How data-driven partnerships can help resource-constrained marketing departments attract new students

Community colleges are losing enrollment at a faster pace than ever before in their history due to demographic and economic shifts. Facing competition from four-year colleges and universities, community colleges must get their message out on social media and digital platforms from which traditional-age college students (17–24) prefer to consume information. With multiple responsibilities and limited resources, however, community college marketing and communications departments must collaborate with digital marketing experts to strategically allocate time and advertising dollars. Macomb Community College in Michigan has found that these data-driven partnerships provide a tangible return on investment (ROI) and allow for wider bandwidth in reaching targeted audiences. Education marketing and communication professionals will learn how Macomb increased traffic to its website and strengthened its social media presence during a highly competitive era in educational marketing. Introduced to the various metrics the college uses to analyse and optimise their digital marketing efforts, the reader will gain insight into the types of data that can help a college effectively market to prospective students. Including an internal strategy for message clarity and continuity, the paper offers a model on which readers can build campaigns with a measurable ROI that reach their prospective students on the digital channels those students patronise.