Brain Waves Blog

A Collaboration Dedicated to Growing a Diverse Community and Helping Professionals Transform Higher Education

Campus Sonar and The Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) are collaborating as strategic partners. This partnership focuses on elevating SCUP’s strategic communications, informing thought leadership, and evolving research and innovative resources to members. 

Looking back on conversation topics and trends we’ve seen in our five+ years of industry research, we see lessons and insights you can use moving forward to make the most of yield season (or the recruitment process at large) and build a robust incoming class. 

Your campus is working to tell a cohesive, compelling brand story, but if you’re not working with a collaborative shared strategy, your message is being drowned out by conversation from accounts managed within departments, colleges and units, research centers, and other disparate areas of campus telling a different story in a different way in hopes of meeting very different goals. Let’s count the ways your brand is fragmented.

In higher ed (like every other industry), brand management is one of a campus’s top priorities. With social media molding the public’s perception of your brand, it’s your job to stay on top of your reputation—creating content that contributes to the conversation and aligns with your strategic goals. 

A journey map is one of the most helpful tools you can build to inform your marketing and communications strategy. In a business context, a journey map outlines the process a customer goes through—from their initial encounter with a brand, to purchase, and ultimately to loyalty and advocacy. It captures a customer’s goal at each stage, and informs the messaging and content a company develops by providing this customer-centric insight.

There’s a lot of online conversation taking place about colleges and universities in the United States.