5 Most Important Things To Quickly Boost Your Admission Enquiry 2016 by Fine Tuning Your IT Infrastructure

It has been notices that, there is a significant drop in admission scenario in Technical and Professional Courses like Engineering, MCA and MBA in last few years. There can be many reasons behind it, that can be classified as social, technical, intake quality, policy decisions, quality of education, employability & employment opportunities,  news & articles about these courses in various on-line and print media etc.

In this blog post, I have tried to focused on two general reasons that are leading to significant drop in admission along with analysis and possible actions that can fast improve the situation.

First Reason, Students & parents are losing there interest towards Engineering, Management and Professional Education. It has lead to the significant drop in admission inquires, and badly affected rest of the process.

One of the reason behind is the sources information, that students & parents are using for the selection of their career & courses. They are accessing information from many indirect or less-reliable sources, instead of concern colleges who are conducting these courses.

Needless to mention that, these courses are backbone of modern society and modern business economy. We cannot imagine the future growth of society, without the availability of adequate numbers of Engineering and management professional.

Students & Parents need to understand that, they need to access the information from right sources to take career decision. Most authentic and reliable sources of such information are the colleges and academicians who are conducting these courses. They must visit to colleges to seek such information or access them from the college websites.

"Colleges must have to come together to create awareness about the same by representing the future scenario with the facts & figures of projected demands, and importance of such professionals in coming time, the career opportunities and career growth"


I will be publishing an separate article about the First Reason mention above as "Need of Branding and Promoting Engineering, Management and Professional Education collectively as a brand, to brand their colleges & courses", because it requires a long term & collective effort by the colleges, and need to work together to achieve this  as their long term goal.

In this post, I have focused on second reason mentioned below, and took them for further analysis.

Second reason, that I have identified is, increasing communication gap between admission seekers(Students) and Educational Organizations (colleges), which has raised, due to rapid growth in technologies, and their adaptation level by Students and Colleges.

If we try to analyze the current scenario, Students have adapted the modern communication media very rapidly, where as most of the colleges are still continuing with the traditional media communication. 

It has created a huge gap between the 'access media & format' on which students are seeking the information Vs the 'publishing media & formats' through which colleges are pushing the information. Colleges must have to adapt, the modern media of communication in order to reduce this gap.

Before reading further I would like to ask you 2  questions ?

1. Are you able to reach to your prospective students effectively, using your current tools & techniques ?
2. Are you using right tools & techniques, to represent your admission centric contents ?
   

If your answer is YES, then it is needless to read this post further. But if your answer is NO, then definitely you should read further to know, how you can achieve them.


Situation and Required Action :
In recent years, it has been noticed an exponential & significant growth in number of smartphone users and easy access to Internet. It has drastically changed the way in which they tries to access the information and interact with other today. Now they are more connected through technologies using social media, and getting personally disconnected.
 "Colleges need to fine tune their IT infrastructure to align them-self with the change. Further in this post I have analyzed about the user behavior on Internet & smartphone and possible action that colleges can take to grab this situation as an opportunity."


Although, this analysis may applicable for all type and size of educational organization without limiting any geographical boundary, but my analysis is based admission scenario in Maharashtra for Engineering, MCA and MBA courses. Reason, I was closely associated with these courses for long time.

Quick Analysis :
In last few years it has been seen a fast growth in Information & Communication Technologies. Advancement in Information and Communication Technologies, have make the Internet availability easier and faster on smartphone devices, tablets at very affordable cost.

Availability of cheaper smartphone triggered the sharp growth on smartphone & internet users. It has significantly changed the the way, in which they communicate earlier among their friends, colleague or relative. Now they shares & exchanges the information just on click of buttons. As much as possible they wants to get information through this device, using websites and social networking media.

It has also deeply affected the way, in which they want the information related to admission, courses, colleges and/or career decision. They want all these information fast, precise and easily accessible through smartphone. 



"Colleges need to understand and match with the expectation of admission seekers way of searching information, and get them-self align with this changing trend in order to cope-up with the situation."

Colleges, by fine tuning their existing IT infrastructure or by strengthening them by adding some more necessary IT tools and technique can achieve a better inquiry responses."


Example : Typically the cost of participating a education fair/education expo is somewhere between Rs 25,000/- to 50,000/- + the logistics, manpower, publicity materials etc, to grab 100 - 200 inquiries, shared among all the participant colleges. Same amount of inquiries can be generated by expending Rs 5,000/- to 10,000/- using digital media, may be an exclusive inquires with better impact.

You must continue your reading If you are agree with the above analysis, to know the possible action that you can take to grab this situation as opportunity, else you can avoid further reading and take moment to write your valuable suggestion/Opinion in Comment section at the bottom of this blog, to enhance my post future post.

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"Thanks for continue your reading..."

I believe that, in current scenario, colleges have 2 options, either continue with the traditional way to reach to their prospective students and keep struggling with poor inquiry responses, or adapt the modern technologies to grab the situation by making their presence where their prospective students are looking for.


Detailed Analysis & Suggested Action:

1) Understanding user behavior on Internet & smartphone

Today, almost everyone have smartphone, an Internet enable device 24x7 with them. Same is true for your prospective students also. They spent a significant amount of time on their smartphone. Let us analyze it further -

They mainly involves in following activities : -

1. Reading, searching, sharing and communicating with their friend, relatives through mainly social networking media. Most common among them are google search, facebook, whatsApp, google+.
2. They definitely share the informations in their connection, if they like them or find the relevant and useful for others in their .

"So, if you can create and share the information, that they are looking for and useful to them, then definitely they are going to read and share them in their connection.

Please note that, the information shared by your visitors, students, parents will be alway having high impact compare to what you share directly to them."

2) User behavior on searching Admission Related Information

As far as admission is concern, It is practically not possible for the students and parents, to visit each and every college personally or through their website, and hence, they first searches the information through Internet, and based on the search results ( mostly in 1st page), they prepares a list of colleges to personally visit, and get further information and further decision making process. Or tries to get the same from their through social network or brand that they see their.

By using some on-line tools, it is possible to know that, what your prospective students are searching, and you can plan your on-line campaign accordingly, to get found in there search result.


Colleges can grab the benefits from these user behaviors, and enhance their reach among their prospective students using following 2 options :
 A) Get visible where students are searching them or  
 B) Make the presence where students are already visiting or
 C) Both A and B

 

Option - A ( Get found in the search result of your prospective customer)
Here, very first thing is, you have to make sure that your college appears in search result of your prospective students. For that you need to know what your prospective students are searching.

Through some IT tools it is possible to know such search words and customize your website to bring them to your website. It is known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization),

Let us further analyses pattern of information search on Internet. In most of the cases, user searches for the required information through google search. Today, approx. 80% for the users land on any website in India, by searching them on google.  There are hardly 20% traffic that reaches to the website directly by typing website name.

User get plenty of web pages as a search result, and user tries to quickly visit the links/websites and tries to extract the information that they are looking for. In such case, if the page they have landed doesn't have expected information, they quickly close and move to another link.

So, once they reaches to your website, you have to make sure that, they have got the information they were looking for. ie. you website must have high quality contents. We can define a contents as high quality contents as, if your visitors get the contents that they were looking for, and got influenced to share them in  their connection through email or social networking media.

I believe every college have their website and fully loaded with the information related to admission, But you have to make sure that, these informations are search-able and accessible to your prospective students.

If you are agree with above analysis then, you have to ask following question to yourself: 

1. Whether your website is searchable on internet ? Make sure that your website is SEO friendly
2. Whether your website has admission centric contents, and compatible to all the devices like smartphone, tablet, laptop and desktop ? Make sure that your website has updated information and responsive design
3. Whether you are able to track sources from which user come on you website ? Search Engine like Google, yahoo etc or  social media like - facebook, g+, whatsApp etc. or direct visit.
   
4. Whether you are able to track the user's behaviors once they reaches on your website, like - On which page they land,  How long they stayed, what all are the pages they visited. Whether they have got the required information or not.
5. If your visitors are impressed with the information, can they easily share the page to their friends and college. Allow users to share page by providing social media icons.
6. Whether there is, sufficient and easy assistance available on your website, so that visitors can contact the right person/contact numbers/emails/contact forms etc to get further information. Ensure that contact details are easily visible on your website and highlighted properly
7. Whether you have exclusive admission website or separate admission url on existing website. It will help you to make this page as default landing page for admission seeker and directly connect them with admission centric contents

Action : Consult your existing vendor, who is maintaining your website, or good web consultant to do this fine tuning.
Option - B ( Make the presence, where students are already visiting)

Today almost everyone have their facebook account and uses google search. That means they are very actively available on these media. So colleges can focus on following points and take necessary action -

1. Do you have your strong presence on Social networking media, like - Facebook, g+, etc. Are you representing your organization properly with admission centric contents there.
2. Are you using google Adwords and facebook to promote your pages through paid searches. You can achieve good result at very low cost.

You can make your presence there, among the segment of users you would like to target as your prospective candidate for admission, just by using free or paid options available there. This is called as Search Engine Marketing(SEM) or Social Medial Marketing(SMM)

Action : Note that, you should don't outsource this activity, You must develop your internal team to handle this in order to achieve good result and steady growth.

Summary

Here, I am listing 5 most important things todo as a summary of this article.

1. Adapt and involve right IT solutions in admission promotion activity.
2. Use right tools to represent your contents online/offline for existing or new inquiry.
3. Make your current students/parents and staff as starting point, to pull new inquiries
4. Make your digital presence through search engine and social networking media.
5. Track your inquiries and communication with them, through professionally trained people and monitor the conversation through experts of your organization.

If you are not agree with above 5 points and skipped the Quick & Detailed Analysis section of this post, I request you to read them to understand the need of above 5 points

Special Note : 

1. "Organization should not outsource your marketing activities. organization must empower their own IT infrastructure for stable & continues growth, because It is now a core activity of every organization".
2. Contact you existing IT service provider to take required action in fine tuning your IT infrastructure. Contact third party only if, your existing provider have lack of expertise in such area, or your are not satisfied with their services.

About the author : 
Author of this article is having 10 Years of experience in academics and equal number of parallel experience in IT industry. Currently, working on cloud computing and service based software development modal.

Author is interested to associate with the educational organizations to work on digital Empowerment and digital transformation of educational organizations, and help them in fighting with the current challenges by defining & adapting right IT strategies.


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