How to partner with student influencers in your enrollment marketing

In a recent EAB analysis, we found that colleges and universities had to increase their application volume by almost 20% over the last five years just to maintain their starting enrollment levels. Combine that with today’s shifting higher education landscape and it becomes clear why enrollment leaders are seeking creative, cost-effective ways to build their inquiry and applicant pools.

One powerful, often overlooked resource is your current students. Many already share their experiences on social media, influence prospective students, and shape public perception of your brand—often without your awareness. Partnering directly with these student influencers presents a powerful opportunity to market your institution’s unique strengths to prospective students who value authentic content from their peers. In this post, I’ll share four tips for partnering with student influencers as part of your school’s enrollment marketing strategy.

What Is Influencer Marketing?

McKinsey defines Influencer Marketing as “a collaboration between popular social-media users and brands to promote brands’ products or services.” This form of marketing has grown in popularity and has proven effective across a range of industries—particularly in the business-to-consumer marketing enrollment marketers engage in. In my role as Senior Director of Appily Marketing, I led the development of our influencer strategy. Appily is the college-search platform of choice for today’s teens. Through robust marketing efforts, we have seen explosive growth in the last year, resulting in more than two-thirds of college-seeking seniors using Appily to find their right-fit school. Since launching our influencer strategy in 2022, we’ve seen a 162% jump in registrations from organic social media driven in large part by our influencer community.

Four Tips for Partnering with Student Influencers

Tip 1: Collaborate with creators who connect organically with your prospects.

When we identify influencers for Appily, we look for students who connect with our audience better than we can. We seek real voices—students whose opinions and personalities shine through in their content. These are often current students who bring the college experience to life in authentic, engaging, and helpful ways.

That might mean sharing highlights from a campus event, explaining their financial aid journey, or offering dorm decor tips—anything that resonates with prospective students.

The core message underlying all this content is simple: “I’ve been where you are, and here’s what helped me have a great college experience at this particular school.” In this way, influencer content becomes a third-party endorsement, which is often more relatable and trustworthy than a traditional ad.

To find potential influencers, start by searching popular social media sites for hashtags relevant to your institution. (e.g., #CampusLife, #[YourUniversity’sName]) You can also ask student ambassadors, orientation leaders, and marketing interns which students they find most compelling and influential among their peers. Free tools like Collabstr, Heepsy, and the TikTok Creator Marketplace can also help you discover micro-influencers with strong engagement.

Tip 2: Allow influencers to be themselves but provide them with guidance and support.

Authenticity and a strong personal voice are an influencer’s biggest strengths—but some guidance is essential for a successful partnership. At Appily, we give each influencer a content creator guide with clear directions and guardrails to help shape their content without stifling creativity.

Your guide should cover key topics like:

• An overview of your school’s mission and what sets it apart
• Calls to action and specific content goals
• Suggested themes (e.g., Decision Day, dorm tours, “day in the life” posts)
• A description of your target audience
• Basic video recording and editing advice

Content guidelines (such as avoiding offensive language and copyrighted music)

After sharing this high-level direction, step back. Let influencers speak in their own voice, which is why their audience follows them. Trusting them to be themselves is the best way to ensure their content resonates and delivers impact.

Sample Page from our Content Creator Guide

Social Media Marketing

Our Target Audience

• High school students in the U.S. who are actively thinking about and planning for college

Our Goals

• Build a relationship with students
• Develop social proof and legitimacy
• Create brand awareness
• Drive traffic to our website
• Get students to take an action – like creating a college list or doing a virtual campus tour
• Follow a student’s journey from first awareness of Apply through the start of college live

Our Voice & Style

• Informative: Providing real, helpful advice on everything college-related.
• Relatable & Engaging: Using memes, trending sounds, and viral formats to connect with students.
• Inspirational: Motivating students to pursue their college dreams – like sharing your college journey, showing your milestones like graduating college

Tip 3: Let go of brand standards when working with influencers.

It’s smart to provide influencers with brand guidelines, visual assets, and basic guardrails—but requiring them to strictly follow your brand guidelines can backfire. Influencer marketing works because of its authenticity. Students should see influencers as brand advocates, not official spokespeople.

To accomplish this goal, you must remove traditional marketing constraints. Let them go off-brand. Encourage them to be natural. This can feel uncomfortable for marketers trained to uphold brand standards—but today’s prospective students can spot an ad a mile away and overbranding turns them off.

With influencers, the goal is to show, not tell. Their content should speak for itself. Prospective students follow social media for a real view into campus life. A video of a student’s daily routine, dining hall experience, or dorm setup feels more genuine without heavy branding. When influencers highlight your school’s strengths in their own voice, it resonates. Add too much polish or corporate framing, and you risk losing that connection.

Tip 4: Integrate influencers into a multi-channel, holistic marketing strategy.

Influencers put your school in front of a broad audience—and some of those viewers will become interested in your institution. Your job is to keep the conversation going. Most prospects need between seven and thirteen touchpoints before they take a meaningful next step.

In practice, this means guiding your prospects along a “buyer’s journey” that nurtures their initial interest. It can also be effective to create cohesive content packages that reinforce and build upon the messages of your student influencers.

For example, if your team wants to highlight Decision Day, you might ask one influencer to post a 15-second TikTok, another to create a long-form YouTube video, and have your marketing staff write a blog post, emails, and social ads around the same topic. Taking this approach creates a consistent message, extends your reach, and supports prospects at every stage of their journey.

Student Expecations in the Enrollment Process in Our Survey of 12,500+ First-Year Students

As you can see, influencer marketing offers you a powerful way to reach prospective students with authentic, relatable content—and with the right strategy, it can significantly boost your top of funnel performance and drive stronger conversion.