Developing impactful content strategies for postgraduate student recruitment. Part 2: Knowing your audience
This is the second part of a four part blog series on developing impactful content strategies for postgraduate student recruitment. In the first part we set the context for a content strategy for postgraduate recruitment and described how to make the case for investing in one. In this part we explore the importance of knowing your audience and using journey mapping techniques.
In other posts in this series we explore:
Mapping the journey(s)
Using a data led approach to mapping the postgraduate decision making journey is crucial for shaping your content strategy and prioritising the content types that you will work on first. A word of caution here though: be careful not simply to design your audience journey maps based on how students currently engage with your institution. When we shape our strategic content planning aligned only to the “as is”, we miss the opportunity and the creativity that comes from imagining “how it could be”. This is why we believe that analytics are not a suitable substitute for original audience research (see “Your analytics are not audience research”).
To map the journey we recommend that you:
Conduct original audience research with a wide variety of people
Do include some of your current postgraduate community in your research, but don’t only focus on them
Include some prospects and applicants in your research, but also remember that they have a bias towards you
Recruit research participants who do not have any relationship with your institution, or those who might yet be a year or two out from considering postgraduate study
Ideally aim to conduct a longitudinal study so that your research captures the truth and not skewed memories. We are a big fan of diary studies at Pickle Jar (see “Dear Diary: Getting started with diary studies”) and ethnographic research techniques (see “How a sprinkle of ethnography could enrich your audience research”)
Remember that there will be more than one journey, so you may need to map a few. We recommend that you map them around motivations (i.e. “the explorer”, “the career seeker”, “the c-suite climber”, “the aspiring academic” etc) rather than by demographics/nationality.
There are three techniques in particular that we think are particularly effective methods for mapping a content strategy to an audience journey:
Method 1: user story banks and epic clustering
User story banks and epic clustering work by writing multiple user and job stories over time. Remember the formats:
User story: “as a… I need… so I can…” (example: “as a parent I need to know what child care options are available so I can ensure my children are looked after while I study”)
Job story: “when… I need… so I can…” (example: “when I apply for my visa I need to know term dates so I can say accurately how long I plan to stay in the country for”)
You’d create a batch of these that represent the whole decision making journey. In one example for a university that we worked on, we had 342 user stories to work with, so this can be a comprehensive task to work through. Then you cluster them together into “epics”. Epics are stages in that journey that make sense as a discreet moment. For example “initial search”, “shortlisting”, and “applying” would be obvious epics under which you cluster the relevant user and job stories.
You then start to plan your content requirements in line with each epic, prioritising the user and job stories within each to decide how (and if) you will meet those user needs.
Method 2: journey decision mapping
Journey decision mapping can be a little more simple than the user story bank approach, and aims to build a visual representation of the different decision making journeys that your prospective postgraduate students go on. You would also identify the stages in that journey much like the epics that we mention above. In these visual maps you can choose to visualise and capture layers of information that you deem to be important such as influencers, key questions, emotional states, distractions, risks, channel preferences, and more. They can be highly customised to your institution and a really clear method for engaging multiple stakeholders with your work.
Once you have your journeys mapped visually, then you can start to align your content strategy and plan to those maps.
A useful technique with these maps is to produce “as is” and “as we want it to be” versions which visualise the shift that your content strategy is aiming to achieve.
Method 3: longitudinal empathy mapping
Empathy mapping is a simple technique in which we aim to hop into the mind of our prospects by identifying at any given moment in time what they are:
Thinking
Feeling
Seeing
Doing.
The technique lends itself to capturing a single moment in time. But equally we can map it over time using a relatively simple table and something like the “epic” technique of clustering the stages together.
Ultimately all three techniques achieve similar results, just with varying levels of detail. You might choose to use method 2 or 3 initially, and then to apply method 1 as you dive into each of the stages in more detail later on.
Up next, part 3: Creating the vision for your content and lead nurture activity
In part 3 we will start to get into the structure and substance considerations for your content strategy. We’ll explore the concept of planning using content types, enhancing SEO and user experience through content clusters, and planning for a seamless journey through a joined-up CRM and lead nurture approach.
How can Pickle Jar help your institution with postgraduate recruitment?
If you’ve made it this far in this long and detailed post, you must be serious about making a difference to your institution’s postgraduate recruitment. And undoubtedly you understand the importance of content strategy in doing so. At Pickle Jar we can support your institution through a bespoke programme of activity designed to meet you exactly where you are at and tailored to your budgets. This might include:
Audience journey mapping
Producing a full content strategy
Developing a content marketing plan
Creating compelling content to drive postgraduate recruitment
Training and coaching your teams to support them to create their own content strategy and approach, or to produce better content.
Contact us by email to hello@picklejarcommunications.com to set up a no obligation conversation about your postgraduate recruitment content strategy needs, and to discuss how we might be able to be your strategic content partner in addressing your challenges.