Your College’s Right Fit Student

“If you aim at nothing you’ll hit it every time.”

Zig Ziglar

Suppose you were opening a high-end restaurant where you had hired a world-renowned chef from Paris, engaged an expert architect and interior designer to guide your multi-million dollar restaurant build-out, and secured exclusive relationships with the most sought-after food purveyors in the world.  You had raised millions of dollars of investor capital from friends and family and cashed in your life savings as a down payment on the real estate required.  You’d gone all in.

Now suppose that in preparing for your opening you budgeted to place some advertising.  You’d want to be careful.  If you placed an ad on the television news, as an example, you’d be reaching a great deal of people.  But given your price point, you’d have to be careful.  Only 3% of those that watch the television news could likely afford to eat at your new restaurant.  In that scenario, 97% of your ad dollars would be wasted or—worse—bring customers to your door who left infuriated that they couldn’t afford you.

In this scenario, it would be critical to hone in on that 3% of customers that could not only afford the restaurant but would enjoy it and tell their friends.  You would want to pursue them with your media dollars and, as such, focus your creative, messaging, and promotional focus to just them, ensuring that your energy is not wasted on the 97%.

In order to do that, though, you would do well to develop a deep understanding of that particular buyer.  You might think about what other brands appealed to her and understand what types of colors, visuals, and materials create appeal.  You’d want to understand something about the age bracket they typically fall in, where they live, and where they spend time.

What do they read?  Where do they go for entertainment?  Where do they travel?  What do they and their peers typically think about and talk about?  What keeps them up at night?

The sum total of these answers helps to form a thumbnail sketch (usually called a higher education marketing persona) of who your ideal buyer is.  Although it’s just an aspirational portrait (not meant to be exact), it can become quite useful in terms of understanding who your ideal customer is, how to reach her, and how to communicate effectively with her.  Absent that you’ll be dealing with a watered-down message consumed by people who aren’t right for your product.

Identifying Your “Right-Fit” Student

Your right-fit student represents a portrait not just of the student who can attend your institution, but the student who will thrive at your institution. We want to hone in on the student that will not only attend, but do well in the classroom, find a place within campus culture that helps her develop, encourages peers back home to attend, graduates with a strong plan for the future, and ultimately participates and gives back as an alumnus. Focusing on just any student who might fill a seat doesn’t help in the long run.