As more Generation Z candidates enter the GME pipeline, admissions, recruitment, and admissions offices must adapt to the latest wants and needs of the candidates they hope to reach.
According to McKinsey & Company, Gen Z consists of people born between the years of 1996 and 2010. This means Gen Z can be as young as 14 and as old as 28—a spread that can present a challenge for programs seeking to build their pipeline of talent from this generation.
Based on industry research and GMAC’s latest insights about Gen Z candidates’ GME preferences and goals, these four strategies can help you develop more engaging content for your Gen Z audience.
1. Add visual elements to make your email content more engaging
GMAC’s GradSelect team created a Email Best Practices Guide for Gen Z that explains not only how to get their attention, but also how to bring them into your ecosystem for longer term engagement. It says that Gen Zers have an average attention span of 8 seconds, so marketing campaigns need to be personalized, engaging, and straight to the point.
The good news for marketers is Gen Zers spend a lot of time on their digital devices, with an average of 2 hours and 43 minutes per day looking at social media. However, with so much content pumped onto their feeds and into their inboxes, it is easy for a message to get lost.
While email is still the generation’s preferred communication format, this doesn’t mean that Gen Zers are looking to just read content—they want a strong visual component that hooks them in. This could be in the form of a graphic, a diagram, or short form video—even better if the image links directly to your social media channels so that it shows up more frequently in their algorithm. Visuals tend to be more memorable and easier on the eyes compared to walls of text, leading to a higher level of engagement.
2. Tell your program’s story through student stories.
Gen Z wants to be able to directly relate to the content they are seeing—and they want to see people their own age experiencing it. A Niche survey of high school juniors revealed that this younger side of Gen Z values community and culture as a vital part of their education.
According to the survey, Gen Z is less likely to look at an institution’s official social media account, as they would prefer to look at content from individual users that reflects more authenticity and relevance. As such, leveraging current students or student workers as “influencers” can be a great way to showcase what student life is genuinely like at your school, providing prospective students the opportunity to visualize themselves as a part of the community. Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are the top three platforms in the United States amongst Gen Zers looking at content from individual users, with LinkedIn quickly becoming a staple for official institutional accounts when it pertains to key information like application deadlines.
3. Take advantage of social media trends to boost the reach of your message.
While it may feel unnatural or a shift in professionalism for brands and institutions to jump on social media trends, it can be a perfect addition to a marketing campaign. It shows that business schools can also be fun, down-to-earth, and in-touch with their intended target audience. By jumping onto trends, it is possible to bring in prospective students that may not normally have been targeted.
For example, the “looking for a man in finance” trend that is currently dominating TikTok feeds has almost 60 million views, not to mention all the remixes and re-creations, and could be an opportunity for institutions—or their student ambassadors—to draw attention to actual careers in finance and accounting.
In addition, Sprout Social says that looking at what your peer institutions are posting on their channels can also help you identify what trends are popular in higher education and what can be added to a marketing campaign.
4. Highlight what matters most to Gen Z in your content.
GMAC’s Gen Z in the GME Pipeline: Explain Why It’s Worth It white paper revealed that Gen Zers are especially interested in financial freedom and stability in their lives and careers. While millennials demonstrate more interest in the technology industry, results from GMAC’s Prospective Students Survey indicate that Gen Zers are more interested in the finance and accounting sector—perhaps because that’s where many aim to find the financial stability they seek.
While Gen Z candidates are certainly interested in larger salaries, many still seek out academic programs and future employers who align with their values. Sustainability and concerns around climate change are key considerations for Gen Z when it comes to choosing a GME program or future company. In fact, two-thirds of Gen Z candidates say that sustainability is important to their academic experience, and a third of them say that a school not prioritizing sustainability is a dealbreaker, according to GMAC’s research.
According to Deloitte’s latest 2024 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, having a strong work/life balance is one of the most important factors for Gen Z as they enter the workforce, and only 36 percent of Gen Z respondents cited work as central to their identity. For context, reading, playing or listening to music, and seeing performances were ranked nearly equal to work in importance. As a result of this, Gen Zers also have a stronger focus on mental health and wellness, especially following the pandemic’s stay-at-home policies and virtual learning.
As you develop content that incorporates visuals, highlights student stories, and takes advantage of trending topics, be sure the actual message behind your posts resonate with the types of careers, values, and futures Gen Z prospective students are seeking after business school.
