Higher Education Enrollment Marketing

Modern Enrollment Journeys Require Connected Strategies

Higher education enrollment marketing has become more complex. Students explore programs across search, social, video, AI-powered research tools, and campus websites, often forming opinions long before they submit an inquiry. At the same time, institutions are managing multiple programs, audiences, enrollment goals, and internal teams that all need to work together to drive measurable outcomes.

Orange 142 helps higher education enrollment marketing teams connect strategy, media, messaging, and enrollment performance to attract the right students and move them from interest to application.

Enrollment Marketing Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All

Enrollment marketing isn’t one-size-fits-all. Every program has a unique audience. Every student has a different journey. Whether it’s an MBA candidate researching executive programs, an undergrad choosing between business or biology, or a working professional looking for the perfect online degree, you need a strategy that speaks to each student’s goals.

That strategy also needs to match how prospects discover and evaluate programs. Some begin with a search engine, while others start on social media or video platforms. Increasingly, future students turn to AI tools to compare programs, explore career paths, and narrow their options based on their specific goals, often forming opinions before ever submitting an inquiry.

Connected Campaigns Drive Better Enrollment Outcomes

Reaching the right students now requires coordinated campaigns across multiple channels, each supporting a different stage of the enrollment journey. For many enrollment marketing teams, that also means managing multiple agencies, disconnected reporting, and separate campaign strategies across platforms.

At the same time, the role of the marketing enrollment team is expanding. Today, many marketers are responsible for both generating and nurturing leads through the enrollment process and for overall outcomes. But to understand which tactics and channels drive enrollment results, marketers need access to performance data. That, in turn, requires alignment between the marketing and admission teams, as well as the systems both use to manage prospects along the enrollment journey.

Orange 142 brings strategy, media, messaging, and performance together under one roof, helping higher education enrollment marketing teams execute connected campaigns with greater clarity and consistency.

Media Solutions

Orange 142 offers a complete suite of media solutions to help enrollment marketing teams reach the right prospects at the right time across desktop, mobile, CTV, digital audio, and paid social media.

We can manage every aspect of your campaign, from audience development, campaign execution, ongoing optimization, and reporting. Learn how you can recruit more students in our Best Practices Guide: Higher Education Enrollment Marketing & Admissions Alignment. If you currently advertise but are unsure what your results mean, please see the Orange 142 guide, Campaign Metrics and What They Mean for Higher Education Enrollment Marketing.

Learn how colleges and universities can improve visibility, follow-up, and enrollment outcomes in our Best Practices Guide: Higher Education Enrollment Marketing & Admissions Alignment.

Why do higher education enrollment teams struggle with their leads? It’s a topic that Orange 142's higher-end experts, Cassandra Razzi and Wesley Rupar, discuss in this Q&A with Calvin Scharffs.

Calvin Scharffs

SVP, Marketing & Demand Generation
Orange 142

Why Work with Orange 142

Higher education enrollment marketing requires more than lead generation alone. Success depends on understanding how prospective students discover programs, how they move through the enrollment journey, and which campaigns, audiences, and channels are actually driving applications and enrollment outcomes.

Orange 142 helps colleges and universities connect audience strategy, multi-channel advertising, SEO/GEO visibility, reporting, and enrollment performance into a more measurable and coordinated enrollment marketing system.

Orange 142 Higher Education Enrollment Marketing Council. We launched this Council to examine the evolving challenges facing college and university enrollment marketing teams, and to develop best practices, strategic guidance, and operational frameworks to support more connected and measurable enrollment marketing strategies.

Leveraging these resources and expertise, Orange 142 can help you with:

AI-Powered Advertising. Use AI-driven search, paid social media campaigns, video, streaming, and AI-driven campaign strategies to reach prospective students across the modern enrollment journey.

SEO / GEO / AEO Visibility. Improve visibility across traditional search engines, AI-generated answers, and emerging student discovery platforms with SEO, GEO and AEO services.

Degree & Program-Specific Campaigns. Build tailored enrollment strategies around the unique audiences, goals, and timelines of individual programs.

Enrollment Reporting & Attribution. Connect campaigns, lead sources, admissions follow-up, and enrollment outcomes to understand better what’s driving performance. Check out our Higher Education Enrollment Marketing Checklist to assess how well you’re aligned with admissions.

Audience Strategy & Retargeting. Identify high-intent audiences, strengthen engagement, and support continued outreach across channels and stages of the enrollment process.

Experience Optimization. Evaluate landing pages, application flows, and conversion paths to reduce friction and improve inquiry and application performance.

Q: Why aren’t my leads converting?
A: Lead quality is only part of the equation. Conversion issues often stem from inconsistent follow-up, unclear application paths, disconnected reporting, or a lack of alignment between marketing and admissions. Without visibility into what happens after a lead is generated, it becomes difficult to identify where prospective students are dropping off in the enrollment journey.

Q: How can we tell which enrollment campaigns are actually driving results?
A: Effective enrollment marketing requires clear attribution and shared reporting across marketing and admissions. Every lead source should be tracked consistently so institutions can connect campaigns, channels, and audiences to inquiries, applications, and enrollment outcomes.

Q: How do I ensure our programs appear in AI-generated answers and search results?
A: Many prospective students use AI tools to compare programs, research career paths, and evaluate universities. Improving visibility requires a combination of SEO, GEO, structured content, program-specific pages, and authoritative supporting content that helps AI platforms understand and surface your institution accurately.

Q: Why is alignment between marketing and admissions important?
A: Enrollment marketing works best when marketing and admissions share visibility into lead sources, follow-up activity, application progress, and enrollment outcomes. Alignment helps institutions understand which campaigns are driving qualified applicants and where improvements are needed across the enrollment process.

Q: How do prospective students discover degree programs today?
A: Student discovery journeys are increasingly fragmented across search engines, social media, video platforms, streaming media, online reviews, university websites, and AI-powered research tools. Reaching prospective students requires coordinated messaging and visibility across multiple channels and stages of the enrollment journey.

Q: How can we improve enrollment marketing performance across multiple programs?
A: Different degree programs attract different audiences, timelines, and decision-making behaviors. Improving performance requires program-specific messaging, coordinated multi-channel campaigns, consistent reporting, and visibility into which strategies are driving applications and enrollment outcomes for each program.