Enrollment and Marketing Strategies For Faith-Based Institutions
In this economic landscape and certainly with the decline of the high school population, lets talk about some strategies for marketing a faith based institution to prospective students. There are some themes that are important and some you will have seen before in my blog posts.
First off, lets take a look at some of the massive challenges that faith-based institutions face. The extent to which religion is present at a faith-based institution varies greatly from campus to campus, and this can be tough to understand. Certainly bible colleges tend to be more focused on faith, but again it varies from institution to institution. The most common challenge for a faith-based institution is the amount of misconceptions out there regarding them. The misconception is that these schools are overly strict. Are alcohol or cigarettes permitted? Is chapel mandatory? Are there rules regarding opposite sex visitations in the dorms? The other big misconception I have seen is that a faith-based institution has less courses to offer and half of those courses must be faith-related. In both cases, these are typically not true. The key to combating the misconceptions is to create a very clear, concise message with a strong value proposition that is going to accentuate the positives of your institution.