Engage Qualified Applicants with Integrated Education Marketing Solutions

K-12 Private Schools

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that private school enrollment has been on the decline. Factors such as tuition, shifting demographics, and a significant number of school options affect how many applicants a school will get and how many students a school retain year after year. With increased competition for a limited number of students, having a solid marketing strategy is critical for your private school.

Greatest Marketing Challenges:

• Declines among private schools have occurred due to the shrinking of the middle-class and closings of Catholic schools.
• Competitive marketplace and sky-rocketing prices are impacting enrollment - within California, 24% of all private schools and 29% of all private school students are in the SF Bay Area!
• Understanding where and when marketing dollars should be leveraged - do you know what your enrollment funnel looks like? Most schools lack clarity around how a prospective student becomes an applicant.
• K-12 private schools have not figured out how to tell a compelling story about their programs and the people - parents, faculty, students & alumni.
• Many schools, even today, have hard to navigate websites, which negatively impacts brand perception.

Adult Learning, Continuing Education, and Community Colleges

As the price of private four-year colleges and universities soar, more Americans are viewing community colleges as the more valuable choice. 58% percent of students go to a college within 100 miles of their hometown, and 72% of students stay in-state. Only 11% of students venture more than 500 miles. [Source: "Going Away to College: Data Dive on 350,000 HS Grads." Ink.Niche.com.

However, with online education, regional boundaries have become increasingly less important and as a result, institutions of higher education have begun competing more directly with one another. And with greater competition, power has shifted toward the student-consumer audience, and those institutions whose online infrastructure is sound are continuing to generate the most tuition income.[Source: UPCEA.edu. "The Changing Landscape for Professional and Continuing Education in the U.S." Feb, 2017]

Older adults continue to represent a potentially lucrative market. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in recent years the percentage increase in the number of students age 25 and over has been larger than the percentage increase in the number of younger students, and this pattern is expected to continue. [Source: United States. Securities and Exchange Commission. DeVry, Inc.: 10-K.]

These adults are enrolling in bootcamps, online courses, and online certification programs rather than traditional Universities and colleges, which has forced many schools to adapt their program structures to accommodate this growing trend.

Greatest Marketing Challenges:

• Competitive landscape means having a differentiation strategy is crucial - but many schools have trouble explaining their value proposition and what makes them desirably unique.
• Students of all ages expect to have a personalized brand experience. Separating the messaging from one segment to another is a difficult task for education brands.
• With most of the researching process being done online, schools must have an exceptional online presence and reputation to even be considered by potential students.
• Continuing education is growing as a market, but traditional colleges are being left in the dust as "a la cart" online programs are capturing more and more of the potential applicants. Launching new programs and organizational restructuring is a massive undertaking aside from the work that needs to be done on marketing and branding alone.

Higher Education: Universities, MBA Programs, and 4-Year Colleges

Even though it might seem that recruitment for the previous class has just ended, the next application season is always just around the corner. High school juniors are in the process of identifying potential colleges, while high school seniors are busy preparing their applications. But with thousands of higher education institutions in the U.S. alone, how do you make sure yours rises above the competition?

For many prospective students, their first point of contact with a university is through the university’s website. According Chegg Enrollment Services and the National Research Center for College and University Admissions (NRCCUA), it has become apparent that in today's higher education landscape, online searches are the top method that prospective college applicants use to find universities and academic programs.

Not only that, which college to attend is one of the biggest decisions in a student's life. You can bet they are scouting your social channels to see if your school is a place they can envision themselves attending. This puts a lot of pressure on Universities, some of whom, have hundreds of years of organizational infrastructure in place - making it difficult to evolve in order to keep up with today's digitally charged landscape.

Greatest Marketing Challenges:

• As within the private school sector, overall student enrollment in higher education is on the decline.
• Even within a university's marketing department, employees can be stretched for time and resources.
• The rising cost of education and falling completion rates have deterred students who can only see looming student debt instead of the promise of salary upside.
• Colleges and universities must balance communicating with a variety of audiences, all with different backgrounds, priorities, and motivations for pursuing higher education.