In this Quick Tips! video, CEO of Interact Dr. Pam Cox-Otto, Ph.D. explains how your marketing and recruitment teams need to create more physical touchpoints in your schools by being present and engaging with students as they come back to campus for in-person classes.
Hi everyone, This is Dr. Pam Cox-Otto and I’m in Orvieto, one of my favorite cities in the world. If you know your history, when Henry the eighth wanted a divorce, he asked the Pope and oddly enough, because the barbarians had pushed the Pope out of Rome,he was here in Orvieto where there’s a huge Duomo, and this is built on a large tufa and a kind of a large plateau.
It’s an amazing city, if you ever come here, you should come here. But that said, here’s something I want you to think about in terms of marketing. It’s been a tough couple of years for Italy, people are struggling, there’s lots of stores that are closed, but all of the ones that survived have something in common; and what that is, is that people walk down the street, they have people who stand on the street and say, “hello, welcome, good to see you here.”
Those people are, you know, they’re waiters, they are people who work in the restaurants and the jewelry stores, et cetera. But what they’re doing is something that we rarely do, which is they’re not standing back behind a table, they’re not standing in their offices, they’re standing out front and saying, “welcome, we’re glad you’re here.” When was the last time people at your college actually got out from their offices, stood and welcomedpeople on day one?
That’s the difference between those who survived here in Italy, and those who disappeared. I mention this to you because we’re going through some tough times. Enrollment is down 10-25% in most community colleges, across the country and the thing to remember is this, there will be survivors and there will be those that don’t survive. You want to be the former rather than the latter. And that will take high touch, high contact, high effort. You need to tell everybody that as they start this fall.
That’s it for now. I’m Dr. Pam Cox-Otto, thanks for joining me, take care.
