Six parts: pick the programs and terms to fill, build program pages that answer the student's questions, win the searches for those programs, run paid campaigns to the audiences the rules allow, follow every inquiry with email and messaging inside the law, and measure to the deposit. The rest of the series goes deeper on each.
The backdrop is a smaller pool: NCES counts undergraduate enrollment at 15.4 million in fall 2021, 15 percent below 2010, with a projected 9 percent recovery by 2031. Each student is contested, so the plan has to be specific.
The enrollment funnel, and why it shapes the plan
A prospective student moves through stages that are longer and more public than a consumer purchase: awareness of a field, a search for programs, a shortlist, an inquiry or a visit, an application, an offer, a deposit and, months later, a first day. Each stage has its own questions and its own drop-off, and most of the drop-off happens between inquiry and application, where a student compares three or four institutions in detail.
The pool is also contested. The National Center for Education Statistics' Fast Facts on postsecondary enrollment put total undergraduate enrollment at 15.4 million in fall 2021, 3 percent below fall 2020 and 15 percent below fall 2010, with 42 percent of that decline during the pandemic, and projected a 9 percent rise to 16.8 million between 2021 and 2031. Fewer students, slow growth and more choice mean that a campaign about the campus in general wins little; a campaign about a program, its cost, its outcomes and its deadline wins seats.
Part 1: Pick the programs and terms to fill
Start with admissions and the registrar, not with marketing. For each program and each intake, write down the seats to fill, the application deadline, the students who typically enroll (undergraduate, graduate, transfer, adult, international, online), what they ask at the first conversation and where they look. Rank programs by seats open and margin, and give the top ones a plan each. A program with full seats needs no spend; a new online graduate program with forty empty seats needs the whole method below.
Part 2: Program pages that answer the student's questions
The program page is where the decision is made, and most are written for the faculty rather than the student. Google's helpful content guidance asks whether a page shows first-hand expertise, gives original information and gives the reader reasons to trust it, and names trust as the most important quality; a program page written with the program director and a current student has all three.
Each program page answers, in order: what the program is and who it is for, in plain words; what it costs, including fees, and what aid is common, with the figures dated; what graduates do, truthfully and without inflated placement claims; the format, length, schedule and location or online delivery; admission requirements and deadlines for each intake; the faculty by name; and a plain next step, such as a request for information, a visit, an information session or the application. Keep one page per program, update it each cycle, and date it.
Part 3: Search, for programs and for the school
Prospective students search for programs (“online MBA in healthcare management”, “accelerated nursing program [state]”), for the institution by name, and for questions (“is a master's in data science worth it”). Program pages win the first kind if they are built as above and linked from the department and from each other; the institution's name and Business Profile win the second; plain question guides win the third. Pew Research Center analyzed 68,879 Google searches by 900 US adults in March 2025 and found that users who saw an AI summary clicked result links less often, so general questions are the least reliable source of visits; program and institution searches hold up better. Our guide to SEO for schools covers the local and family side for K-12 and independent schools.
Part 4: Paid campaigns, by program and by audience
Paid search on program terms and paid social to defined audiences are the fastest ways to fill a specific program by a deadline. Run them by program, with a landing page per program, a budget per program and a count of inquiries and applications per program, so that spend can move from a full program to an empty one mid-cycle. Audience rules differ by platform and by the age of the audience; campaigns aimed at minors, such as early outreach to high school students, face extra restrictions, and campaigns for adult and graduate programs can use job-title and interest targeting. Our paid social page covers the campaigns we run, and our guide to student recruitment marketing covers the funnel from inquiry to enrollment in detail.
Part 5: Email and messaging, within the law and within FERPA
Most of the work between inquiry and deposit is email and messaging: the information requested, deadline reminders, event invitations, admission decisions and the steps to enroll. In the USA, the FTC's CAN-SPAM compliance guide covers commercial email and requires accurate headers, a truthful subject line, identification as an advertisement where the message is one, a physical postal address and an opt-out honored within 10 business days, with penalties up to $53,088 per email. In Canada, CASL requires consent before a commercial electronic message. Transactional messages about an application a student has started are a different category; keep them plain and separate from marketing.
Once a student enrolls, their records fall under FERPA. The U.S. Department of Education's overview explains that FERPA gives parents rights over their children's education records, including some control over the disclosure of personally identifiable information, and that those rights transfer to the student at 18 or on entering a postsecondary institution at any age. Marketing to current students and alumni, and any use of enrolled students in stories or photos, has to respect that; involve the registrar before any such campaign. General information, not legal advice; your counsel has the last word.
Part 6: Social media and the institution's own voice
Social media carries the life of the programs to students who are deciding: faculty explaining a course, students describing a week, graduates saying where they work, with written permission from each person shown. It also carries the institution's answers to the questions students ask in public. Our guide to social media marketing for schools and universities covers what to post, where, and the privacy rules that apply to posts.
Edtech and online programs
An institution selling an online program, or an edtech company selling to schools, parents and learners, runs a version of the same funnel with its own rules, from the privacy of younger users to the long sales cycles of district buyers. Our guide to edtech marketing strategy covers that side.
How to measure higher education marketing
Measure by program and by intake, monthly, through the funnel: inquiries by source, applications started and completed, offers, deposits and first-day enrollments, with the cost per inquiry and per enrolled student by channel. Search Console and the ad platforms give the top of the funnel; the admissions system gives the rest, and the two must be joined by program. Review with admissions each month and move budget toward the programs and channels that fill seats. Clicks, followers and impressions are context only.
If you want it run with you
PromotEdge International is an international strategy, technology, marketing and design company, and our delivery team is in India. Our content marketing page explains how we plan and write program and question pages with faculty and admissions staff, our campaign service page covers the campaigns, and our sectors page lists the industries we work with. We have no higher education client to name, and we say so rather than invent one. This guide is general information, not legal advice; the rules of your country, state and province apply, and your counsel has the last word.
Facts we rely on: see our company facts for what we state about ourselves and where each fact comes from.