Storytelling That Drives Online Enrollment
The Strategic Marketing Guide (SMG) is a tailored brand and storytelling guide, designed to elevate your messaging and market positioning. Developed through a highly collaborative discovery process, the SMG helps institutions create a cohesive, differentiated identity for online programs that resonate with adult learners.
Why It Matters in an Online Enrollment Strategy
Online enrollment marketing tactics have to be designed for action. The SMG provides institutions with clear marketing strategies, audience insights, and creative direction to implement and impact enrollment goals.
The Challenge:
- Online programs struggle to differentiate themselves in a crowded market.
- Many institutions have inconsistent branding across departments, leading to a disjointed student journey experience.
- Marketing spend doesn’t translate into inquiries or enrollments.
- Without a unified strategy, marketing efforts become reactive, expensive, and ineffective.
- The ability to reach and engage adult online learners requires a nuanced and personalized approach that some institutions are not prepared for.
You might need an Strategic Marketing Guide if…
- Marketing and enrollment teams looking to align branding and marketing strategies across channels for maximum impact
- Institutions launching a new online program or turning around a lagging program
- Teams shifting from a low-transparency vendor and needing a marketing foundation to build on
- Teams who don’t have an in-depth understanding of their target audiences
- Smaller teams with bandwidth challenges
How It Works
Building your SMG is a collaborative, phased creative process:
- In-depth discovery: We interview stakeholders from your institution to gather insights on core values, differentiators, audiences, and goals, while analyzing historical student data, market research, and other key resources.
- SMG development: Our team leverages findings from the discovery phase to craft compelling messaging, visual, and audience targeting strategies designed to be used as a go-to-market roadmap.
- Asset development: Once the SMG has been approved, we design the creative assets needed to be successful across different platforms and channels.
- Applying creative to conversion: New creative and marketing assets are deployed alongside detailed audience insights, ensuring a broader reach and more effective recruitment of high-quality, mission-aligned students.
Inside Your Strategic Marketing Guide
Once this process is complete, you have a marketing resource to align all your teams. This guide includes:
- Goals: Targeted marketing and enrollment strategies aligned with your institutional vision and priorities
- Unique Value Propositions: Clearly defined brand differentiators that set your programs apart from competitors
- Brand Story: A compelling, student-focused narrative that emotionally connects and carries across all platforms and campaigns
- Brand Architecture: A snapshot of your brand that provides a foundation for any content and messaging
- Voice and Visual Guidelines: Tone and visual identity frameworks that create consistent branding across various teams
- Personas: In-depth, composite student profiles based on market research to tailor messaging
- Creative Messaging: Conversion-focused messaging that resonates and drives engagement
- Visual Themes: Unique and varied visual themes that distinctively represent your institution, grab the attention of prospective students, and inspire users to take action
Why A Strong Marketing Foundation Matters
- Ensures brand consistency across academics, marketing, and enrollment.
- Provides a clear, strategic roadmap for messaging, creative, and outreach.
- Increases engagement and inquiries when paired with optimized, tested paid marketing campaigns.
- Strengthens your institutional and program identity in the competitive higher ed space.
