4 key imperatives shaping graduate business student enrollment and lead generation

The graduate business education market is evolving fast, with shifting student expectations, increasing competition for domestic students, and new challenges in lead generation. Schools that fail to adapt risk losing prospective students to institutions that better understand and respond to these changes. In a recent research report, I explored what these changes mean for graduate business leaders in terms of enrollment and lead generation, as well as strategies to address them.

In this post, I’ll break down four key trends influencing graduate business enrollment and what schools can do to attract and engage right-fit students.

Imperative 1: Understanding student motivators is key to effective differentiation.

Demand for graduate business programs is rising, with 2.1% enrollment growth in Fall 2024. Yet, a strong labor market and a growing number of program options have intensified competition—making differentiation essential. But many schools struggle to move beyond broad, generic messaging that doesn’t tap into their uniqueness or student motivators.

What you can do:

• Ensure your value proposition aligns with four key criteria: relevance, difficulty to replicate, broad appeal, and provable success.
• Target right-fit candidates and personalize the prospect journey by their key enrollment drivers.
• Refine your differentiators to capture what makes your program unique – if it’s not clear to you, it won’t be clear to prospective students.

Imperative 2: Grad business candidates shop stealthily but expect a personalized experience.

A little more than half (51%) of today’s business prospects prefer to “stealth shop”—they research institutions independently, declining to share personal information with schools until they are ready to apply. At the same time, they expect to be met with an experience that feels both personal and relevant to their needs. Building this kind of experience through your marketing pays off—business students tend to engage with personalized marketing at higher rates than other program types.

What you can do:

• Diversify your lead-gen strategy to make sure you’re effectively reaching stealth shoppers.
• Refine nurture strategies to ensure prospective students receive the right message at the right time, tapping into the urgency of the enrollment decision process.
• Develop tailored messages about program benefits and career outcomes to provide the reassurance students need to take the next step.
• Fine-tune your SEO strategies for greater visibility

Imperative 3: Showing ROI is crucial to the student decision-making process.

As schools face intense competition for new students and their expectations evolve, a key move is to demonstrate the real-world results of your program. With 42% of US business candidates seeking to switch careers, they enter your program with prior experience and high expectations for professional mobility. By leveraging social proof—such as testimonials from alumni or industry partners—networking opportunities, and hands-on training experiences, institutions can effectively demonstrate the tangible benefits students gain by enrolling.

What you can do:

• Identify students, alumni, and industry partners who can speak to tangible outcomes they’ve experienced as a result of your programs.
• Align your program’s value proposition with career outcomes and financial ROI.
• Leverage this information across your website and pair it with lead forms that directly integrate into your marketing campaigns for fast follow-up.

Imperative 4: The pressure is on to recruit domestic students.

Graduate business programs rely on international students to fill their classes—they made up 36% of enrollments in fall 2024, particularly in STEM-designated programs. But political shifts and tighter border policies may reduce the flow of these students, negatively impacting enrollment numbers. Yet, domestic students now make up a smaller share of total enrollment, declining 6% since 2020. It’s crucial for schools to learn the needs and preferences of domestic students in their local market and adapt lead-generation tactics to effectively connect with them.

What you can do:

• Expand lead sources to reach a robust, targeted candidate pool early.
• Identify ideal student profiles and align your SEO and paid strategies with search behavior.
• Focus on high-intent leads—those most likely to convert—to ensure your marketing efforts are more precise and efficient in guiding prospects toward enrollment.

Diversify your approach to lead generation

To stay competitive in an evolving landscape, graduate business leaders must act decisively to strengthen their enrollment and lead-generation efforts, ensuring a steady flow of student demand at the top of the funnel. Yet, it can be difficult to manage a lead acquisition strategy across numerous platforms in an efficient, cost-effective way. Solutions such as Appily Advance can help business programs generate actionable leads at scale in a consolidated way.

We find high-intent leads from a variety of sources, including digital ads, national consumer data, a network of affiliate partners, and proprietary sources containing data from more than 17 million active student users. Request a demo today.