Higher Education Marketing Plan Development Agency Best Practices

There is substantial upheaval in higher education. Colleges and universities are navigating a complex landscape characterized by demographic shifts, technological advancements, economic pressures, evolving student expectations and even outright questioning the value of college education. An institutional marketing plan is crucial for colleges to navigate these complexities. It helps them attract and retain students, enhance their brand, differentiate from competitors, and achieve strategic goals. By leveraging a well-developed marketing plan, colleges can ensure they remain competitive, relevant, and successful in an evolving market.

I. Strategy

Colleges don’t play the game of strategy for the sake of playing. They  play to win.

1. Understand Your Situation

Begin with a discovery. Size up at your situation. Glean insights from market research. Perform a SWOT analysis. Benchmark against peers.

Know whether you an struggling, striving or an arrived institution. Know whether you are an underdog, small giant or a wonder dog. Know the sources of your revenue: tuition, research, grants, government support. Know whether you cater to first generation in college families or children of working professionals.

2. Pick a Strategy Lever

Determine which strategies you will deploy: focus; lead with strengths; expand bright spots; open new channels; play where others aren’t playing; zig when others are zagging; up the game; deploy “Both And” thinking; offer guarantees.

3. Address Psychological Segments

All colleges know how to position the institution for demographic segments of the market — high school students, transfers, graduate students, international students, online students, and more. But we’ve learned that successful colleges position themselves for psychological segments of the market: underdogs, arrived, ambitious, etc.

4. Prioritize Marketing of Signature Academic Programs.

Know and market your signature programs, program portfolios and mission-oriented academic programs. Invest lion-share of your marketing budget in signature and program portfolios and use the returns they generate  to market the remaining programs. 

II. Brand

In the sea of sameness, brands win. A brand is the sum of all experiences, be they virtual, experiential or architectural interactions. It is the DNA of an institution that affirms its purpose, defines its values and ideals, creates distinction and is the foundation of its reputation. A brand transcends marketing campaigns. It attracts right-fits and dissuades wrong-fits. It builds a community of brand believers.

1. Define Core Promise

Core promise is not a claim, or theme or a slogan. It is a benefit for the prospective student. It pays to promise a benefit which is unique and competitive, and the degree must deliver the benefit you promise. Most marketing promises nothing. Large promise is the soul of success.

It pays to boil down your strategy to one simple promise – and go all the way in delivering on that promise.

2. Define Brand Image

Speak with one brand voice to all audiences, but strike different notes for each segment of students, alumni, donors, partners and influencers. Elevate brand image to convey quality.

3. Position the College

How you position your college vis-à-vis competitors in the market place will ultimately bring prosperity. We benchmark competitors and know the unique position that you hold in the hearts and minds of the prospects and their influencers. This is equivalent to articulating your unique selling proposition.

4. Pursue a Big Idea

Unless your marketing is built on a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. It takes a big idea to jolt the prospect out of indifference – to make people notice you and take action. Look for one. Articulate it. Express it.

III. Keyword Guide

Higher education institutions are content factories. Unless they inform the content with a Keyword Guide, they will struggle to realize their enrollment, fundraising and reputation goals.

Using basic keyword research tools, craft a Keyword Guide that contains clusters of keywords and phrases spanning strategic plan priorities, academic programs, brand ideals, and areas of thought leadership, research, innovation and intellectual capital. Lay claim to the keywords begins with an intentional plan. Categories in the Guide should include academic program and research keywords, brand positioning keywords, thought leadership and reputation keywords, decisioning keywords, and location keywords.

Since more than half of searches are now voice activated, incorporate frequently asked questions and natural language phrases in your Keyword Guide.

Inform university magazine department names, categories, tags and editorial calendar with the institutional Keyword Guide.

Also inform college blog names, categories, tags and editorial calendar with the institutional Keyword Guide.

IV. Website

The website is not just the digital soul of a college but it should be the #1 inquiry and application generation tool. It should increase online giving rates and fortify college reputation.

1. Merchandise Hope

Make the website persuasive, delightful, conversion-friendly, and beautiful.  Wow prospects. Be a merchant of hope.

2. Public Facing vs. Internal Facing

The sole goal of your public website is to attract, engage and convert prospective students, faculty, staff and partners. Guide current students, faculty and staff to their own private portals.

3. You Can’t Bore People Into Buying From You

Involve the student. Treat them with dignity. Charm them. Inspire them. Get them to buy from you and buy into you.

4. Google Page One Rankings

If people can’t find the major you offer on Google page one, they simply won’t inquire or apply to your program. 90% of people either never go to page 2, and the few who do almost never click on listings there. SEO Optimize your website to ensure it is ranked on Google page one.

5. Program Finder

If prospects can’t find the program on your website, they won’t inquire or apply to your program. Norman Nielsen Group research shows that because of poor website user experience, almost half (48%) of prospective students didn’t realize that the university offered the program that they were looking for even when it did. Invest in building an effective and user-friendly program finder.

6. Romance Prospects With High-fidelity Academic Program Pages

They are the “money pages” on a website used by value-minded prospects and their families to make their college choices. Build them with the right balance of persuasion architecture, science of conversions, and beauty. Assure prospects that the value of their degree far exceeds its cost.

7. Use Retail Merchandising Techniques

Use retail merchandising techniques such as showcasing related programs, 3+2 programs, and availability of special scholarships. This will pay dividends.

8. Accepted Student Microsite

In today’s world, the college application is the new inquiry. Enrollment managers can’t expect admitted students to accept their offers and simply show up. They must continue to romance them until they show up on campus. A helpful admitted student microsite is just one of many tactics successful schools use to usher students along.

9. Students and Alumni, Not the Institution, Are the Real Heroes of Your Story

A college is enabling its students to realize their destinies. Celebrate their victories. Tell stories of them solving the consequential problems of humanity. This will create a community of happy students, brand ambassadors, influencers, referral streams and reliable feeders for new like-minded students. Focusing on them will effectively transform your decision funnel into an inverted funnel where thriving students attract like-minded prospects.

10. Express Gen-Z Diversity

Gen-Z are color blind, faith blind and gender-blind. To them double and triple majors are the norm. They are digital natives. They are data and research driven. They are self-directed. They respect brands with values. They have a voice and want to be heard. They are entrepreneurial. And they are stressed by existential crisis of climate change, cost of education, and managing parent expectations.

Show a full-throated expression of this diversity and support in your website communications.

11. Feature Brand Anthem Video

A brand anthem video is a powerful marketing tool that distill the argument for a college brand’s essence, and reason for its being in a concise and impactful manner. Feature it prominently in your website experience.

V. Social Media

Social media carries two burdens: it must engage, educate and lead both prospective and current stakeholders.

1. Manage college brand perceptions by keeping your social media profile info current. Select the right social platforms.

2. Post engaging content that’ll resonate with your prospects. Tell the stories of your students, faculty, alumni, thought leaders, and major cultural influencers. Share career outcomes stories. Share learning resources from the college and beyond. Promote campus events and speakers.

3. Partner with influencers to piggyback on their followers.

4. Promote your posts to new audiences. Use hashtags judiciously.

5. Create an editorial calendar and follow it.

6. Measure metrics like engagement, followers and sentiments.

7. Keep an eye on peer institutions. Get inspiration from social media of brands you admire.

VI. Integrated Marketing Campaigns

Fish where the fish are. Allocate marketing dollars to digital channels where students roam. Invest marketing dollars in both traditional and digital channels where influencers live.

Audiences, messaging and channels are the foundations of integrated campaigns. Orchestrate them to attract, engage and convert prospects and other key stakeholders.

1. Paid Advertising

Hunt like sharks, and don’t feed like whales. Implement innovative paid advertising approaches tailored to the preferences of right-fit students including micro-segments, look-alikes, A/B testing, machine learning, big-data algorithms and affinity groups. Consider advertising in paid Google, appropriate paid social and paid digital radio channels.

Steer prospects to captivating landing pages infused with brand essence, high-quality storytelling, and key differentiators. Embed brand essence, return on investment (ROI) insights, and compelling facts into a persuasive argument.

Monitor the prospect journey and campaign performance meticulously. Be decisive in making tough calls with results of A/B testing. Feed the winners, and starve the losers.

Beyond paid advertising, embrace inverted admissions funnel strategies and tactics to expand outreach.

2. Inbound/SEO Marketing

Google page 1 is destiny. Prospects trust schools that are found on page one. Leads generated from organic rankings out-convert paid advertising leads three-fold. The most desirable prospects prefer to “discover” the college of their choice through “accidental finds” on page one of Google. Organic inquiries often result in long-term relationships with universities and exhibit lowest attrition rates.

Know the five buckets of ranking factors that help attain Google page one rankings: URL, on-page, links, social sharing and local. There is no better way to create inbound links and social sharing than consistently producing high-quality, share-worthy, inclusive content to satisfy the Google freshness ranking factor. Inform creation of all new content (news, social media, university magazine, blogs, website, etc.) by the institutional Keyword Guide.

Showcase compelling alumni stories, student experience, infographics, ROI statistics, videos, quizzes, and contests across your website.

Ensure that the content displayed in search engine results is compelling and enticing.

Continuously monitor your search engine rankings and website traffic to identify top-performing content and adjust your focus accordingly.

3. Email marketing campaign

Email marketing achieves optimal results when targeting house lists, undergraduate alumni lists, and through joint marketing campaigns with related niche organizations. It’s crucial to meticulously monitor the prospect journey and campaign performance.

4. Traditional media.

If budgets permit, create a rising tide with traditional media. Remind prospects with billboards, TV, regional/digital radio and NPR, posters, flyers and signs at bus stops and public places. Don’t waste your precious marketing dollars on newspapers.

In today’s world, where attention is scarce amidst busy schedules, traditional advertising can only succeed with truly innovative, breakthrough creative that grabs attention and compels people to pause and take notice. Invest in it.

For  TV commercials, use testimonials with credible students and alumni, show how your degree solved a problem student was facing, showcase successful alumni and how their education helped realize their dreams, use on-camera voice, reduce musical background, go factual rather than emotional, avoid animations and cartoons, and use an exciting opening.

For print ads, use a simple, 6-8 word headline with a benefit or a newsy headline, call out the prospect, use photograph with story appeal and add captions.

For billboards, use a simple, memorable 3-5 word headline with an equally memorable photograph.

VII. Boots-on-the-Ground Plan

It’s hard to achieve success with marketing alone without a good ground game and a follow-up program.

1. Curate and Orchestrate Tours and Visits. Invest in first impressions.

College visits and tours are moments of truth. Face-to-face interactions during college visits, alumni outreach, and admitted student days improve the number of high-quality leads and admissions yield.  Students remember a college that reaches out to them in a caring, personal and organized manner. Pick tour guides, volunteers, work study and junior staff smartly and direct — ensuring the talking points, presentations, touch points and tour details are all curated and orchestrated perfectly. God is in the details.

2. Treat Accepted Students Like Royalty

Hold  and encourage students and families to attend accepted student days, early orientation, and welcome receptions.

3. Befriend High Schools and Community Colleges

The more the number of high schools you visit, college fairs you participate in, school principals and teachers you meet, college counselors you befriend, community colleges you build partnerships with, the higher your success rate will be.

4. For Graduate Programs, Create Partnerships with Undergraduate Program Feeders.

Cultivate strong connections with dependable undergraduate program chairs within your university and across other institutions – regionally, nationally and internationally. A consistent influx of students from these channels forms a sturdy base for universities to expand individualized recruitment efforts.

5. Offer Pre-College Programs and Summer Camps

These are some of the most effective feeders for future enrollment.

6. Create Joint Programs with High Schools

Enable high school students complete college level courses and offer them admissions based on their performance in those courses.

7. Create, Cultivate and Fortify Corporate Relationships for Internships, Coops and Job Placement

Above everything else, outcomes and job placement are one of the top concerns of  students and their families. By facilitating corporate placements, colleges help students realize a return on their investment by helping them gain practical experience, develop job-specific skills and secure quality job opportunities. Become known as a gateway to corporate America.

8. Attend Events Where Your Prospects Hang Out

Parents today are investing in their kid’s education much earlier in their life than in previous generations. So, if you offer STEM programs, show up Comic-Con, First Robotics, Science Fairs, Audubon Societies, and other events.

9. Cultivate Strong Relationship with Surrounding Communities

The goodwill generated will pay off handsomely.

10. Influence Ranking and Rating Agencies

While colleges often maintain a complex relationship with college rankings, prospective students generally lean towards attending the highest-ranked colleges within their financial reach. Establish committees dedicated to actively influencing factors such as peer perception, student satisfaction, placement rates, and salary data to impact these rankings.

11. Optimize Follow-up Programs

Follow-up with inquiries on a timely basis. Let the faculty, directors and chairs be the face of the programs, especially with top applicants. Utilize a personalized contact strategy for every stage of the admissions funnel to maximize yield. Employ a unique contact strategy for applications to prevent melt. Leverage an appropriate CRM system. 

VIII. Budget and Calendar

1. Dedicate Sufficient Budget.

Most non-profit colleges and universities are investing between 2% and 5% of their total revenue on marketing, when they ought to be investing at least 10%. Many of them are reluctant to grow the marketing budget annually despite the fact that the pay-per-click costs and media costs are rising annually. They are also oblivious to the large sums of money (in some cases as much as 20% of their revenue) that for-profit colleges and increasingly non-profit college are investing in their marketing. More than 50 colleges are now a part of the $100M marketing club.

2. Develop A Sensible Calendar

Keep a flexible Editorial Calendar with a plan for regularly creating fresh content, new stories, consequential news, and event coverage to maintain search visibility and authority. Le the Editorial Calendar spell out content types and formats, publishing dates, content themes and topics, target audience, primary and secondary keywords, editorial guidelines, reference sources and more.

If you are seeking a talented team to assist in development of your marketing plan, see our  higher education marketing  and consider partnering with us. Elliance team has changed the institutional destiny of more than 100 colleges and universities.