4 Ways to Bring Focus to Graduate Program Marketing

What was once a bright spot during the pandemic is now facing a year-over-year enrollment decline amid an increased effort to boost enrollment. According to EAB, enrollment leaders are now taking ‘big bets’ on prioritizing graduate programs. Although organizational challenges were indicated as a barrier to growth, increased competition from primarily online institutions, budget limitations and the growth of programs offered have presented those tasked with graduate program marketing with a challenging environment to achieve those results. 

At least outside our category, what often follows market saturation and product (or program in this case) parody is the commodification of communications. If graduate program marketers are going to win this bet on boosting enrollment, they must bring the same distinction and innovation that often happens inside their classrooms into their marketing efforts, and it starts with focus.

Simplicity (i.e., focusing on a few efforts) can be a marketer’s secret weapon. And how we achieve simplicity through strategy, takes focus. This has become incredibly important when audiences have become fragmented, competition has increased and the category has constricted. 

To get there, this article provides four tips to help graduate program marketers bring focus to their strategy in a way that may ultimately lead to a stronger positioning in the market and improve the likelihood that those ‘bets’ pay off. First, let’s discuss how strategy can meet this goal.

How Strategy Brings Focus

In most categories, each player “owns” the category benefits. It’s entirely possible that with the growth of online graduate degrees, all graduate degree programs incur many of the same market characteristics (e.g., flexible or affordable). What this means is that positioning has become a graduate program’s competitive advantage.

With proper strategy — an understanding of the market, who you are targeting and how you’ll position your program — graduate program marketers can begin to carve out distinction in the market and increase consideration among prospective students.

To quote one of the more prolific authors on marketing strategy, Michael Porter, “The essence of strategy is defining how a company is unique and how it will deliver a distinctive mix of value. Strategy is about aligning every activity to create an offering that cannot easily be emulated by competitors.”

In a sense, strategy is about what you choose not to do as much as it is about what you choose to do — more or less a series of trade-offs. To paraphrase Porter, the more focused your strategy is  (i.e., applying strict scrutiny to a few key decisions),  the more likely differentiation will evolve. 

In the next section, I’ll walk you through the four steps to bring focus to your graduate program marketing.

Where Strategy Brings Focus

1. Focus on a ‘Hero’ or “Halo’

As is most often the case, there isn’t enough budget to market every graduate program in the portfolio. A good market orientation and segmentation approach should help to identify flagship programs (i.e., heroes). For example, the promotion of your M.Ed may increase awareness of your Ed.D., or the other way around. 

Another way to look at a hero program is to identify the program that you feel has the highest propensity to attract those currently in-market (MBA vs. Business Analytics). With enough resources dedicated to your hero, you can quickly see a return-on-investment and use any new funds generated for other programs. Identifying profit drivers earlier—or those with the potential for a higher marketing velocity—makes it much easier to focus your efforts.

A similar strategy is to use the halo effects of brands. The single strongest predictor of higher click-through rates and lower cost-per-acquisition is a strong brand. Depending on the strength of your institution or the departmental brand (think Darden School of Business as opposed to M.S. in Product Management), when budgets command it, take advantage of the strength of your strongest brand. This is the rising-tides-raises-all-ships marketing analogy. A heavily concentrated “brand campaign” can be more effective than a stretched-too-thin budget for multiple program campaigns.

2. Focus on a Core Target Market

It’s imperative that we must also focus on the targets that will make the biggest difference. Referring back to Porter’s quote, the actions we opt not to take are just as important as what we ultimately do. So once you’ve established which programs you will move forward, identify the core markets in which you can adequately invest. If your state is primarily a net export state, it makes more sense to invest your budget in-state. If you have more students seeking career growth well into their careers than those immediately out of undergrad, invest in the first segment.

As an example, let’s look at how location and modality should play a role in finding focus. In 2022, “Proximity-to-institution” fell slightly, with two-thirds of online grad students reporting they would only consider online degrees from schools within 50 miles. 

If your location doesn’t have the infrastructure to support the typical 25-34 career advancer, then chances are you’ll need to expand your geographic reach to pull prospective students from outside this radius. This will lead to a very specific focus across your market decisions.

3. Focus on One Message

It can be tempting to tell the world about all the benefits of your program. Access to faculty, world-class labs and program rankings are all valuable. However, the more you try to pack into your ads, the less likely they are to be memorable or retained. Afterall, most display ads get 250 milliseconds of your audience’s attention.

The same can be said when it comes to branding. Outside of your logo, focus on 1–2 design assets to use across marketing activities. Remaining distinct   from a design perspective   can be just as effective as being differentiated.

Combined, the focus of messaging and design makes it easier for you to build familiarity and memory structures that improve processing. If you are advertising for multiple programs, find a way to communicate the same benefit but dramatized it differently or create slight variations in design. Repetition naturally creates mind share, and the meaning and message anchored to your ads creates a position.

4. Focus the Commercial Impact of Comms

The question of how marketing and communications affect enrollment outcomes isn’t new. Although we may spend time in setting up systems to track attribution across our marketing activities, rarely do we focus on how comms play a role in those outcomes and how it can be a key contributor to an advantage. Whether it helps to establish your message or leads to its development, focus must be made on the benefit of the communication activity.

Let’s use a College of Education as an example.

• Business Effect: Increase applications
• Behavioral Effect: Get prospective students to register for an online, instructor-led open house
• Attitudinal Effect: Faculty support plays a key role in helping prospective student progress while being employed full-time
• Communication Activity: Show the invaluable benefits due to the powerful relationships formed with high-profile professors

The framework above was founded in the insight that those who registered for an open house were more likely to apply to the program and do so much earlier. It was also determined that those in education can be a bit more suspect in the delivery of online education courses, depending on the notoriety of the program and instructor. 

The communications activity was meant to play up the fact that the same instructors that are found in the literature and are teaching in-person are also teaching online courses. What’s more, that was reinforced by the fact that those same instructors were featured in follow-up communications and played a role in the open house.

According to Mark Ritson, “The last decade has seen marketing deluged with a sea of new tools and techniques. The concept of real-time rather than long-term planning has added fuel to the fire.”

The same is true within higher ed marketing. Marketers have enjoyed a multitude of tools and technology that seemingly makes our jobs more efficient. With these tools comes the promise of tactical prowess. Far too often the end result is shaped by the tool. Using this framework, graduate program marketers can create a stronger connection between these tools and a stronger strategy for real growth.