7 Ways to Identify Your School’s Differentiators
To stand out in a crowded market, you need to know exactly what makes you different. Identifying your differentiators will help!
Inbound Marketing
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) aren’t exactly new anymore, but these technologies are still full of innovative college marketing potential.
Let’s check your knowledge. How might your institution stand out with VR and AR?
First off, let’s go over the essential differences.
While similar, these technologies offer different experiences of varying complexity and cost.
Let’s examine the role they have come to play in the marketing world, then take a closer look at applications for college marketing.
The primary purpose of VR/AR for marketers from a variety of industries is to remove as many barriers as possible to the buyer’s journey.
Enable prospects to experience a product or event virtually, and you can propel them much faster toward a purchase or commitment.
To this end, marketers utilize AR/VR to accomplish several goals:
Despite being around for the better part of a decade, AR/VR experiences are still a novelty, which makes this technology an effective pull tactic.
To supplement the usual push tactics to drive motivated buyer traffic – digital ads, retargeting, email marketing – marketers are using AR/VR to create experiences that pull in users motivated by the sheer fun of participating.
Retailers are using AR to allow you to virtually put furniture in your house before you buy; try on shoes and glasses; apply makeup to your face, and more, before you’re anywhere near the product. Car manufacturers are even bringing the showroom to you.
Others are taking it a step further with VR, letting you “walk through” virtual retail spaces, tour an airplane, or sit in the front row for a fashion show.
It’s not only a fun way to reinvent the fun of window shopping. AR/VR shopping may see increased demand for people who want a similar experience but would prefer not to go out while COVID-19 is still a major public health concern.
But how does any of this apply to college marketing?
Let’s take a look at how institutions are currently utilizing these technologies, then consider what applications might be next.
Over the last few years, higher ed institutions have taken a few cues from the world of retail. Their goal for AR/VR is to close the college experience gap for prospective students and donors.
The most popular applications of AR/VR I’ve seen are innovative variations on the traditional campus walkthrough.
In the VR version, prospective students put on a headset that transports them to campus.
Simple viewers like Google Cardboard have made this experience far more accessible, as most smartphones can play the content.
While several schools have created these experiences, the technology remains largely untapped.
The transition into VR tours can be an iterative one with lots of near-VR creativity on the way. Oral Roberts University, for example, decided to show off their Global Learning Center by building a model inside Minecraft.
While it appears to be a one-screen interface built for traditional screens, VR Minecraft is an available technology. I wouldn’t be surprised if ORU will be expanding their VR capabilities to develop more fully immersive 3D Minecraft tours in the near future.
The AR version of this either involves media superimposed over a real-world marker, or media imposed over location-based markers.
Marker-based augmented reality involves a physical object, kind of like a coupon with a QR code, that triggers an image or video viewable only as your smartphone camera is pointed at it.
This is not a simple QR code, however. QR codes are essentially links that usually trigger the opening of a website in your browser, or maybe an app download page in the app store.
AR actually makes what you’re looking at appear to transform.
Way back in 2014, the University of Scranton was already doing this with an AR-enabled poster. You downloaded the app, pointed your smartphone camera at the logo, and it transformed into a video that appeared to be playing on the poster.
Location-based augmented reality requires no coded object to trigger it. The experience is already happening in an exact geographical location, ready for you to approach it.
Made popular by the smartphone game “Pokémon Go,” which places virtual creatures at various physical locations for users to find, colleges use this technology to enhance the physical tour experience.
The California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, for example, treats visitors to historical stories about buildings on campus, including images of what they looked like, triggered by pointing your smartphone camera at them.
College recruiters have long been interested in ways to convey the excitement of sporting events virtually. COVID-19 has made it imperative as prospects can’t attend events in person.
Iowa State University is ahead of the ballgame.
A few years ago, football coaches worked with Iowa State’s on-campus Virtual Reality Applications Center to create a VR experience for student-athletes.
Designed for the HTV Vive headset, the app put prospects in the stadium during a game with cheerleaders, screaming fans and a marching band.
This concept of recreating sporting events (and other events) is a powerful storytelling tool for recruiters and college marketers. It gives prospective students and donors a sense of what it’s like to really be there long before they can make a physical visit.
The University of Washington is reportedly working on the next frontier in augmented reality sports: a 3D soccer match you can watch on a physical tabletop.
An AR experience like this would be an appealing development for recruiters and development officers. Whereas immersive VR experiences take all the participant’s attention, AR experiences can be more social, perhaps better facilitating a conversation.
Similar to the way the automotive industry has utilized AR/VR to showcase new vehicle designs, higher ed has utilized it to showcase new campus developments.
Speaking of the University of Washington, this is exactly what they did prior to the construction of their new $105M computer science building.
The app they developed to allow users to virtually tour the space was an innovative AR/VR crossover.
Applications like this help make the argument that this school, this program, is forward-thinking and cutting edge. That’s a powerful argument to prospective students and donors alike.
There is still a lot of room for innovation here. Your institution could not only stand out, but make big waves and drive serious enrollment by embracing AR/VR.
Here are a few ideas to get you started.
Bring them into a project your students have done. Make them an observer or participant, either in a fully virtual (VR) space or allow them to manipulate or measure objects superimposed on real space (AR).
Re-create a real-world internship experience you provide for students that allows them to interact and make decisions in real time.
Put them in the OR where they can stand right next to the surgeon, or let them get hands-on with an AR dummy.
They might be immersed in a virtual art class, manipulating virtual materials on a real-world surface, or operating a 3D printer that only exists within the app.
Let them walk around a virtual client who needs help with swinging a bat, shooting free throws, weight lifting techniques, etc., so they can see all angles and provide a critique.
Ideas like these are just seeds.
What grows out of them depends on your available budget and how these applications might be used. Creative uses beyond marketing may reveal additional funding sources.
Of course, the greatest obstacle to innovation is the tyranny of the urgent.
You have systems, channels and people with certain specializations in place to keep up with your organization’s pressing marketing needs. It’s difficult to get beyond that.
I’m challenging you to try.
Why? Because higher education will only get more competitive, the demand for virtual experiences will grow, and your approach to digital marketing will have to evolve to keep up.
Technologies like AR/VR represent that evolution.
What is a novelty today will be the language of the future as some form of AR/VR becomes an essential gateway to higher ed.
Let’s get you ready for it. Whenever you’re ready to start this conversation, just reach out. Let’s explore – and get ahead of – the future of college marketing together.
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