Higher education marketing strategy, planning and assessment
Your marketing team is busy. Is all that work moving you forward?
Colleges and universities have no shortage of marketing priorities, requests and expectations. But without a clear strategy, even talented teams can spend their days responding to what’s urgent instead of focusing on what matters most.
Solve helps higher education leaders assess marketing effectiveness, develop strategic marketing plans, improve coordination and build campaigns that support institutional goals. We bring the perspective of people who’ve led the work and understand how hard it can be to make everything fit together.
SERVICES
Where we focus
It’s hard to know what needs to improve when you don’t have a clear picture of where your marketing operation stands today.
We develop custom higher education marketing maturity models that assess strategy, staffing, organizational structure, workflows, technology, governance and performance measurement. The result is a practical roadmap for building marketing capabilities over time, with priorities that reflect your institution’s resources and ambitions.
When everything is a priority, it’s hard to make meaningful progress on anything.
We help colleges and universities develop marketing strategic plans that connect institutional goals to clear priorities, resource decisions and measurable outcomes.
Whether you’re building a new marketing function or rethinking an established one, we help you determine what deserves your team’s attention over the next one to three years.
Sometimes you need an outside perspective to see what’s working, what isn’t and what you’ve gotten so used to doing that no one questions it anymore.
Our higher education marketing audits evaluate strategy, messaging, campaigns, digital channels, staffing, workflows and performance. We identify gaps, uncover opportunities and help you prioritize changes that can make your marketing more effective.
Your audiences don’t see the organizational boundaries between marketing, admissions, communications and individual colleges. They see one institution. Or at least they should.
We develop integrated marketing plans that coordinate brand strategy, enrollment marketing, communications, digital channels and campaign timing. The goal is a more consistent audience experience and a clearer plan for who’s doing what, when and why.
A campaign can look terrific and still fail to accomplish what you need it to do.
We help colleges and universities develop marketing campaigns grounded in audience insights, institutional brand positioning and clear goals. From creative concepts and messaging to channel strategy and execution planning, we connect the big idea to the work required to make it successful.
Common challenges we solve
We don’t have a clear marketing strategy
Our efforts feel reactive instead of intentional
We’re not sure what’s working — or what isn’t
Our campaigns aren’t connected to a larger strategy
Marketing, enrollment, and communications aren’t aligned
We need a roadmap, but don’t know where to start
Less guesswork.
Better marketing decisions.
A better understanding of your marketing team’s capabilities and opportunities for improvement.
A clear marketing strategy tied to institutional priorities and measurable goals.
More intentional use of marketing budgets, technology and staff resources.
Integrated marketing plans that connect brand, enrollment and communications.
Campaigns with clear objectives, consistent messaging and meaningful performance measures.
A practical roadmap for improving marketing effectiveness over time.
Common questions
When should a college or university conduct a marketing audit?
A marketing can be useful when your institution is investing resources in marketing but isn’t confident those efforts are producing the right results. It can also help when priorities have shifted, leadership has changed, campaigns aren’t performing as expected or the team is struggling to keep up with competing demands.
An independent assessment can reveal problems that are difficult to recognize when you’re immersed in the daily work, along with opportunities your team may not have the time or capacity to explore.
What’s the difference between a marketing audit and a marketing organizational assessment?
A marketing audit examines the effectiveness of your strategy, campaigns, communications, channels and performance measurement. A marketing organizational assessment looks more deeply at the people and systems responsible for delivering that work, including staffing, structure, governance, workflows and decision-making.
The two often overlap. A campaign performance issue might be rooted in an unclear strategy, but it could also reflect a staffing gap, inefficient workflow or lack of coordination between departments. We help determine which questions need answering before recommending a solution.
Can Solve help implement recommendations after an assessment?
Yes. Depending on the engagement, we can help translate findings into strategic marketing plans, improved workflows, campaign priorities, performance measures and implementation roadmaps.
We can also provide ongoing strategic advisory support as your team puts changes into practice. The goal isn’t to hand you a report and wish you luck.
Why Solve?
We know what it’s like when everyone needs something from marketing.
We’ve led higher education marketing and communications operations, managed large teams and multimillion-dollar budgets, built new functions and inherited ones that needed rethinking.
We understand the challenge of balancing institutional priorities with limited resources, managing competing expectations and making difficult decisions about what marketing should—and shouldn’t—take on.
That experience shapes our consulting work. We don’t just recommend strategies. We help colleges and universities think through the staffing, structure, processes and resources required to put them into practice.
Let’s make sure the work is working.
Whether you need a fresh look at your marketing operation, a stronger strategy or help connecting all the moving pieces, we’d like to hear what’s happening.
Let’s figure out where to start.