Leveraging Values in Higher Education Marketing

So if leveraging values is good enough for Apple and Nike, why isn’t it good enough for higher education brands?  All too often, colleges and universities tend to talk more about rankings, top-rated faculty, and statistical merits.  The problem is that every college can talk about rankings, top-rated faculty, and statistical merits.  That ultimately lumps an institution into that “sea of sameness” that Steve Jobs alluded to trying to avoid.  And when it comes to messaging, most ads and social media posts become some variation of another school down the road.

Instead of talking about rankings, class sizes, or hybrid learning, what if you re-framed your marketing strategy around what your institution stands for?  Rather than messaging around some degree of “better than” when it comes to features and benefits, what would it look like to contemplate communications that amplify your school’s values?  The chance you have to actually resonate deeply with your audience will increase dramatically.

So how does an institution do that?  How can you do that?  The first step is to look for your school’s list of core values; those pillars of meaning that represent what’s truly important to the campus community.  If a school doesn’t necessarily have a codified list of values, there’s a good chance that they are reflected in the mission statement.  Some interesting values to consider with respect to your institution are:

Academic and Intellectual Values

Excellence: Commitment to the highest standards of teaching, research, and scholarship.

Rigor: Emphasis on critical thinking, intellectual challenge, and deep exploration of ideas.

Innovation: Encouraging new approaches, creativity, and a willingness to take intellectual risks.

Curiosity: Fostering a love of learning and a lifelong desire for knowledge, understanding, and growth.

Truth-seeking: Dedication to honest inquiry, pursuit of accurate information, and respect for evidence.

Community and Social Responsibility

Diversity: Creating a welcoming, inclusive environment that celebrates differences in background, thought, and experience.

Inclusion: Actively ensuring all individuals have a sense of belonging and an opportunity to thrive.

Equity: Working to eliminate barriers and promote fairness and justice for all members of the community

Service: Encouraging a spirit of giving back to the local community and the broader world.

Global Citizenship: Developing cross-cultural awareness and an understanding of interconnectedness within a global society.

Sustainability: Prioritizing responsible resource use and commitment to environmental stewardship for future generations.

Student Development

Personal Growth: Providing opportunities for students to develop as whole individuals, intellectually, ethically, and emotionally.

Leadership: Cultivating students’ skills in influencing others, creating change, and building a better future.

Spirituality:  Creating environments and pathways to help students understand, cultivate, or develop a personal faith.

Integrity: Nurturing honesty, responsibility, and adherence to ethical principles.

Resilience: Helping students develop the ability to adapt and overcome challenges.

Wellness: Promoting a holistic approach to well-being that includes physical, emotional, and mental health.

Experiential Learning

Hands-on: Emphasizing active learning through projects, internships, fieldwork, and research opportunities.

Real-world Application: Providing opportunities to connect classroom learning with practical challenges and career preparation.

Collaboration: Cultivating teamwork, problem-solving, and the ability to work effectively with others from diverse perspectives.

Experiential Education: Integrating travel, study abroad options, and service-learning that encourages out-of-classroom exploration.

Focus on Outcomes

Career Preparation: Emphasizing programs and resources that help students find fulfilling and successful careers.

Lifelong Success: Positioning the university as a foundation for a lifetime of achievement and impact, not just a four-year degree.

Personal Transformation: Highlighting the ways in which the university experience can help students discover their passions, develop their potential, and become the best versions of themselves.

Additional Values to Consider

Tradition: Celebrating the institution’s history, heritage, and enduring legacy.

Accessibility: Commitment to making education affordable and open to students from all backgrounds.

Community Engagement: Emphasis on partnerships with and contribution to the surrounding community.

Collegiality: Fostering a respectful and supportive campus environment where ideas are debated and friendships are forged.

Spirit: Cultivating a sense of school pride, belonging, and shared connection through events, athletics, and traditions.

This is just a sampling of values that institutions use to form convictions an beliefs.  Your institution may hold up some of these or others altogether as concept upon which to build culture and brand.

Clustering Values for a Unique Platform

It’s also worth noting that while individual values can be very powerful, an institution’s combination of values can really present an opportunity to stand out.  You might have multiple institutions that share a particular value like environmental sustainability.  In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find many institutions that don’t hold that value.  But an institution that combines environmental sustainability with global citizenship and technological advancement, for example, opens up some interesting possibilities for standing out from a peer group or competitive set.

Combining a series of institutional values into  groups or clusters may very well lead you to a place where the institution has firmer footing in terms of embracing a position of true meaning that is truly unique.  Here are some examples of how clusters might work:

Cluster 1: The Innovator’s Path

• Innovation
• Hands-on Learning
• Entrepreneurship
• Technology & Innovation

This cluster emphasizes a cutting-edge, action-oriented approach to education, perfect for attracting students who want to disrupt the status quo and build new solutions.

Cluster 2:  The Community Catalyst

• Service
• Social Responsibility
• Equity
• Global Citizenship

This cluster is perfect for students driven to use their education for social impact and making a difference in their local and global communities.

Cluster 3: The Explorer’s Journey

• Curiosity
• Experiential Education
• Lifelong Learning
• Global Perspectives

This combination attracts students eager for intellectual adventure, constant discovery, and a broader understanding of the world.

Cluster 4:  The Scholar’s Pursuit

• Excellence
• Rigor
• Critical Thinking
• Truth-seeking

These are just some examples of values and value clusters to spark thinking and exploration.  Once identified, though, look for ways that those core values (or a cluster of values) might find a connection to your right-fit-student.  It’s widely known that today’s emerging generations hold organizational values in high importance.  Deloitte’s 2019 Global Millennial Survey revealed that millennials and Gen Z are drawn to institutions and employers who share their concerns around causes and social issues.  An institution that values environmental sustainability, spiritual development, or servant leadership, as examples, opens up worlds of possibilities for messaging, partnerships, and storytelling.  That’s much more fertile ground upon which to build a compelling message than, for example, waiting for a magazine’s annual rankings to come out.

Understanding values also helps to shape the marketing mix (or 4 P’s) of the institution.  Holding a value in freshwater sustainability, as an example, might lead the institution to not only talk differently about itself, but to change its actual product.  That institution might create and host an annual conference or speaker series around the topic, form a new journal, or even open a special institute dedicated to the cause?  In short, values should not just determine what the institution says, but what it does.