Today’s higher education marketing goes far beyond campus tours and brochures. Prospective students enter the process more connected and with a better grasp of consumer research than any earlier cohort. 

College students sitting on the front steps of a higher education institution.

Colleges and universities need proactive marketing strategies to reach these savvy learners. And don’t let the “Gen Z doesn’t use email” rumor fool you — these students will open your messages, possibly more often than they tune into your social media.

This guide will explain how learners engage with these popular forms of marketing. You’ll learn how to design a campaign that resonates and what sources prospective students pay the most attention to. But first, let’s discuss the importance of higher education marketing.

Standing out in higher education

Higher education marketing identifies what makes a college or university unique, emphasizing those features to attract students. To succeed, schools must clearly define their core characteristics, such as:

  • Organizational mission: What the college or university wants to achieve through its classes, research, and activities
  • Core values: The beliefs that administration, faculty, and students can unite behind
  • Campus atmosphere and student life: The experience of studying, living, and working as part of the college community
  • Community identity: How the college or university interacts with the local and global communities
  • Alumni stories: How students carry what they learned and experienced into their adult lives

By defining these aspects of identity, colleges and universities can make meaningful connections with prospective students. Online engagement is critical early in the college search process. As students learn what schools align with their goals and personal values, they focus on those they can picture themselves attending. Painting that picture while staying true to the college brand is the essence of higher education marketing.

Here’s an excellent example from Stanford University, which has a powerful brand:

Stanford University’s brand emphasizes curiosity, engagement, and diversity. The image and text work together to emphasize a community of intellectually curious people, and the EPluribus initiative adds a unique touch:
Image source: Stanford University.

Any college or university can develop an equally strong brand. All a school needs is a sense of identity and the skill to communicate that identity to students from multiple cohorts.

Understanding your future students

Traditional college students

Traditional-aged college students are young adults through age 24, according to the Education Data Initiative (EDI). But if you’re marketing your college programs, you’ll also want to include high schoolers. A recent survey shows that junior year of high school is the most popular year to start looking at colleges, averaging 39% of students surveyed. 

Diversity and representation

The teen and young adult audience is more diverse than ever, thanks to more students of color enrolling in college. The EDI reports that in 2022, 13% of college students were Black, and 21.5% were Hispanic, compared to 12.4% and 10.4% in 2002.

College campuses have become much more diverse in the past half-century. That’s great news for students and schools. Image source: Education Data Initiative.

Higher education marketing needs to reflect this demographic shift. Images and videos should include students from all backgrounds. Written content should highlight features that students of all backgrounds consider when choosing a school. 

College choice priorities

According to Inside Higher Ed’s most recent available data, the top factors students consider are: 

  • Available programs of study
  • Academic quality and reputation
  • Proximity to home
  • Tuition cost and financial aid

Finally, remember that students don’t make these decisions solo. In one Niche survey, 52% of students learned about schools from a college counselor, and 43% relied on advice from friends and family. These channels were more popular than college search platforms (39%), online content from colleges (39%), visits to college campuses (35%), and marketing materials like emails and brochures (33%).

Colleges and universities must ensure their marketing reaches students and the adults who influence them.

Adult learners

It’s important to remember that not all of your potential students are teenagers. According to EDI data, 24% of college enrollees are over 25, and 16% are over 30. 

Adult students have busy lives and are often more budget-focused. According to recent survey data, available through Inside Higher Ed (IHE):

  • 55% have caretaking responsibilities
  • 48% work full-time
  • 53% earn less than $30,000 annually

In another survey, financial aid and scholarships topped the list of adult student priorities for the first time. These students overwhelmingly enroll for career reasons, yet according to IHE’s report, many feel they don’t get enough career guidance from advisors. Career-focused content goes a long way with this cohort.

These students are likely to find you through search or visiting your website directly, as EAB data shows: 

Perhaps surprisingly, adult students are more likely than traditional learners to find you through Google or your website. Image source: EAB.

If these prospective students see value in what they find, they’ll be more likely to engage.

Where to find and connect with students

A multi-channel approach is essential for traditional and adult students. Engage through social media, email, video, and written content to reach more learners.

Digital platforms overview

Online resources like social media are ubiquitous for today’s digitally native applicants. According to the most recent available E-Expectations Trend Report from the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), 78% of students have used social media for college planning, often to learn more about a particular university or find peers who share their college interests.

Higher education marketing should meet students on their favorite social platforms. Be aware that adult learners use Facebook and LinkedIn more than their younger counterparts.

Email marketing is also essential. CIC respondents rated email as the most popular channel for receiving messages from colleges, and it gets high levels of engagement. Consider these statistics:

  • 89% of upper-grade level high schoolers open emails from colleges and universities
  • 82% of students find these emails helpful.
  • 30% of students click to a college website from an email

Whatever you do, be sure your emails and all other digital content pieces are mobile-friendly, since approximately 95% of U.S. teens have smartphones. For your marketing materials to reach potential students, they must look good on a small screen. 

A professional email tool like Constant Contact makes it easy to make sure all your messages are mobile-friendly. It also provides templates and centralized design tools that make it easy for you to stay on-brand, even with multiple target audiences and content contributors.

Creating your platform mix

How you use each channel, including which social platforms you’re on, will depend on your prospective students. For example, if your email database shows a large percentage of non-traditional age students, you might decide to invest more in Facebook ads versus YouTube ads.

List the platforms you plan to use and estimate how much time and budget you’ll allocate to each. Look for opportunities to coordinate messaging across platforms and encourage potential students to check you out on other channels. One option is to integrate social media with email marketing with strategies like:

  • Adding social media icons to your emails
  • Creating email sign-up ads for your socials
  • Using your email list to learn about your audience

Once you’ve launched your strategy, keep an eye on your numbers to learn which platforms perform best. Adjust your resource allocation accordingly so you invest more in what works.

Creating content that connects

As you plan the next steps of your content strategy, consider the messaging you want to send to each audience.

Content types by platform

Video is becoming more popular for learning about colleges and universities. According to the CIC’s report, 82% of students have watched videos from schools. Of those, 83% have found video content helpful. Students’ favorite types of content include:

  • Current students talking about their experiences
  • Recent graduates talking about their jobs and job search
  • Videos showcasing campus life, buildings, and activities
  • Videos personalized to students’ interests

Your social media content should target the demographic you want to reach and embrace the strengths of each platform. Consider these ideas to get you started:

  • Instagram: Campus photos, student profiles, extracurricular and event highlights
  • TikTok: Student interviews, mini-tours, account “takeovers” by students or student groups
  • LinkedIn: Professional and graduate program highlights, faculty or executive thought leadership, higher education industry news
  • X or Bluesky: Event announcements, deadline reminders, retweets about the college experience
  • Facebook: Adult learner profiles, graduate testimonials, reshares of posts that mention your institution

Facebook and LinkedIn are great platforms for sharing blog posts and articles. These formats can effectively share in-depth insights, such as industry trends for professional studies candidates. Relevant infographics can also engage these audiences.

All images, including infographics, should grab your audience’s attention. Look for impactful images that align with the topic of your content and are easy on the eyes, with optimal resolution and a fast load speed.

Messaging strategies

Now that you’ve decided where to post, you can start designing content. Know your audience for each marketing channel and speak to their interests. Your professional education marketing on LinkedIn should sound more formal than your TikToks and Instagram stories.

Keep your messaging and style on-brand, especially when you speak to different audiences. Higher education branding is the best way to communicate what makes your institution unique. 

Every message should convey the unique flavor of your campus community. If your college or university has multiple locations, you’ll want to emphasize the unique personality and atmosphere of each one, while maintaining an “umbrella” brand for your institution as a whole. 

Finally, every marketing asset should include a call-to-action (CTA). A CTA takes someone to the next step, such as requesting more information or scheduling a campus tour. For awareness-building content such as this “Summer vibes at Harvard” YouTube video, the CTA might be a simple Subscribe or Follow button:

This is a great example of a CTA in top-of-funnel content. The material speaks for itself, but the Subscribe button and the request in bio are prominent, encouraging viewers to stay connected.
 Image source: Harvard University YouTube Channel

Consider having CTAs that directly relate to your content when possible. Add “Schedule a Tour” to the end of a student-led tour video or link to your info request page in a post about a major.

Building community and engagement

Your campus community is one of your biggest selling points. Students who feel like they belong are more likely to feel comfortable at your school, and your marketing content can encourage that identification.

Consider the various departments and student programs you have on campus. Each attracts a unique type of student and engages differently with current, prospective, and future enrollees. Look for ways to take advantage of those connections and build inter-cohort connections.

For example, consider the student and alumni connections in a STEM program. What does their content look and sound like, compared to what comes from your athletic department? Take advantage of those networks to reach applicants.

Student ambassador programs

Now that your traditional applicants are digital natives, you can get significant traction with online student ambassadors. These peer representatives function like influencers, a model that’s familiar to the vast majority of teens. 

Your ambassadors don’t need to be influencers already, but they should be outgoing and enthusiastic about your school. A social media presence helps, but you can guide them in what to say. Pay attention to which ambassador messages get attention!

Events and activities

Campus community events have always brought college and university students together. Since the pandemic has normalized online events, using them for higher education marketing is even easier. Consider enhancing your strategy with events and competitions, such as:

  • Giveaways: Prospective students can post a selfie on a campus tour to earn entry into a drawing for school merch
  • Student video competitions: Students or groups earn a prize for the best outreach video
  • Campus tour raffles: Attendees at on-campus events can enter a giveaway for merchandise or a special welcome packet if they enroll

Don’t forget to track participation so you can do more of what works.

Measuring success moving forward

Higher education marketing is an investment in your institution’s future. To get the highest return on that investment, you need to measure the success of your efforts. It’s essential to follow specific key performance indicators (KPIs) that match your goals, such as more requests for information or a boost in applications.

Don’t try to do everything at once! Start slowly by implementing one of the outreach methods you learned in this guide, such as email marketing for students requesting information. Use email tracking software to find out how many prospects opened each message. Look at what your most successful messages have in common, then incorporate those features into your next message. 

Add another element, such as social media, when you feel ready, continuing to track what works. You’ll have a full higher education marketing strategy before you know it!

Did you know? Constant Contact offers multi-account solutions for universities and colleges, giving them all the digital marketing tools they need for consistent email marketing across all departments. Learn 3 reasons why colleges and universities are centralizing their email marketing into one online marketing solution.