Full Service Marketing for Higher Education, Health Care & B2B Marketing
Full Service Marketing for Higher Education, Health Care & B2B Marketing
Christopher Lott
August 21, 2024
There’s a rhythm to higher education. Semesters come and go, and each new generation of students leaves its mark on campus before moving on. Yet the faculty and staff who make these experiences possible remain, eager to welcome a new class to an institution that will become their home.
If you’ve never worked in higher education, it can be tricky to understand the nuances. Colleges and universities have a language all their own.
At Stamats, we’re fluent in higher ed.
“Higher ed needs expertise,” explained Lisa Starkey-Wood, Stamats Account Executive and former director in marketing and admissions roles for Keuka College and Hartwick College. “It has to be strategic and data-driven. It’s helpful to have someone like Stamats experts drive the strategy, especially when we’ve been in their shoes.”
Starkey-Wood is one of several Stamats team members with deep experience in higher education. Because we’ve been there, we’re well-equipped to help our clients see the big picture, understand the varied perspectives of students, faculty, and staff, and help manage change in large organizations that are often dedicated to tradition.
In light of the changing dynamics of higher ed, it’s more important than ever to ensure marketing is strategic, insightful, and precise.
“Whether it’s a community college or a university, the challenges facing higher education are real,” said Leslie Schmidt, Senior Digital Project Manager at Stamats and former Highland Community College marketing and community relations administrator. “We have deep expertise in the big picture challenges and day-to-day struggles our clients face, and we’ve developed solutions that work.”
In a crisis or an enrollment pinch, politics can get stormy. Even the steadiest ship can get tossed on the seas of overwhelming projects and competing priorities. When it comes to knowing which way the wind blows, it helps to have a weatherman (despite what Bob Dylan’s been arguing for 60 years now).
That’s where Stamats comes in. Our experts have walked a mile in our clients’ galoshes, and we’ve weathered these storms before.
“One asset of people who have worked in a higher education environment is that we’ve been a part of that culture,” explained Lin Larson, Stamats Digital Strategist, who held strategic director positions through a 20-year career in marketing and communications with the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin. “But we also have enough experience outside it to see how the culture operates across different institutions and projects. It allows us to have a broader perspective.”
When the interests of faculty diverge from the institution’s marketing goals, seas can get rough. It helps to be an experienced sailor.
“Faculty and marcomm priorities are different, and they should be different,” explained Stamats Senior Digital Project Manager Kelly O’Brien, who held several marketing and communications roles at the University of Minnesota. “Every place has politics. Understanding how these priorities and politics intersect and how to ensure the marketing team’s voice gets heard is one way I help my clients.”
Jennifer VanGenderen, Stamats Senior Account Manager, worked in the financial aid office at St. Ambrose University—an experience she said helps her understand how her clients work together for students.
“Working in the financial aid office helped me understand the importance of the work they do,” she reflected. “I also learned how admissions, marketing, and financial aid all work together in the enrollment process, which I use when helping my clients make strategic decisions and think through workflows.”
Stamats’ experts navigate with more than just expertise. They use data to make and support decisions that get results for clients—in the conference room and on the bottom line.
“I do a lot of work in website designs and information architecture,” Larson explained. “I stress that whatever recommendations we make are supported by data. Our recommendations tend to be accepted by faculty and administrators. We don’t get a lot of pushback because we’ve done the research and we can show the data.”
Data is central to creating designs that inspire and knowing your audience’s voice is key to motivating them to action.
Related reading: Ban These Words from Your Higher Ed Content
At their best, colleges and universities are diverse, exciting places where thoughts collide, new knowledge is formed, and future leaders take shape. In that environment, there are a lot of voices talking at the same time, and it can be hard to understand who’s speaking your language.
Stamats experts are steeped in the languages of higher ed, and we have experience crafting communications that hit the mark with distinct audiences.
Take it from me, a former journalist and marketing specialist for Hartwick College who is now a Senior Content Writer at Stamats. You wouldn’t talk to an alumna with a Ph.D. the same way you talk to a high school senior who just visited campus. They value different things about your institution, and they’re looking for different outcomes from their interaction with you. If you use the same language for both audiences, neither one will be well served.
Julie Toomsen, who worked in distance learning at Kirkwood Community College for more than 30 years, knows understanding how different people communicate is an important part of her role in proofreading and content migration for Stamats clients.
“It’s always valuable to understand the different voices and audiences of higher ed,” she said, “and I always appreciate how Stamats creates and implements easy-to-navigate websites.”
In recruitment and philanthropic materials, websites, print publications, and emails, Stamats helps our clients find their voice and make sure it resonates with the right audiences.
For instance, recruitment communication plans are complicated by nature. Knowing when to send the right message to the right audience (and how!) can be the difference between hitting your goal for the incoming class and scrambling all summer to make the numbers work.
We’ve been there. We’ve hit home runs for our colleges and our clients, we’ve learned how to pivot when a mistake happens, and we’ve learned how to build a strategy that gets results.
“I can help our clients now because I’ve had to put my waders on and figure it out,” said Marianne Sipe, Senior Director of Enrollment Strategies at Stamats who’s worked in all aspects of strategic enrollment communications for Eastern Oregon University and Blue Mountain Community College. “Now I can give them that perspective. I wish I would have had someone to help me like that when I was in their shoes.”
Related reading: Enroll More Now: 3 Steps You Can Take Today
Some higher education institutions are great at change. They’re nimble, agile, and ready to adapt. Others … not so much.
It’s entirely understandable that large organizations built on tradition and shared decision-making can turn like a tanker. Progress can be slow and agonizing—a dangerous proposition when change is happening quickly.
Stamats teams have led major projects resulting in major positive change. We build momentum, get buy-in, and support important decisions with data that can help us forecast results.
“Higher ed can sometimes be a culture of ‘yes,’” explained Starkey-Wood. “When a faculty member wants something on the website, we can help say ‘no’ if what they want is not focused on the strategy, user, and student journey. We can speak truth to power when it comes to overcoming obstacles to effective strategy.”
Just like saying ‘no,’ big picture change management can be difficult when you’re embedded in a marcomm office that needs to respond to internal pressures.
“We did a big website project where we centralized control of the website, and we knew people were going to freak out,” O’Brien recalled of her time at Minnesota. “We prepared them by acknowledging the pros and cons, we shared the analytics and trained people how to understand them, and we formed a steering committee that included people from across campus.”
Getting ahead of concerns and practicing transparency can help manage change, as can having someone to keep an eye on the big picture.
“We’re helping clients look at their holistic communications plan, discover where those issues are, and track traffic from digital ad campaigns through email communications,” said Katie Eckelmann, Stamats Digital Specialist and a former director of enrollment technology and operations at Hartwick. “That helps our clients get the best ROI from working with us because we can provide that outside perspective on their overall strategy.”
Related reading: Campus Protests: 4 Tips for Crisis Planning
Not every strategy is the same for every college, so Stamats experts come from a diverse range of backgrounds. We’ve been insiders at sprawling public universities and tiny private colleges. We’re as well versed in career-focused community college offerings as cutting-edge research science and religious institutional cultures.
No matter your organization’s story, we can help you share it with audiences who want to hear from you.
“Our clients have different needs, and we all have different backgrounds,” explained Schmidt. “No matter where our clients come from, we’ve been there.”
As the landscape of higher education shifts, it’s never been more important for colleges and universities to produce thoughtful, strategic communications that advance institutional goals.
“We see a lot of institutions facing real enrollment challenges, and we see some closing up shop. I don’t think that is going to change,” Larson reflected. “I think that going to college, earning traditional credentials and new credentials, is going to continue to be important. But the market is shrinking and changing, and it’s going to move in some ways we don’t expect.”
That’s why understanding what the data mean for your institution and executing strategic communications is more important than ever.
“The enrollment cliff is real,” said Sipe. “Marketing and communications are essential because these strategies help schools attract students who are a good fit. It’s so important to have the conversation about value and to be prepared for when employers start prizing credentials again.”
The combination of inside expertise and outside perspective allows Stamats to offer clients particularly effective guidance in challenging times.
“The stakes are so high, and for many of our clients, resources are being cut,” O’Brien reflected. “It’s incumbent upon us to understand and anticipate the trends, to work with our research team to know everything we can about jobs, outlooks, and demographics, and to help translate that for our clients so they can be ready for opportunities.”
Are you ready to get some help with your digital, content, and enrollment strategy projects? Stamats’ team of experts is here to help. Contact us to get started.
