Smart Marketing Moves for Higher Ed During the Slow Season
The summertime lull can affect a lot of different businesses and organizations, and higher education feels it more than most. Those hot, hazy days before the fall rush can feel like off-season, which can lead to things like “summer melt,” where schools see a solid percentage of enrolled, admitted students just…not show up for classes.
The summertime slow season is actually a prime opportunity for higher education institutions to make marketing moves that can set them up for success for the back half of the year.
Upgrades and Investments
When things are busy and you’re scrambling to hit your goals, the last thing you want to worry about is interrupting the flow for hardware or software boosts and adjustments. That makes the summertime lull the perfect opportunity to integrate new tools and technologies. It gives you the space you need to not only perform these upgrades, but also to format your processes, best practices, and standard operating procedures alongside them.
Maybe you don’t know of any particular upgrades or tools you might need? Slow season also provides the breathing room you need to dig into research on the latest advancements and figure out which ones might work for you.
But your tech is not the only thing that could use an investment over the summer. Your people are even more important, which means you need to prioritize time to ensure all of them are feeling supported and satisfied. The slower work schedule gives you the chance to see what your employees need—new training, summer outings or activities, longer lunch breaks, etc.—in order to feel relaxed and ready to perform their best.
Planning and Big-Picture Thinking
When you’re in the thick of dozens of daily tasks and responsibilities, there’s no time to take a step back and look at the wider scope of your plans, but strategic planning is so important to overall success. When the slow season hits, take advantage of it by using that breathing room to look at the big picture.
Start at the organizational level: are your goals and values still aligned? Is your branding in line with them? Do you have a clear idea of your unique selling points and value-adds? Is there anywhere you need to pivot in this area?
All of those answers will help when you dig into the broader marketing picture. Which channels are performing well for you? Which ones might you be missing out on? How are your marketing processes—like content strategy and preparation, cross-channel connections, and so on—working? Are there places you can tweak to be more efficient and effective?
Campaign Audits
Big-picture thinking helps in terms of overall strategy, but marketing is data-driven and granular. During the summertime lull is an excellent time to dive into your analytics on every active platform and start developing takeaways and action items.
Look at how your website is performing and which pages and topics are driving visitors to you. Check your social platforms, whether you’re getting the engagement you’re looking for, which posts seem to resonate with your audience. Analyze how your content strategy and calendar worked over the past year. Assess how everything contributes to your overall sales funnel so you can toss out what’s not working and boost what is.
Stay Engaged
As much as we might want to kick back and relax during the summer months, it’s more important than ever to stay engaged and active and continue to reach out to both prospective and enrolled students. Plan and promote events—both virtual and in-person—that can give students a chance to get to know you. Stay consistent on your social media posts. Utilize the personalized, targeted messaging that we’ve talked about before to remind prospects about important dates, application status, and more. Create and bolster your ties with your surrounding community because that can greatly enhance your school’s outreach.
Heat Things Up This Summer
The warmth, the sunshine, the vacations—everything about summer makes you want to relax and let go of the usual work hustle. But if you write off the slow season, you’re missing key opportunities to build the marketing infrastructure your higher education organization can leverage in the fall.
