Navigating 2019 Higher Education Marketing Challenges
Increase enrollment. Maintain or increase diversity. Attract more out-of-state and international students. Keep retention up. Sound familiar?
For over two decades, we’ve worked with higher education institutions of all sizes and types to solve their tricky brand and marketing challenges. Consistently, we hear about similar challenges across all the hard-working, often under-staffed and under-supported teams we know. They all (at one time or another) feel like they are the only ones struggling with these issues—we’re here to tell them (and you!) that you’re not alone.
We spoke with VP and Director-level leaders of marketing (mostly, but not entirely, in the New England Region) from a mix of higher education institutions including large public institutions, small private institutions, community colleges, Ivy League schools, and a handful of law schools to dig deeper into what keeps them up at night. Here’s what we found.
External Forces Affecting Higher Education Marketing Efforts
Many issues faced by the leaders in our study were external. Let’s face it, higher education has been turned on its head and there’s a lot that’s out of our control when it comes to how students and their families are choosing to approach higher education:
The market of traditional-aged students has been shrinking for years. It’s a trickle down effect from recent decades of couples marrying later and choosing to have fewer children or no children at all. Since 2016, twenty non-profit colleges have closed.
Prospective student perception of higher education is affecting matriculation rates. Online degree programs are rising in popularity. Competency based learning (while not a new concept) is garnering attention and gaining traction.
The ROI of a university degree is itself under increased scrutiny. Influential companies like Google, IBM, and Apple have publicly stated that they don’t care if you have a degree.
Generation Z has grown up on the internet. They have all the world’s knowledge at their fingertips. They want to know why they should pay exorbitant fees for something they can get for free, any time, anywhere they want.
And we don’t even need to tell you about the economy. 67% of Generation Z say they don’t think they can even afford to go to college. They probably aren’t wrong.
Interestingly, despite these factors, hitting recruitment goals wasn’t as big of a challenge as we initially suspected it would be for most of the teams we spoke with. One institution even reported that while they may not have hit their internal recruitment goals, they were still out-pacing their peer institutions. Many respondents also referenced the need to attract more out of state students who pay higher tuition levels and create a more diverse student body.
For a few schools that were hitting their recruitment goals, there were a few respondents who acknowledged that they were adjusting their admissions process to enroll more “lower caliber” students. These are students who don’t necessarily meet the highest academic standards set by the school, but who can afford to foot the bill.
And we’re wondering: does admitting financially-stable students who will not thrive academically actually solve enrollment challenges or simply shift the issue? And is that shift at the expense of students who will be less likely to succeed in a rigorous academic program?
Unsurprisingly, retention rates were also a sore spot among respondents.
Three Ways To Weather the Storm
1. Develop a compelling and unified brand message that communicates the real value you offer. Think “outcome based” stories like how your alumni get hired right out of school or how they make more money on average than graduates from your closest competitors. Focus on “truly unique opportunities” like working alongside big brands or known public figures.
2. Build yourself a robust team. They should be capable of telling stories across the many fast-paced technology platforms that incoming students will use to research their college and university options. Leverage your current students and really listen to their feedback—they’ll know what’s popular, how people are using it, and what made them choose your institution in the first place.
3. Be consistent but flexible in your efforts. Learn from failures and proceduralize successes.
Sound impossible? We get it—many challenges also come from within institutions themselves.
Internal Challenges Faced By Higher Education Marketing Teams
Whether the university or college was large or small, there was a consistent set of internal obstacles our respondents reported.
Data-Driven Decision-Making
Data has become a big deal. More and more higher education C-levels are demanding data to back up institutional successes—and they’re probably even more interested in it when it’s time to approve your marketing budget. However, there’s often a misconception of how “easy” it is to pull numbers.
In reality, grabbing, deciphering, and making decisions based on data is a time-consuming and extremely strategic process. And that’s if your data collection is even set up correctly. We find many clients “have an Analytics account” but haven’t set up any goals or configured their dashboards. Most haven’t started actively using Tag Manager, either–which leaves them with incomplete or not-so-useful data.
Twice the Work, Half the Team
We asked respondents what their “biggest headaches” were when it came to their marketing efforts, and whether their internal teams were small (2-4), medium (5-8), or large (20+). On average, teams of 3-5 people were responsible for handling overall strategy, publications/print, copywriting, alumnae magazine, PR, etc..
As you can imagine, one of the most common headaches reported was not having enough resources to achieve the goals expected of them by their institution. Additionally, many of them were also facing technology challenges like out of date software and clunky, difficult to use course catalog configurations.
Who’s Steering the Ship?
Decision-making hierarchies that often lack clear delineation of responsibilities and roles creates paralysis for many departments. Team leaders are encouraged to “take ownership” of marketing efforts, but then can’t make decisions without running options by a larger committee who either struggle to make decisions or may not meet regularly enough to keep projects moving at a reasonable pace. Many interviewed noted that “squeaky-wheel projects”—department heads vying for homepage space or large spreads in print collateral—or other un-prioritized requests often derailed higher level marketing efforts.
And Where Are We Going?
This continual cycle of distraction and inertia is compounded by another problem: communicating the need for consistent messaging and branding across all campus websites, print materials, and marketing collateral. One marketing leader of a large institution observed that they have 600 people on campus who touch communications in some way and it’s a real challenge to keep the overarching messaging consistent.
Many teams don’t know how to talk about how marketing decisions are made, so they often have trouble telling an adamant department head why an arbitrary web request won’t be honored.
That’s when teams turn to people like us for help.
How Agencies Can Help Higher Education Teams
Don’t get us wrong: everyone we interviewed is a dedicated professional who truly, passionately cares about the work they do and believes in the value their institution provides. However, many of them are lacking the support of their organization and could use the help of an external team that can teach them how to lay the foundation for strong marketing efforts and how to organize their team around a set of shared goals and data-driven solutions.
Almost all of our interviewees understood the importance of analyzing data, determining the ROI of their efforts, and using all of that information to shape their future marketing endeavors. Many also are aware they’re not employing as many modern techniques as they could be because they’re either strapped for time, funding, or human resources– or, most often–the frustrating combination of being short on all three.
Hiring an experienced agency can alleviate some of these concerns; we can become those extra team members an institution needs for short-term projects and we can be the guides they need in understanding how they can take the reins of their marketing efforts and lead a campus-wide initiative for on-brand communication. Testing assumptions - And we have the time and skills available to do the necessary testing to figure out what will work and what won’t on your chosen platforms.
The One Strategy That Cuts Across Internal And External Higher Education Marketing Hurdles
Use Data Not Feelings To Make Decisions
And then get comfortable saying one little word: No.
No in this context is not a negative—and, let’s be honest, you’re going to need to be a little more specific than just saying no. But learning how to say no to projects that are not part of your institution's overall marketing goals will help you better prioritize the projects you do take on. It will also help you communicate more effectively with departments who are likely unaware of all the work that goes into planning, producing, and distributing university communications.
People want to be heard and it’s usually way easier to let team members know their idea isn’t going to make the cut when they can see a clear reason for why a decision was made.
Consider this friendly, data-backed no:
“We’re not going to include that link in our main navigation anymore because in our user testing we found that only 5% of all site users are clicking it.”
To this one:
“We’re not including that link in the main navigation anymore.”
The latter might be considered arbitrary or dismissive, but the former provides a data-backed rationale for why that link will be removed. The requestor may not like it, but they’re likely to feel better about it—even if it’s just because there’s a tangible metric behind the decision and it’s not just because Mr./Ms. Marketing Department didn’t like their idea.
When you say no, what you should really be saying is, “We’re strategically prioritizing these activities in order to meet specific goals.”
Let Us Be The Bad Guys
Seriously! We are happy to be the ones to tell the president why a carousel on your homepage is the worst idea ever or why the Dean of Student Life can’t “just” change her site’s colors to something she likes better. It sounds stressful, but in reality, teams are really excited to work with us to understand the challenges involved in higher education marketing and to be a part of the team that’s helping to set a new course—even if it’s as simple as participating in a brainstorming session.
Our team loves to help schools identify their most important organization goals, dig deep into Analytics data to support or disprove existing and proposed strategies, and create institution-specific marketing plans that help them achieve their goals. But most importantly: we help the many departments participating in the process work together as a team.
“I’ve never heard those two people agree on anything. How did you get them in alignment in just one meeting?”
At the end of the day, we can have all the technology and information in the world at our fingertips, but we still need to have a smart, driven, excited team of people running the show behind it. We can help you build that team and teach you how to use data to make smart, targeted decisions to overcome all the internal and external hurdles your marketing team faces every day.
We’re excited about the future of higher education marketing, we hope you are, too.
Let’s talk about how we can help you today.