Unlocking Enrollment Transparency: Four Critical Questions Higher Ed Marketers Should Ask

The long-awaited enrollment cliff in higher education is no longer a distant concern—it’s here. Since the Great Recession, declining birth rates have led to a shrinking pool of high school graduates, and universities are feeling the effects. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), college enrollment has dropped by 15% since 2010, with 2.7 million fewer students enrolled today than a decade ago. And the outlook is only getting worse.

The time for incremental change is over—higher ed marketers must embrace radical transparency and data-first strategies to survive. Experts warn that this is not just an enrollment crisis but an economic one. Many institutions are struggling to keep their doors open. In 2023, more than one college per week announced plans to close, and projections suggest the rate of closures may accelerate (NPR).

In this new reality, higher ed marketers must rethink how they attract and engage prospective students. Understanding applicants—their motivations, barriers, and decision-making processes—is more critical than ever.

Here are four key questions that every higher ed marketer should ask to unlock enrollment transparency and build a sustainable pipeline of applicants in the years ahead.

1. Who are my right-fit applicants?

Marketers must go beyond basic demographic data and explore the nuanced characteristics that truly define their right-fit students. Admissions and engagement offices’ existing data systems can uncover these details.

Below, we detail the demographic and psychographic characteristics within these data systems that will allow your team to uncover new insights into specific personas and applicant segments.

Knowing these details provides a solid foundation for marketing campaign audience targeting. By working to better understand your audience via detailed personas, you can maximize your advertising spend.

Through predictive modeling and persona clusters, your marketing team could even develop lead scoring that supports in-person recruiting efforts. This is accomplished by providing strategic, data-backed recommendations on where to prioritize a higher portion of your budget.

2. Where do I find better-qualified students?

Traditional advertising and engagement tactics such as college fairs, printed mailers, and commercials play a key role in the higher ed marketing channel mix, but digital platforms have become increasingly influential as you try to reach your “right-fit” applicants. Social media, search engines (including video-based search engines like YouTube), and programmatic display ads are powerful tools for reaching prospective students.

But the question remains—what channels are most effective at finding your specific applicant audience? Determining this involves a combination of data collection, persona mapping, and testing your messaging and creative across various channels.

By understanding key behaviors and attention signals, your marketing team can start incorporating unique channels and content types into your digital advertising channel mix, while still maximizing spend based on persona and high-value locations.

3. How do I reach applicants with my marketing dollars?

In an era of heightened competition and limited marketing resources, optimizing media and campaign budgets is crucial. It's not just about spending more (with the ol’ digital advertising “spray and pray” method) but spending smarter. The goal is to reach the right applicant, with a message reflecting their intent, on a channel where they are spending their time and attention.

Creating compelling and personalized content is now table stakes for marketing teams who want to capture potential applicants’ attention.

When considering tactics, digital marketing boasts some of the most flexibility and a range of cost-effective channels—from targeted social media advertising to organic content, which drives search engine optimization efforts.

Segmentation through digital marketing channels is a powerful tool for maximizing the impact of marketing dollars. Tailoring messages to specific audiences based on factors such as:

• Academic interests: area of study, extracurricular activities, organizations, and groups

• Geographic location: zipcode or county-based targeting

• Demographics: age, gender, income, education, and occupation

• Psychographics: interests, hobbies, lifestyle, values, personality traits, and beliefs

These allow for a more personalized and resonant communication strategy. Regularly reviewing and adjusting your segmentation and allocated marketing budget is essential for continued success. Institutions should be agile in reallocating resources to channels that show the most promise and adjusting strategies based on changing market dynamics.

4. What did I learn from the data about my investment?

Data-driven decision-making is at the core of successful higher education marketing. Beyond tracking the effectiveness of individual marketing campaigns, your team should use this data to influence decisions throughout the entire enrollment pipeline.

But how do you actually get to this analysis? It starts by tracking conversion rates at each stage of the enrollment funnel, from awareness and inquiry to application and enrollment. By building your enrollment funnel and layering on marketing spend, channel performance, and real student data, you gain a more comprehensive understanding of your applicants and ideal student personas.

Once you have a good handle on the enrollment funnel, you can begin to identify patterns and trends that reveal the most influential touchpoints in your students’ enrollment journeys. This enables you to allocate more marketing resources to these inflection points, increasing overall campaign effectiveness.

This data-driven approach gives marketers the power to refine their strategies continually, addressing pain points in the enrollment process and enhancing applicant experiences.

In addition to quantitative data, qualitative feedback can be an equally valuable resource for decision-making. Surveys and interviews with enrolled students (particularly with ideal target persona students) can provide nuanced insights into their decision-making process. These outputs, along with the data about your digital enrollment funnel will provide the roadmap for future success.

Take control of your enrollment strategy

By asking these four questions, gathering and analyzing the right student data, and making flexible, strategic decisions, higher ed marketers can address challenges like the enrollment cliff while positioning themselves and their institutions for long-term success.

Reach out to learn more about our higher ed data solutions, or see how we helped a public, four-year university increase total applicants by 40% year over year.