How to Market STEM and Technology Colleges and Universities: Strategies, Tactics and Best Practices

There is an art and a science to marketing of STEM and Technology colleges. Our 30 years of marketing of STEM and Technology universities has taught us 13 best practices and 52 strategies and tactics. Let’s review them.

52 Strategies and Tactics

Strategy

To realize prosperity, a college must play to win more of right-fit students and partners.

1. Understand situational context. Perform SWOT and benchmark peers.
2. Pick the right strategy lever. Where should the college play and how will it win?
3. Know demographic and psychographic segments. How will you meet and exceed their needs?
4. Prioritize marketing of signature programs. Let them generate unfair returns to bring the rest of the programs along.

Brand

In the sea of sameness, brands win. A brand is the DNA of an institution that affirms its purpose. The practice of branding demands that a college:

1. Define core promise that is enduring, immutable and indisputable.
2. Articulate a distinct and memorable brand image.
3. Position the college vis-a-vis peers.
4. Pursue a big idea, without which the college will be ignored.

Keyword Guide and Editorial Calendar

Google page one is destiny. If prospects can’t find the college, they won’t enroll. If corporations can’t find the college, they won’t partner.

The journey to Google page one begins by creating an institutional Keyword Guide with the following groups of keywords a college needs to claim and own:

1. Programs keywords.
2. Brand keywords.
3. Reputation keywords.
4. Location keyword.
5. Decisioning keywords.

Because fresh content is the fuel of Google, create an editorial calendar. Never create a piece of new content without identifying the keyword first You become the story you choose to tell.

Website

A website is the digital soul of an institution. All roads lead to it. Here are some guidelines worth following:

1. Merchandise hope.
2. Separate public facing and internal facing websites.
3. Don’t be a bore. A college can’t bore people into enrolling, or buying into its brand ideals.
4. Secure Google page one rankings for the college programs. If a program can’t be found, prospects won’t consider enrolling.
5. Deploy a smart program finder. Half the site visitors think a college doesn’t offer a program when it does.
6. Design a fields of study section to inspire prospective students, enhance content relevance, and establish entry points for academic programs.
7. Romance prospects with high-fidelity academic program pages. We call them money pages. Feature courses, students, alumni, faculty, career paths, and placement companies and stats. Spotlight special STEM scholarships. Show how AI is being integrated into the curriculum and pedagogy.
8. Create a career pathways section outlining possible career paths.
9. Use retail merchandising techniques to promote related programs.
10. Streamline admissions process. Avoid frustrating prospective digital native students with arcane process. Develop an accepted student microsite.
11. Make students and alumni the hero of the institutional journey, not the institution. Celebrate successful alumni.
12. Prominently display STEM designation to attract more international students who are entitled to extended practical training opportunities.
13. Express Gen-Z diversity — religious, racial, and gender in your photography.
14. Feature brand anthem video to tell your brand story and why the college matters.
15. Create a STEM lovers resource channel as an extension of the college website. Feature symposiums, summits, graduate addresses, keynote speakers, and STEM topics such as 3D printing, solar eclipses, robotics and scientific breakthroughs. Promote all this via social media.

Social Media

Turn on the charms and enhance a college’s likability with social media.

1. Tell better stories of impact and consequence.
2. Partner with influencers.
3. Promote social posts.
4. Create an editorial calendar.
5. Measure metrics.
6. Keep an eye on peer institutions.

Integrated Marketing Campaign

Colleges must fish where the fish are. They must:

1. Implement precise paid advertising campaigns with story landing pages and A/B testing. They must have the discipline to starve the losers and feed the winning ads and landing page alternatives.
2. Conduct persistent content/SEO marketing campaigns with educational, career counseling and thought leadership content.
3. Execute charming email marketing campaigns.
4. Run data-driven traditional media advertising if they have spare budgets.

Boots-on-the-Ground and Follow-Up Plan

If marketing lights the spark, then boots-on-the-ground activities fuel the fire, and follow-up shows genuine care. To be successful, universities must orchestrate all three. They must:

1. Curate tours and visits. Invest in first impressions.
2. Treat accepted students like royalty.
3. Create unique STEM competitions that attract a broader community of technology enthusiasts such as robot competitions, autonomous vehicle competitions, and more.
4. Create a large variety of STEM clubs and organizations.
5. Befriend high schools and community colleges.
6. Offer pre-college STEM programs and summer STEM camps.
7. Create joint programs with high schools.
8. Create 3+2 programs with liberal arts colleges.
9. Create, cultivate and fortify corporate relationships for internships, coops and job placement.
10. Attend extracurricular events where college prospects hang out such as Comic Cons, First Robotics competitions, Maker communities, Lego Mindstorm communities, Videogame communities, Raspberry Pi clubs, Cybersecurity clubs, Girls Who Code clubs, and Women in STEM clubs. Follow Twitch streamers.
11. Create speaker series that attract STEM lovers in the surrounding communities with topics like Machine Learning, AI in medicine, and more.
12. Throw game launch parties.
13. Influence ranking and rating agencies.
14. Optimize follow-up programs. Responsive brands win unfair share of students.

Budgets

No money, no mission. Dedicate sufficient budget.

13 Best Practices

We address this challenge by employing an investigative mindset to uncover concrete evidence and proofs, combined with a creative mindset to infuse brand appeal and craft persuasive arguments.

1. We begin our work by taking a close look at a school’s general education core and first year studies courses. How do these and other student experiences shape their mental muscle and instill broader habits of the mind. We make the case that core courses nurture the development of seven habits of long term success and fulfillment; learning, relating, organizing, creating, connecting, communicating and leading.
2. We develop sophisticated fields of study pages and tie them to degree offerings.
3. We highlight STEM designation to attract more international students who are entitled to an extended practical training after completing their program.
4. We focus on faculty imparting maturity, discipline, discernment, perspective and resilience — the things that lead young people to early success and traction. 
5. We connect the classroom to various facets of experiential learning, including internships, coops, capstone projects and undergraduate research.
6. We look for and tell rich stories of interdisciplinary centers of excellence and symposia funded by corporations, major foundations and other government sources.
7. We connect the success of STEM graduates with collaborative and teamwork aspects of their education in ways sufficiently concrete that they make sense to prospects and their parents.
8. We make a compelling case for why a STEM education is unmatched in helping students to transition into the world of practical work and the work of the future. 
9. We highlight how faculty and alumni open doors for students to gain internship experience, find job opportunities, and explore innovative career paths.
10. We underscore what employers prize in the graduates they have hired.
11. We punctuate the argument with placement details: top employers, starting salaries, acceptance rates into graduate and professional programs, and the institutions at which they are completing their advanced studies.
12. We raise ambitions of students towards realizing leadership in their fields of study.
13. We create brand lines like “Future Fit”, “Light the Way”, “Be Central”, “Talent to Shape Tomorrow”, and “Flourish!” backed by high octane communications to give tailwinds to all marketing efforts.

It takes a village to nurture STEM programs and marketing imagination to bring vibrancy to the life of these majors.

We hope we get the chance to put our talent and experience in marketing of STEM and technology programs together to advance the cause of STEM education at your institution. Please review our higher education marketing capabilities and consider partnering with us.