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Campus Comms Unplugged
Our podcast, Campus Comms Unplugged, hosted by Toby Roe, explores the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of marketing and communications in business education. We aim to overcome barriers faced by marketing communications professionals within business schools and help them make a bigger impact with their campaigns.
Each month, we feature insights from leaders in the field. We cover topics such as strategy, messaging, artificial intelligence (AI), international student trends, and more.
Episode 4
In our fourth episode, host Toby Roe sat down with Helen Robertson and Leyla Gilbey (pictured left to right), co-founders of Capstone Consultants.
Leyla and Helen are experts in helping business schools and universities to achieve their enrolment targets and increase student recruitment.
Toby talked to Leyla and Helen about the volatility of the current student recruitment landscape and both the external and internal pressures facing business schools.
They looked at why collaboration between departments is so crucial for effective student recruitment, and how alumni relations present untapped opportunities for growing portfolios.
And importantly, why continuous improvement and adaptability are key to overcoming the current recruitment challenges.
Key takeaways
- Brand recognition does not guarantee recruitment success. Even strong brands must invest in commercial capability (BD, marketing, admissions) and sales skills rather than relying on reputation alone.
- Collaboration between departments is crucial for effective student recruitment. Marketing, admissions, recruitment, careers and alumni need to work together to deliver end‑to‑end customer service.
- Marketing teams are expanding due to increased content demands. Resource and organise marketing to handle high‑volume, continuous, distinctive content across many platforms, while trying to understand its impact on enquiries.
- AI can enhance student recruitment processes, but should not replace human interaction. Use AI as a tool for information and comparisons, while keeping human critical thinking, questioning and judgment at the centre.
- Sales techniques are becoming increasingly important in recruitment. Train and manage recruitment and admissions teams around a visible pipeline and basic sales discipline, especially at the offer‑holder stage.
“So really we’re about minimising white knuckle recruitment and being completely transparent about where you are in the campaign at any given time so that the numbers that you end up with are not a surprise. And I think historically also what we used to find is that once the applications had come in, offers had gone out, you could feel fairly certain that people were going to join the programmes, but actually that is where the hardest war is now being fought. So people are sitting with one offer, maybe two offers, maybe three offers for programmes.” – Leyla Gilbey, co-founder, Capstone Consultants.
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