What students look for in a college—and how your virtual tour can help

EAB’s latest insight paper explores the characteristics that most strongly influence a school’s ability to attract students, along with nine archetypical school personas. Given that virtual tours are a uniquely powerful tool for engaging today’s students, we explored how to align your virtual tour with your school’s persona for maximum impact.

We spoke with Alice Shindelar, who oversees the EAB Virtual Tours Creative Strategy team.

LD: What role do a school’s differentiators play in crafting an engaging virtual tour?

AS: A well-designed virtual tour isn’t just a walkthrough of buildings and grounds—it’s a curated experience that leaves a lasting impression. Not everything on campus belongs in your tour. Instead, every location and piece of content should help students understand what makes your campus unique and the benefits you offer.

That’s where EAB’s nine institutional personas can be really helpful. These personas help schools identify the key characteristics that matter most to prospective students. Think of them as a handy, personalized guide for selecting locations, programs, amenities, and voices to feature in your tour.

Discover EAB’s 9 Institutional Personas

LD: Once a school has identified their persona, how can they apply that knowledge to their tour?

AS: Start by focusing on your persona’s strategic opportunities. Let’s take the “Mission-Driven Learning Community” persona. Its biggest strength is an accessible and valuable education. Your tour should reflect that right from the start.

If your tour kicks off with a video—at EAB, we call these “Action Zones”—cast students and alumni that can speak to these themes. Perhaps one student discusses how the variety of academic opportunities at your school allowed them to discover their passion. Then an alum tells us that your school was the one of the best investments they ever made, as evidenced by their great salary after graduation. And finally a third student might emphasize how accessible the admissions requirements are and how easy it was to apply.

For EAB partners, we recommend reinforcing these messages through embedded Hotspot videos, captioned photos in your Media Gallery, and Hotspot links to key website pages like application requirements or academic opportunities. The key here is to front-load your tour with this content.

LD: How can schools ensure they’re highlighting their differentiators?

AS: Continuing with the “Mission-Driven Learning Community” archetype, one of the standout traits of this persona is their relatively large number of sports teams for a smaller school. So, dedicate part of your tour to athletics.

Include 360° photos of all your athletics fields and buildings. But go beyond that: feature student-athletes (like this stop in La Sierra Universities tour) and interview them in videos where they speak on the integration of athletics, team spirit, and a healthy lifestyle with their academic pursuits.

LD: Can a virtual tour also help address competitive weaknesses?

AS: Definitely. If your persona indicates that students may be deterred by a perception of weaker student organization involvement, look for ways to showcase what you do offer. Does your school have an usually high number of student organizations for its size? If so, dedicate a destination in the tour to speaking on that topic. This could be staged in the student center, on the quad, or any destination on campus dedicated to student organizations. Here, we would meet presidents of various student organizations in Action Zones and explore embedded Hotspot videos and Media Gallery content that touch on your activities fair, as well as content from your most popular and active student organizations.

LD: Once you’ve updated your tour, how should you measure the results of those changes?

AS: If you’re considering major changes, it’s often helpful take the time to fully audit your virtual tour. At EAB, our creative team can support partners by fully reviewing their existing tour and providing strategic recommendations based on a school’s existing marketing materials, website, and social media accounts.

Once you’ve decided on changes, set a clear launch date and track engagement before and after. It’s important to regularly review analytics to understand whether engagement has changed—at EAB we do this with partners quarterly.

LD: How can schools account for student interests in their tour that may diverge from the core persona characteristics?

AS: Engagement data is key. Our AI Personalization feature asks students what they’d like to see more of, whether through pre-set categories or free responses. Reviewing these responses can be helpful in not only ensuring that you’re hitting on students’ top areas of interest—we also work with partners to benchmark the unique search queries for their campus. Those findings can then inform any additional “hot topics” that you should be covering in your tour.

LD: Any final advice for a successful virtual tour strategy?

AS: Don’t just check the boxes on differentiators. Prospective students also want to be entertained and excited about your campus when they visit your tour. To that end, use high-quality and recent photos. If a photo or video isn’t showcasing your best side, you don’t need to include it. And always make sure your tour kicks off with your best content—a gorgeous campus photo or high-energy video will captivate prospective students from the first click!