Reaching More Students With Conversational Marketing

This post was originally posted by Mongoose.

During a student’s college search, the college website is typically their first interaction and the most influential resource. Schools that provide students a better website experience will thrive. Is your website helping students and prospective students, or annoying them and pushing them away?

Students arrive on your website in hopes of quick information. It’s important that:

• Your website is clear and easy to navigate.
• It is easy for them to find the information they need.
• They can quickly connect to a human to help if needed.

The first step in ensuring that experience is to have an independent party navigate your site and conduct an audit. After that, your institution needs to adopt conversational marketing.

What is conversational marketing?

It means engaging with current and prospective students via real-time conversations. This style of marketing builds trust with the student through personalized communication and removes friction from the admissions process.

Forms = Friction

It makes sense that the more information a student can gain about a school, the more interested they will be. It also holds true that the more they interact with an institution, the stronger their connection is. What happens when someone visits your site and wants to know more about their preferred major or how to apply for financial aid?

With most college websites, in order to get questions answered or more information, students have to fill out a form. That information may then sit in someone’s inbox for hours, days, or even weeks to get a response. But when a student wants information, they want it now—not a week from now.

How conversational marketing can help

A quick way to achieve conversational marketing, without a huge overhaul, is by adding an intelligent chatbot, like Harmony, to your site.

It’s a bit ironic, but a real-time conversation with a chatbot treats a potential student like an actual human being. In fact, the 2021 RNL E-Expectations Report states that 50 percent of high school seniors and juniors want to use a chatbot to engage with a school, rather than complete a form.

Mongoose’smarket-leading AI conversational chatbot Harmonycan transform your website with instant, 24/7, personalized on-site support that aims to create meaningful, one-to-one conversations that drive student engagement.Customized to fit your needs, Harmony resolves your website’s friction points and improves your student’s experience. It helps:

• Answer frequently asked questions
• Capture visitor information
• Start enrollment
• Book meetings

Harmony also has a live chat functionality, seamlessly handing off conversations to available staff members to immediately help students with the questions bots can’t answer.

A positive impression could be the start of a wonderful relationship

Put yourself in the shoes of your students and think about a positive or negative website experience you’ve had in your life. Do you enjoy being spoken to like a human? Did you enjoy waiting days for a response after filling out a form? Did you spend more than four or five minutes searching a website for what you needed? Conversational marketing helps you actually solve problems and connect with students.