As the world becomes more digital, the relationship between enrollment marketing and digital marketing is almost entirely intertwined.

There is no denying that prospective students receive a majority of their college information from digital spaces. Whether they’re scrolling on social media or using a search engine, such as Google, individuals considering a college degree are likely to be influenced by digital marketing efforts. Therefore, the connection between digital marketing and enrollment marketing work is undeniable. 

Though the two types of marketing are often controlled by different offices on campus and paid for through different budgets, the inter-connectedness should still be acknowledged so the two can work together and not against each other. 

Synergy > Silos

Digital marketing on college campuses are often concerned with expanding brand awareness. Enrollment offices are typically interested in sharing program- or institution-specific information to grab the attention of prospective students and their families. 

Instead of viewing these two goals as separate, creating an environment of synergy and collaboration will ultimately produce impressive results for both offices. 

There are several benefits to fighting against the silos that are often naturally created: 

• Creating a Cohesive Brand Experience: Working closely across institutional marketing entities encourages the overarching use of a consistent tone and voice. Consistency between the look and feel of a digital ad and the enrollment campaign a student will later receive provides a seamless experience for prospective students. 
• Optimizing Shared Data: Working together also means sharing data, which leads to channel optimization and appropriately spending the established media budget. 
• Increasing Efficiency and Effectiveness: A synergetic marketing strategy avoids the possibility of doubling up on efforts or working against each other.

All Marketing = Enrollment Marketing

While there is often a differentiation made between brand awareness and enrollment marketing work, in the end, all institutional marketing should have an enrollment bend. This means all marketing assets, placement, and media spend should have enrollment goals in mind. 

Though digital marketing goals may be more related to brand awareness, prospective students and family members of prospective students are guaranteed to see the ads. Ensuring that all marketing content includes useful, compelling information for prospective students and their families will increase brand awareness and enrollment metrics.

Simple Steps Towards Collaboration

For some, creating this collaboration feels impossible. However, there are a few simple steps that will quickly start the process: 

1. Schedule regular meetings between departments.
   As basic as it sounds, reach out to your counterpart to schedule a regular meeting cadence, opening the lines of communication and creating a unified force. 
2. Audit all current marketing assets.
   It would also be beneficial to complete an audit of all marketing assets, the goals of said assets, and their success. Once audited, the necessary changes to the work become more obvious. 
3. Create a digital marketing and enrollment calendar.
   Further into the process, a cohesive content calendar between both digital marketing efforts and enrollment offices should be developed to ensure that the many channels and types of communication are covered.

At GMB, we encourage this collaboration by ensuring the correct people are at the decision-making table. Bringing both digital and enrollment marketing experts together will provide an opportunity to create cohesive campaigns, work seamlessly towards the same goal, and increase both brand awareness and enrollment numbers. 

1. Develop a comprehensive digital marketing strategy.

In today’s digital age, it’s essential to have a strong online presence to attract prospective graduate students. Develop a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that includes search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, email marketing, and pay-per-click advertising. A strong digital marketing strategy will help you rank higher in search engine results, reach a wider audience, and generate leads.

2. Create compelling content.

Prospective graduate students want to know what they can expect from a program and why it’s worth investing their time and money. Show them what your program offers by creating compelling content that showcases your program details, faculty, research, and alumni. Use storytelling techniques to bring your brand to life and appeal to the emotions and aspirations of your target audience. 

Here are some ideas for crafting content that resonates:

• Use multimedia: Incorporating images, videos, infographics, and other multimedia elements into your content can make it more visually appealing and engaging. This can help bring your content to life and showcase the unique features of your program. 
• Focus on the student experience: Prospective graduate students want to know what it’s really like to be a student in a particular program. Create content that focuses on the student experience, including stories from current students, profiles of alumni, and virtual campus tours. 
• Showcase research and thought leadership: Graduate students want to know that your program is at the forefront of research and thought leadership in their fields. Highlight your program benefits in an email campaign or during a campus visit and share how it has shaken industries and helped graduates build successful careers. 
• Always, aways, aways, talk about your differentiators as a program: Every program has something unique to offer, whether it’s a specialized curriculum, access to cutting-edge technology, or opportunities for hands-on experience. Create content that highlights these unique features and showcases how they can benefit prospective graduate students.Up&Up has a system to ensure that we bring out the best in our clients and pair them with the right-fit students, whether that be in brand, web, digital or enrollment scopes of work. 
• Use data and statistics: This can help make your content more compelling and persuasive by demonstrating the success of your graduates, the impact of their research, and the quality of your programs. 

By incorporating these strategies, it lays the groundwork for organic search to be increased and allows for your program to stand apart and above the sea of sameness in the higher education space. 

3. Leverage virtual events.

Leveraging virtual events is a great way to engage prospective graduate students. Host virtual open houses, webinars, and Q&A sessions that allow prospective students to interact with current students, faculty, and staff. This will give them a sense of what it’s like to be a part of the community and help them make an informed decision about the school they want to attend.

4. Use personalized communications.

Prospective graduate students want to feel like they are more than just a number, so it’s important to use personalized communications to address their specific needs, interests, and goals. Tailor your messaging to their stage in the decision-making process  and use data-driven insights to provide relevant information that will help them choose your school as a right-fit student.

5. Build strong partnerships.

Building strong partnerships with other organizations in the industry can help you attract top talent. Work with industry associations, alumni networks, and other higher education institutions to create opportunities for prospective graduate students to engage with professionals in their field. This will help them see the value of your programs and give them a sense of the opportunities that await them upon graduation.

Engaging prospective graduate students from an agency perspective for higher education clients requires a multi-faceted approach. By following these steps, you can attract top talent and build a strong pipeline of future leaders in their respective fields.

With student enrollment declining for the past decade, many institutions are struggling with effectively reaching this generation’s pool of prospective students. And from sizable education costs to a general mistrust in the education system, many Gen-Z students are rethinking the traditional college experience, putting many institutions at a disadvantage. However, this doesn’t mean it’s over for higher ed; instead, this challenge presents an opportunity for institutions to flip the narrative and grab hold of the market. To do this, we have put together a comprehensive guide of student marketing strategies to help you market to Gen-Z students.

Who is Gen-Z?

Generation Z represents a major force in the marketplace for higher education. As the next generation going to college, it is imperative to know and understand this audience as the foundation of your future student marketing strategies. Gen Z, born between 1996 and 2012, is a cohort defined by being the most technologically advanced, outspoken, and educated generation. 

Gen Z places the highest value on truth, compared to Gen X who values status, and Millennials who value authenticity. This value for truth comes from Gen Z’s persona as digital natives. As a generation that has never lived without the Internet, Gen Z has more access to technology than any other generation. Because of this, Gen Z students are very comfortable searching for information and cross-referencing data sources in their quest for truth. For higher education institutes, this means that the student marketing strategies you put out must speak to the driving factor of this new generation: truth. 

Student Marketing Strategies to Attract Gen Z Students

Be authentic.

Gen Z values authenticity more than anything else. They can spot a fake or insincere message from a mile away. This means that your marketing messages need to be authentic and genuine, and you need to be transparent about your values and your brand.  Don’t try to be something you’re not, or Gen Z will quickly lose interest.

Gen Z students prioritize authenticity and truth, and they want the same from the brands they interact with. No longer will the one-size-fits-all marketing messaging and catchy taglines work for this group. Schools need to be upfront about cost and the value-add they offer to attract prospective students. 

It’s best to focus on the facts because this generation is all about asking “Is it worth it?” when choosing a college education. And it’s on institutions to answer that for them; because if you don’t, then you can’t start the relationship of trust between your prospective students.  

Prioritize digital outreach.

Gen Z students are part of the first generation to grow up with social media, and it is a crucial part of their lives. With the majority of Gen Zers owning a smartphone (and spending nearly 10 hours a day on their phones), social media can be a great way to connect with them. 

However, not every social platform is going to attract your intended audience. So when evaluating student marketing strategies, higher education institutions must be sure to be on the same platforms as their audience. For Gen Z, these platforms include Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube. 

Facebook and LinkedIn tend to be the top two platforms institutions prioritize. However, from a demographic perspective, Facebook is primarily used by Baby Boomers and Gen Xers while alums primarily use LinkedIn. For marketing efforts to be successful, colleges and universities must be active on the social media platforms their prospective students use.

However, decisions regarding which school to attend often involve people from multiple generations: prospective students, parents and guardians, relatives, teachers, and mentors. A multi-generational social media approach can help schools connect not only with prospective students but also with the varying members in their lives.

Focus on visual content.

When it comes to social media, 81% of Gen Zers say Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube are their preferred mediums of media. This shows us that Gen Z is a highly visual generation. As you’re creating student marketing strategies, stick to short-form videos and high-quality visuals to showcase the beauty of your campus and community. 

Video and stylized visual content should be a top priority for catching the attention of your target market. Due to the dynamism of the digital community with so many new apps and filters, anything considered static or “boring” won’t stand a chance with Gen Z. 

Leverage peer-to-peer influence. 

As you’re evaluating your student marketing strategies, consider leveraging peer-to-peer influence to attract prospective students. Gen Z tends to respond more to input from peers than their parents. They rely on platforms like TikTok to receive this peer-to-peer input and tend to view this kind of user-generated content as more authentic and accurate. 

Therefore, colleges and universities should use this peer-to-peer influence as a potential student marketing strategy. Because Gen Z primarily uses social media, this type of content can yield better results as well as reach a wider audience. 

Some examples of how to incorporate peer-to-peer influence in your student marketing strategies include:

• “Day in the Life” videos created by current students 
• User-generated content by student ambassadors 
• Alumni spotlight videos 

These types of student marketing strategies allow institutions to incorporate storytelling into their brand, which in turn bridges the gap between prospective students and schools. 

How to Best Incorporate Student Marketing Strategies 

Remember that Gen Z values truth and authenticity the most, so be sure these values are reflected in your brand and your marketing messaging. And don’t be afraid to throw out the old playbook: What worked for the last generation of college students won’t necessarily work for this generation. This means pivoting from some of the traditional methods of marketing and meeting students where they are, in the digital universe. Digital platforms offer a great way to connect with prospective students and really lean into the Gen Z persona. 

By leveraging the latest student marketing strategies, you can improve your student enrollment, attract the right fit students, and increase brand awareness of your educational institution.

In today’s digital age, websites have become the face of higher education institutions for many prospective and current students, faculty, and alumni. It’s essential for universities and colleges to have a website that is not only functional, but also visually appealing. Good higher ed website design is crucial for many reasons, including creating a positive user experience, building a solid brand identity, and improving conversion rates. A well-designed website will also bring your brand’s mission, values, and messaging to life for its users.

What are some best practices to follow when designing or redesigning a higher ed website? For starters, focusing on a few core foundations, such as user-centered design, storytelling, web accessibility, and mobile responsiveness, will all contribute to a more engaging user experience. 

User-Centered Design

As the digital landscape continues to grow, user experience (UX) has become a vital aspect of website design. It’s no longer enough to simply create a website that looks good. To be successful, websites must be easy to use, intuitive, and meet the needs of the people who use them. That’s where user-centered design comes in.

Storytelling

With so many higher education websites out there, it can be difficult to stand out. Storytelling is a powerful tool that can make your higher ed website design more engaging and memorable. 

Incorporating storytelling into your website’s design can create an emotional connection with your audience, build trust, and communicate your brand message in a way that is both entertaining and informative. 

By telling a unique and engaging story through visual design, photography, and copywriting, you can set your higher ed brand apart from the competition and create a strong impression with your audience.

User-centered design is a design approach that puts the needs and wants of users at the forefront of the design process. It takes into account the users’ goals, motivations, and behaviors to create a website that is tailored to their needs. Prioritizing the user experience will ensure that your site is easy to navigate and understand, providing a more satisfying and enjoyable experience for users, which makes it more likely they will stay on the site longer and engage with it more. 

Accessible Web Content

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a set of internationally recognized guidelines for making websites accessible to people with disabilities. It includes areas like color contrast, functional images, and font usage hierarchies. By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your website is usable and accessible to a wider audience, which can improve the user experience for everyone who visits your site.

An additional benefit of following WCAG is that it improves your website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Websites that are accessible to people with disabilities are often easier for search engines to crawl and index. This means that your website may be more likely to appear at the top of search engine results, which can help you reach more potential visitors.

Mobile-Responsive Strategy

With the increasing number of people using mobile devices to browse the web, a higher ed website design that is mobile-responsive has become a necessity for higher education sites. 

A responsive website is designed to adjust its layout and content to the size of the user’s screen, providing an optimal viewing and navigation experience on any device. Wise design strategies for all page elements, such as responsive grids, font sizes, fluid images, and device breakpoints, are critical parts of the design process.

There are numerous benefits to using an effective mobile-responsive strategy with your higher education website, including an improved user experience, increased reach, and better SEO and conversion rates.

In Conclusion

Incorporating user-centered design, storytelling, web accessibility, and mobile responsiveness into higher ed website design creates a valuable investment for any higher education institution looking to stand apart and above in today’s crowded digital landscape.

One look across LinkedIn presents a good snapshot of how quickly communications have been commodified. Innovation and distinction may be happening in the delivery of courses or in the classroom themselves, but not in terms of positioning and recruiting students for graduate programs.

The trouble with positioning – both inside and outside of higher ed – is that it can be quickly copied. How often do you see “flexible” and “affordable” as a proposition? It’s hard to imagine that no matter how well priced your online MBA is, someone else can’t come along and offer it at a lower price point. 

In most categories, each player “owns” the category benefits. It’s entirely possible that online graduate degree programs incur this same market characteristic. What this means is that positioning has become a graduate program’s competitive advantage. But to get there, we must take a step back from the usual tactics-as-digital-strategy perspective and refocus on the basic tenets of strategy. 

With proper strategy – an understanding of the market, who you are targeting and how you’ll position your program – higher education marketers can begin to carve out distinction in the market and increase consideration among prospective students.

Below, we’ll explore why this increasingly competitive and uncertain world requires a renewed focus on strategy as well as three things to focus on when planning your next recruitment campaign.  

Strategy, Revisited

To quote one of the more prolific authors on marketing strategy, Michael Porter, “the essence of strategy is defining how a company is unique and how it will deliver a distinctive mix of value. Strategy is about aligning every activity to create an offering that cannot easily be emulated by competitors.”

In a sense, strategy is about what you choose not to do as much as it is about what you choose to do – more or less a series of trade-offs. To paraphrase Porter, the more focused your strategy is – applying strict scrutiny to a few key decisions – the more likely differentiation will evolve. 

So this is our call-to-arms, if you will. As you revamp or start planning your next recruitment cycles, return to the basics of strategy. The new marketing realities for higher education marketing demand it. 

New Marketing Realities

Messaging parody aside, recruiting students for graduate programs using digital marketing has become increasingly competitive as well as more expensive. Higher education marketers must be more attune to the limitations of most budgets and how those limitations should impact strategic decisions. 

In terms of cost, average cost-per-clicks can be approximately $20 to $30 for many of the popular online graduate degree programs. LinkedIn CPMs can hover around $30 and geotargeting can average around $10 to $15 on social media channels. In terms of competition, primarily online institutions saw online graduate enrollment fall 13.6% (education and business degrees taking the biggest enrollment hits). And while graduate enrollment rose slightly (fall 2021), enrollment rates and graduate degree alternatives may skew the number a bit. “Proximity-to-institution” also fell slightly, with two-thirds of online grad students reporting they would only consider online degrees from schools within 50 miles. Talk about the market constricting.

Why Campaigns Fail

Poorly Allocated Budget

The reality is that none of us have an unlimited budget. While reach and frequency rarely make it into many digital advertising conversations, in a high-involvement category frequency is huge. How much you have to spend and how big your target audience is plays a role in how impactful your messaging can be when recruiting students for graduate programs. What’s more impactful, reaching one person once per month for six months or one person once per week for six months?

Lack of Defined Targeting

Similarly, with the same limited resources, we cannot target everyone. Not only should segmentation help identify probable targets, if done correctly it should identify what segment will be the most responsive. For example, which segment has a higher propensity to be interested in an online MBA: a young professional with no kids in a marketing role or a 35 to 44 year-old parent working at a nonprofit? Strategic focus makes answering this question easy. 

More Metrics than Focus

This isn’t so much about identifying the most important metrics, but to identify the most important KPIs that align to those objectives. Higher education marketing isn’t exactly e-commerce, yet what we track often isn’t impactful to moving the needle. The more we focus on the natural ebb and flow of click-through rates, the less we lose sight of the incremental effects of our digital marketing. Attributing inquiries to each campaign is important – but if that isn’t the dominant behavior for most prospective grad students, looking at holistic incremental gains over the course of your marketing efforts provide a much better view of your efforts.

Where Strategy Brings Focus

Focus on a ‘Hero’ or ‘Halo’

As is most often the case, there isn’t enough budget to realistically market all of your online graduate programs. A good market orientation and segmentation approach should help to identify flagship programs (i.e. heroes). For example, the promotion of your M. Ed may increase awareness of your Ed. D., or the other way around. Another way to look at a hero program is to identify the program that you feel has this highest propensity to attract those currently in-market. With enough resources dedicated to your “hero,” you can quickly see a return-on-investment and use any new funds generated for other programs. Identifying profit drivers earlier makes it much easier to focus your efforts.

A similar strategy is to use the halo effects of brands. The single strongest predictor of higher click-through rates and lower cost-per-acquisition is a strong brand. Depending on the strength of your institution or the departmental brand (think Darden School of Business), when budgets command it, take advantage of the strength of your strongest brand. This is the rising-tides-raises-all-ships marketing analogy. A heavily concentrated “brand campaign” can be more effective than a stretched-too-thin budget for multiple program campaigns. 

Focus on a Core Target Market

It’s imperative that we must also focus on the targets that will make the biggest difference. Referring back to Porter’s quote, the actions we opt not to take is just as important as what we ultimately do. Once you’ve established which programs you will move forward with, identify the core markets that you can adequately invest in. If your state is primarily a net export state, it makes more sense to invest your budget in-state. The same goes for segmenting your audiences. Starting with 25-34 year-olds is great but if you can’t reach your audience at least once 1-2 per week, you’ve stretched your budget – and segment – too thin.

Focus on 1 Message

It can be tempting to tell the world about all the benefits of your program. Access to faculty, world-class labs and program rankings are all valuable but the more you try to pack into your ads, the less likely they are to be memorable or retained (most display ads get 250 milliseconds of your audience’s attention). 

The same can be said when it comes to branding. Outside of your logo, focus on 1-2 design assets to use across marketing activities. When recruiting students for graduate programs, remaining distinct – from a design perspective – can be just as effective as being differentiated. 

Combined, the focus of messaging and design makes it easier for you to build familiarity and memory structures that improve processing. If you are advertising for multiple programs, find a way to communicate the same benefit but dramatized differently or create slight variations in design. Repetition naturally creates mind share and the meaning and message anchored to your ads creates a position. 

At GMB, we define digital strategy as “where to play and how to win” – a line borrowed from Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works. It’s a quick reference to bring to life the steps needed before we even touch ad creative. We look at people, presence and then we focus on ad platforms. 

If you’ve got a tricky marketing problem you can’t quite find a solution to or gearing up to plan your next graduate student recruitment campaign, drop us a line! We’d love to help you find your strategic focus.

Behind every successful advertising campaign is a landing page that is designed with one thing in mind: a conversion. And like most things marketing related, there’s an art and a science to designing a higher ed landing page. 

We’ve dissected our most successful landing pages and found six principles to help you design the perfect landing page for your program or department.

Design for Focus

Like marketing campaigns and advertising messages, landing pages should be designed with one focus or goal. As you’re planning the page, be precise when defining the one goal you want users to complete once they hit your page. Remember, your marketing efforts are already competing with more than 7,000 competing marketing messages. The more potential actions we give a visitor to our page, the more distraction we create on top of an already distracting web experience.

Structure Your Page

Understanding information hierarchy and user flow can turn a good landing page into a much more effective landing page. The goal is to develop a landing page experience that is appealing and aligns with our natural flow of reading online.

First, start with the structure of the page. What are the most important messages, actions and visuals components you need to meet your goals? Once you’ve listed them, order them in a way that makes sense with your campaign goals. Below, we’ve mapped out sample landing page components that highlight a typical hierarchy of information.

When it comes to headlines and subheadlines, there’s a typical pattern to how users will read each layer of copy. Consider each line and build a narrative that aligns your ad to landing page. In our first illustration, we’ve sketched out how this would look.

Next, consider the two primary reader flows: The “Z” and the “F” patterns. If your page needs to be copy heavy, the “F” flow provides a natural experience. Most often, visitors will start at the top left of the page, scan right and then down the left side of the page until a component stops their scan.

The “Z” pattern considers how readers engage with a page with more visual elements and less copy. Creating components that alternative styles creates a more pleasant user experience.

Create Consistency

While campaign landing pages are often developed on the periphery of brand work or outside of your website, it shouldn’t be a completely different experience for the user. Successful landing pages account for the entire campaign ecosystem as well as the entirety of the customer journey. 

To be clear, campaign landing pages should be consistent with your paid media and your owned assets–your website. We’ve covered the importance of aligning your advertising with your landing page–the same can be said for your website. 

Why? Our brains were designed for pattern recognition and we process visuals (i.e. design) much faster than messages. Message alignment is important, but visual consistency instills a sense of confidence and relevancy-removing user dissonance. 

When designing your higher ed landing pages, pull in brand guidelines as well as ad design elements. You don’t need to incorporate 100 percent of the ad, but purposeful elements such as images, color palette, button design, etc.

Highlight Benefits

Humans naturally seek confirmation. When we’ve expressed interest in something – let’s say clicking on an ad – we want our rationale for interest to be proven correct. 

Part of the confirmation is that the benefit matches the user’s interest. And the quickest way to express the benefit of your product or service is visually. This isn’t to downplay the importance of copy, it is just that our brain can process visual cues much quicker – meaning emotions, brand cues and end user. 

Typically the hero image is the first component a user experience. The hero image should be attention-grabbing but not at the sacrifice of clarity. A good test is to remove all copy and see if you can still understand what the page is about. 

When it comes to the image, research would suggest that people-focus hero images are more effective than product shots or illustration. The use of real people tends to be more memorable and elicit emotion more effectively. Start with emotions and map them to the aspirations of your audience.

Optimize for Attention

When it comes to designing for action, designers have a few tools that create a direct path to what we want the user to do. The first is to use colors in a way that calls attention to elements. For example, to highlight buttons use a mix of contrasting colors. In the example below, we’ve chosen a color that contrasts with the overall theme of the landing page to quickly draw attention to it.

Negative space can also create an environment that forces focus on one specific element. Negative space is a useful tool for benefit-driven copy and buttons. Almost immediately a visitor to the page is pulled to the copy on the left.

Finally, use images to drive the users’ attention. Research using eye-tracking technology routinely shows the impact of the human gaze. We tend to follow eye lines and direct our attention in reference to where someone is looking. The strategic use of a person’s gaze can place the focus on a button or line of copy.

Build Trust

Social proof is one of the most vastly studied heuristics – or cognitive biases. Humans have a powerful desire to fit in and the quickest way to learn a behavior is to observe the crowd. Testimonials on landing pages is a common but effective practice.

When planning on placement of testimonials remember that they are important for reinforcing a user’s beliefs about a product or service. To help, include personal details that make the message more relatable and credible. Reflex words and emotions that are natural and mirror your audience’s.

Set a Strong Foundation from the Beginning

A few additional housekeeping items to ensure you’ve built a solid foundation for your users. Make sure the page is mobile friendly. This means cut down on extraneous copy and make sure what’s above-the-fold is a positive user experience. Second, make sure your page load times are short. A few things you can do to keep your load times down are to optimize your images and video for the web, cache your web pages and minimize your pages code. Use Google’s Test My Site tool to find out how your page scores.

Finally, don’t reinvent the wheel. If you’ve found success previously, pull in past learning or design elements. A new campaign doesn’t necessarily mean you need a newly designed landing page.

Our industry is at an inflection point. Higher education has lost billions of dollars. College Board reported apps are up, yet the numbers are unevenly distributed across the spectrum of college types. And while we continue to read predictions that aren’t in our favor, Americans are “still attached to the college experience.”

More than ever, colleges and schools must establish a strong identity and position themselves in a way that brings clarity to their core truths–meeting current consumer shifts caused by COVID as well as having the vision to remain relevant beyond. 

So while the results of the pandemic have left many schools re-evaluating who they are, their value proposition and what to invest in, it’s been shown that an investment in building a strong brand increases the likelihood of enduring. 

Today, modern brand building starts with a strong higher education brand strategy that understands that there have been fundamental shifts in where brands are built and combines intelligent strategy and creative communication. 

Modern Brand Building Requires Balance 

Modern brand building is built on a foundation that balances culture, media and marketing truths. For every new shift in media behavior there is a marketing truth that continues to endeavor. For every emergent social media platform, there are still fundamental human behaviors that are slow to evolve. For every qualifier we place in front of “influencer” and for each push to remove “funnels” from our lexicon, the more we rediscover a need to go back to past practices to inform key business goals. 

As Richard Rumelt wrote in Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, strong strategy “discovers the critical factors in a situation and designs a way of coordinating and concentrating your actions to deal with those factors.”

From a brand strategy perspective, the critical factors higher education marketers must focus on is media’s continued fragmentation, the dividing of attention and a customer journey that is more disconnected than ever. To remain relevant, visible and unique, we must connect the various “bits” and develop them into a coherent and comprehensive alignment.

In sum, strong higher education brand strategy should be rooted in modern brand building techniques that strike a balance between these new challenges and the fundamentals that haven’t changed. 

Balance brand marketing and enrollment marketing

Often thought of as siloed or divided by traditional/digital tactics, modern higher ed brands must balance brand marketing and recruitment activities across the spectrum of marketing objectives. As Binet and Fields argued “Balancing brand building and sales activation activity appropriately for the sector in which the brand operates remains a vital requirement.” Enrollment and brand marketing should seek to work in tandem to build a full funnel. 

There’s nothing worse than recruitment efforts gone unnoticed because the brand wasn’t recognizable, marketing efforts cannibalized or ownership of first party data weakened the overall institutional media strategy. All should work in concert to maximize effectiveness of brand building activities to make recruitment efforts more efficient. 

In practice, modern higher ed brands use brand marketing to reach the right audience enough times to increase preference and shape attitudes, so when recruitment campaigns are launched, these short-term activations are made much stronger. Similarly, marketers should pursue a balanced and shared scorecard to monitor the movement of both efforts to better understand which leading indicator is a reliable predictor of long or short-term success. 

Balance the “bits”

Our current media environment can best be described as fragmented, disconnected and decentralized. The customer journey is messy at best, attention is divided and interactions with brands extend beyond our control–making higher education marketing much more difficult. 

Modern higher ed brands recognize that this seemingly endless array of digital interactions demands consistency across each audience touchpoint that reinforces a brand’s distinct assets and brings balance between brand, college and program communications. 

Balancing the bits also requires understanding that the diverse collection of channels higher ed marketers have at their disposal can work together, not only to scale reach but through a mastery of craft and context can maximize impact throughout this complex ecosystem. 

Balance the collective understanding

Brands are built through collective meaning. Marketing helps to create meaning, reinforce previous interactions with a brand and get more people to experience the brand. It’s when a consensus reality has formed that a brand truly “owns” its status and attributes. For example, luxury brands don’t maintain their luxury status without a collective understanding. 

As prospective students experience a college or school, collective attitudes and perceptions are established and strengthened through a school’s advertising as well as reinforced by the actions of current students. 

Modern higher ed brands find their authentic brand promise and ensure that it resonates internally as well as externally. Effectively communicating your brand promise ensures you attract more right-fit students, which has the potential to improve future student outcomes. Similarly, improved student outcomes coupled with delivering on your brand promise increases the likelihood that the meaning you’re building with advertising is also reinforced through internal audiences. 

Balance marketing communications and community

Just like our social networks, brands have become decentralized. Audiences have just as much voice and more creative tools than ever before. Brands are now shared and scale can now be built through co-creation and community–creating meaningful incremental reach. 

Whether it’s an influencer or genuine fan, strategic partnerships with creators add value by communicating more nuanced brand codes, reducing buying friction and strengthening emotional connections to a brand. 

In practice, modern higher ed brands balance distinctiveness and messaging between paid media and their community creators. Carefully selecting partnerships with creators who enhance your brand promise brings additional value to your creative strategy and credibility.

The Modern Higher Ed Brand is Built with Authenticity

As Stephen King wrote in What is a Brand?, “[A brand] has to be a coherent totality, not a lot of bits…blended into a single brand personality…Secondly, it has to be unique, and constantly developing to stay unique, because it is through its uniqueness that the brand can offer sustained profit margins. Thirdly, this blend of appeals must be relevant to people’s needs and desires, and immediate and salient. It must constantly stand out from the crowd; it must spring to mind.”

To King, a brand was always more than its communications–and we couldn’t agree more. It starts with the desire to invest in uncovering what makes a brand truly authentic. Reflected in a compelling brand promise, balancing each new media challenge becomes much easier when anchored in a brand truth that’s consistent, unique and relevant to the needs of your right-fit students.