As the demands and preferences of online college students grow, social media and marketing are significantly influencing their enrollment decisions.
Marketing platforms and social media channels are playing a paramount role on today’s online undergraduate and graduate students. EducationDynamics’ 12th Annual Online College Students Report 2023 reveals who is enrolling in online programs and what drives enrollment decisions.
The report details the survey conducted at the start of the 2022-2023 academic year of over 3,000 fully online college students. The results following perspectives and trends are important for college administrators and staff, and will give leaders in higher education relevant data to better attract, enroll, serve, and retain online college students today as well as to know the makeup of the online college student market in the United States in 2023 and beyond.
Students of all ages enrolled full-time online undergraduate and graduate programs will continue to be a growth market for colleges and universities in the years to come. Age is no longer a factor to predict how students will learn. Schools must appeal to and design their marketing efforts and programs for students of any age. It is estimated that nearly 5.7 million students are enrolled in fully online programs today.
Technology as well as health and medicine will continue to grow in online college student enrollment. Among prospective students, business is the major area of interest while health, nursing and medicine, and computers/IT/technology also remain the top areas of enrollment interest.
Social media and streaming services are an integral part of college students' lives. Colleges failing to use these channels to reach prospect students are missing the target. The report indicates that almost all online college students are social media platforms’ users. The majority, about 75 percent, use Instagram or Facebook. About 60 percent use TikTok, 55 percent use Snapchat, and almost half of them use Twitter.
Their preferred medium to access social media platforms is a smartphone (95 percent). Interestingly, almost 60 percent also access social media on their computer, and only 26 percent use a tablet.
According to the report, the largest proportion of survey respondents who utilize specific social media platforms (47 percent) to search for information about schools ‘like’ or follow schools on Facebook, with another 42 percent doing so on Instagram. Almost half of all online college students who cited use of specific social media platforms view or watch video ads on Facebook. Another 46 percent do so on Instagram, and 34 percent watch ads on TikTok.
Both undergraduate and graduate online college students most often stream media on platforms using a premium, ad-free subscription. However, online college students streaming media consumers cited YouTube (50 percent) as more often streamed using a free, ad-supported subscription. In terms of frequency, 73 percent of respondents stream media daily on YouTube, almost 70 percent stream daily on Spotify, and nearly 60 percent stream daily on Netflix.
In addition, on consumption of ad-supported streaming services, the report reveals that 49 percent of online college students would downgrade to use ad-supported streaming services, citing YouTube (37 percent) and Netflix (36 percent) as the two most cited platforms they use.
Among the factors influencing school selection, 38 percent of online college students were most influenced by in-person events such as a campus tour or class audits, and 35 percent were most influenced by online events such as webinars, online tours, and online social events.
Almost 50 percent of undergraduate online students and 44 percent of graduate online students prefer to be contacted by schools via email. Only 14 percent prefer to be contacted by phone, while 10 percent prefer text/SMS communication.
Colleges seeking to enroll online students will need to build a strong brand through awareness marketing efforts that reach students before they are in the consideration stage. In order to accomplish this, social media and streaming media platforms are the two growing avenues recommended to reach online college students.
Colleges must have a strong social presence and marketing representation on the most influential social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Snapchat, as well as on the most influential streaming platforms: Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify.
EducationDynamics’ full report can be accessed here.
For more articles on enrollment, see:
Ottawa University’s Wireless Network Powers Up eSports
Alliant International University Launches School of Nursing and Health Sciences