Is your university simply checking marketing boxes to attract new students, or are you creating well-thought-out marketing strategies that lead to enrollments and high student retention?
More than ever, the answer lies within the results you are achieving. Until the recent past, many universities could still rely on decades-old marketing tactics (events, alumni outreach, printed mailers, etc.) that filled their enrollment pipelines with quality applicants who viewed acceptance as a near guarantee to a successful future. The advent of digital natives (Gen Z), their questioning of the value of a college education, and the proliferation of the online modality have upended higher education marketing. Traditional marketing tactics remain important, but they alone cannot fill most universities’ enrollment pipelines in the current environment. In 2024, effective higher education marketing strategies require an emphasis on digital marketing capabilities with an understanding that students are comparison shopping for postsecondary options.
The Role of Higher Ed Marketing Agencies in an Era of Change
What should you do when the marketing playbook you’ve relied on no longer delivers the same results? For many universities, the answer is to bring in support from a higher ed marketing agency. Everspring, which works exclusively with universities, brings a deep comprehension of the higher education landscape, a full understanding of the entire prospect to enrollment funnel, and over a decade’s worth of proprietary data on what works and what doesn’t in higher education enrollment marketing.
Agencies like ours restore predictability to higher education enrollment funnels, enabling universities to proactively shape their futures with confidence. The services that universities typically hire marketing agencies for include:
- Digital Advertising Planning, Buying, & Management: Executing effective digital campaigns that maximize reach and impact within budget constraints.
- Website Design, Development, and SEO Optimization: Creating visually appealing and optimized websites to enhance user experience and improve search engine rankings.
- Optimized Marketing Campaigns: Using effective digital marketing tactics to find and convert qualified prospective students.
- Custom Enrollment Content: Developing personalized content that resonates with prospective students and supports enrollment objectives.
- Strategic Marketing Consulting: Crafting tailored marketing strategies to meet institutional goals.
- Market Research and Program Consulting: Analyzing market trends and advising on program development to ensure relevance and demand.
- Integrated Technology Solutions: Implementing an integrated marketing technology stack, like Everspring’s Enrollment Marketing Platform, ensures connected data and systems across marketing and admissions.
Digital marketing's complexity demands specialized knowledge in areas like user experience (UX/UI), analytics, and marketing technology—areas where many universities might lack in-house expertise or find the investment prohibitive. Marketing agencies excel in these niche aspects, offering deep, targeted skills that enhance digital strategy effectively.
What a University Gains from Working with a Higher Ed Marketing Agency
The competitive edge that a marketing agency provides may be the difference between a profitable campaign and one that sends you back to the drawing board. Successful enrollment campaigns require targeting the right audiences, identifying the platforms they’re on, and placing messaging and creative in front of them that inspires action. It sounds easy enough, but the nuances involved in mapping the student journey, crafting compelling marketing communications, and optimizing performance are where a marketing agency—especially one with higher ed know-how—can be the difference between reaching your enrollment goals, or not.
The experience and processes that marketing agencies bring to the table will likely lead to faster and more efficient results for your university. In marketing, each campaign starts with a hypothesis, and there are no guarantees that the campaign will yield the desired results. However, expertise running similar campaigns and access to higher ed marketing data that supports the hypotheses significantly increase your probability of success. An experienced higher ed marketing agency will have proven testing methodologies that enable them to quickly optimize campaigns to find your most qualified prospects. The result of working with an agency is that universities are able to:
- Targeting the right audiences
- Creating enhanced brand awareness/recognition
- Driving conversions throughout the enrollment funnel (social follows, email signups, virtual tours, etc.)
- Generating quality leads
- Growing enrollment
- Lowering cost-per-lead (CPL) and cost-per-enrollment media costs due to process-driven optimization
Reach Your Enrollment Goals with a Higher Ed Marketing Agency
The declining student population and the ubiquity of higher education online offerings have led to an ultra-competitive enrollment dynamic. The competitive pressure has made executing a sophisticated digital marketing strategy a requirement for universities to fill their enrollment pipelines. For university marketing teams, engaging in strategic collaboration with an agency is generally a cost-effective means to boost enrollment while decreasing the cost per newly enrolled student.
How can working with a higher ed marketing agency help you reach your enrollment goals? Contact Everspring to learn more.