Top Up Your Testimonials

You need proof that your students graduate and move on to successful careers. To beef up your stock of testimonial stories, attack it from two sides – both current students and alumni. 

Collect stories of distinctive projects and programs that your current students are leveraging to create pathways to career success. Give evidence of the ways in which they are engaged in research, internships, and experiential learning opportunities that directly map to their career goals. Solicit employer testimonials and utilize industry surveys to demonstrate that these are, indeed, the skills that employers want. 

If you have particularly strong relationships with certain employers, ask them to contrast the experiences they have had with your graduate to those of other educational backgrounds. Focus on these key relationships as a distinctive advantage. 

Tap into Your Alumni

For the second category, reach out to your alumni for interviews and highlights of their successes. Invite graduates with notable successes to serve as guest speakers for leadership programs, engage them as presenters for webinars on hot topics in their field, or ask them to co-present with faculty to talk about the link between what students are learning in class and what they will need after graduation.

You can also directly involve successful alumni in on-campus programming, matching them up with groups of parents to share their experiences and successes. “Celebrity” alumni are more valuable than ever as families seek visible markers or quality. Ask these alumni for quotes that you can display prominently on your website. Create displays highlighting them for your admissions office. You can also ask them to share about the school on their own social media pages.

Tighten Up Your Career Pathways

Career services can be your best ally in demonstrating the value of your degree. Partner with your career office to get the data that you need to make your marketing efforts more compelling – job placement rates, average starting salaries, sign-on bonuses, potential industry growth rates, and other factoids. Utilize the “first destination” survey results, which most career offices collect, to design infographics to grab attention and show how your graduates are stacking up compared to averages, both for students with and without degrees.

Show how career services is cultivating good relationships with employers. Parents, in particular, want to see that there is a chance that jobs will come looking for their students. Take the time to capture photos and videos of job fairs, employer interviews, and other events. Show students having headshots taken for LinkedIn profiles, shaking hands and exchanging business cards with employers from recognizable companies, and attending resume or interview workshops. Total numbers of employer visits to campus is another statistic to gather and highlight.

Tout Your Faculty

In addition to your students, graduates, and employer partners, you can also highlight your faculty. They play a critical role in shaping your students’ college experience as well as their initial career steps. In fact, research from the Gallup-Purdue Index indicated that two of the top predictors of student success and engagement beyond college are having a faculty member who helped students get excited about an academic topic and having a faculty member who cared about them as a person. Share this research along with the relationships that students and faculty have on your campus.

Other ways to show the quality of your faculty include:

• Show off the bios of your faculty, especially those who are actively working in their fields or have significant market experience. 

• Highlight those who are frequently quoted in the media as experts, perhaps with a YouTube channel of clips where they are quoted. 

• Capture photos and video of subject-matter conferences hosted on campus that feature faculty members as speakers. 

• For an interesting twist, ask current students to interview their faculty either on current topics of interest or on their pathways to success. 

• Pump up your campus visits and reduce your visitor no-show rate by sending a preprepared email from a faculty member or department chair to families before they arrive on campus.

Talk About Your Differentiators

While tight finances will likely prevent some students from attending college at all, many others will go to your competition if they provide slightly better financial aid. To prevent this, you need to know your head-to-head value with your most important competitors and be able to highlight your differences. 

For example, if you are a smaller private college and your top overlaps are larger public institutions, they may win on published sticker price, but you can likely win on smaller classes sizes or getting students the classes they want without as much waiting. Clearly identify the benefits students see in your competitors and be ready to counter them. Focus on what your competitors don’t do well and give compelling proof of your strength in these areas. Create videos of students who transferred away from other institutions (even if you don’t want to name them), indicating their reasons for transferring to you.

By combining these kinds of evidence, you are showing, not just telling, families that you are the right investment. There should be no doubt that your graduates are getting their money’s worth, even if they have to sacrifice a bit more for it. 

While the financial aspect of higher education is certainly a key consideration for families, it presents a vital opportunity for schools to clearly articulate the exceptional value of their educational experience. Maximizing the impact of all your institutional assets – including thriving students, successful graduates, dedicated faculty, and strong employer relationships – will powerfully affirm that your institution is an invaluable and rewarding investment.

Could you use a fresh perspective on your enrollment marketing efforts—or some extra man hours to supplement your team? Let’s talk about how 5° Branding can help.

From a marketing perspective, what can we do to help our institutions position themselves for success in the face of these changes? How can we help our students navigate the new landscape in ways that will help them continue to find solutions that help them to enroll?

The OBBB’s Anticipated Impact

While the bill is still being finalized, campus financial aid offices are already gearing up for the impacts it will have on their students. The bill includes major changes to federal financial aid programs, including annual and lifetime caps on Parent Plus loans and the elimination of Graduate Plus loans. These changes have the potential to significantly limit the borrowing power of students and families, which could, in turn, put downward pressure on institutional revenue. 

In most cases, institutional budgets are not ready to simply absorb the changes by providing additional aid, which means that universities will have to make an even stronger case for their value, while also being more creative in helping students find ways to fund their education. Many graduate students, in particular, are heavy loan borrowers, which is creating particular anxiety in graduate enrollment offices across the country. 

An Opportunity for Some 

Alternatively, schools that rely less on federal funding in favor of institutional aid can stand to benefit from the changes. Their aid packages will be impacted less, presenting a stable option compared to those more reliant on federal loans. Schools with the highest tuition rates may simply be pushed out of average families’ price range when loans are limited. 

Mid-priced, mission-driven institutions could receive renewed consideration from families who previously were focused on those most expensive options. Beyond an attractive net tuition rate, they should highlight other evidence of value such as a nearby location, the personal experience of a smaller campus, and comparable career outcomes to further emphasize their high return on investment.

Communicate with Your Internal Audiences

That said, most students are oblivious to changes in regulations, and faculty and program directors may also not be informed. Marketing and communications teams should partner with the financial aid office on internal communication to both of these audiences. 

Your help in communicating the issues to campus leaders and current students will help elevate the changes to a level of importance where your institution can develop a proactive strategy instead of reacting – potentially too late. 

Focus Your Efforts

Messaging should be prepared for both those students who are and are not affected by the changes; providing clarity and reassurance of their future at your institution to minimize concerns surrounding the changes.

Request data about how many of your current and incoming students are likely to be impacted and the potential impact that could have on revenue. Identify which populations and academic programs are the most vulnerable to losing enrollment based on their number of borrowers and the amount of borrowing per student. Make these student populations your primary targets for proactive internal communication. 

The Grandfather Clause

The way the bill is written, students can still be grandfathered into the old program regulations if they do so before July. In most cases, this is too early for parents of undergraduate students to benefit, as their loans typically disperse after the start of classes in August, but many graduate programs start in the summer. If your campus has graduate programs with the option of spring or summer starts, you should prepare an outreach campaign to get students registered. 

Communicate to potential fall enrollees that the time to start is now so that they can take advantage of the older, more generous scholarship provisions. Once students are in by this date, they will continue to have access to Graduate Plus loans as long as they continue to borrow. This means that it is in a student’s best interest to borrow something, even if it is a nominal amount, in order to maintain Graduate Plus loans as an option. 

This strategy may not be self-evident to students, so communicating the grandfather clause early and often with your current and potential graduate students is critical.

Alternative Funding Sources

Demonstrate that your campus cares about affordability by providing information on outside scholarship opportunities offered by civic organizations, employers, and foundations. Create lists of resources for students to utilize to identify other funding options. 

Your university may even have financial partners who could offer options to your students for alternative loan sources. If you can create and package these sources, you can market them as part of the solutions you are proactively providing for families.

By providing the information that students need and creatively guiding them to other resources, you can mobilize students to act in their own best interests. 

For institutions that are not heavily reliant on federal aid, this is an opportunity to highlight institutional discounts as the school’s confident investment in its students’ success.

Position Your Institution as an Expert

As the details of the bill become clearer, prospective students and their families will want answers and strategies for how to navigate the new regulations. Position your university as a source of the latest information – and solutions – that families need. 

Create a page on your website dedicated to explaining the changes in loan programs and offering solutions. Host regular webinars for families to hear from your financial aid staff on how the loan programs work and how they can maximize their eligibility for alternative loans.

An Opportunity to Step Up

As the saying goes, don’t waste a good crisis. Yes, the new loan changes have the potential for negative impact on student borrowing and, ultimately, on institutional revenue. However, we can lessen that impact by proactively communicating, providing the caring and expert guidance students and families need in times of uncertainty, and making a strong case for the value of what you have to offer. For institutions with low reliance on federal aid, it’s an opportunity to position themselves as an even more attractive option in the midst of the shifts.

Check back for our next blog, which will dive in on emphasizing the value of a college degree. While these strategies are particularly important in anticipation of the OBBB, student concern around cost is a perennial challenge our teams must be prepared to tackle.

Could you use a fresh perspective on your enrollment marketing efforts—or some extra man hours to supplement your team? Let’s talk about how 5° Branding can help.

Do this. Do that. Try this. Try that. 

Have you thought about shorter YouTube videos? What about longer ones?

Maybe try this app instead of that one.

Does physical mail matter anymore? 

When it comes to marketing strategy, the questions, ideas, and suggestions are endless. And yet, Ryan Morabito, senior advisor at 5° Branding, has found time and again that marketing experts resonate with core concepts that stand the test of time. Ryan regularly shares such insights and conversation starters over on LinkedIn, prompting discussions among marketing leaders across the higher education landscape. 

We’ve gathered Ryan’s top ten posts for 2025. Take a look at what mattered most to marketing leaders. 

Everyone has a marketing opinion.
What colleges need is marketing expertise.

Most people aren’t popping into the finance department to give the accountants budget tips or poking their heads into the provost’s office to recommend a new pedagogy. And yet, when it comes to marketing, just about everybody has an opinion. It’s an understandable reality — everyone is on the receiving end of multiple marketing attempts everyday, whether they’re scrolling social media, watching television, or driving down a billboard-laden highway. 

For marketing leaders, though, the never-ending supply of marketing opinions can become a challenge. Since people experience marketing every day, they may not recognize the need for a leader with true expertise. But marketing experts make a tangible difference — that is, when they’re empowered and resourced to function as true leaders. 

Great academic leaders recognize the knowledge and expertise of a C.M.O. and other marketing professionals as valuable and actionable.

The school isn’t the hero. The student is.

Students have more choices than ever. Not only that, but they have vast amounts of information about their choices at their fingertips. In a sea of sameness, making the student the hero of their upcoming college journey can make all the difference. While the achievements and hallmarks of an institution are important to share, just naming them as selling points isn’t enough. 

Great marketers communicate their school’s brand assets as invitations for students to see themselves in the story of their college or university. They find ways to show how their institution is set up to support what the student values, desires, and hopes to accomplish. And in doing so, they help prospective students — whether high schoolers and their parents imagining what’s next or working professionals envisioning their career trajectory — see how their institution could be the ideal setting for the next chapter of their hero’s journey.

CMO = direct report to the college president.

We’ll be honest — this one caused some controversy in the comments! While many people replied with something along the lines of “Yes!” or “#fact,” others had a different perspective. 

“One size should not always fit all,” said one enrollment leader. Another suggested that being in the cabinet made a bigger difference than the reporting structure. Across the board, however, one thing seemed easily agreed upon: the CMO must have a seat at the table of leadership. One commenter summed it up well:

“The president must be intimately aware of how the lead flow is coming along as well as when funds and efforts need a boost or to be re-prioritized. When that doesn't happen, it leads to less and less prioritization of the funds towards marketing efforts. Then you get to the stage, when the president doesn't understand effective marketing, where they wonder why they are ‘using up the scarce resources of the organization.’ As one president put it when I asked what their marketing budget was, he replied, ‘what is this marketing budget you speak of?’”

This too-common story makes it clear: marketing needs a seat at the table, a well-resourced budget, and the backing of leaders at the highest levels. When the story of the school is understood and well-told internally, all stakeholders are better equipped to communicate it effectively externally.

Honest, realistic enrollment forecasts set teams up to succeed.

The demands on marketing leaders are constant. While they often work with constrained budgets and timelines, the expectations placed on marketing leaders can be very high. When it comes to enrollment goals, set them with the opinions of marketing leaders in mind — and with reality always at the forefront.

“Stretch goals are great; but let's build the budget on a realistic goal!” commented one VP for Enrollment Management and Marketing. 

Unrealistic goals — and the inevitable failure to meet them — can be a source of tremendous discouragement and even burnout for marketing teams. But wisely set, attainable goals offer a pathway to consistent success. 

Discernment is critical. 

Data matters. Measurement matters. Technology matters. And even still, at the end of the day, the human expertise of a strong marketing leader knows that those tools require capable hands.

Knowing when to go hard, when to pull back, and how to communicate in any season are key elements of higher education marketing that require “experience and intuition,” one commenter wrote. In an era when marketers list “constant pressure to keep up with trends” and “ad-hoc requests” as two of their top stressors, it’s more important than ever for marketing leaders to cultivate their discernment and apply it with confidence.

Strong marketing leaders help college presidents fulfill their missions.

For stressed college presidents facing declining enrollment and constricted budgets, it’s easy to think that less marketing spend is the route to go. But the opposite tends to be true — when higher education institutions maintain or increase their investment in marketing, the numbers improve. 

Why? Because strategic marketing leadership doesn’t only increase revenue, it decreases costs. 

When a president can focus on the mission at hand knowing that capable, collaborative marketing leaders are executing the institutional vision, their time and energy is better spent. When college presidents and their marketing leaders trust and rely on each other to complete the work at hand with excellence, all involved are empowered to leverage their gifts, talents, and skills for the good of the institution.

Perception is reality.

Many college and university leaders feel like they have a strong sense of their institution’s perception. The logic goes something like this: I’m here every day, experiencing the unique features of our campus life. I know exactly who we are, so that means I know exactly how people see us.

The problem is — internal experience doesn’t necessarily correlate to external perception. In fact, many studies show that internal and external perceptions of higher education institutions often differ significantly. 

External perceptions are easier than ever for the public to find. When prospective students receive an email from a school or see a college’s Facebook post, they may give it a thought or two. But a Reddit post about the real-life experiences at that school? Or an Instagram reel in which a current student shares a day on campus? What prospective students see in those spaces is likely going to shape their reality more than traditional marketing efforts. That’s why it’s so important that colleges both learn how they’re viewed from the outside and seek to understand the experiences of those on their campus, so that their brand voice and messaging can be an authentic reflection of their institution. 

While Reddit posts and tweets are simple to find, the greatest value lies in high-quality research that surveys perception among both internal and external stakeholders, empowering institutional leaders with comprehensive knowledge and action steps.

Prioritizing programs isn’t just a good idea — it’s essential.

When it comes to making friends on campus, “let’s prioritize programs” may not be the best conversation starter. But with ongoing discussion and shared understanding, recognizing the importance of leveraging mission-driven, profitable programs with strong outcomes can be a win-win throughout an institution. 

One commenter recommended naming the feeling of “playing favorites” as a tool for acknowledging and reducing tension. When the air is a bit clearer, it can become possible to have conversations about growth, demand, and capacity that serve academic departments while providing marketing teams with the clarity they need to highlight various programs. Oftentimes, focusing outreach on specific programs not only positively impacts them, but the school’s programs as a whole as people are drawn in by targeted efforts that introduce them to the broader institution.  

Strategic marketers are successful marketers.

As delightful as unicorns are, there’s a reason they live in the realm of magic: they’re not real. So why do we expect our marketers to be unicorns? Too often, marketing leaders are asked to have broad-ranging skills and to see the world through the lens of a crystal ball, encouraging them to make projections and decisions that may not have all the relevant factors in mind. As tempting as it may be to attempt a unicorn existence, the most effective marketing leaders recognize that the key to their success is not being able to do everything, but instead applying a strategy to everything. 

Building a strategy. Cultivating a team with diverse skills and gifts. Demonstrating the humility to foster the skills of others. That’s the magic of a good marketing leader.

Optimistic marketers create optimal momentum. 

Effective higher education marketing leaders are strategic, open to feedback, and willing to talk about hard things. They’re also optimists. While effective marketing leadership requires repeatedly rising to challenges and managing critique, the more difficult aspects of the role don’t have to set the tone of the leader.

The optimistic leader doesn’t turn a blind eye to problems. Instead, they keep the mission and vision of the institution as their guidepost, continually working toward growth with the belief that things can improve — and that marketing can be a strong part of that improvement. 

At 5°, we believe that small, data-driven and discernment-guided marketing shifts can bring about remarkable positive outcomes. We’re excited to connect with more marketing leaders in 2026, learning and working together toward flourishing higher education institutions. 

Are you ready to explore a new higher ed marketing partner? Let's talk about how 5° could come alongside your team to meet your institution’s needs. 

The latest chapter in that story is HCU’s record enrollment of 954 freshmen in the fall of 2025, a 36 percent increase from the previous year. In conjunction with a six percent growth in new transfer students and a 14 percent increase in total undergraduate enrollment, HCU is soaring past its enrollment goals. The school now has 4,693 total students, a 10 percent jump from the previous fall semester.

HCU established this new record just three years after undergoing a seismic shift: changing their name from Houston Baptist University to Houston Christian University. In explaining the reason for the name change, university president Dr. Robert Sloan emphasized the need for clarity about the university’s core convictions and the desire to reflect the diversity of denominations represented within the school’s student body, faculty, alumni, and donors. 

This refinement of who the characters are in the HCU story — and what they are all about — presented 5° with the opportunity to be part of communicating how HCU fulfills its mission and why a prospective student should consider enrolling. This storytelling included physical assets like campus banners and a full suite of admissions materials. More recently, 5° designed a new website for HCU that showcases the university’s commitment to Christ, excellent liberal arts education, and diverse student body that represents 56 states and 59 countries. 

As HCU continues to tell its story, they have a next chapter in mind: ten thousand students by 2030. James L. Steen, HCU’s VP for Enrollment Management, describes 5° as a partner that will continue to help HCU “sharpen the saw and move the needle” toward this goal. Specifically, Steen lauds two specific 5° tools — the Global Pulse Survey and Higher Ed Marketing Truths — as strategic tools that will buoy their success.

The Global Pulse Survey

When it comes to the idea that “perception is reality,” there may be no clearer example than higher education. How key stakeholders experience and describe the culture, strengths, and weaknesses of an institution has a direct impact on the institution’s reputation externally. 

To empower HCU with a clearer understanding of their public perception and identify opportunities for brand messaging, 5° surveyed alumni as well as parents of both new and returning students Global Pulse Survey (GPS). Steen credits the GPS with giving his team insights they need to better “evaluate marketing performance and strategically plan for what’s next.” 

Higher Ed Marketing Truths

Designed to bridge the gap of understanding, the Higher Ed Marketing Truths give institutions a framework for comprehending and communicating the most effective ways to tell their story. From “know your people” to “stay agile,” these truths are as simple to remember as they are essential to implement. In a higher education landscape too often defined by stress and silos, the Higher Ed Marketing Truths assess gaps and opportunities, provide clarity, and stoke creativity.

Steen says that the truths challenge the HCU team “to think differently about how we connect with prospective students and promote the HCU brand.” That’s one of the most profound elements of the truths — they provide the structure needed for marketing teams to innovate and ideate in each new season. The truths offer a lens for seeing what is so that institutions can dream, design, and drive toward what can be. 

The truths aren’t a checklist; they’re a hope-filled reality check for leaders who are eager to learn what’s working, what isn’t, and what the future can hold. 

Are you interested in bringing the Truths and the Global Pulse Survey to your campus? We’re here as true collaborators to build your dream with you. Contact us to chat about how 5° Branding can partner with your institution. 

The higher education vendor space has become crowded. As many institutions struggle with enrollment in a complex and shifting market, they often turn to vendors to help them fill in the gaps in their staffing, technology, or marketing. Education-related companies offer a huge range of services, but it can be a challenge to know which potential partners have the knowledge and experience to deliver what they promise in a meaningful way.

At many institutions, every dollar counts, and making a misstep in choosing vendors can be costly. Some institutions have discovered this the hard way, finding themselves locked into expensive, long-term contracts that are not producing the hoped-for return on investment.

As an enrollment leader, how can you tell when you have found a great partner? Look for these telltale signs:

They Do Their Homework

My daughter is starting own with her own small graphic design business. I referred one of my friends to her who own a coffee company based in Uganda. This friend had previously had a bad experience with design and was skeptical about working with someone just starting out.

Before creating the logos, my daughter thoroughly researched the business and the location where the coffee comes from. She discovered that the mountains where the coffee is grown are also known as the “Mountains of the Moon,” so she incorporated the mountains and the moon into a unique design for the project. Even my friend, a native of the area, had forgotten this nickname, so he was surprised and delighted with her research and the extra element it added to the final product.

This is how a good partner makes you feel — like you are their only client, and that they want to get to know your business personally.

They Know When to Tell You “No”

A good partner is not going to accede to your every whim. This is healthy. Part of their job is to tell you when you are about to make a mistake, especially when this mistake will waste your time and resources.

One of our partners was recently on campus with our enrollment and marketing team for a brainstorming session. Our team had a “great idea” about a new scholarship that we wanted to market, and we tried to convince our partner that this was a good idea. She was able to push back, using data, to demonstrate that not only was our idea not likely to bring us the ROI we were hoping for in tuition revenue, but it was likely to run us afoul of one of our external evaluators.

A poor partner, interested only in keeping us happy and extending a contract, might have given in to what we wanted, but she was able to stand her ground because she knew she was acting in our best interest.

They Worry as Much as You Do

One of my favorite partners was a CRM technology group that I worked with at a previous institution. At the time, they were small, just a little more than a startup. I was amazed at the level of service they gave my team. We actually looked forward to our weekly update meeting with them because they always started the meeting with the insights that they had seen in our data within the last week. They walked us through the data, pointing out problems and opportunities and showing us where our efforts were having an impact and where we could be doing better.

Because of this, we knew that our success was as important to them as it was to us. They were committed to us doing well and they worried in between our meetings if they saw something unexpected. This is what you want. Having someone who worries about some aspect of your business means one less area where you have to focus your limited attention. With a partner like this, you are much more likely to catch it quickly when something is wrong, and your partner is more likely to be able to suggest timely solutions to fix it.

They Give You Homework

A vendor is someone who you pay and they do the work. A partner is someone who involves you in the process. Part of the value that you get from the relationship is the opportunity to learn best practices and apply them. A good partner does not keep you dependent on them forever but empowers you and your team to be better professionals. A good partner amplifies your capacity.

In one of my partner relationships, I had a consultant who would always end our meetings with, “And your homework for the week is….” She would proceed to outline what the members of our team should be doing in the interim between calls. I loved this. I felt like it was a major value-added element to our partnership. When this consultant left the company and was replaced by someone new, I would end our meetings by asking, “So, what is our homework for the week?” Pretty soon the new person caught on and started preparing assignments for us.

They Speak in ROI

It would be fantastic to be friends with the people in your partner company, and this often happens, but at the end of the day, you need them to bring you results. As a campus leader, you will be judged by whether they can help you get across the finish line. One of the most important points in the evaluation process is listening for whether your potential new partner can speak with concrete examples of what they have achieved and what they can achieve for you.

A few years ago, my campus leadership was searching for a partner to help us with lead generation for some of our programs. We had come down to the choice of two vendors. One vendor was less expensive and told a big story. They had a really impressive presentation and promised big numbers. They wined and dined and gave a lot of good theory, but they were a little short on examples from previous clients. The other company was much more understated. They quoted us a higher, although competitive, price, and were really transparent about what they believed the risks and the results would be. Unfortunately, we chose the first option, and six months in, we realized we had made a big mistake.

In partnerships—as in many things—slow, steady, and proven often wins the race.

As you and your team tackle the challenges of this critical moment for higher education, you have more choices than ever in who you choose for your partners in the journey. Look for these qualities in your vendors and they will become true partners to get you where you want to go.

Are you ready to explore a new higher ed marketing partner? Let's talk about how 5° could come alongside your team to meet your institution’s needs.

For more than 130 years, Asbury University has been recognized and respected for a distinctive commitment to academic excellence and spiritual vitality. Recent years have seen much momentum at Asbury from the combination of increased enrollment, new academic offerings, strategic partnerships, and community engagement initiatives. As a result, the AU enrollment and marketing team recognized a growing need to address several priorities related to the institution’s website. 

Asbury’s strategic communications team partnered with 5° Branding for a complete website redesign, content strategy and transition to a cloud-based WordPress hosting service with 24/7 technical support. The new Asbury website needed to accomplish many things, including better conveying the school’s visual brand, campus culture, student experiences, and academic excellence to support ongoing recruitment efforts. 

What We Discovered

It had been several years since the Asbury site had undergone a complete rebuild. Like many university sites, this resulted in more than a thousand pages, competing layers of site navigation and inconsistent program information. 

Through interviews with internal groups, the 5° team identified specific goals for the new site:

• Improve content strategy through consistent, engaging program content 

• Elevate AU’s academic excellence, unique programs and impressive student outcomes

• Improve global navigation and overall site structure

• Extend and enhance the visual brand throughout the entire site for a consistent user experience

• Leverage the AU team’s strong media library and internal capabilities

This project was also an opportunity to implement key student segment strategies from recent research efforts and to extend current recruitment messaging throughout their site. 

A True Partnership

For comprehensive projects such as this, the best results typically stem from strong partnerships. AU’s strategic communication team led all efforts to update photo and video content sitewide. Collaboratively, team members removed, consolidated, or moved several hundred pages to internal sites. Regular communication across faculty and staff channels supported efforts to gather and update content for each of Asbury’s academic programs.

“The 5 Degrees team deeply understood both the mission of Asbury University and the practical needs of today’s prospective students. The new site is visually compelling, mobile-first, and highly intuitive—exactly what we need to engage students and families as they navigate the college search process. The 5 Degrees team brought expertise, creativity, and a true partnership mentality to every step of the process.”
—Jennifer McChord, Vice President of Enrollment & Marketing, Asbury University

Improving User Experience with Recruitment in Mind

The new Asbury.edu site has a page organization and visual flow that authentically reflects the university’s culture. Intuitive paths for key user segments connect prospects with relevant content. 

“I expect it to be much easier for prospective students and families to find the information they need,” said Abby Laub, Asbury Director of Strategic Communications. “This improved user experience with the stronger visual aspects of the website will enhance our enrollment and marketing efforts and make our online presence a true reflection of the in-person experience that our students come to know and love.” 

The improved user experience and engagement is evident through a year-over-year decrease in reliance on search to access content, decreased bounce rate, and increased average engagement time per active user. Additionally, a higher percentage of the site’s users are returners rather than new users compared to last year’s user breakdown. 

Connecting People, Not Users

An important element contributing to making the site more engaging was an intentional effort to integrate the student voice across the site. While this has technological advantages for “user” engagement, it more importantly communicates the unique Asbury community that will welcome the person who is exploring the university via the screen. This was achieved through written but also multimedia content. On the backend, implementation across the site was aided by assigning unique categorization within AU’s larger newsroom.

A Sustainable System

5° understands that a website project doesn’t end on launch day. Care was taken to build stronger internal governance protocols, implement cloud-based hosting, and centralize management of faculty bios and news articles to be efficiently repurposed across the site. These improvements, along with training resources and documentation, equipped the Asbury team for ongoing success.

“5° made it easy for us to ‘own’ this project once they were done,” Laub said, “and their team members were there for any question – big or small.”

Ready to chat about how a partnership with 5° could boost engagement and extend your school’s brand? Let's talk!

There have been so many changes, proposed changes, or anticipated changes, that it is hard to find solid ground for institutions to plant their feet and market confidently to their audiences. At the same time, marketing and communications offices have had to be ready to handle a crisis at any moment, from a number of possible threats. At this moment, many an executive council is running possible scenarios for changes, to which their marketing teams would need to respond.

It's a high-pressure and difficult situation. After all, one small body cannot cover a whole big net. So what is the best way to respond to an unpredictable, vague sense of crisis? As higher ed communicators defend our institutional “net,” let’s draw some lessons from our goalkeeper friends who defend the goal against countless shots.

Get Out in Front

One tactic goalkeepers use to control the risk is to aggressively leave the net and even the goalie box to get to the ball before any opponents could get close. This can be a risky move. If the keeper misjudges her speed or skill, the ball, or other players, someone could get past them for an unguarded shot on goal. However, this tactic often works. Keepers often are able to get to the ball and “disarm it” well before it becomes a one-on-one situation, which would put the goalie at the disadvantage.

In the marketing world, the equivalent might be trying to anticipate the general direction of public sentiment and regulatory changes and get out in front of them. We have seen this in response to changes around DEI, with institutions carefully combing their websites to anticipate what words and phrases might be likely to draw additional attention.

In soccer, the key to getting out in front is to be able to predict the movement of the ball and the flow of play. For colleges and universities, simply reacting to changes in policies or shifts in the landscape can put them behind on recruitment efforts or serving students effectively. If, for example, it is clear that federal support for higher education is likely to shrink, they should consider auditing every area of the institution that the federal government touches and prepared to pivot.

For example, what adjustment would need to be made if the proposed changes to financial aid take place? Marketing and crisis management teams can work together to continually assess the “top five most likely vulnerabilities” and have the talking points ready for each one to hand off at a moment’s notice.

Let the Ball Clear

Another, almost opposite, tactic that goalkeepers utilize is to be patient and let the play unfold to increase predictability. Many times, if the goalie waits, one of the defenders is able to steal or redirect the ball and clear the danger. In this strategy, the team can carefully monitor everything that is happening but not commit major time and energy to any particular effort until it is clear that it will become a reality. In this way, the team can avoid wasting resources on concerns that never materialize.

A good example of this is the recent rescinding of visas for international students. One day they were happening and institutions were writing off all international enrollment as too risky. But from one day to another the landscape changed. While many institutions still have healthy skepticism about their international enrollments for the fall, hopefully they did not completely divest from this market or stop marketing to their international applicant pools.

The trick to this tactic is to bring the rest of your community along with you. In environments of uncertainty, people are easily ruled by fear, and they feel better when others are fearful, too. They can even get angry or offended when others refuse to panic or justify their fear. This is when a level head and a calm approach is the most necessary. Resist the push to chase every phantom, and help others deal with their fear, as well.

Play as a Unit

Another strategy goalkeepers use is directing other players as if they were chess pieces. One-on-one, the goalie is at the disadvantage. This is why penalty kicks can be so devastating. The attacker always has the element of surprise. To avoid this, the goalie must utilize the other players on the team to avoid one-on-one situations. This means sizing up the opponent’s players and matching defenders with them. It means clearly communicating with the team which of the above tactics – aggressively anticipating the ball or waiting for the play to develop – the goalie will use. It is involves giving frequent audible commands to other players and trusting that they will be followed.

This strategy is focused on team play rather than individual performance. This tactic has been used successfully not only within institutional teams but also among colleges and universities nationally. Over the past few months, institutions have worked together to confront common challenges, with many pursuing all of their lobbying through professional associations and state groups. Institutions who have had to stand on their own have taken the most hits. One-on-one, you are always at a disadvantage, but communicating as a team can help to even the odds without incurring high risk.

Keeping Guard in Uncertain Times

Higher education is taking a lot of shots right now, with institutions doing their best to “protect the net” and move into a more secure future. Marketing has a key role to play in helping our colleges navigate and respond to the sudden shifts that schools are likely to experience as the market changes around us. Like a goalie, communications and marketing teams can use tactics like getting out in front, letting the issue clear, and playing as a unit to help get their institutions through the game safely.

At 5° Branding, we believe strongly in the power of independent higher education as a force for good in the world. If you’re looking for a strategic partner, let’s talk!

One of the least talked about, but often most important, elements in the success equation actually happens before students step into the classroom for the first time—smart marketing.

Just as colleges emphasize to students the importance of “finding a good fit,” it is equally important that colleges seek out the students who will be happy and successful in the environments that they offer and then successfully onboard those students to help them acclimate quickly. That does not mean that the students who enroll should be demographically the same, or even necessarily academically similar. It does mean that their goals and expectations for their college experience align with your institutional characteristics and culture.  

Be clear about who they are

The first step in this effort is often analyzing your historical data to better understand which students choose your university and which ones stay through to finish. By looking at the characteristics that your most successful students have in common, you can actively search for those students when you purchase search names and when you decide which markets to target with digital advertising.

Develop personas

Sometimes it can be helpful to develop a set of personas for the students who most find themselves thriving in your community. Is it the small-town athlete who is looking for a practical degree in something like business and wants to stay local on graduation? Is it the first-generation student who has big dreams of being the first in their family to achieve a professional degree? Or maybe it is the unconventional thinker, who wants to combine diverse interests and chart their own course for an adventurous life?

You will certainly have a few personas represented on campus, but conducting focus groups and assessing student characteristics can often provide a clear sense of the students for whom you have the most appeal.

Avoid unintended effects of targeted marketing

As you work to find the students who are most likely to succeed and persist on your campus, it is important to keep an eye on preserving the diversity of the student body. The origin of the word “university” itself comes from the idea of bringing different kinds of people and different perspectives into one community to learn from each other. It is important that institutions not become like clubs of students from the same backgrounds. One of the biggest benefits of a college education is the ability for students to learn from faculty, staff, and students with other life experiences.

The idea, however, is to draw in students who value the same types of opportunities, whether that is learning in small classes, engaging closely with faculty, having hands-on-learning experiences, connecting socially in certain ways, participating athletically, or engaging in service in the community. It is these shared values, and the focus that each institution places on various aspects of its identity that makes a good match and helps students feel like they have made the correct choice in their college selection.

Be clear about who you are

Understanding your students allows you to clarify your messages about who you are, what you have to offer, and who you serve best. The clearer that you are with your personas and the strengths of your institution, the more likely you are to be able to attract the types of students that will find a great match and retain. It is your way of planting your flag on a hill and letting students rally to it instead of searching for students in every valley.

To do this well, you will need to understand the goals and motivation of each of these persona groups. The more motivational data you can collect on your target audiences – either through analysis of existing data or conducting new surveys and focus groups – the better you will be able to speak to and attract your audience.

For example, the University of Pikeville identified two institutional strengths – affordability and community – that have contributed to a retention rate topping 90%, a near 20% increase over the last decade. They’ve seen the practical impact of those strengths not only through high retention numbers but also through a rise in transfers returning from other universities.

Dr. Lori Werth, UPIKE’s Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, told the Appalachian News-Express that those returning students “didn’t realize the affordability here or that community is so very important. Having people who know that is vital.” These insights gained through returning transfers will allow UPIKE to refine messaging around those strengths to attract students with those financial and community-centric motives.

Connect students to campus early

Once you know the type of students who are your best fits for retention and you have clarified your messaging, it is critical to start training your top prospects for success. This is a philosophical shift for many institutions.

To do this, think about your most interested students as already enrolled. Start early connecting students to campus to help them understand what it takes to be successful in your environment. The more relationships that students can build before arriving on campus, the more likely they are to adapt early and easily to campus culture, setting them up for success.

One way to do this is to develop marketing pieces that introduce campus processes and people as “team members” to help students make the transition. For example, reaching out to students before they arrive to offer them access to career resources and assessments can help them attach to the institution quickly. Outreach messages from current students, advisors, faculty, and club leaders can also start students on the path to connecting and adapting to campus culture.

Market thoughtfully to support student success

When you focus only on addressing persistence after the fact, you miss utilizing one of the most powerful levers available to improve student success. By knowing your current students and the characteristics that make them successful on your campuses, you can better identify what messages you should be sending and which audiences will respond. You also can engage students earlier, helping to acclimate them to campus culture and launching them to early – and long-term – success.

Aligning college brands to find “right fit” students is something 5° Branding does best, and we’d love to help your institution do just that. Let’s talk!

The father of a high school senior relayed the following story. His son had applied to several universities, two of which required an additional piece of documentation to complete the student’s application. One communicated the need for the missing item directly to the student via email, but the other sent a letter “to the parents of” to request it. Guess which one got action?

The parents asked the student about it, and the student took action. Later, the son said, “Oh, yeah, and I think the other place emailed me about that, too.” To which the father replied, “And you were going to mention that when?”

In college marketing, we often think of parents as ancillary to our strategies to woo prospective students. We treat them as secondary influencers of our primary audience, perhaps only including them in questions of financing the education. Often, however, they are drivers of the college search. This is especially true in an age when students are slower to step forward as individuals and the cost of college raises doubts about return on investment. College attendance is a family decision, and students frequently rely on their parents, not only for wise counsel, but also in orchestrating the college search process.

Next-Level Parent Involvement

Gone are the days when every teenager sits for the driving test on their first day of eligibility and takes a road trip with friends to visit colleges. For the current generation, parents are frequently both close confidantes in the process and the ones identifying the initial choice set. They often spend more time than the student researching school characteristics, and they often reach out to school counselors and other parents for feedback to help their students form or refine their list of candidate schools.

Just ask your admissions office. When was the last time a prospective freshman called to make their own reservation for a tour? It is almost always the parent, and in fact, in most cases, it is the mom who organizes the calendar and handles all of the logistics. Because of this, mom also has a strong influence on which places get visited. Many a college choice has been made because mom decided to add a school to the family visit “while they were in the area.”

This is not a surprise when we think about it, and yet, how much of our marketing efforts are focused on this part of the equation? While we frequently arrange student focus groups, focus groups for parents—or even only for moms—are much less common.

Speaking Mom’s Language

Think about the many ways mothers are likely to influence the search. Moms care about cost and affordability, financial aid opportunities, safety, academic reputation, support services, and the quality of dorms. They have invested their lives in their kids, and there is no way they are going to hand them over to a place that doesn’t look like it has its act together.

There are so many potential touchpoints your team can have with parent in the communication process. They are more likely to go through the mail than their students, so they are much more likely to be the first viewer of any printed material you send. Making your viewbook appealing to them or sending postcards with easy to see dates and and clear registration links could give you the edge in getting noticed and visited.

Parent in general, but in many cases, moms in particular, are concerned about their students missing deadlines or forgetting to do something. If you want a student to take action, recruiting the mom might be the most efficient way to make sure it happens, so addressing individual calls to action or even whole mailings “to the parents of” can actually make a lot of sense if you are trying to move students down the enrollment funnel.

This is an area where your alumni and current parents can really help you. Nothing speaks louder to a potential customer that a current happy customer. Adding testimonials from satisfied parents to your communication flow can have a big impact. This is especially true if you have willing repeat customers who have sent multiple children to your institution.

Engaging Parents IRL

Some schools go beyond just communication and actively engage current parents in the recruitment process. Parents might participate on panels for open houses, attend college fairs, or send individual emails or handwritten notes to prospective families. Some of your parents may even be willing to meet other families for lunch or dinner to talk about their experiences.

Parents are often hungry for good information and sources of truth to guide their students. Some parents do not have college experience, while others have only their own outdated experience. By actively and consistently reaching out to parents in your communication, you are filling in that knowledge gap and establishing your institution as a generous source of expertise in the process.

Often, I think our teams hesitate to “barrage” parents with too many communications, or we fool ourselves into thinking that if we communicate directly with the student, we will be the ones to convince them to step forward and take control of their destiny. Neither of these assumptions is correct. Parents are already intimately involved in the college search process, and we ignore them at our own peril.

Continuing Connection

Your communication with parents doesn’t have to stop with enrollment, either. Clear and consistent communication with your current parents can be a powerful contributor to your retention efforts, as well.

A mother relayed this story about her daughter’s college, which began sending parents weekly emails after their daughter enrolled. The emails publicized events, made recommendations, advertised campus store sales, and more.

“At first, I thought it was kind of strange and maybe a bit annoying,” she said. “After a few more weeks, though, I started to look forward to those emails. I would imagine what my daughter was doing, think about what she might need, and feel connected and grateful to the university for keeping me in the loop.”

The emails changed from spam to part of the retention effort.

Don’t underestimate the power of the parent. Marketing to them can be as important—occasionally even more important—than getting in front of the student. Recruit the parents, and you have recruited powerful allies in your enrollment efforts.

5° Branding can help you make the most of your marketing to parents and students alike. Reach out to our team today to learn more.

How One School Found Just the Right Solution

Your brand probably doesn’t need a 180° turn. And you may not even need an entirely new strategic plan or marketing campaign. Sure, there’s a time for a comprehensive rebranding and invention of all the assets to support that initiative. Often, though, you just need a little glue to fit together the pieces you already have on the table.

Last year we had the pleasure of working with a school where filling a gap was exactly the action step they needed.

Strategic Glue

Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, is already positioned for success. The entire Saint Vincent experience is grounded in a rich Catholic and Benedictine heritage, and the energetic student body thrives. 

When the 5° team began working with Saint Vincent, the college had already completed constituent research and a brand discovery initiative. Simon Stuchlik, Vice President of Marketing, explained their strategy: 

“We needed 5° to validate that we were interpreting our research the right way, and turn that research into a messaging framework that would be unique to Saint Vincent in the competitive space of private, faith-based higher education. We felt that the external expertise brought by this partnership would be invaluable to operate not just based on guesses, but on a thorough understanding of the space and the position Saint Vincent occupies within it.”

The Puzzle Pieces

The project included a thorough assessment of research findings, followed by the development of a messaging strategy and messaging map. 

Based on the review of existing research, the 5° team, in collaboration with Stuchlik, started by honing Saint Vincent’s brand platform. Taking the identified “brand pillars,”  we repurposed each one to showcase the benefits of the stand-out features. It would be the distinct translation of these harmonious characteristics, now recognized as the “brand differentiators” that would enliven the identity.

Academics: Love for Learning
Find joy in learning as you pursue deeper meaning.

Community: A Place to Belong
Discover a community where you’re part of something bigger.

Affordability: A Greater Value
Imagine the value of your college education —for a lifetime.

Outcomes: Whole Life Outcomes
Aspire to more as you excel in your field and live with greater purpose.

Throughout the project, the 5° team also recognized the distinctive beauty of Saint Vincent’s Catholic and Benedictine heritage woven into each of the brand differentiators. It was clear that these principles would be part of shaping the brand messaging. 

And keeping with Saint Vincent’s sense of community, we also discovered that the college’s beloved mascot, the bearcat, would be a meaningful—and fun—boost to the messaging. 

The Work of Art

Putting all the pieces together led to a compelling narrative that serves as the North Star for brand messaging: 

Saint Vincent College takes students on a journey of discovery—where higher learning leads to truth and insight—for a meaningful and more rewarding life. Rooted in our Catholic and Benedictine principles, we prepare students for personal, spiritual, and professional fulfillment. Bearcats pursue greater purpose, for a lifetime, influencing the world around them for good.

Subsequent theme copy succinctly captures the essence of this big idea, or a particular aspect of the narrative, for the intended audience. The brand differentiators support the narrative, so all the pieces are working together. 

Stuchlik says his internal team has extensively leveraged the framework. “It now shines through all of our admissions print materials, our website, our new virtual tour, our legacy media and digital ad campaign, and all other messaging seen by our core audiences for recruitment.” A new video, “Bearcats Climb Higher” shows the narrative in action. 

How Can You Fill a Gap in Your Strategic Marketing Plan? 

When developing a brand framework, Stuchlik advises marketing leaders to “avoid operating based on hunches.” He recommends letting the data drive you to conclusions instead of just trying to guess. 

“Internal bubbles of what marketing offices and institutional leadership think is true about your institution is not necessarily shared by your students and the rest of the community,” Stuchlik recognizes. “Don’t be afraid to leverage external help,” he says, “which can become an extension of your resources and also validate your work, both for accuracy and to the internal community.”

Are you ready for a 5-degree shift? It may make all the difference. Let’s talk!

We may agree, theoretically, that it’s okay to be an “undecided” or “undeclared” major, but how well do our practices support this? Do our marketing and admissions approaches encourage freedom to explore and discover? Or do we unintentionally add to the pressure these students are already feeling?

As the mom of a high school senior, 5° Writer and Research Analyst Tara Miller has been giving this a lot of thought lately, and we’re handing her the reins to the blog to share her reflections and tips for higher ed marketing teams.

A Parent’s Perspective

I’ve been enthusiastically accompanying my daughter on campus visits for the last year. Countless times, I’ve heard the default introductory question, “So what are you planning to study?”

While this well-intentioned conversation starter may seem like a pleasant icebreaker, below the surface for many students, it stirs teenage angst. Why don’t I have this figured out yet?

The discomfort is fueled even further in a group context where most everyone has a prepared answer to the question. Why does everyone else have this figured out, and I don’t? By incorporating some new approaches—from your website to campus visits and maybe even your application process—your school’s perspective on choosing a major can set you apart. You can show you really mean it when you say college is a time to discover and grow. As a parent (who also happens to have worked in higher ed for more than 10 years), I have a few ideas.

Create a Freedom Framework

Some prospective students may be feeling overwhelmed with the 50+ majors every school is touting, unsure what many of those academic-sounding titles even mean, much less what they can do with those degrees.

Adding some friendly touches to the academic programs page of your website is a great way to make the list less intimidating.

The University of South Carolina, for example, offers a clever interactive search. Students can choose from a list of interests—like “Being Creative,” “Collaboration,” and “Places and Culture,” and the site identifies majors that fit those interests.

Students can further explore Areas of Interest to find connections between broad academic areas and career paths.

Carson-Newman University includes a list of careers on every program page. Students can find inspiration on the spot as they realize they really can get a job with a degree in Art or Philosophy or Social Entrepreneurship.

Foster Exploration

The college experience is a time of transformation and personal growth. Why not encourage academic and vocational exploration as part of this journey?

At MIT, ranked #2 in National Universities by U.S. News & World Report, all students start their freshman year as undeclared majors. MIT offers academic fairs, lectures, seminars, and other programs to help students choose a fitting major.

For students intentionally seeking a personalized educational experience, small and mid-size schools can excel in offering this kind of guidance. Incorporating touchpoints and programs for helping students choose a major is a great way to show your commitment to student success.

St. Thomas Aquinas College in New York optimizes the personalized aspect of their school, promising a community where each student can “learn by doing, discover your gifts, and ignite your passion.”

Communicate Better

Finally, perhaps the most meaningful of all new approaches is simply reframing your communication.

When you ask prospective students to share their intended majors during group visit days or even in one-to-one meetings, you may not really be fostering the connection you think.

The reality is that many of those confident-sounding answers you’re hearing have been carefully formulated in anticipation of these uncomfortable inquiries. Perhaps students say something just to sound self-assured at the moment. Or, to relieve the pressure, they may decide a major prematurely and head down a pathway that will ultimately be rerouted or regretted.

How can we encourage more productive thinking? When students come to campus or meet with you virtually, consider better introductory questions:

• What are you most looking forward to about college?

• What do you like to do?

• What are some of your academic areas of interest?

• What are some of the career paths you want to explore?

You may just open the door for a robust and memorable conversation! Be prepared to share with these students the many ways your school will encourage them to explore, to try new things, and to imagine more than traditional pathways.

By incorporating some simple changes in your approach to majors, you can assure prospective students—it really is okay to be undecided.

Let's talk about ways to optimize your recruitment and marketing strategies. 5° Branding can bring fresh eyes and expertise to your institution’s challenges.

But First, a Fable

In his landmark business book, Good to Great, author Jim Collins and his research team compared sets of like companies to find out why some went from average to greatness, while others either stayed mediocre or sank into failure. Collins found a variety of factors that contributed to a rise to greatness, including Collins’ discovery of a “hedgehog concept,” a simple, clear idea or strategy that the organization pursued with complete focus.

The concept was based on a fable that tells the story of two animals, a fox and a hedgehog. The fox is crafty in pursuing the hedgehog; it tries a variety of tricks and strategies to outsmart its prey. The hedgehog, however, has just one simple strategy of rolling into a ball—but it works every time. Collins found that the companies that were able to identify their one simple concept that worked for them—and who could stick to it with dogged discipline—thrived.

Finding Your Economic Denominator

One of the most important elements of a hedgehog strategy is the organization’s ability to understand the simple equation that was driving its “economic engine.” What was the one thing it could focus on and continuously improve to drive its profits exponentially? If the key to success was “profit per x,” what was its “x”?

Collins gives the example of Walgreen’s drugstores. The Walgreen’s team discovered that their key profit driver was convenience, because convenience led to higher sales per visit. The company concentrated all its efforts on convenience, buying only the best locations, clustering their stores for easier access, and pioneering the pharmacy drive through. Their fanatical focus on convenience drove the company’s profits to achieve 15 times the returns of the overall market between 1975-2000 and launched the company to greatness (Collins, Good to Great, 2001, p. 92).

Collins’ team found that all its “great” companies had such a simple strategy. From Kroger, which became the best at building innovative superstores, to Gillette which focused on profit per repeatable purchase, to Kimberly-Clark, which concentrated on profit per consumer brand (p. 106). Each company discovered an economic denominator that worked for it. They each understood what idea what driving their profitability, and they were able to exploit this strength to maximize results.

Hedgehogs in Higher Ed

Identifying and sticking to a “hedgehog concept” is a challenge for most colleges and universities. Historically, many of our institutions have prided themselves on exactly the opposite—on offering something for everyone. In the current environment, with more supply than demand, this is a recipe for mediocrity, or worse.

Hopefully, your team has spent time and energy developing a clear brand that describes your promise to your students and the world. This is a great start, as it charts the course for where you want your institution to go. Now it is time to look under the hood and find out which metric will get you there. What measure will help to drive you toward success?

Think of Southern New Hampshire University, whose commitment to access is exemplified in its bus trips to award diplomas. SNHU has discovered that every time it can take its education to the student, it wins, and its “stock” goes up. Or the University of Alabama, whose public perception is heavily driven by winning football teams. It now recruits students from all across the country who would never have considered it without its reputation for huge game experiences. Consider The Johns Hopkins University, whose commitment to medical breakthroughs and training some of the world’s best doctors has ensured prestige for every other major that it offers.

The Metric That Matters

For you to tell your institution’s story in an effective way, you need to know what metric matters. What measurement predicts success? Is it the number of graduates who get jobs in a particular field? Is it the number of visitors you can wow with your location? The quantity of grant dollars you can attract? Making each applicant feel special? The loyalty of your alumni to their experience?

Your university probably has a formula that is already at work, your team may just not know what it is. If you can find it, it is the marketing team’s task to drive your economic engine by shining every possible light on your “X factor.” Again, think of the SHNU bus, which is a tangible symbol of the university’s winning strategy, and which tells their target audience, “You are special to us.”

In some cases, institutions actively resist their natural advantages. They worry that they will be seen as a “one trick pony” if they focus on their areas of strength, which will hurt them in public perception. But if utilized correctly, your profit equation will have far reaching benefits beyond just the area of focus. Other academic departments at Johns Hopkins have benefited from the university’s international recognition in medicine. And Alabama’s other athletics programs likely get students they could never recruit without its football machine. When you focus on what truly drives your economic engine, all boats rise.

Don’t Go Chasing Foxes

Perhaps your institution has not yet identified its hedgehog concept. The marketing team can lead the charge. Help your institution achieve true greatness by finding a hedgehog concept and identifying the “X factor” that predicts your success. In many ways, it is about tracking the dollars that serve as the lifeblood of the institution and following them back to a common denominator, and then brainstorming creative ways to fuel that driver.

If your key to success is legacy families, your team should be marketing traditions and sending swag to alumni children. If it is the idyllic setting of your campus, your efforts should focus on driving visits. If you are a major pipeline into professional schools, tout your statistics and highlight alumni profiles.

Rather than chase the latest new trend in marketing, like the fox in the fable would, focus all of your efforts on identifying and leveraging your primary institutional strategy and watch your organization thrive.

Let's talk about how 5° Branding can help you find your institution’s “X factor.”

Reaching parents could be a pivotal step in securing student interest, and starting your marketing efforts early can make all the difference. Creating campaigns that reach students and parents alike can increase a family's touchpoints with your university and boost brand awareness as they select a school. Additionally, many parents are highly receptive to marketing from higher ed institutions due to their emotional and financial investment in their child. 

In short, targeting parents in higher ed marketing provides an opportunity to welcome an entire family to your school for the years ahead. Here’s how to ensure that your marketing efforts for prospective families find success.

There’s Power in Peace of Mind

When prospective students consider which school to attend, they ask questions like, “Does this school offer my desired degree program?” and, “Will I like the campus, town, and culture here?” These are important questions to answer, but parents often come to the table with different concerns. A winning marketing strategy addresses student dreams along with common parental worries. 

Address financial aid. 

The most recent data from Sallie Mae shows that 3 in 4 families used parental income or savings to assist with student tuition and other expenses. Two-thirds of families relied on scholarships to pay for college, at least in part, and 50% of families borrowed funds in the most recent academic year to supplement savings and scholarships. 

Figuring out how to pay for college is often comprised of a mix of savings, scholarships, financial aid, and loans. And since the majority of parents play a key role in the financial aspect of their child’s education, it’s important to learn how to talk about financial aid with both prospective students and their parents. Providing clear communication about the financial options available at your institution can give parents a clear path forward, which boosts excitement about their student attending your school. 

Discuss student safety. 

Every parent wants their child to thrive after leaving home and embarking on a higher education journey. Safety is key in a student’s ability to thrive, so address common concerns head on, providing detailed information about student and campus safety. Leaving the nest can be anxiety-inducing for parents “left behind” at home, but sharing your plan to protect students can alleviate their worry. 

As you consider how to share safety information with prospective parents, don’t forget to touch on programs that cater to the health and wellbeing of their students. Students should, of course, be kept safe from physical harm—but that’s just one piece of the puzzle. Mental and emotional health concerns are on the rise, with parents wondering how their children can find support while they’re away from home. Sharing with prospective parents about your school’s available mental health resources and policies such as bullying safeguards goes a long way in assuaging their fears. 

Talk about the student experience at your school. 

In addition to practical concerns, prospective parents want to make sure their child lands at a college with a culture and student experience that suits them. But in most cases, they won’t get to spend a lot of time on campus—and even on campus visits, it’s rare to see “typical” student experiences in dorms, classrooms, and social activities. 

The good news: as a marketing expert for your university, you already know how the fabric of your institution’s culture sets it apart from other institutions. Make sure to include those unique selling points, helping both parents and students see your school through a new lens.

Instead of simply describing the college experience in general, give families “a sense of place and personality” at your school. When you’re clear about the experience you provide for students at your institution, families can decide together if you’re the right fit for that individual student to enjoy their time in higher education. 

Speaking to Parents: Finding the Right Avenues

Most marketing campaigns today are multi-faceted, employing a mix of print and digital avenues like social media, websites and online advertising. While it can be tempting to target prospective students with digital marketing efforts and address parents in print, remember that in today’s world, parents are on social media too! Some universities are even going beyond traditional digital platforms to ensure parents are well-informed and connected to their student’s college experience. 

Greg Van Dyke, director of admissions at Dordt University, has learned how to go the extra mile in communicating with prospective parents. 

“We recognize the critical role parents play in the college decision-making process, which is why we prioritize building strong relationships with them,” he said. “To enhance this effort, we use a third-party vendor whose platform allows us to effectively engage parents by providing personalized communication, keeping them informed about important deadlines and events, and helping them feel more connected to our institution. This partnership has been instrumental in ensuring that parents remain involved and informed throughout their student's journey.” 

Create Space for Conversation

Create ease of access for parents who seek more information. Provide direct lines of communication if they have follow up questions about safety, finances, academics, and campus life. And even if you’re able to address these concerns directly and promptly, consider the perks that come with inviting current students and parents into the conversation. 

Washington College has learned the power of community connection when it comes to recruiting, said Kelsey Miller, the university’s director of admissions and communications. 

“In addition to our usual drip campaigns targeting parents, we also use another recruitment tactic called the Family2Family program. Through this program, prospective families can sign up to be paired with a current or former Washington College family,” she explained. “Once matched, they can connect via email, Zoom, or phone to hear firsthand about the Washington College experience, gain insider insights, and get advice on navigating the next steps.”

Learning how to appeal to prospective students and parents at once can seem daunting, but incorporating clear communication initiatives and innovative digital strategies will help you bridge the gap. 

5° Branding can help you make the most of your marketing to parents and students alike. Reach out to our team today to learn more.

Do you return to work from Thanksgiving break and look around on your college campus and wonder, “Where’s the Christmas spirit? Where’s the tradition? Where are the lights and wreaths and cheer, oh my?” 

For colleges, the holiday season is an opportunity to create core memories for your students, strengthening their connection to you for years to come. It’s also an opportunity to express your brand in fun and meaningful ways that aren’t available other times of the year. To quote Buddy the elf, “The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.” So let’s get out the pitch pipe and make sure that we’re all singing on tune and at full volume. The benefits are greater than you may even realize.

Branding matters, even at Christmas

Nothing says Christmas like red and green—unless you’re a college. Your campus’s celebration of Christmas needs to be expressed in your brand colors. No matter how much the “vice president for being involved in things that aren’t under their purview” loves red ribbon, if your university color is orange, red ribbons shouldn’t be front and center on your campus. 

Two great examples are Hardin-Simmons University and Texas Christian University. Even though they aren’t using traditional Christmas red and green, the spirit of the season shines through while also leaving no doubt that you’re on their campus. After all, from kerning to couch colors to Christmas trees—details matter.

Build it and invite them to come

There’s something special about a campus tour when there’s Christmas cheer all around. There’s a reason Hallmark Christmas movies abound. We’re suckers for the feels that Christmas evokes. Use that to your advantage. 

Most colleges have a standard visit day during late November or December. Use that existing event, just make it Christmas. Add a hot chocolate bar to the event day. Make the schedule later in the day so students and families can be on campus when it’s darker and can enjoy the lights. Connect the visit to a Christmas performance by your choir or band. Advertise getting a college branded ornament for attending the visit. There are achievable additions or adjustments that can be made to make your visit event more in line with a holiday theme. 

For example, Dallas Baptist University understood the assignment. They have a landing page that showcases their campus Christmas events, houses their Advent devotional guide, and encourages Christmas tours for prospective students.

Christmas is also a great time to invite the local community to campus for holiday performances or to use your beautiful decorations as a backdrop for family photos. These low-pressure introductions to the school are great for community relations and breaking down any “town and gown” divisions that might exist for you. Don’t forget to do old-fashioned public relations for these, too; they can be great newsmakers as media outlets look for seasonal stories and items to fill their holiday event calendars.

DBU social media posts

Christmas—season of peace, joy, and love—also great for retention

Christmas doesn’t only draw in prospective students, it can also foster retention. As students are winding down for the semester, they’re tired, they’re stressed about final grades, they might not be sure if they’re coming back. A festive vibe and events that bring the community together just might remind them why they attended your institution in the first place. Will that change everyone’s mind who might transfer? Absolutely not, but it will put your school in a much better light as students weigh their options. 

The holiday season is a great opportunity for university leadership to put in more face time with students. Union University has “Christmas with the Olivers,” where the university president and his wife read Christmas stories to students. 

Get your mascot suit out and put a Santa hat on them and students will melt. East Texas Baptist University brought Toby the tiger to their “Christmas on the Hill” event to take photos and play the role of Santa. Even these simple ideas can create meaningful connections with students during a hectic, stressful part of their semester. 

Hearing about these special moments—or seeing them on social media—can increase parent satisfaction, as well. Moms will be pleased that you’ve taken the baton to create holiday magic for their kids at their home-away-from-home.

That feeling when your holiday budget is underwhelming

Maybe you’re on board but experiencing sticker shock after pricing corporate-grade Christmas decor that will last year after year. We hear you. One solution is to find strategic partners who have an extra dose of holiday spirit and cast the vision for them. Help to show them that their support will help create Christmas magic on campus that will be good for the community, the current student body, and prospective students. 

Offer to acknowledge their contribution with signage or headline sponsorships for events or items the community will see—like your campus tree lighting or a large light display. Being associated with Christmas is good for business. Why do you think businesses put up Christmas décor before spooky season is even over? So, have confidence that the right business will be excited and understand the potential of being a partner with you for a Christmas endeavor. 

On the flip side, the fuzzy feelings that your holiday efforts produce in alumni and friends could influence those critical end-of-year donations to the school at large. They can keep you top of mind and remind those friends what a special experience you provide. 

You’re a magic-maker

Christmas is one of the most important times of the year for a reason. Whether you’re at a faith-based institution that leans into the birth of Jesus as a focal point of your celebration or you’re in a space where the holiday is about the season of community and love, this time of year matters to people. Maybe your campus traditions are all you could ever hope for. Or maybe you’re in the trenches planning the magic you’ll create for next year. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, you’re making a difference. Merry Christmas to you and yours from 5° Branding! 

5° Branding loves helping colleges think in new ways about shaping their brands. Let's talk about your institution’s next big splash.

No, WC wasn’t undergoing a comprehensive branding initiative or redesigning a website; their needs didn’t fall under typical agency service offerings. That’s where Boost came in.

A New Way to Outsource

Boost is a service that brings the higher ed marketing skills offered by 5° to campus teams that need help executing anything from one-off design projects to recruitment theme and creative development. This retainer package can be customized and scaled to each university’s unique needs—urgent or ongoing, tactical or strategic.

For Washington College, the 5° team worked both to execute straightforward design pieces, lightening the day-to-day load of WC staff and ensuring that the fall recruitment season launched without a hitch. 5° also collaborated with the WC team to elevate and refine the creative expression of the brand and rethink the college’s admit packet to have maximum impact within the college’s budget.

An Elevated Admit Packet

“We gave them a vision, and samples of what had been done in the past, and had continuous conversations throughout the production stages. The final product is something we are really proud of,” said Johnnie Johnson, Vice President for Enrollment Management at Washington College.

“Also, they were very conscious of our timeline in being able to deliver the materials ahead of the fall semester.”

The WC admit packet features a custom die-cut envelope with a pocket and slits for displaying four pieces designed to build excitement for enrollment as well as inform students of next steps in their journey. Pieces included a fold-out poster, next steps insert, sticker sheet, and the much-anticipated formal acceptance letter.

The self-mailer was an efficient and cost-effective way to deliver the desired information while leveraging design, size, and quality materials to have a strong positive impact on families who receive it and welcome them to Goose Nation!

Delivering Quality and Quantity

Boost by 5° takes your typical retainer agreement to a different level. By bringing a team of higher ed marketing and branding experts to the table and taking careful onboarding steps to get to know the institution, a thorough understanding of the college’s strategic needs and brand voice is quickly reached.

You aren’t working with an outsourced designer or writer who doesn’t know or care about your ultimate goals. The 5° team is deeply invested in the personal brand of higher ed that its clients bring to students and the transformational effect it has on their lives. Even as we work on something as quick as a postcard, we bring that care, strategic insight, and desire to truly collaborate to each project.

“Through multiple projects, the 5° team welcomes our input and takes our suggestions seriously,” Johnny added. “While they have their own ideas and expertise, they ultimately deliver what the customer wants. This is a much-appreciated difference than other vendors.”

This drive toward delivery is a hallmark of the 5° approach. Within the first three months of the partnership, 23 pieces were delivered to the college: two postcards, a dozen email headers, a yard banner with box and insert, a self-mailer brochure, and the five-piece admit packet above—all in a newly developed creative style that elevated the college’s existing visual identity.

A Like-Minded Partner

If this sounds like an arrangement that could benefit your institution and your team’s current season, we would love to talk with you. Working with 5° will feel like working with trusted friends—friends who are ready to take things off your plate and deliver outstanding results, expanding your marketing team’s impact. Bring your big ideas, and let’s get to work.

Ready to chat about how a 5° Boost package can help your team in this season? Let's talk!

Cultivating a satisfied student body has long-term positives for the institution, as well. In addition to cost savings, marketing to current students correlates to increased affinity for the entire institution (rather than just a department or professor) and, later, converts them into engaged alumni. 

While communications and marketing teams aren’t often responsible for the services and programs students utilize on campus, they can use the communications tools at their disposal to contribute to a happier student body. Consider these three ways your institution can better market to current students. 

Listen to Them: Student Surveys

Chances are, your institution has some student surveys that are fielded on a regular basis. Bring your marketing mind to the survey instrument to suggest adjustments to yield the best insights possible. Or consider including student satisfaction questions in your office’s brand perception studies. 

Surveys can be an effective way to hear from current students about their experiences on campus, what they appreciate about the college’s offerings, and how they feel the college could improve. 

Be sure to gather helpful demographic data with your surveys in order to analyze sentiments among certain segments of the student population. Just as you recognize the differences in prospective students and market to them accordingly through segmentation, it’s important to understand your current students’ experiences as unique individuals within the student body. Perhaps there’s a pain point for athletes that you can help solve, or a misunderstanding about your honors program that you can clarify moving forward.

Inform Them: Useful Content

Often, student complaints are driven by lack of information or misperceptions. Utilize the survey data to create content strategies to bridge those gaps. Perhaps students want to be more engaged with the campus’ mental health offerings, but they’re confused about when counseling is available and what the intake process is like. It could be that students expressed disappointment when they saw pictures of a campus event that they missed because they never heard about it. 

Knowing about these needs can help the marketing team craft content that will keep your students engaged and feeling supported. Or perhaps the team could develop resources to empower other offices to better communicate with students.

Once you determine the message that needs to be communicated, it’s time to figure out the right channels. Where do students spend physical time? Where do they spend virtual time? Where are they a captive audience? Well-placed digital signage screens and insides of elevators can catch students’ attention as they travel to class or wait between classes. 

Engage Them: Create Brand Ambassadors

By engaging current students as brand ambassadors, colleges and universities can activate a significant population who are able to reach their peers. Some colleges have official Brand Ambassador programs in which students maintain a social media presence, contribute content to school accounts, and partner with the marketing office. 

Even without requiring a long-term commitment, marketing departments can engage students as brand ambassadors by:

• Hosting social media contests encouraging students to share #myCOLLEGENAMEstory with specific invitations to share things like their favorite spot on campus or preferred meal at a dining hall. 

• Inviting students to do social media “takeovers” of school accounts to show a first-person perspective for a day.

• Increasing opportunities for current students to interact with prospective students and participate in the recruitment process

The more involved students are in shaping the university’s brand, the more likely they are to closely identify with the institution and maintain a positive relationship with it even after they graduate.

Current Students Are More Than Important Customers

We get it. Your top priorities as a marketing team are likely prospective students and donors as the revenue drivers of the institution. But current students are a captive audience with a vested interest in what the institution has to say. Their experiences and satisfaction can affect their future relationship with the university and shape your brand as a whole. By communicating effectively with current students, your college or university can contribute to the financial health of the institution through retention and also the long game of cultivating engaged and, hopefully, generous alumni. 

Plus, isn’t the transformative experience of higher education what got us into this field in the first place? As marketers, those rare opportunities to impact students directly can be some of the most rewarding. Let’s take them when we can for the benefit not just of our schools, but for the students they serve.

5° Branding loves helping colleges shape their brands in ways that serve students best. Whether you need help with the research, messaging, or design, let's talk!

Step One. Start with the Institutional Strategic Plan

For example, if Goal One in the university’s plan is to cultivate leaders for tomorrow, relevant goals for the communications and marketing team might be helping the university grow leadership among staff, faculty, and students by demonstrating excellence in communication. Another example is how you position university leaders as experts in their field by highlighting their accomplishments and the impact they are making in the world. You might state this goal as “Promote the University as a Producer of Leaders and a Center for Thought Leadership in the Region.” 

Step Two. State Your Objectives

Next, break each of the major plan goals down into smaller goals, labeled objectives. Typically, you want between two and five objectives under each goal (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc.). These subgoals are the primary elements that will make the goals possible. Creating objectives is a way of breaking your goals into manageable and measurable pieces. At this step, we are not ready to add the element of “how” this will be accomplished, but are focusing on taking the overall goals of the university and making them “marketing-specific.”

Continuing the example of leadership from above, Objective 1.1 might be “Promote Employee and Student Leadership Opportunities.” Objective 1.2 might be “Position University Leaders as Experts.” 

Step Three. Name Your Numeric Targets

Every strategic plan needs to include numerical targets for measurement. Once your objectives are identified, include beneath each one quantifiable achievements that represent the definition of inarguable success. 

For your team, this might be placement in certain media outlets, changes in rankings, a number of followers, reaching an enrollment goal, or assisting the institution to cultivate a transformative gift. Whatever you choose should be clearly measurable, authentic to your environment, and stretching but realistic. Include each of these success markers as “targets” under your objectives. 

Step Four. Add Strategies

Under each objective, begin adding a bulleted list of strategies. Think of the steps that would need to be taken in order for your department to be able to realize the objectives. Who would need to be involved? What significant changes would need to be made? What would you need to realign to get a different result than the one you are getting now?

Continuing the leadership example, if Objective 1.1 is “Promote Employee and Student Leadership Opportunities,” the strategies with it would include specific steps for each of the constituents, providing an idea of what success would look like for each one. For example, “Create an expert database of faculty to make it easy for members of the media to connect with their expertise.” 

List as many strategies as you need to in order to mobilize the people and resources needed to meet the objective. For some lists this might only be two or three strategies, while others may need eight or ten. If the strategy is a complex idea that includes multiple parts, feel free to create a bulleted list of sub strategies below it to break it into more specific pieces. These bullets can serve to flesh out the strategies and better describe how they will be accomplished. 

Step Five. Plan Timely Action

The final step in creating your marketing strategic plan is to make specific, time-bound action items to achieve your goals. This is the step that is most often overlooked, but possibly the most essential for actually ensuring the success of the plan. Plans most often fail because they do not assign responsibility for results or set benchmarks according to a timeline. Often plan goals are treated as perpetually “ongoing” and the general responsibility of “the institution” or “the leadership.” This is a recipe for a failed plan. 

To prevent this, for each strategy and sub strategy, create a specific action item. These should include the person responsible for initiating the action and the expected timeline of completion. In our example, this might be “Director of Marketing to promote new expert database to local media outlets through personal communication by November 1.” 

You can even create these action items using active checkboxes that can be filled when the step is accomplished. That makes it easy to quickly see what progress has been made and contributes to the sense of momentum for everyone utilizing the document.

Share It

With these steps complete, you are ready to share your new Marketing Strategic Plan with the world, or at least the audience of your choice. You should now have an organized plan that is in lock step with your institution's strategic plan, provides a roadmap of what needs to be done, and clearly indicates who needs to take action and by when. With your new plan in place, you are ready to help move your institution forward with intentionality.

Let's talk about how 5° Branding can help you meet your institution’s strategic goals.

Institutions often struggle to tell compelling outcomes stories. Yes, each college has its handful of star alumni and students who are in fabulous internships or changing the world in some way. Beyond those stories, it is notoriously hard to quantify the return on investment that the average student will receive from the education that is offered. 

Making a great ROI case is not impossible, but it does mean getting outside of some of the usual boxes in which many colleges operate and viewing the challenge the way prospective students and their families do.

Seek Better Internal Alignment

The first challenge in marketing ROI is adjusting our alignment. To find compelling outcomes stories, our advancement and career offices need to work together much more closely than they do at many institutions. Sharing data on graduates builds a robust database of outcomes to pull from. A close connection between these two offices makes it that much easier to involve alumni in helping current students with networking, interviewing, and internship placement—key examples of potential return on investment.

At some institutions, advancement and career services are part of the same division, which creates a natural environment for collaboration. After all, both of these offices work with constituents from outside the college as much, if not more than, inside. If this is not the case at your institution, the marketing department can become the connector between the two offices to make sure that outcomes information moves back and forth. Create an easy system for both offices to share their data and stories. Launch a portal for students to tell you what they are doing in their internships and early job experiences and provide access to both offices.

If your career office collects first destination survey information or collects alumni data on LinkedIn, do not let them keep it to themselves! Pool it with data on graduate success from your alumni office and creates a central source of ROI stories that can be leveraged by marketing and enrollment teams.

Start Before Day One

Institutions often miss the opportunity to make a case early and demonstrate what we can do for students by helping them confirm their career direction. Students often get very little help with early career planning, and yet one of the first questions we ask them as institutions is, “What major do you want to study?” Why wait until students are enrolled to help them when we can demonstrate the first evidence of our ROI by helping them answer this question?

Marketing teams can partner with career offices to create resources for students pre-enrollment. This could be as simple as a brief printed guide on career planning, early access to the assessments that are available to enrolled students, or optional enrollment in an online career class created for them. Communicate with admitted students and invite them to utilize these resources early. Make them available in your orientation materials. Use them as examples of your institutional commitment to helping each student achieve a great career outcome. 

This kind of pre-enrollment resource provides multiple benefits. 

First, it is a compelling “loss leader.” It demonstrates your institution as a source of expertise, but does so in a way that is generous and puts the good of the student before the gain of the college. If you create something that benefits students, whether or not they choose to enroll, you begin to earn trust, and you strengthen your reputation as an institution that begins paying students back from day one. 

Institutionally, you also receive a benefit because students arrive more prepared. You improve the chances of students retaining and graduating on time when you help them get on to a major path about which they feel confident. You can also prevent heartache and angst for students who may have switched majors—perhaps more than once—without such early guidance. 

Embrace the ROI Question

Good information on outcomes and graduate success is some of the most difficult information to find in college materials and websites. And yet, for most families, it is one of the most critical deciding factors for selecting a college. Rather than backing away from the return on investment question, we can embrace it and use it as a differentiating factor. To do this, we need to make sure that the offices most able to help make the case are well aligned and sharing data, both with each other and with the marketing team. We can also demonstrate a commitment to career outcomes by making resources available to students even before they arrive on campus. 

In both of these cases, the marketing office is the vehicle for communicating that we care about return on investment, and we know that it matters to students. Embracing the outcomes question, with confidence and clarity, will make your institution a distinctive choice in a crowded market. 

Let's talk about how 5° Branding can help tell your institution’s story to support your enrollment efforts.

Embrace the Short-Lived Trend

Take deep breaths and hear me out. It’s okay to utilize the short-term trends that are here today and gone tomorrow—IF they fit with your university brand. Some TikTok/Instagram Reel sounds or meme formats just don’t work for you, and that’s okay! Don’t “try and make fetch happen.” But if trends come up that do fit your vibe, make time for them. 

If you engage in a timely manner, there are so many easy wins to be had: social media engagement, bonus points with students and young alums, and contributions to the cultural conversation of the moment. Go forth and empower your social media gurus. They’ve been waiting for this one. 

In the summer of 2023, the internet was buzzing with a battle between two blockbuster movies: Barbie and Oppenheimer. Anderson University quickly moved into action to create Instagram stories that brought their brand identity into the trending meme using their mascot or other campus characters. 

Because of the 24-hour shelf life of the posts, Instagram Stories is a great medium to utilize for reactive trends that may feel more “risky” than your more permanent in-feed content. (That’s not to say you should be reckless here!) Even as the content—and audience attention—moves quickly with Stories, the subconscious points you’ve gained with your audience won’t be forgotten anytime soon. 

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour juggernaut also has taken over the world. While everyone in your audience probably isn’t a die-hard Swiftie, the collective world is aware of the trend and how it has saturated culture. The University of Arkansas’s Walton College of Business posted in their Instagram feed about their students’ semester using an Eras Tour aesthetic. The caption is a clever nod to Swift’s lyrics and other insider fan lingo that those in deep will really appreciate. 

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Capitalize on Trending Items for Giveaways

Everyone loves a good social media giveaway. While a giveaway itself isn’t a new idea, they continue to work! You can use them to increase followers, drive applications or event deposits, or increase any number of metrics needed for admissions, marketing, or student life. 

Breathe new life into this tried-and-true strategy by thinking differently about the product you’re giving away. Rather than the same old stand-bys, what if you tried using trendy items that might not be cool in six months to a year? Or tickets to a concert, restaurant opening, or other experience?

One pro of using a short run of trendy items that aren’t being offered by every trade show vendor is that you aren’t stuck with inventory. Just think, in two years you won’t have a closet full of phone wallets that you have no idea what to do with. Another pro is earning credibility with an audience that is notoriously suspicious and desensitized to run-of-the-mill marketing. 

Think about items that are bespoke or difficult to replicate. In 2022, the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor gave away Yeti water bottles at the height of their popularity. And in 2020, California Baptist University gave away coffee cups that were like the well-known geographically specific Starbucks mugs. Other examples of trends that did well in their time are painted tennis shoes or denim jackets, fanny packs, bucket hats, and Stanley cups. 

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The trick is to be aware of what’s trending now and how you can use what’s current to your advantage. Gather student workers or students from the communications or marketing departments to get a read on what the vibe is or isn’t. They’ll know what they would want as a giveaway and will be happy you asked! 

Give Something They Really Want—Memories

The oversaturated Gen Z audience also loves an experience. If you’re hosting a back-to-school concert, give away VIP tickets or free merch. It helps drive ticket sales and provides positive PR by spreading the word that your university is doing fun things with a current artist. 

When fast-casual restaurant Tacos 4 Life expanded into university campuses, Ouachita Baptist University was first to the proverbial table as the owners’ alma mater. Ouachita utilized that moment by giving away free tacos for a year. The social media giveaway increased buzz among students as well as prospective students who knew and loved the regional restaurant, and it caught the attention of alumni, who were excited to experience this new amenity on their next return to campus. More broadly, it connected the university brand to the philanthropic, friendly, and fun restaurant. And who doesn’t love free tacos?! 

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You’re More Innovative Than You Know

You’ve got this. In no time you’ll be chronically online and bursting with newfound, obscure knowledge. Or you’ll have empowered those on your team who are already there and are brimming with ideas for how to leverage the trends of the moment. The sooner you set personal preference aside and lean into the interests of your target audience, you’ll be well on your way to marketing your university with a new burst of creativity. Innovate, take risks, do something that makes more sense now than at any other time, and inspire thumbs—and minds—to stop the interminable scroll. 

Let 5° join your marketing team at the brainstorming table to freshen up the story your brand is telling prospective students. We’d love to chat about how we can combine forces.

Rather than urging the masses through their doors on Black Friday, the REI #OptOutside campaign encouraged customers to spend the day focused on what typically brought them into the store: a love for outdoor experiences. The campaign generated tremendous buzz on social media as millions of people shared photos of outdoor fun. 

And the campaign didn’t just succeed at generating goodwill—it led to higher revenue, as well. In the first year of the campaign, the company saw a 9.3% increase in year-over-year sales and its membership grew by one million. 

All of this occurred because REI embraced a marketing idea that was deeply aligned with its vision and values. The idea required buy-in at every level of the company and required that marketing leaders be part of the strategic decision-making from the beginning of the process—not brought in simply to promote a set plan.

Higher education institutions can learn a great deal from an example like REI’s. Too often, our marketers are treated as the executors of plans developed without their input. But for today’s colleges and universities to thrive, marketing leaders need to be included in the idea formation, planning, and execution from beginning to end.

A Voice at the Table

A seat at the table may sound like enough, but it’s not. If marketers are simply invited into the boardroom or executive meetings but only expected to listen and carry out the strategies of others, the entire institution will miss out on their expertise and contributions. 

Higher education administrators will see better results when they ask marketing leaders for input in the same way that they do with experts in other areas. Academic deans provide insight into scholastic strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. The chief financial officer is the go-to in the institution’s business office. In the same way, marketing leaders should be looked to for the school’s branding and storytelling.

Had REI kept their marketing leaders from having real decision-making power in the organization, the #OptOutside campaign likely never would have happened. Neither would the increased revenue, brand popularity, or social goodwill the company generated as a result. Higher education institutions can achieve similar results when they trust their marketing experts.

Diving into Data

One of the key areas of expertise that empowered and equipped higher education leaders can bring to the table is data. More than ever, technology is available that enables marketers to understand their audiences, segment them, and communicate meaningful messages that enhance recruitment, increase enrollment, and improve current student experience. 

Data-informed marketing, for example, led to a year-over-year increase of 26% in lead volume and an 18% increase in conversion rate for a large state university. And a British university saw a 100% increase in marketing engagement when they implemented a data-driven marketing strategy. 

A data-informed marketing approach requires belief in—and support of—marketing leaders in higher education. Recognizing their expertise looks like trusting their ideas (even when they sound as wild as closing on Black Friday), honoring their voice at the table, and providing them with tools and technology that empower data-informed decisions. If the #OptOutside campaign is any indication, doing so will be a win for all involved. 

Let 5° come alongside your marketing team through enrollment marketing support or leadership coaching. We’d love to chat about how we can combine forces.