There are a number of reasons why universities and colleges try to recruit the best students or the most talented students.

My concern is not why, but how to recruit them.

There are many techniques that works when it comes to get students to enroll, but there are at least four techniques that I believe to work when it comes to recruiting the best students.

The best students have more options than the ordinary students, and I believe that talented people are more critical and that they use more logical reasoning when they decide where to enroll.

Legacy is an important part of any marketing strategy. Legacy is anything handed down from the past. The past of a business, a specific company, a product or a person. It could be anything from the past.

The past is important in order to understand the present and the future.

The local bakery

It's been here for more than 76 years. Three months ago they closed their doors. The owner was sick, he couldn't work anymore. I've talked to many of their customers, they were sad. They loved their local bakery.

I was out walking. It was raining and I was in a hurry. My wife, my daughter and my son, they were at swimming practice.

I decided to take a shortcut, through the woods.

That's when I discovered it.

A sign, on a tree, next to the river. It was the name of our college, and an arrow. Showing me the direction to the college.

As I'm writing this, we're developing the marketing strategy for the college where I am working. Since our budget is limited, we can't really compete with the universities and some of the larger colleges when it comes to resources. We have to do things a little different.

We are competing with the big players and in one way or the other, we're closing the gap and building our brand - the right way.

We're listening

Here's a short story for you.

A few days ago, I was attending a meeting at the college where I work. All the deans were attending, and we were talking about marketing. One of the them said something like, "we don't have to focus on marketing, because everybody is satisfied with the quality of our website. All the information to new and potential students are at our website, so why use resources on marketing?"

Now, I have to give you my reply.

The College where I work is not using Facebook Pages to attract new students. The reason that we're not, is because we don't have a strategy when it comes to using social marketing. Hopefully, that's about to change soon.

At the moment, I'm reviewing last years marketing campaign for our college. I'm considering what we thought of as success, and what was not a success. Most likely, we'll continue with some of the advertisements, but with a different message.

What we're looking for is a campaign that will focus on two levels.

The first level is the people that have decided to attend a college or a university. We'll try to get their attention, and we'll tell them that our college is the best choice.

I am assisting four students with their paper/dissertation this semester, and I will be assisting them when it comes to writing their press releases as well.

I believe that when it comes to press releases, for the region we live in, there are two main goals that we need to focus on.

The first goal might be specific to the fact that we live in Norway, and a certain region of Norway. I am not really sure though, it might be fairly similar in the US and other countries as well.

I have been thinking. Our college doesn't have a slogan, we have never had any slogans. Many colleges and universities have.

Does it really matter, do we need a slogan to brand our college?

I will argue that a slogan is one of the basic elements in building an effective brand campaign. It consists of a short sentence or a phrase that serve to reinforce the business name or logo. In fact, many companies has created highly successful marketing slogans that has been recognized by the consumers as much as their name.

For instance, do you remember these ones?