Anyone in higher education knows that colleges and universities are facing numerous challenges these days, from increased competition for students, to the tightening of traditional revenue streams, to an explosion in free online courses (MOOCs) offered by top schools. As a result, marketing and admissions teams are actively searching for innovative ways of reaching and enrolling the best and brightest students into their programs.

In an effort to uncover how schools are responding to these challenges, and identify trends, best practices, and issues facing the education sector we conducted the 2012 Benchmarking Survey for Higher Education Marketing. If you’re an active blog reader, you know that we released our 2012 Benchmarking Report for For-Profit Schools earlier in the summer. And soon, we’ll be ready to release our 2012 Not-for-Profit Report.

In the meantime, we thought we would give you a sneak peek inside the Report, and let you in on some of the trends that we’re seeing in higher education marketing and recruitment this year.

Here we go!

Trend One: Traditional marketing methods alone are no longer enough.

Gone are the days when schools could rely solely on direct mail campaigns and print advertising to achieve their enrollment goals. 84% of schools agree that “traditional marketing methods alone are no longer enough to meet enrollment goals.” As a result, schools are eagerly exploring innovative, online methods of reaching potential students.

In next week’s post, we’ll examine what traditional marketing and recruitment methods are taking the hit, and which ones are still seen as viable options for successfully recruiting students.

Until then, we want to hear from you! Do you agree that traditional marketing methods are no longer enough? What are you turning your sights to?

About Colleen Gauthier

Colleen is Senior Marketing Manager at CUnet. She has over 10 years of experience in higher education sales and marketing, and has worked closely with everyone from professors, to deans, to students, and administrators. When she is not working, she can be found spending time with her two young children, playing baseball, or drinking wine!

• View all posts by Colleen Gauthier →
• Blog

Tags: benchmarking report, enrollment marketing, higher education, Higher education marketing, not-for-profit

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2012 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Benchmarking Report, CUnet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.