Higher Ed Marketing Benchmarks: Why Universities Must Invest in Audience Research and Automation
Insights, delivered.
The last year and a half has been a bit of a rollercoaster for every organization in every sector. Colleges and universities weren’t immune. Federal funding seemed tenuous. Stock indices teetered. And the airwaves were thick with urgent calls to action. Add to this the ongoing battle in higher ed to make the case for the value of a degree.
Election years are often challenging for marketing teams. They make prospective students (and their parents) a little more cautious. And their attention is pulled in a million different directions.
Despite this, higher ed marketing teams fought well to maintain course and enroll students.
Results from our annual Mighty GPS marketing survey were a cause for optimism. It’s our marketing self-assessment that measures effectiveness and confidence in six key areas. While some areas dropped to three-year lows, the overall performance of our education respondents was strong.
If you’d like to dive into the higher ed results yourself, you can read the full report below. You’ll see scores for each category, each specific question, and get a longer list of recommendations.
Below, we offer up four takeaways and recommendations.
1. Research for thee and none for me
While professors conduct the research that forms the bedrock of academia, university marketing teams aren’t conducting research of their own. Without audience research, universities aren’t making a compelling case to prospective students. And without keyword research, universities aren’t answering student and parent questions with precision.
Three key categories were especially low-scoring: audience interviews or focus groups (32.4), audience surveys (44.2), and research-based customer journeys (45.4). In addition, 32% of our higher ed respondents report their school never uses research-based customer journeys when making marketing decisions.
Which is unfortunate, considering schools that use research-based customer journeys score 12 points higher in marketing maturity on average.
Our recommendation
Set up a research plan to engage students and parents. Their opinions, challenges, and habits are the most important. You need to know what exactly those are to address them. Your research plan should include SEO, psychographics, and direct testimonials.
Conduct quarterly keyword research, interviews, and focus groups with students, and surveys for parents. It’s not enough for your marketing to address their pain points. It needs to be done in their own words.
2. Technology and software aren’t being fully leveraged
Privacy and security practices are strong. CMSs and Google Analytics dashboards are being well-leveraged. It’s the unification of technology and channels that’s lacking.
Like the siloing between departments, “tech stacks” are not seamlessly integrated. Worse, the poor use of Marketing Automation Platforms (MAPs) leaves marketing and communications efforts even more disjointed.
That means time and data—two highly valuable resources—are falling through the cracks. It’s also making it more difficult for marketing teams to segment campaigns.
Our recommendation
Master a marketing automation platform (MAP) to unify your strategy. Read all the tutorials. Take all the training classes. Take advantage of any free training and support your package offers. MAPs are incredibly impactful when you maximize every feature and benefit.
Mastering a MAP requires upskilling, but it’s worth the effort. They streamline your strategy and put your metrics in one dashboard. And give you real-time insights into what’s working and what’s not.
3. There’s not enough budget or bandwidth for planning or documentation
Within the Team Dynamics category is an alarming, though unsurprising, takeaway—budgets and bandwidth are a little thin. This is common in election years. Doubly so when federal funding seems like a coin flip.
That often means marketing is being conducted on an ad hoc basis. Without the time for planning, strategizing, and documentation, marketing suffers in quality, quantity, cohesion, and timeliness.
Our recommendation
Establish KPIs and metrics to optimize your efforts. If time and money are a bit out of reach, you can at least improve your ability to adapt in real-time. To do that, you need KPIs and metrics for your marketing efforts.
With the right KPIs and metrics, you can see what’s working and what’s not. Then, reallocate resources towards high-performing channels. More importantly, this data helps you make the case to leadership for more marketing dollars.
4. Take the Mighty GPS assessment to see where you stand
Not sure whether the trends and takeaways apply to your institution? Start with a good, earnest gut check in the form of our Mighty GPS self-assessment. It takes around 6-7 minutes to complete. Then you get a custom score report with strategic recommendations.
After that, download our 2025 Benchmarks Report for Education. See how you compare to your peers. By taking the GPS, you’ll also contribute to our data for next year’s benchmark report.
And if your university’s challenges are just too big to tackle on your own …
Don’t be afraid to reach out. We’ve been helping mission-driven organizations improve their marketing for over 25 years. Many of us have direct higher ed experience of our own. And 100% of us can’t wait to offer some solutions. Let’s talk about your enrollment strategy and see how we can help you hit your target yield.
