4 Fundamental Principles That Are Key to Higher Ed Marketing

“Marketing is still an art, and the marketing manager, as head chef, must creatively marshal all his marketing activities to advance the short and long-term interests of the firm.”

It’s hard to believe that the marketing mix—the 4 P’s—goes back only as far as the 1960s. As Neil Borden’s quote above indicates, since its inception there has been a push to find balance among activities. I was immediately transported to a professional kitchen when I first read his words. Head chef flanked by sous chef (I’ll admit it, I’m thinking of Ratatouille) determining the perfect blend of sweet and savory or herb to spice. 

As any Food Network viewer knows, you can always riff, but there are fundamental principles of food. Call it science or call it lore, but cooking’s foundation in replication has cemented it as evidence-based. The more any chef is grounded in these fundamentals, the better they become. The same can be said for marketing. Unlike food, which has had quite the cultural renaissance during the past few decades, most evidence-based marketing is confined to conferences and academic journals, unexposed to many. 

I aim to bring to the surface academic work that gives higher education marketers evidence-based approaches to marketing and communications. From media planning to email marketing, I’ll walk you through four studies that will help you turn the academic into effective action. 

1. Take Your Audience to 2.5

Attention as a construct has both time (length of attention) and level (active, passive and non-viewing) implications. Interestingly, this can vary across platforms and environments, as well as content types. This tells us that the more we understand how our audience attends to messages across channels, as well as the actions we can take to increase the likelihood of that attentiveness to increase its impact, the better. The ‘meaty proof’ of Nelson-Field’s research shows that the period between 2.5 and 3 seconds is when memory kicks in—the magic timeframe that will make any marketers’ efforts stronger.

This study (and the multitude of Nelson-Field’s studies thereafter) has given higher education marketers a benchmark for creative performance that can be used across channels. It also shows—albeit, through short-term advertising strength (STAS)—that if we aren’t allowing our audience to get beyond that 2.5-second market, we are quite literally leaving money on the table. 

To turn this academic work into action, let’s examine attention triggers.

Activate Bottom-Up Triggers

Described as external, stimulus-driven triggers that are unexpected, meaning they disrupt our brain’s desire for patterns. 

• From a video perspective, this could be an initial, quick cut or an intense shot that places the audience immediately into a scene. 
• Sound can also be incorporated in a way that is surprising or not often the style of the platform. 
• Visual elements can create an unexpected media experience.

Activate Top-Down Triggers

Top-down triggers are described as personal and goal-oriented, meaning attention is more directional and requires a different set of attention-seeking devices. Let’s say you are using YouTube to learn how to complete a home improvement task. In this mode, we are experiencing high and controlled attention. Higher education marketers can activate top-down triggers by planning media with the context in mind. Rational-based messaging can work harder on a college search site, while emotional-based messaging may work better on Snapchat.

Create a list of media that your audience most likely interacts with across the customer journey, and map their mindset against each media. Overlap each media with a type of trigger, and plan the creative execution accordingly. 

One last note: Don’t lose sight of your brand. Or, rather, don’t let your audience lose sight. Brand elements are critical within this window. Ensure your brand is viewable (approximately 30% of the pixel), and show it often and within the first two seconds. 

2. Clear Up Consumer Confusion

As marketers, no one spends as much time with and thinking about our brands as we do. From every sentence clause to the space between pixels, we cultivate and grow the brands we tend. Yet, we expect the same from our audiences. Brand love sounds great in case studies, but there simply isn’t evidence to suggest it exists empirically.

Most brands share image attributes, meaning what we perceive as being different is rarely held uniformly by all buyers. Higher ed brands are no different. We’ve seen this most recently documented in Niche’s Spring Survey.

Research suggests that most brands share patterned attributes that are indicative of their category. That is, referred brands share a “brand prototype.” As much as we want to position our brand as authentic and innovative, chances are that many attributes are also held uniformly by competitors.  

To combat the confusion and to turn what we know about standing out in the market, below are five ways higher education markets can turn academic studies into action that drives distinction. 

• More logos means more memorable: As much as designers may cringe, more than half of all ads go unattributed. There’s a reason. We tend to shy away from the logo. Yet, early brand presence is a driving force for brand recall. Frequency and logo size in relation to content units are equally as important. 
• Find fluency among all institutional entities: A rising tide lifts all ships, and the more brand elements are consistent, the more the elements benefit from the cumulative effects of exposure. Next to logos, colors are the most effective distinct asset. Cull all marketing materials and start with colors. As much as secondary colors create a brand from the “norm,” they can erode distinctiveness more than they create cut-through. 
• Build brand cues: If you haven’t created one or haven’t revisited it in a while, socialize your brand’s visual identity beyond logo use and colors. The verbal and visual cues you employ to reinforce your brand strategy or position can create distinctiveness when used in concert across divisions. What imagery, word choice or design element could you remove your logo from and still identify your brand? That’s the test. State Farm’s sonic branding and Salesforce’s Astro Nomical would both pass.

3. More Than Just a Name

Stanford University researchers explored the effects of email personalization. Interestingly, the results were replicated across multiple studies, and the initial study was conducted in partnership with multiple companies. 

Across all four studies, simply adding the recipient’s name increased open rates by 20%. Additionally, the studies found that adding product information along with the recipient’s name had no lift in the open rate. Similarly, there wasn’t an increase in engagement with the email if the recipient’s name was included within the body of the email. The researchers concluded by studying the mechanisms that drive personalized email, and it’s here that we find some ways to turn these results into action. 

• The name gains attention but don’t forget to leverage what’s also included in the subject line. Although product information didn’t increase the likelihood of an open, it doesn’t mean what’s included in the subject line isn’t still valuable real estate. Humans automatically orient their attention to one’s name, even among clutter. Given this, it may not necessarily increase the open rate, but it will be more salient and easily recalled. 
• Non-informative messages along with the recipient’s name had no observed negative effects on open rates. This means that there’s equal opportunity to use subject lines to drive priority messaging, and it shows creativity also has its place.
• Finally, including the recipient’s name in two of the four studies showed a lift in leads. It should be noted that the recipients had previous engagement with the brand, so there’s an indication that brand awareness may play a stronger role in behavioral outcomes than a personalized subject line. 

4. Kick It Up a Notch

Across multiple categories, multiple studies have found synergistic effects across social media, email marketing and television (CTV/OTT/OLV). One such synergy is called the “Kicker Effect.” When social media advertising was combined with television, the study demonstrated 62% free recall and 39% weighted purchase intent. 

What was interesting about the findings was the order in which consumers were exposed. Scores were significantly higher when social advertising followed television advertising. In terms of behavioral outcomes, this combination was shown to drive search-related behavior more effectively. What’s more, when the effects were examined by category, “higher-involvement” categories scored higher on impact.

Gaining access to the big screen is no longer out of reach for many institutions of higher education. Smartly planned CTV/OTT campaigns or YouTube campaigns optimized for television viewing can be used as a leading channel in a media mix and benefit from a similar effect. To turn this into action, consider the following when on a limited budget.

• Use video to reach your audience as often as possible, while flighting (a term that identifies how long a paid placement will be in-market) social advertising when the budget is limited.
• Take advantage of the impact video has while your audience continues their exploration of your brand. Because video can be the driver of search-related behavior—on either social or the web—ensure creative consistency and message congruency when a video ad is in-market across your owned channels and any other paid efforts.
• If using CTV, consider cross-device targeting. Cross-device targeting is identifying and messaging one user across multiple devices. This is a great option for targeting households with CTV and then retargeting across the entire customer journey using displays. 
• Knowing that television can drive search and social, optimizing ad campaigns for these moments can create channel synergy. In terms of search, higher ed marketers should create media plans that optimize keywords for brand-related queries first and optimize category keywords during the long tail.

When email is thrown into the mix, we find additional synergy beyond just the Kicker Effect. A combination of social media and email marketing was shown to have an even higher percent increase in purchase intent.

We know that, in most cases, your digital advertising and email marketing campaigns will drive traffic to social media. Although social media strategy may be laid out a month(s) in advance, message synergy between paid and organic content is vastly important. Here are a few questions to ask when planning enrollment marketing campaigns.

• Does the most current organic content on your brand’s page match or reinforce the brand’s recent campaign? 
• Similarly, if cross-buying is a product of consumers’ trust in a known product offering, do institutional offerings—product-like benefits (e.g., internships, study abroad)—produce similar effects? If so, what shows on an institution’s page during paid campaigns should be considered as related benefits and their place within the campaign platform. For example, if the location plays a prominent role in the campus experience, is it incorporated into the campaign in a way that aligns with the messaging? 

Borden was not without inspiration when developing his marketing mix framework. His vision was partly influenced by a colleague who often described marketers as “mixers.” In the Management of Marketing Costs, his colleague Jamies Culliton wrote that marketers are like grand mixers of ingredients. Sometimes following a recipe “prepared by others, or sometimes preparing his own.” There’s something to be said about following a hunch, but when the path forward has been well-worn by others, it’s important to impart that evidence on any marketing investment.