Competing on Student Outcomes to Attract Today’s Career Changer Study
Executive summary
Program-focused marketing messages are no longer sufficient to attract prospective students to professional, adult, and online education programs. Consumers today are highly skeptical of marketing messages, filtering out solicitations and content not immediately relevant or engaging.
This calls into question the primary lead generation strategy deployed by most COE units and requires a new approach to attract and maintain prospect attention.
Changes to consumer behavior require a new marketing paradigm in the attention economy:
Demand for consumer attention is rapidly outpacing its supply
Marketing costs across industries have risen at dramatic rates in the last few years, while consumer avoidance of marketing—evidenced by the steep increase in ad blocking technology adoption—has increased commensurately.
American adults are constantly digitally accessible, but highly distracted
Marketers have more opportunities to access digitally-connected consumers now than ever before, but those same consumers are much more distracted and less likely to engage.
Consumer skepticism of marketing and advertising has reached an all-time high
There is a growing disconnect between the advertising strategies that colleges and universities believe to be most effective—and in which they invest most heavily—and the types of messages that prospective students find most compelling. Marketers invest the vast majority of their budget in advertising, while consumers are more likely to trust recommendations and referrals from personal networks and third-party sources to validate their purchase decisions.
Higher education not immune from the acceleration of "ROI" shopping behavior
Public concern over student debt and uncertain higher education outcomes compounds skepticism among prospective students, often delaying decisions to pursue graduate or continued education.
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