4 Trends Shaping the Future of Higher Ed Marketing

Marketers are tasked with staying on top of ever-shifting industry trends. For those of us in higher education marketing, the enrollment cliff has been a looming concern for years. But as we approach this inflection point, there are additional, equally pressing trends we must consider—trends that will shape how we engage students, faculty and the broader community. If we zoom out, there are four trends that we should be following and prepared to deal with to not only focus our efforts with enrollment marketing but also to work to improve the perception of the industry.

1. Changing Privacy Laws

While we haven’t seen any new major federal laws in the U.S. like the GDPR in the E.U., states have started rolling out their own privacy laws, and national changes could be on the horizon. In a world where users can opt out of cookies, the methods advertisers have relied on are no longer as effective. At the same time, such changes are an opportunity to innovate and rebuild trust with our audiences. The current political climate is also influencing the way people are interacting with technology, shaping decisions about what to share, who can access their data and how it can be used. These legal changes have altered how we think about privacy. Google and email protections have also evolved, and we’re seeing more permission-based personalization and double opt-in.

Some of the metrics that we have traditionally used, such as open rates, engagement, clicks and conversion events, are also shifting, and so the way we’re measuring success must also shift. With evolving privacy concerns, we need to start thinking about more organic, opt-in lead generation and progressive profiling that builds trust through personalized content over time. In marketing communications, enrollment and admissions, our currency is relationships, and that requires building trust with these audiences. And as we deal with privacy law changes, we have to be worthy of their trust—meaning taking actions to build the trust and not breaking it.

2. The Search Cliff

Before we reach the enrollment cliff in higher ed, we’re going to hit a search cliff. Thinking through the traditional phases of the enrollment funnel, we purchase names and use that to build our marketing campaigns to move from awareness to consideration to decisions and then finally enrollment. According to a 2019 report from RNL, the overall funnel rate from purchased name to enrollment was 0.131 percent: just 131 enrollments per 100,000 purchased names. Fast-forward to 2023 and higher ed partner College Vine reported that funnel performance has dropped by 67 percent, so now we can expect 43 enrollments per 100,000 purchased names.

But that’s not the only startling data. By 2027, it’s possible that there will be 840,000 fewer 12th-grade names available for purchase and 700,000 fewer 10th-grade names. This equates to a 40 to 80 percent decline in name availability. Given these realities, institutions must find ways to broaden the funnel—or better yet, consider shifting to a flywheel model that prioritizes ongoing engagement throughout the student life cycle. In addition, we should be looking at diversifying lead generation through organic inbound strategies, like leveraging strategic content, and strengthening partnerships across departments, especially in resource-strapped environments.

3. Consumer Expectations

We don’t often like to think of our students as consumers or customers, but we need to shift our mindset on this. We all have expectations for consumer journeys: People want it frictionless, fast and personalized and have little tolerance for cumbersome processes or experiences. Higher ed institutions absolutely have processes and experiences that are neither easy nor fast; some campuses—my institution, the University of Montana included—are still using paper-based processes for things such as graduation applications. For our digitally immersed students—and for faculty and staff—this is frustrating and unacceptable and does not align with their expectations.

At Montana, we now think of our digital platforms as a human-centered digital ecosystem that we need to maintain to best meet market demand. In that ecosystem, we’re focused on personalization, building trust and making sure the digital experience is consistent for our visitors. Regular evaluation and improvement are needed to create and compete with consumer-grade experiences. This shift presents an opportunity for us to lead the charge in transforming not just our processes, but the overall experience, ensuring students are met with a frictionless, future-forward institution that prioritizes their needs.

4. Brand Awareness

The market is so rapidly shifting, and even though it seems like another school closes almost every single week, it’s getting more competitive in the digital space and the advertising space to reach a dwindling pool of students. More of us have to increase brand awareness in other geographic areas, and getting resources for advertising can be challenging as budgets continue to shrink and ad costs go up. Additionally, increasing brand awareness and changing perceptions and position takes time. When you’re tasked with elevating the institution’s reputation and working to increase enrollment, your efforts will likely take three to five years to take hold; there’s not going to be much immediate ROI, making it even more difficult to justify the cost, as many of us are living from one budget cycle to the next.

Very few of us in higher ed have the budget to perform regular brand studies, and so that brand measurement piece is challenging, despite it being essential to prove the brand and performance marketing spends are necessary. Luckily, CollegeVine has released a new, free brand index database that can help give us benchmarks and measurements about our brand platform performance. Additionally, some of the easiest and best brand awareness building work can be done by aligning content strategy and earned media strategy to support enrollment management strategy.

So, what can marcomm teams do right now?

Addressing these trends will require strategic collaboration and creativity, but by embracing these changes, we can strengthen our institutions, elevate student experiences and foster long-term success. Change can be scary and hard, but with the right mindset, marcomm teams can approach this new frontier as strategic, revenue-generating partners. To get started right now, try these three things: evaluate your state trends and your current prospective student funnel, improve your owned and social media channels through content marketing, and research some of the new, emerging tools that may help alleviate the search cliff. But more importantly, if you don’t already have a strong, healthy relationship with your enrollment management colleagues, the time to start building that is now.