Cognitive Biases Impacting Graduate School Enrollment Marketing

What is a Cognitive Bias?

The Cambridge dictionary defines cognitive bias as how people understand events, facts, and other people based on their beliefs and experiences. These biases can work in our favor or against us, leading us to either correct decisions or err judgments.

How do cognitive biases impact enrollment marketing?

In higher education, biases define how we judge and evaluate universities, programs, alums, and even their athletics programs. For example, a fan of a university athletic team wants to do an MBA. Among his options is the MBA program at the university, whose team he is a fan of. Confirmation bias will likely impact his decision. Confirmation bias is the tendency to accept better the information that confirms pre-existing beliefs. Even if that university does not have a stellar MBA program, the fan might still enroll due to his confirmation bias.

Tackling Cognitive Bias in Higher Education Enrollment Marketing

The process for undergraduate enrollment may be more straightforward as influential figures often weigh heavily in the consideration set and can either remove or create biases. These figures include parents, friends, family, social media influencers, and guidance counselors. In addition, graduate studies is often a more intimate and personal decision since doing graduate school is not often a societal expectation as doing an undergraduate degree.

A Council of Graduate Schools study revealed that graduate applications increased by 7.3% in 2021 compared to the 2.5% average of the last decade (source). However, marketers can’t rely on this figure and wait for applications to land in their inboxes or CRMs. What biases are out there? How can we set up our landing pages for success and capture the most leads? Addressing those biases will help you to accomplish that.

Belief Bias

Marketers often focus on tooting their own horn by saying how great their products are versus what great benefits they have for the buyer. Unfortunately, I see this all too often in Higher Education. We often flash countless rankings badges, some from established publications and sometimes from unexpected sources. Despite rankings running into some credibility issues, they are still a trusty barometer of how good a program or a university is. For example, evaluate the University of Central Florida landing to the right. Beautiful design, brand colors are spot on, and it’s not too text heavy. It does enough to promote downloading a brochure. Feel free to check it out in more detail by clicking here. If you do, I dare you to find clear benefits of enrolling in that program. What career possibilities are there? What are the salaries? I would keep the rankings but add language that helps the prospect visualize their career after completing the program.

Don’t sell me how great you are; sell me how great I will become thanks to you.

Impact Bias

The counter to belief bias is impact bias. This bias is future-looking as it plays on the tendency to overestimate future experiences’ impact on us. Impact bias will help us address the lack of benefits in the belief bias example. For example, enable the prospect to visualize career success by sharing industry data, salary stats, and testimonials from those who have already achieved success. Conversely, negative impact bias can lead a prospect to think that completing a master’s is too much work and time-consuming. Successful landing pages will address these and other future-impact concerns while guiding the prospect to visualize a better professional future.

IKEA Effect

One of my favorite biases is the IKEA effect. This bias consists of consumers placing higher than the usual value on things they worked on or put together themselves. This is an excellent gateway for landing pages directed at alums or current undergraduates in programs that naturally transition into graduate programs. Think medicine, law school, nursing, etc. Building on their undergraduate work lends itself to this bias. Consider building alternate consumer journeys for those who already have a level of affiliation with your university. Use language they are familiar with, such as school spirit terms, traditions, and legacy.

Many more cognitive biases can undo enrollment marketing efforts. The key is to have an information balance on your landing pages. Too much might overwhelm a prospect. Focus on creating a customer journey that builds trust and interest in stages, and avoid the dreaded “enroll now” CTA. Yes, I am biased about that last one. Wishing you success!