AACRAO partnered with two marketing faculty members to identify how higher education institutions are marketing themselves to high school seniors and to assess whether a brand management approach is being utilized. The research also sought to identify the practices that some institutions use (if any) to achieve enrollment results that are more successful than others.
The research suggests that institutions that tie their recruitment goals to their mission experience a greater yield between admitted and enrolled students. Those that rate themselves high on their use of social media and multichannel communications have similar yield rates. Institutions that can, at a minimum, use these two aspects to manage their brands are likely to meet their recruiting goals. The research also clarifies that higher education, in general, appears to lag behind U.S. corporations (e.g., Nike, Apple, Procter & Gamble) in the use of brand management to market to prospective customers (i.e. students).
