Attract more right-fit students, energize stakeholders, and enhance your reputation with brand strategies that harness your institution’s authentic value.
As colleges and universities grapple with shifting demographics and changing perceptions about the value of higher education, institutions have an opportunity to shine as beacons of purpose and progress. With today’s students prioritizing both value and values, it’s crucial to build a brand that articulates what makes your school unique, so you can attract the right students and engage meaningfully with stakeholders and the larger community.
At Vital, we make your students the heroes of your brand story, so you can connect with their beliefs, dreams, and hopes for the future. Our distinctive approach focuses on identifying and amplifying the core elements that make your institutional identity come to life for your audience, so every aspect of your brand aligns with your mission and your students’ aspirations.
Update or recalibrate your brand message, voice, visual identity, and more, without losing the essence of what makes your institution unique.
Put your students at the center of your brand with storytelling that connects and converts. We collaborate to define your institution’s narrative and communicate it across digital channels.
Help ensure cohesiveness across touchpoints with comprehensive brand guidelines covering your mission, personality, voice, logo, colors, fonts, and everything in between.
Ensure that every school and program stands out with strong positioning, messaging, and visual design that enhances rather than dilutes your master brand.
From comprehensive institutional campaigns to enrollment marketing, alumni engagement, fundraising, and more, we work with you to establish the “big idea” themes, messaging, and visual identity guidelines that hold it all together.
Launch your multi-touch campaigns with ease with our creative packages, including copywriting and designs for paid ads, landing pages, emails, and social media templates.
What sets us apart from other higher education branding agencies? A unique, structured approach honed over our decades of experience with higher education institutions to ensure that your brand authentically communicates your distinctive value.
1. Discovery & Workshops
Our branding engagements begin with discovery to establish an understanding of your institution’s strengths, challenges, and opportunities. We conduct audience and competitive research, and we lead your team in workshops to explore and refine your brand story, personality, point of view, and other defining features. This enables us to make the strongest possible strategic recommendations.
2. Calendar Planning & Execution
Once we’ve established the foundation for our engagement, our expert strategists “plan the work and work the plan.” We deliver any necessary brand and campaign guidelines, then follow our established, disciplined process to develop strategies for launch and execution. Creative deliverables and brand and campaign assets are planned out on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis.
3. Weekly Status & Monthly Reports
We meet with you weekly to review deliverables and campaign metrics that matter most to your institution. We incorporate your input into our planning, developing tests, tweaks, and optimization strategies to help you meet your brand awareness and conversion goals. Once a month, we go deep into the data to deliver a comprehensive picture of your brand’s performance. We identify areas of potential growth and recommend new campaigns, creative enhancements, and more.
The Vital offices are filled with marketing nerds who can fill you in on the latest search engine algorithm updates, or wax poetic about the virtues of open source content management systems (CMS). We’re also home to some of the most innovative creative minds in the business. More often than not, the nerds and the creatives are one and the same. We get a kick out of solving problems your competitors don’t even realize they have. And we love to talk shop.
Every higher education institution is different, and success starts with understanding your audience, your goals, and your challenges. We bring a unique combination of higher education-specific expertise and out-of-the-box thinking that drives enrollment and revenue growth for a wide variety of institutions. Here are a few of our specialties:
What’s in the eBook? This 30-page guide is your digital marketing playbook for attracting more qualified applicants, building your academic brand, and bridging the gap between acceptance and enrollment to fill more seats and grow your school’s programs.
Ready to start your school’s digital marketing or website redesign project? So are we! Let’s get the ball rolling. Our team will be in touch within 48 hours.
