Here we’ll present some expert advice for creating authentic, actionable personas, plus offer up some of our own tips from working with schools on this nuanced, highly valuable process.

1. Developing More Relevant & Actionable Student
Personas
Presented by:
Higher Education Marketing

2. 1. Why Personas Matter
2. Common Student Persona Development Mistakes
3. What Makes up a Student Persona?
4. Surveying Students for Persona Development
5. Leveraging Student Success Stories for Additional Insight
6. Limiting and Focusing Your Student Personas
7. Treating Personas as Living Documents
8. Don’t Go it Alone in Persona Development
9. Revamping Personas for Alumni Engagement
Overview

3. Schools can't create customized content for prospective students
without first understanding their distinct:
 Goals
 Aspirations
 Challenges
 Attitudes
 Search behaviours
Creating ‘student personas’ allows institutions to develop highly
personalized, strategically targeted marketing campaigns that
truly influence potential recruits.
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
1. Why Personas Matter

4. There remains some debate over precisely what the student
persona should contain. As a result, many schools develop
ineffective personas that:
 Merely skim the surface
 Aren’t based on real evidence
 Place too much emphasis on irrelevant characteristics
Read on for some expert advice for creating more relevant,
actionable student personas that will really help you generate
more student inquiries!
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
2. Common Student Persona Development
Mistakes

5. When creating personas, many schools zero in on just one or two
aspects of their target audience, thinking these will be enough to
flesh out an authentic archetype.
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
3. What Makes up a Student Persona?
“While a customer profile can help with understanding buyers, they
will not be revealing about buying behaviors. Nor will they offer any
illuminating buyer insights.”
-Tony Zambito
So how do we avoid this, and construct illuminating, insight-
rich representations of our most sought-after prospective
students?

6. At HEM, we use a 5-step persona development process for our
online student recruitment campaigns:
1. Define motivations and goals
2. Identify pain points or perceived roadblocks
3. Isolate search behaviours or key steps in the decision-making
journey
4. Clarify background information (age, location, financial situation,
etc.)
5. Identity important Influencers (agents, parents, peers, guidance
counsellor, etc.)
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
3. What Makes up a Student Persona?

7. Personas should deliver actionable insights – information about
the attitudes and behaviours of prospective recruits that can
effectively guide marketing decisions.
3. What Makes up a Persona?
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
Pro Tip!
The Buyer Persona
Institute offers a familiar
framework for
understanding how genuine
insights can be applied to
your student recruitment
strategy!

8. While it’s helpful for student recruitment team members to
contribute their observations, it’s always smart to go straight
to the source – and survey students directly.
4. Surveying Students for Persona
Development
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
There are a wide range of
surveying tools out there,
such as SurveyGizmo,
Surveypal, SmartSurvey, or
SurveyMonkey!

9. A survey of your current students can help you:
 Create an in-depth report of important characteristics, statistics, direct
quotes, and behavioural trends
 Gain some concrete "evidence" to present to your board of directors
Pro Tip!
For more insightful results, use a balance of open-ended and multiple
choice questions. For more subjective questions, such as "What prompted
you to ultimately choose College ABC?" leave space for participants to
describe their experience in their own words.
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
4. Surveying Students for Persona
Development

10. Conducting in-depth interviews with successful students can help
you uncover valuable or surprising information that might be
missed on a more standardized survey approach.
5. Leveraging Student Success Stories for
Additional Insight
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
Example:
George Brown College
features student success
stories on their website, and
encourages students to
submit their own experiences
via an online form. This
information can be useful in
persona development.

11. While large universities may have 10+ legitimate personas, smaller
institutions should probably limit themselves to 1-3. When
evaluating your personas consider your goals:
 Is there a particular program you wish to recruit for?
 Is there a particular audience you need a better understanding of?
 Are you hoping to reach an entirely new audience?
Focusing your persona development will stop you from micro-
segmenting your audience and wind up with so many personas,
you descend down a rabbit hole of data points, tactical options,
and conflicted key messaging!
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
6. Limiting & Focusing Your Student
Personas

12. Persona research and development is never really finished. Over
time, new insights will emerge about your prospective students,
and their preferences and behaviours will change. Continue to
refine them by:
 Periodically polling and interviewing students
 Taking note of discussion trends on your school's social media channels
 Considering feedback on the persona-oriented content you've published
 Tracking or mapping your personas' interactions with your website
 Checking in periodically with admissions to see if they've noticed any
new trends in terms of questions asked during the inquiry process
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
7. Treating Personas as Living Documents

13. Pro Tip!
To avoid reaching false conclusions, more than one person should
be responsible for crafting personas!
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
Invite input and critique
from your student
recruitment team to
spot inconsistencies
and information gaps.
8. Don’t Go it Alone in Persona
Development

14. As some of your most convincing "brand ambassadors," alumni
can and should play an important role in recruiting your next
generation of prospective students.
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
After they
graduate, students will
develop a different set
of aspirations,
challenges, attitudes,
and behaviours!
9. Revamping Personas for Alumni
Engagement

15. In order to retain alumni as committed members of your
community, you'll need to understand how to segment them into
groups, and tailor inbound marketing content to suit them.
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
Pro Tip!
Alumni engagement
expert Beth Kanter
developed a continuum of
engagement that schools
can use to guide
messaging to grads at
various stages of
involvement!
9. Revamping Personas for Alumni
Engagement

16. Schools should survey or interview alumni to determine answers to
questions like:
 In what ways do your various alumni personas most want to "give
back" to their alma mater?
 What is the easiest way to engage with overseas or out-of-state
alumni versus those who live close to campus?
 What kinds of in-person events would your different
alumni personas enjoy attending?
 What alumni persona would be most receptive to hosting a Q&A
with prospective students?
Surveying your alumni periodically will allow you to adapt your
engagement strategy so it truly resonates with their needs!
Source: HEM – 7 Steps to More Relevant & Actionable Student Personas
9. Revamping Personas for Alumni
Engagement