Influencing the Influencers: Shaping Prospective College Students’ Choices

Prospective students have a lot on their plates, and the sometimes lengthy process of researching colleges and ultimately making a decision is tacked on to their high school workload. Your counselors and marketers can’t be everywhere all at once, so having advocates is a valuable asset. How do you identify, engage, and reward them?

Who are the key influencers?

Advocates take on many roles in the lives of students. Parents or guardians and counselors come to mind first, but teachers, coaches, and their peers are significant influencers as well. Parents or guardians play a different role than other influencers because they play an ongoing role throughout the college experience. They can be a positive or negative influence that impacts retention as well. Counselors play an important role for some students, but too many students report that their counselors are spread thin and play only a minimal role in their selection. Let this be a call to action to support school counselors! They excel at keeping students informed about deadlines and support them with letters of recommendation and keeping an eye on deadlines.

Teachers and coaches are important advocates for their own alma mater as well as for institutions that have excelled at building recognition of relevant programs. I’m using coaches here as a shorthand for athletic coaches, debate coaches, theater directors, and music teachers. Anyone who coaches the students in a specific skill can also promote related programs and encourage students to continue growing in areas where they have an interest and talent.

Peers are overlooked and underleveraged. Peers exert influence in a multitude of ways, including:

• Friends who influence the initial consideration and inquiries

• Online testimonials and social proof

• Siblings either encouraging or dissuading them from attending a college

• Friends encouraging transfers

• Significant others being a reason to enroll

Having a plan to influence important individuals and activate them can make a significant difference. Influencers play both an emotional and practical role in the decision-making process. They can help get students really excited about a college, raise red flags or barriers, or help with (or hinder) processes on the road to matriculation.

How are you helping students make decisions by leveraging influencers? I’ll lay it out in 4 steps, and while I can’t say they’re easy, they are meaningful.

Tactics to support and influence the influencers

First things first: When you’re building a campaign to influence the influencers, you need to start small and focused. If you try to start by doing everything, you’ll exhaust yourself and lose the opportunity to learn and optimize.

Choose an audience and outline what their relationship to prospective students is and what they need from you. If you only ask for their support without giving something of value in return, you aren’t building a relationship; you’re being greedy. Communicate in the way they prefer. Share guides, FAQs, webinars, podcasts, or swag as needed. Thank them and reward them. You need to educate and build a relationship in ways that are memorable and appreciated.

Step 1: Identify and define the audience(s)

If you’re working with traditional undergrads coming straight from high school, your first audience should absolutely be parents. Every audience is important, but for most students, their parents are their most important influencer and supporter. Eventually, you should have plans for all the audiences you can identify, but start small so you can learn and build over time in a manageable way.

Next, you’ll need to know how to find and communicate with them. Have students identify them, build channels to allow inbound interest, and if there are opportunities to engage with organizations to reach them at scale, those should be explored as well.

Define them, and by that I mean define their relationship to the student and how they can help or hinder progress. Brainstorm this with staff and current students, you’re sure to miss something building alone.

Step 2: Outline each audience’s key criteria and concerns

Create two columns for each audience and brainstorm as many of the key criteria and concerns as you can for each. The key criteria are the things they care about in a positive way, and the concerns are the things that worry them or might cause them to be a detractor. Some of these you may already know, but you can check for existing research and feedback to help inform the lists.

For all of these topics that can be a boon or burden, you should look for what existing assets you have that speak to them. Do you already have a webpage or portal addressing financial aid? How do you speak to physical and mental health? These will make your job easier later on.

Step 3: Motivate them

Nobody promotes or dissuades consideration at random. There is always a reason for trying to influence consideration, and these can be much more personal. Counselors do it either out of a concern for what they believe is best for the student or a love of their alma mater. Maybe past students have shared struggles or a lack of support that causes counselors to hesitate recommending a campus. Friends might want more familiar faces on their campus. Significant others might be motivated by a fear of losing a relationship. Now, how can you help add motivation?

Alumni tend to like shirts and swag, but who doesn’t love a good t-shirt or pair of socks? Tangible rewards, referral programs for current students, or leaderboards of inquiries recruited might be effective for some individuals. What are you able to do to sweeten the pot for influencing consideration?

Step 4: Put it together and measure success

Now you get to start writing emails, texts, phone scripts, and print assets. Maybe you’ll do some on- and off-campus events to gather people together. Make sure that you’re providing them with something valuable while you educate them about your institution and ask for their support in building your inquiry pool or converting admits.

Don’t forget to measure the impact of your work, either. If you have a benchmark number of referral inquiries, you can measure a lift after running campaigns to influence your influencers. Look for personas that are more effective at influencing interest. Keep measuring the engagement and conversion rates of your campaigns to optimize the message, delivery, and audience definitions.

Approaches to building 1:1 and broad-based campaigns

There are two angles to approach outreach to influencers: 1:1 outreach and broad-based campaigns at scale. At scale, you can reach out to counselors, parents, and alumni with general talking points and reasons to refer students. From that work, or independently, you can build ambassador programs and reach out to influential individuals who have an audience or platform to help promote your institution to prospective students and parents. What might these look like?

Newsletters, short videos, social posts, targeted ads, and events are ways to reach influencers at scale. From there, your staff will get a better picture of who the most engaged and enthusiastic advocates are. Ambassador programs need a strong start with a clear direction and a ask for the ambassadors, as well as an active group to work with. It can grow both organically and intentionally after that, but without a strong start, it’s destined to feel like a slog for the manager running it.

Your 1:1 outreach can start by collaborating with the alumni office, community affairs or similar office, and by getting feedback from counselors about who the most engaged counselors and parents are. Having a leader reach out to recognize and thank them, followed by an ask for additional support, can leave them feeling more positive about the institution.

Having the program isn’t enough! Don’t plant your flag and move on to the next initiative. Someone on your staff needs to own the program, be enthusiastic about it, and have the authority to run it well. Ambassador programs need ongoing training, support for ambassadors, and recognition of their efforts. Whether they’re current students, alumni, or others in the community, your appreciation needs to be felt and not just heard.

Final thoughts

Influencing the influencers is a critical, yet unfortunately underleveraged, component of successful college recruitment. By recognizing the diverse roles that parents, counselors, teachers, coaches, and peers play in the decision-making process, you can build programs that support prospective students while also multiplying your recruiting team’s impact. Focusing on targeted, relationship-driven outreach — whether one-on-one or at scale — ensures these key advocates are equipped, motivated, and engaged to support your institution. The most effective strategies provide value, foster trust, and continuously measure and refine outreach efforts.

Ready to elevate your influencer engagement? Reach out to discuss training opportunities and strategy sessions designed to empower your staff and ambassadors to make the biggest impact possible.