5 Key Considerations for FY25 Enrollment Marketing

Enrollment marketers are experiencing significant headwinds as we begin FY25. Many undergraduate institutions are starting to feel the impact of the enrollment cliff, this year’s beleaguered FAFSA rollout has everyone holding their breath on final matriculation numbers, and there is more pressure than ever on graduate, adult, and online education programs to fill the gap. 

As higher education marketing teams launch campaigns for the coming year, we’ve got some ideas on how to navigate the many changes ahead. Keep these five ideas in mind as you refine your FY25 enrollment marketing plan.

Search advertising has long functioned as an efficient and smart initial investment in digital marketing. However, at a certain point, your results will plateau. Branded search specifically is basically digital wayfinding – offering directions to people who are already looking for you. So it’s no surprise that a diverse media mix is essential to reaching new audiences. Additionally, search is changing. Google recently rolled out its “AI Overview” feature at the top of search results and then announced that these AI search summaries will also include ads. How will these changes impact the user’s experience of or reliance on search?  For your enrollment marketing strategy to maintain resiliency through the changing search landscape, you have to go beyond it.

Once you’re ready to expand your media mix beyond search, the next logical step is usually paid social. In a fragmented media landscape, social platforms stand out as the one place where you can find a diverse range of audiences in one place, allowing for precise targeting and broad reach. Plus, many social media platforms are now being used as a search engine as well. 

But there are a lot of platforms to choose from, each with its own behavioral and audience differences. Whether you use Meta, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, or other emerging platforms depends a lot on who exactly you’re trying to reach and what you want them to do. Pick one or two platforms to focus deeply on — then test, learn, and expand.

With the recent AI boom, algorithm-driven audience targeting has gotten better than ever and is particularly useful for programs where it’s hard to pinpoint audience segments through traditional interest or demographic targeting parameters. Additionally, platforms like Meta are removing some detailed targeting options in order to push marketers to rely on AI. But to make the most of new AI functionalities, these same platforms require high-volume, high-quality first-party data (applicant/customer lists) to model off of. If you can’t feed them the volume of quality data they need to succeed, it won’t save you the same time and money.

You know your audience better than anyone, but it would be impossible for you to anticipate every individual’s interests and goals. And sometimes even prospects themselves don’t have an exact degree or certificate in mind. Google search trends are far stronger for general skills and academic fields compared to individual program names. So, if your institution has several offerings in a related field of study, try “portfolio”-based campaigns to leverage efficiencies of scale and empower users to choose the program that fits their needs. In search, this could include bidding against more general upper-funnel keywords; and in paid social, you could use carousel ads like a course catalog to showcase multiple programs and direct people to program-specific information based on their interest.

Finally, for any paid media efforts you take on, be sure to identify a “North Star” objective. Higher education institutions are complex and have a lot of different goals — awareness, site traffic, inquiries, applications, and more. Different teams, leaders, and other stakeholders will come out of the woodwork asking about different metrics. But each campaign you undertake should have a defined North Star so you know what you’re trying to achieve, and so does everyone else.

Higher education is in the midst of a transformation, but fortunately so is digital advertising. By embracing transformation, collaborative problem-solving, innovative tools and platforms, and new areas of investment and strategic focus, enrollment marketers can weather the challenges the industry is facing.