For various reasons, young people are choosing to forgo higher education and enter the workforce without a college degree. In addition to contributing to the shrinking pool of prospective students and the current enrollment decline, an anti-higher education attitude sets the stage for a greater impact in people's lives: People with bachelor's degrees earn a median of $24,900 a year more than those who completed high school degrees, and the marketable skills they gain from higher education degrees make them less susceptible to economic downturns over time. Beyond individual impact, social mobility factors and economic drivers support a broader societal need to maintain or, better yet, grow college enrollment rates. 

Higher education marketing departments are tasked with raising awareness and recruitment of prospects and their influencers, as well as specific enrollment goals. However, the way marketing departments take on this work needs to shift. KW2 recommends a five-step strategic approach that makes every touchpoint resonate – plus makes every penny of your marketing spend count. 

Step 1: Audit enrollment and communication gaps.

It starts with crunching the numbers across departments. Marketers can see where there are communication gaps and conversion opportunities by analyzing the entire higher education pipeline, from recruitment through admissions, enrollment, and beyond. KW2 Director of Higher Education Lisa Maiers points out the value of this deep analysis: "The more we can learn about who your qualified leads are at the very beginning of a marketing effort, the higher rate of success we can create as we nurture them through the enrollment funnel." 

Step 2: Conduct mindful audience modeling.

Audience modeling allows higher education marketers to create detailed profiles of prospects from their own data and meld them with third-party intel. When we better understand preferences, behaviors, and barriers, we can use these profiles to use marketing dollars more efficiently. This ensures marketing efforts reach the right people, improve engagement, optimize ad spend, and drive better ROI through informed, data-driven decisions. 

Step 3: Implement a nimble message testing plan.

Understanding how brand- and campaign-level communications resonate with your audiences — including potential students and those who influence them — is key. While some audience segments may appear to have much in common on paper, you can’t discern the subtle differences that local culture and geography may play without testing. Maiers offers an example: "We tested a recruitment campaign in one rural area, and found that the local population was wary of full-time enrollment but open to signing up for a class as a starting point. The same campaign gained traction in another area when we highlighted a faster path to a credential. Without testing, we wouldn't have been able to anticipate possible iterations and versions." 

Step 4: Build flexibility into campaigns.

Designing media campaigns for quick pivots includes building dozens — or even dozens of dozens — of different ad options. This allows your institution to leverage audience modeling in ways that respond quickly to changes in the world, both in terms of what's succeeding and motivating individuals to enroll — or the equally valuable knowledge of what's not working. Keeping on the pulse of which platforms and placements will perform best – and leveraging proof points in planning – can lead to implementing more effective paid media campaigns. We use everything from national data to extremely specific hyper-local stats to find like-minded populations that result in a win. 

Step 5: Collect deeper data and insights for future work.

Deeper data and insights are the linchpin to long-term success. But – data should not be harvested just for the sake of more data. Ongoing data collection and analysis throughout a campaign should be intentional and ladder up to a goal of studying patterns and the story the data tells us. This allows for immediate pivots, smarter evolutions, and iterated planning from year to year. 

As higher education organizations continue to navigate the changing landscape of declining enrollment and anti-higher education sentiments, marketing strategies must also keep up. By aligning strategy with data and effectively tailored messages, higher ed institutions can do more than weather the enrollment crisis — they can lead with innovation and impact. When every marketing decision is intentional, every dollar stretches further, and every student touchpoint becomes an opportunity to connect meaningfully.