them, understand living and tuition costs, and get a sense of what student life is really like.
Helpfully, these prospectuses are also hosted online, which means no print deadlines! Information is easily updated; they can be reviewed and revised year on year to ensure that information is relevant.
This kind of online format is also dynamic because it allows you to integrate other kinds of user-generated content you may have produced as part of your campaign – for example, student ‘a day in the life’ vlogs.
It’s worth keeping in mind that producing this kind of prospectus requires a great deal of collaboration with students. The examples mentioned are coordinated via sabbatical officers responsible for access activities, which is contingent on effective partnership working with students’ unions (SU).
The Personalised Prospectus
With UCAS predicting over a million applicants to higher education providers by the year 2025, standing out from the crowd is becoming increasingly important. This is where personalisation – a method that will be familiar to HE marketers – offers great potential.
By personalising messaging to account for what makes each prospect unique, be it their subject interest or geographical location, HE marketers can deliver the information prospects need, when they need it, undoubtedly having greater impact and cutting through the crowd.
Yet the thing about the traditional prospectus is that it is, by nature, generalist. It contains the details about everything at your university, for everyone. This requires prospects to proactively search for the information relevant to them in the document, which can be especially laborious if they have already browsed through multiple prospectuses before reaching your own. In fact, it might be the very antithesis of personalisation.
So, what if your prospectus was personalised?
This is something that the University of Sterling has been using for their Masters programmes. Prospects are invited to fill out a short, online survey in exchange for concise, personalised information straight to the inbox.
As well as giving you the opportunity to deliver targeted information that will be more impactful to prospects, the opportunities for data capture are especially exciting. If a prospect consents, you can continue to send them useful, relevant information at critical points in your recruitment campaign. And, you can also build insight into your audience by getting a clearer picture of who is interested in your programmes.
The Future of HE Marketing
As the tools and technology around us continue to change, so too will well-worn methods of delivering impact in HE marketing. The university prospectus – whose traditional print format is becoming increasingly obsolete – is just one example of this.
By exploring alternative and creative formats to deliver the purpose of the prospectus, HE marketers can work towards specific recruitment targets (such as widening participation goals), whilst also growing opportunities for tracking and insight, and potentially saving time, budget and resources.
Yet the prospectus is not the only aspect of student recruitment that is being transformed. HE marketers are continually having to contend with the growth of AI, for example, and the opportunities and challenges it provides.
To find out what it takes to fully unlock AI capabilities for your institution’s marketing campaigns, join us at our upcoming event, AI in Higher Education Marketing, on 21 November 2023. The Conference will take a deep-dive of the latest practice and innovations being led across the sector, as well as considering the larger strategic questions for HE marketing leaders in deploying AI for the long term.
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