# Strategic Marketing Guide
**Author:** Archer Education
**Published:** February 12, 2025
**Updated:** July 22, 2025
---
## ** 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.
---
**Image: Strategic Marketing Guide Image**
(https://www.archeredu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Mock_Devices-1024x485.png)
---
## **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.
---
**Image: Strategic Marketing Guide Image**
(https://www.archeredu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Mocks-1024x584.png)
---
## **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.