Higher Ed Marketing

Enrollment is the trailhead.

Enrollment marketing at most colleges is built to produce a yes and then stop. I build it to produce a graduate. The funnel keeps going past the deposit, the messaging tells the truth about how hard a program is, and the team that recruited a student stays accountable for whether she's still enrolled in the spring.

What I've built

I write for community college students, which is a specific job. The person reading my page is thirty-four, working, caring for somebody, and deciding about money she doesn't have much of. She isn't choosing between us and a flagship. She's choosing between us and nothing, and she has about four minutes. That changes the copy, and it changes what counts as a good campaign.

So the tests I use are unglamorous. Can a stranger read our program page in under sixty seconds and correctly tell us what it costs, how long it takes, and who it's for. Count the touchpoints between her first click and her first day, then ask how many of them a busy adult would actually complete.

At Forsyth Technical Community College, marketing sits in a division that also owns recruitment, onboarding, advising, and student care, so my team doesn't hand a student off at the application and walk away. I'm careful about generalizing from that. Forsyth Tech isn't a stand-in for the sector, and a structure that works here because of the people in it may not transfer anywhere.

What I argue

Write for the four-minute reader

She's on a phone, on a break, and she's doing this between other obligations. Every sentence that makes her work is a sentence that costs you. The test I use: can a stranger read our program page in under sixty seconds and correctly tell us what it costs, how long it takes, and who it's for.

Tell the truth about difficulty

Nursing prerequisites are hard. Say so. A student who enrolls believing the program is easier than it is becomes a withdrawal in week six, and the withdrawal shows up on somebody else's report while the campaign that recruited her gets counted as a win.

Count the touchpoints

Between her first click and her first day, list every form, portal, email, code, appointment, and document. Then ask how many a working adult with two kids completes without help. The number is usually embarrassing, and it's the cheapest thing on this page to fix.

Own the spring number

If marketing reports on applications and enrollment and stops there, the department is measuring its own activity. The number that matters is how many of the students we recruited are still here in the spring. That number is harder to move and harder to take credit for, which is most of why it doesn't appear on marketing dashboards.

Writing on this

Community College Marketing Has a Discovery Problem

Students are asking AI where to start a career, and the college that answers well is not always the one nearby. What that changes about program pages.

Marketing's Accountability Doesn't End at Enrollment

First-year retention is improving and still leaves a large share of community college students behind. The conditions that predict who stays get set before a student ever meets an adviser.

Enrollment Can't Be the Finish Line

The reframe this whole topic runs on, argued through one returning student's first week.

The Question behind the Submit Button

Response time is an enrollment metric. Students read it as an answer about whether they matter.

Every Rebrand Needs an Outro

What happens to the old name after launch, and why AI search holds onto it longer than your website does.

Which Higher Ed Marketer Are You, Based on Your Zodiac Sign?

Twelve real jobs on a marketing team, sorted by a system with no scientific backing whatsoever.

Where this shows up

I speak on enrollment strategy for the students who are actually showing up: adult learners, returning stopouts, career changers, and the people who left with credits and no credential. The consulting version runs from enrollment communications through the systems that have to carry the message after someone says yes.

The four-minute version of your program page is the one she reads. Most colleges have never looked at it.

Related subjects

Student experience

Recruitment, onboarding, advising and care are one path, not four departments.

Student retention

Every campaign that works hands a problem to somebody downstream.

Work together