Enrollment Marketing for Higher Education

Your brand is your institution’s essence. It is the constant thread woven through all your institutional touchpoints that says, “This is who we are. This is what makes us different. This is why we matter.”

Done well, it is constant, clear and unmistakable. It is reflected in every dimension—your logo, your look, your messaging, your history, your images, your social media presence, your literature, your communications and your campus experience. And it reflects a cohesive, all-hands-on-deck approach that involves administration, marketing, PR, social media, faculty, recruiting and everyone else on your staff.

Given today’s hyper-competitive environment, a strong brand has never mattered more. Here are some steps to help you get there.

It starts with your brand mark

First and foremost, your brand mark must be highly recognizable in all of today’s diverse media. Whether it’s on a t-shirt, in a brochure or at the opening of a TikTok ad, your brand mark needs to instantly convey who you are. Make sure it’s unique enough to stand out in the digital world and foundational enough to anchor your literature.

Does your mark need to be contemporized?

Unfortunately, some time-worn logos fall flat in digital settings. Worse, many schools have no guidelines for how a mark should look when it’s in motion. The solution is a contemporary upgrade that makes sure it looks as resonant on Instagram as it does in your viewbook.

The good news is, brand marks can be streamlined and modernized while still maintaining their old lore. For instance, we helped one of our nation’s service academies by modernizing a crest that had been used for 25 years. The result? A logo that looks as good in literature as it does when partnered with social content or YouTube videos.

Know your key differentiators

If you’re unsure of your key differentiators, start with a brand audit—a comprehensive review of your brand’s position in the competitive marketplace. By understanding your institution’s strengths and weaknesses and comparing them to your competitors’, you can pinpoint your unique selling proposition. Once you understand exactly why students choose your school over the alternatives, you can hammer that message home.

Use storytelling to engage your audiences

Storytelling is a way of bringing clarity to concepts. Platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook offer vehicles that allow you to tell stories that bring your differentiators to life. Whether conveying a day on campus, the diversity of your student body, the creativity of your engineering students or the success of your alumni, video is ideal for enabling people to experience an emotional connection.

Make sure you have a strong media strategy

You can have a dramatic differentiator, a great brand mark and spot-on creative, but it’s guaranteed to fail if it’s not reaching the right students and parents. A strong media strategy is your assurance that your messages are hitting your targets—the candidates looking for you and your key differentiator—wherever they are.

This requires a sufficient allocation of dollars, a knowledgeable application of those dollars and a keen understanding of your target audiences. As an example, prior to partnering with Paskill, an urban liberal arts college was devoting a large portion of its marketing budget toward professional sports advertising. We suggested that they instead devote those dollars toward paid media platforms more capable of building awareness and generating leads. The impact on open house attendance and queries generated was immediate and dramatic.

Manage your communities

Institutions that don’t monitor and engage with their social communities risk enabling others to define their brands. Control the narrative by finding fresh ways to speak about your differentiators. Follow conversations, track feedback trends, address concerns and reinforce brand-building shares.

Communicate internally to ensure cohesion

Make sure members of your PR/Social team are involved in marketing conversations so they can offer their take on the current landscape of conversations concerning your institution. If a professor wins a prestigious award, if the school is recognized for a specific level of excellence or if a student achieves extraordinary things, everyone needs to know.But more importantly, internal communication is a way of making sure the look and content of your messaging is consistent across all platforms so that audiences immediately recognize it as coming from your institution.

Let Paskill be your brand expert

Paskill is an enrollment marketing firm that has been fortifying higher ed brands for more than 30 years. We know how to create brands, refresh them and finetune them so they continue to resonate with each new wave of candidates. If you’re looking for a partner to make your brand leap off the screen, reach out to us.