How UK universities can attract (and keep) more students

Something has shifted in university recruitment over the past couple of years. Applicant numbers are tighter in certain subjects, international students are weighing up more countries before they commit and by the time someone actually enquires, they've usually already made up half their mind. A glossy prospectus and a well-run open day used to be enough. Not anymore.

We work with educational institutions across the North East on exactly this problem, and a few things keep coming up regardless of the institution or subject area.

Know who you're actually talking to

A lot of university marketing tries to speak to every prospective student at once. School leaver, mature student, parent footing the bill, international applicant comparing four different countries. Try to reach all of them with the same message and you end up reaching none of them properly.

The mature student wants to know if part-time study fits around a job. The parent wants proof it's worth the money. The international applicant wants to know what happens if their visa gets delayed. These aren't small differences. They change what you say, where you say it and when.

Once an institution is honest about who it's actually trying to recruit, the rest of the marketing tends to fall into place. Budgets stretch further because they're not being spread thin trying to please everyone.

Your website is doing more work than you think

Most applicants have already decided how they feel about your institution before anyone in admissions speaks to them. They've read the course page, checked the fees, maybe searched for what accommodation actually costs in the local area.

If that information is buried, out of date or hard to find, they'll go and check a competitor instead. This is the unglamorous reason SEO matters so much in this sector. Technical SEO and proper on-page optimisation make sure the right pages actually turn up when someone searches, and that once they land there, the page answers the question they came with.

Done well, a website can do a version of what an open day does. It gives someone a genuine feel for the place before they've set foot on campus.

PR does the trust-building that adverts can't

Parents in particular are sceptical of anything that reads like an advert. A story about a graduate landing a good job, a research project making headlines or a genuine partnership with a local employer carries far more weight, because it hasn't come directly from the institution's own marketing team. That's the value of PR in this space.

Part of our job is finding the stories worth telling in the first place. Institutions often sit on good news without realising it's newsworthy. Placed properly, that coverage reaches people who trust journalism over advertising, which for a decision as big as choosing a university is most people.

There's a reputational side too. One bad news cycle can shape how an entire cohort of applicants sees an institution, so it pays to be proactive rather than only reacting when something goes wrong.

Open days and advertising still earn their place

Open days remain one of the strongest recruitment tools there is, but only if people show up and the day delivers on what got them there. Our event management work covers the promotion beforehand as much as the day itself, because a half-empty open day does more damage than good.

Paid advertising still has a job to do too, especially around deadlines and clearing, when timing matters more than almost anything else.

Social media is where the real research happens

A lot of course research now happens on Instagram and TikTok, often before anyone even opens the university website. What tends to work isn't the polished, corporate content. It's the honest stuff. A student showing their actual halls of residence, a lecturer answering a genuine question, someone talking honestly about what the workload is really like.

Current students are often better recruiters than any campaign an institution could run themselves, which is exactly what good social media marketing should be built around.

AI is useful where it actually helps

Admissions teams are stretched thin, particularly around clearing when enquiry volumes spike overnight. Used properly, AI-enhanced strategy can take some of that pressure off without making the experience feel automated or impersonal.

That might be a chatbot answering course queries at 11pm when nobody's in the office, or segmentation that means a follow-up email actually reflects what someone was interested in rather than a generic template. We usually start with an AI readiness assessment because the technology only helps if it's solving a real bottleneck, not just being added for the sake of it.

Getting someone to say yes is only half the job

A student can accept an offer and still change their mind before term starts. The months between offer and enrolment matter. Clear communication, honest expectations about the course and some early sense of belonging all reduce the chance of someone dropping out before they've properly begun.

Consistency helps here more than people expect. If the branding and tone from the first prospectus download through to induction week feels joined up, it reassures people they've made the right call. That's where branding and design work sits alongside recruitment rather than as a separate exercise.

The institutions that get this right don't treat it as separate boxes

A strong website without PR behind it struggles to earn trust. Good social content with a weak website behind it doesn't convert. Marketing, PR and AI work best as one connected strategy rather than three departments doing their own thing.

We've seen this play out in our own work. Our Northern Leaders Trust and Association of Education Advisers projects both involved bringing PR and marketing together for education clients rather than treating them as separate jobs, and both saw stronger engagement as a result. Worth a read if you want to see what this looks like in practice rather than in theory.

If you'd like to talk through what any of this could look like for your institution, get in touch and we'll book in a free consultation chat. No pressure, just a proper conversation about where the gaps are.