Infographics can often be overlooked as key piece of content when it comes to attracting, engaging, and delighting students to attend a college or university. We know, we get it, they’re time consuming. After all, not only does it mean extensive research to get a bunch of technical stats, but it also means making a sweet design to go along with it. It’s a lot of work!
But at the end of the day, infographics will prove to be crucial to your recruitment efforts—more, now than ever. So, if you’ve been putting this piece of content on the back-burner, we wanted to break down 5 reasons why you might want to start making them a priority before next year’s student recruitment efforts.
1. Infographics for attracting
Think about all the visuals students are bombarded with as colleges competitively try to attract them to their university. And, for most students who may have never heard of a college or university, their first impression is often based off of the school’s website, the brochures they see at college fairs, their social media pages etc.
According to a 2018 study by Harris Poll/Pearson (which coincidentally happens to have a nice infographic), 65% of Generation Z value two things the most when it comes to picking a school: doing well academically and getting a good job after graduating. Meaning the bells and whistles and “beating around the bush” tactics of yesterday won’t work to attract them to a university—they want cold hard facts. They want to see the graduation rate from your programs and job placement—and preferably not in a spreadsheet. This is where infographics come in. Students will be doing their research as they look for schools and they want to see a university putting in the same effort.
2. Infographics for generating leads and increasing conversions
We are visual creatures. In fact, 65% of people are visual learners. Overall, visuals increase our chance of remembering a message—and if we find that message has value, we will want to take it with us.
Let’s use the example of creating an infographic that will show the student job placement upon graduation from a university’s business program. If there was a blog or webpage written about the business program with the infographic as a content offer, the student may find that information valuable and want to download it. Ultimately, this would take them to a landing page where they will be asked to fill out their information in order for the infographic to appear in their inbox. After that, bingo! They’ve become a lead. Then, a university can start to send more relevant content tailored towards that person’s interests—clearly, they want to learn more about the business program, what else should they know? Using infographics is a great way to provide broad information that is relevant to many students prior to personalizing messaging.
3. Infographics for enhancing your brand identity
Infographics are where practicality meets creativity—this speaks a lot to a university’s brand identity in general. Sure, you could simply bold and italicize that Times font to share your stat about your college athletes making up 75% of your student body. Visually though, the stats would become overlooked—not to mention, they would be just plain boring.
Your infographics are content pieces that will work alongside your other brand identity elements, but they also serve a concrete purpose in providing measurable, quantifiable information. Make them a key part of your content strategy and brand identity elements. Highlight design that resonates and that can be sharable across a wide variety of visual platforms.
4. Infographics for increasing search engine ranking
After you’ve attracted your students using your infographics, it’s likely you’ll see that engagement with your university is higher too. Especially if you are sharing your research findings across social channels, you will encourage even more social sharing. If you share your infographics on a blog, make sure to include backlinks—you will see your search engine rankings start to climb. There is opportunity for you to go viral with your infographics as key pieces of content to showcase your financial aid services and success, study abroad programs, athletic programs, general admissions and other programs that have impacted your school while making it stand out.
Pro tip: Cut an infographic into micro content, giving your target audience a taste of your work but ask them to download the entire piece of content directly off your site.
5. Infographics for simplification
Another reason why you should be using infographics to sell your university is because they often take very complicated concepts and simplify them in a visual way, helping students understand. Because students are often able to hold attention longer with the help of visual aids (paired with the rich data provided) your message will be more persuasive, easily interpreted, and easier to remember.
Interested in learning more about infographics? Need help creating an infographic for your university? We can help! Send us a message at [email protected].
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