Adventure is Out There! Communication Tips to Standout to Prospective Students

In this multi-part series, we speak with professionals who presented at the AACRAO Annual Meeting and discuss the key points of their presentation in case you missed it at the conference. These will help you move forward as you plan for the next recruitment cycle.

This episode features Becky Tankersley, Director of Enrollment Marketing and Communications at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Patrick Frazier, Associate Director of Admissions Marketing & Events at Western Carolina University, who led a fantastic session on Adventure is Out There! Communication Tips to Standout to Prospective Students. In a world of overwhelming college marketing, how can your institution truly stand out? This episode explores how two schools use storytelling, connection, and a touch of creativity to cut through the noise and capture students’ hearts.

Host:

Dr. Alex Fronduto
Faculty Lead, M.Ed in Higher Education Administration & Associate Teaching Professor
Northeastern University

Guests:

Becky Tankersley, Director of Enrollment Marketing and Communications at Georgia Institute of Technology

Patrick Frazier, Associate Director of Admissions Marketing & Events at Western Carolina University

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to a special live edition of Admit it. I'm Alex Frodo, associate teaching professor at Northeastern University, and we're coming to you live from the 2025 Afro annual meeting in Seattle, Washington. This episode is part of our conference conversation series where we sit down with presenters to dive deeper into their sessions and insights. Joining me today are Becky, who's the director of enrollment marketing and communications at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Patrick, associate director of admissions marketing and events at Western Carolina University. They led a session called Adventure is Out There Communication tips to stand out to prospective students. I'm really excited to hear more about their work and the key takeaways from their presentation. Becky and Patrick, thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Well, of course, for our listeners, they may or may not have attended the Acro conference or maybe they did, haven't been able to go to your session. So really to have each of you introduce yourselves first would be great. Um, so Becky, I'll have you start. Sure, my name is Becky Tankersley. I'm the director of enrollment marketing and communications at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia, and I've been in this position for, oh wow, today is actually my 5 year anniversary of being in this position. How exciting. Um, I always jokingly. I came into this role on April 1st of 2020 and it was no joke. There was no fooling, um, it was serious. So yeah, I, I feel that I started my new position March 15, 2020 as they literally closed every door. So I feel the same way. Patrick, how about yourself? Uh, so Patrick Frasier, I work at Western Carolina University in the mountains of North Carolina. I serve as the associate director for marketing and events, overseeing all of our campus tours, open house events, uh, any type of recruiting event for the admissions office, plus all of our marketing materials and admissions, uh, and I have been at WCU for about 1718 years now. Well, congratulations on your tenure. Um, so funny, we've all met before. We did the same thing last year, and so obviously to start off with, is this session similar to your previous one or completely different, and then we can kind of hop into kind of a synopsis of it. I think it was very different, to be honest. Last year I think that we dove more into the mechanics of campaigns and emails and strategy, and this year I think we're more focused on content and also strategy, but in a completely different way. Yeah, I would say last year, this year's presentation is a follow up to last year's presentation. And that um we kind of took it to the next step. We've given you the basics. Now, here's how to take those basics and really bring your story into your marketing and your communications to students. OK, I love that. I'm so excited to hear more. So, first and foremost, why did you decide to present again? You kind of obviously did it last year, you're like, I'm gonna present again, kind of what was that initiation, like initial thought and then kind of we can dive into more. Truthfully, it's just really fun to present with a hope to have two people like to have, you know, two perspectives. I think there's a lot of value and especially in an organization as big as Acro to have two very different perspectives of different institutions, right, because we operate differently, but I think it gives a broader scope for the audience and I think it just, it's fun to have some collaboration with someone outside of your own institution. And we actually came up with the idea for this year's presentation at Acro last year it was. We presented we were having kind of like a debrief conversation about it and talking about different things at the institutions and they're like, oh, that could be next year's presentation of this is what we're doing and this is how we're doing it and it just kind of grew from that conversation after last year's presentation. I love that. Is there a 2026 on the horizon? At this rate, sure. Why not magic number. Yeah, see, I love that. So. Either of you or both of you, kind of from a high level, what would have attendee kind of seen, kind of what's the quick synopsis and then we can kind of talk about some of the key takeaways. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm actually looking, I, I pulled the, pulled up the slides on my phone to make sure I didn't miss anything, um, but I think what was really fun this year that we added into the presentation, um, we added a different spin on sort of a theme, um, full disclosure, we're both self-declared Disney adults, so we decided. To go with a Disney theme, um, which made this a really fun one to present, um, but we really wanted to talk about communication and content and breaking it down into three different buckets, um, telling your story, creating a connection and building a relationship and how we've done that through both our. Primarily printed materials and marketing, um, but also really diving into campus events, which is, um, you know, Patrick's area of expertise and really how you can bring all of those together into a really full cohesive student experience. Yeah, and I think in today's time people are trying to move digital, move everything digital. It's all got to be emails or things like that and showing the piece matters, uh, and that student connection matters through print and not just digital because students are digital. And they're getting digital overload and a lot of students, they want something tangible in their hands, something that they can hold and feel, and also gets in the hands of the parents, so how you can still utilize kind of old school ways in new methods and, and processes moving forward. I love that because I think there is this thought, even especially even more so with generative AI and things of just like, OK, everything can do this with process, streamline and so I, you know, I support that idea about the the printed piece and thinking about that. And so as we kind of dig a little deeper into your session. You know, what was it you said you're, you're kind of went from beginner essentially last year and now they're kind of giving some more tangible kind of intermediate or advanced pieces. What were some of the kind of key takeaways? One example that I used early in the presentation is that, you know, if we go back to the Disney example and Disney model, you know, for myself, I didn't go to Disney until I was in my 30s, right? We took our kids and it was one of those things as we approached it, I thought, you know, this is, let's do the one and done trip, whatever, um, and then of course went and now, you know, Every year I'm figuring out how can we go back and buying the ears and memory maker and doing all these things and it really struck me that there's a lot of similarities and that I was really a naysayer and now I'm I'm not a formal brand ambassador, but I do love Disney, right? Um, but also thinking about the questions around paying for college and is college worth it, right? We think about higher ed right now we're really having to. Work, work with a narrative externally that's very much about college is expensive, is it worth going like that's a very common story that's there. So how can we change the story? How can we tell a different story, a more compelling story to help students and families see that value of higher education and how can we take some lessons from. How did things that Disney does well, we're used to do really well, um, historically has done really well, um, but also kind of put that into our own marketing and really align that with both the student life cycle, align that with the, um, also the buyer cycle like the sales cycle if you will, and like how we can really meet the students where they are in different points in the enrollment cycle. Yeah, and also showing how the brand consistency matters, uh, so the students don't feel like they're getting a different message for everything that they see from your school, for every piece that they get, every visit that they take, and showing that you need to have a cohesive look, cohesive feel, so that you can tell that story from start to finish. And then, you know, the branding is gonna change a little bit from here and there, but having it consistent creates a level of comfort for the students. They know when they get something in the mail, oh, this is from institution, just from seeing it, just from that initial look, without having to do a little bit of digging. Who sent me this? Where did they get my information? Oh, I've already gotten this from Western. I already know this is gonna, this is the next piece. It looks just like the last piece I got, but it's different. Uh, so that creating that awareness of how we're sending things, how we're doing things, we need to be intentional, uh, in more ways than just name and information. And so are there any kind of key examples? So if it's a certain piece or a certain, you know, plan that you've kind of put in place or maybe an example you gave, you know, to put kind of some like tangible ideas out there for other people listening being like, OK, I want to go try to do something like this. So one of the examples that I mentioned was, uh, we did a student story that in our main travel piece the call out student had a QR code with a little like paragraph snippet of their story. You went to the QR code from a perspective student uh side and they got a video about that story and then if they came and actually visited, then that was one of the pre-tour videos was a more in-depth video of that student story. Um, and then at open houses and such, our, um, music department highlighted that students, so they were, we were connecting the dots from that initial college fair visit all the way to being on campus, uh, for that cohesive story of this is just one example of a student success for you to kind of get an idea of what it's like. Um, and then, you know, you don't have to break the bank in terms of we got to have 30 stories, one for each department. Just do one or two and then create that cohesiveness with it, and then you can change it from your here. I think one tactic that we use similar, I think that we focused a lot of, I feel, especially at the end of the presentation on really students being storytellers, right? And not just telling their story but enabling them to tell their own story to your audience as well. And one thing that we've done, um, at tech that has been really successful over the last few summers is after we have our deposited class, um, we engage them via social media, but we do that by asking them. To raise their hand if they'd like to participate in like our admitted student um sort of like a campaign right? so basically the students will raise their hand and then we'll do a quick profile of them congratulating them and they'll include their graduation picture, right? So we'll have the student you know them in their high school graduation regalia holding a Georgia Tech banner or pen or whatever they may have and then we do a quick profile of their name, their hometown, their um major, and students. They're super engaged in this effort like they always um we have more than we can do truthfully uh more hand raisers and we have time to get on our social media handles but not only is it popular um with our audience and with the students because they love to see themselves they've they've opted in so it's something that you don't have to feel like you're trying to make them do like they're excited to do it, but it also plays really well with, um, even beyond just admission and it plays well with. Um, different entities on campus, whether that's development, whether that's, you know, the office of the president, whether that's, um, some folks with government relations, like people like to see students from their areas at your school, and that's something that, you know, going back to what Patrick was saying, it doesn't cost a fortune, right? I mean, yes, it will take some bandwidth and time, but it's content that's there you just have to access it and then elevate it and students as storytellers is a really big element. And I'm curious when you're thinking about for either of you, when you're picking those stories or picking those students, as you said, like you don't have to do every single program, you have 100 programs, like there's no expectation that you do that, but I'm curious about. When you're trying to really be intentional about the continuity, like how did you go about actually thinking through that? Like, especially Patrick, you were very clear in saying, like, here's each step. So kind of, can you walk us through just quickly how you thought about that? So the main reason that we thought about the way we did was what do we want students, what kind of process we want students to go through. Uh, we know we're gonna start with the college fair visit. Um, and then we have the email campaigns that that was also a piece of too was kind of one of the stories in the email campaigns, um, but it was, what are our touch points? So college fair visits, the on-campus visit, where are our touch materials as a part of those points, um, and we wanted, of course, to drive the traffic online so that we could get that online traffic and data, but we wanted it to pull the students to campus. And so, Every piece of the, of the college fair material and even that initial QR code. Well, this is one student story, come to campus and learn more of them. So then you get that initial story at the start of the campus tour followed by the story of the Tour guides. So we've given you one and now we're giving you the current students story and we're getting that live action story almost so this is who they are and this is who you have the potential to be at our school as you begin your story and your journey to us. And it's almost that point of curiosity, I assume is what you're also going after. And I think I want to take it one step further is, so you were like, OK, here's the touch points, but how did you also decide like, oh, it should be a video or this should go here at the in your info session, right? Like, obviously you just laid out where those things happen, but like even the media behind it,-- like the-- media behind it for us, uh, the video piece was a big piece for us because we don't want it to just be us giving presentations as a part of that pre-tour, so we want to be able to showcase current students that aren't there. Uh, our, the student that was a part of this was a part of our marching band, and that's a big selling point for us as marching band, and you can't really showcase that without showing the video unless they're there for a football game, right? You can't showcase the marching band or the degrees of that they're in, uh, and so we, we didn't want it to just be pictures. We didn't want it to just be like a quick social media TikTok or anything like that. We wanted it to have a little depth to it, uh, and so. The, the initial video was a little bit of the shorter kind of a snippet video of here's a little bit about me, just enough to get you enticed to come and visit. More in depth about a 10-minute video for the campus tour as a part of you've made the investment in us. Now we're gonna make the investment in you and tell you a little bit more about the student and the student story because if you're not as interested, you don't need the 10 minute video. That 2 to 3-minute video at the beginning. is all that you need if you're still trying to figure out you wanna attend the school. Um, and then like I said, we were incorporating in print materials and some of the emails into it, but the video component was a big piece for us, um, just because we also feel like a lot of people are moving away from some of that and they're just focusing on the 32nd TikTok. We wanted to be have a little depth. We wanted it to have some information that's more than just a 32nd TikTok. And I think you're, it seems as if you're trying to stand out from all of the noise in some ways and like try to be, you know, what is unique, what can we be doing differently, which again I think everyone is asking that same question. So you know, as tangible takeaways to think outside the box, I think is helpful. I mean, Becky, you talked about one example, but are there other examples that are, you know, people should be thinking about? Yes, I think when you think back to meeting students where they are, again, you know, every, every institution has a little bit of a different approach, you know, for. For our admission process we're a competitive institution with a a fairly low acceptance rate so we find that with our audience um we really have to do a lot of and we call it de-stressing the process they're very high achieving students who have very big goals um so one thing that we found a lot of success with is when they are approaching that applicant stage or prior to becoming an applicant when they're still in that you know, a high school senior prospect we start shifting our messaging on our application pushes to really becoming a resource. So our goal. is to demystify the process and give them tools they can use in their application process. So for example, we have um a video series of first year application tips and there's a video on essays. There's a video on test scores. There's a video on deadlines. Um, we have a video for waitlist. We have a video for Deer we have all these this video content that we have created that are usually 2 minutes or less, um, but we really use that in a lot of places. So we'll embed it on our website on that particular. Page we have a playlist on YouTube we put these in our emails but really our goal is to try to again reach the students where they are and provide them the information that they need so we find a lot of success and really just trying to and it also helps our admission staff be uh a little bit more personable um sometimes I think you know students are afraid that we're very you know formal and a little bit scary, right? So we're trying to break down some of those perceptions and help them get a bit more comfortable with the process and have the information they need. So one thing that um. I think it's really important to remember is you can take your content and use it in a lot of different places. I think sometimes we make the mistake of creating content, then we put it in one place and we, you know, sort of our hands off and say we're done. But in reality that content for us the videos go in multiple places because when you look at if you have Google Analytics on your website, and if you don't, highly recommend it's free, um, you can, you can get it, um, but it will. Show you where your students are coming from and where your traffic is coming from and they're rarely coming on a linear path of your institution, click to admissions, click to first year, click to essay like they're never coming there. If you think about it, it's just like all the rest of us they're going to Google and typing in Georgia Tech essay and then they're landing on that page. So if you're banking on them, clicking on your homepage, then you're really. missing some opportunities because in all likelihood they may not ever hit it, right? They may hit something deeper in your website. So as you create content or for us, we found that it's, it's helpful to put that and all these sprinkle it throughout all these different places so we can catch them wherever they're at and not rely on them to just open the email or just be on our YouTube channel but hopefully getting that information to them in a place. where they can digest it. And in that instance, right, it's like working smarter not harder, right? Like you're saying like people are sometimes underutilizing all of the work that they might be doing. I hear the same thing with your video, right? Like, I'm sure you could have, you did the whole thing and maybe you spliced it and edited it, right? So again, you're using it in a lot of different ways. And the other thing too that that we make sure is a really important piece is that it has a win your shelf life. Because when you're recruiting students, if you're talking to a high school sophomore and they come back again next year and it's the same material, same piece, they're, they're gonna tune it out. So each year has to be new, different, different story, different students, because you never know where the students are in that life cycle of the recruitment process so that they're not getting the same information year after year and they feel like they earn and learn something different with each visit, with each interaction and not just the same thing over and over. I think that's a great point as well. I mean, as we wind down, are there other things that you feel like people should know that's listening that couldn't go to your session? Any advice, any ways to get by in, anything at all, and kind of as final thoughts or words? I think one of the big things that I kind of uh alluded to throughout the, the presentation was a cohesive message, not just in your recruitment materials but your entire event recruitment process. You know, if you have a specific look and feel for your recruitment materials, your program should have that same look and feel and your event should have that same look and feel and that same messaging, uh, and you want to be consistent from that college. Experience to the open house experience to orientation and so forth, uh, because any time that you start deviating from that, then the students really gonna question who is the real institution is the institution I met at the college fair or the institution I'm meeting now and if it's assistant, they're gonna be a lot more comfortable with the process versus I'm getting different feels and different messages at each stage. Yeah, one thing I will tack on that Patrick said that I thought was really a great takeaway and just a great reminder that he said during our session was, you know, take your travel pieces and if you cover up your logo, do they know it's your school? Like, would they know looking at that that it's your campus? And I think that's really, that's really important because it's easy to use that stock photography. or photos that we use a lot, um, but are you really differentiating and I just thought I wanted to throw that in because I thought it was really-- helpful-- and I'll say one of the things that we did for several years, uh, our rival institution didn't change their material size. So we realized that they were not making any changes from year to year. So we made ours slightly bigger and put our name at the top of it. So our name always stood over theirs if they were behind it in materials and until they finally started changing it. It took them several years of us being right above them before they started realizing that. That's funny. We're changing the physical size of our road piece this year as well just to-- just to change things up a bit-- to think about think about the physical size, right, um. One thing that um just as we wrap up that folks asked today and I think also in the session I did yesterday was really about how you can get campus partners to buy in to what you're trying to do in the story you're trying to tell. And one thing I, that's been very important for us at Georgia Tech is just relationship building within your institution, right? Um, if you think about it, you really have to market your ideas to marketers, right? So a few things that I've found to be helpful is one just creating and maintaining those relationships with whether it's your central. Marketing your enrollment marketing your communicators because really um that's who you're trying to sell on the concept and on the idea but helping them to understand why it's important and if you have a strategic plan or you have a strategic enrollment goal tying your tying your project to those specific goals I think is really critical. So if you can show how what you want to do is going to help achieve XYZ goal, then the uh opportunity for that to be successful I think is much higher, but also just maintaining those. Relationships in general. One thing that helped us one year is that we held a focus group with our current students and really just laid out all of our print materials, all the print materials we got from other schools, whether it was in the mail or on the road, and just really picked their brain on what they thought, what worked, what didn't, but we invited our marketing teams to come to that session and listen in. So then they aren't getting it just from us as staff saying this is what we think will work, but they're hearing our actual students give live feedback of. What they like, what they don't, and that really helped us, I think gain a lot of ground of like, OK, like this is, these are some things we can change that are really helpful. So those again are just takeaways that I think can be implemented um easily and quickly like wherever you are and whatever you're trying to do. And we had a couple of close college fairs nearby our campus that we brought our marketing team to a couple of years ago to see that even though the marketing piece they designed had a nice look to it, when you put it on our table, it got lost in the shuffle and the students weren't picking it up. Uh, so they actually got to see firsthand that the high school kids were not picking it up, even though we tried to explain this to them, seeing it firsthand was a big difference for. Yeah, anytime you can engage them in like a real process, not just in an email that gives your opinions, but in an actual like with people in a live situation, that's super helpful. Yeah, it almost gives them the ability like you were saying, they can make, oh look what I see here, right, rather than you, you know, telling, showing, and so. Again, I appreciate you both coming back again. We'll see if 2026 is gonna come up. Well, but thank you so much again for coming. Thank you for having us. We appreciate it.