Growth Strategy
Understand the market, align stakeholders, prioritize opportunities, and build higher education marketing strategies that fit your specific institutional ecosystem with a holistic approach to integrated growth planning.
What We Do
Get a partner who Connects the Whole system
Agencies Need to Understand the Higher Ed Landscape
Higher ed teams are under pressure to do more with less: meet ambitious enrollment goals, improve lead quality, differentiate crowded programs, prove ROI, adapt to AI search, and keep internal stakeholders aligned. Viv helps you step back, see the whole system, and build higher education marketing strategies focused on the work most likely to move the needle and help you hit your targets. With integrated growth planning, Viv can help you break out of silos and strengthen the impact of your efforts holistically.
You’ll get focused university marketing strategies for specific programs, divisions, or entire institutions that connect audience data, platforms, campaigns, nurture, and more. And it doesn’t stop with strategy: Viv’s radically human storytelling helps you rise above the sea of sameness in the minds of your target audiences. We help your team turn complexity into clearer priorities, more memorable creative, and measurable next steps.
Get Help Fixing Key Blockers
Messaging that sounds like everyone else
Paid media that drives leads but not enough right-fit prospects
Websites with low-traffic pages
Missing mentions in AI answer engines
Content that doesn’t support the full decision journey
Reporting that shows activity without clear next steps
Internal complexity that slows everything down
How We Help Higher Ed Grow
See Growth Strategy
Market research & focus groups
Competitor analysis
Portfolio & program strategy
Institutional advancement, development, philanthropy & fundraising strategy
Strategic planning
Organizational alignment workshops, retreats & strategy sessions
Digital Marketing
Build and manage digital campaigns that connect the right message, audience, channel, and conversion path, then keep improving performance week by week. These higher education marketing services are designed to strengthen lead quality, not just generate activity.
Paid media strategy & execution
Campaign concepting & creative
Landing pages
Lead nurture emails, SMS & phone
Analytics & attribution
CRM management
Branding & Storytelling
Radically human storytelling stands out. It’s the “show, don’t tell” approach to messaging that highlights your institution’s strengths through its people: students, alumni, faculty, and the wider community. Help students understand what is distinctive about your institution with psychographic messages connected to their goals and concerns. Uncover a big idea and connected design that elevates the best things about your institution. Build a memorable brand, content, creative, and stories. Viv’s radically human approach helps audiences feel a connection to your institution.
Branding, positioning & content strategy
Print & digital design systems
Web design, UX & copy
Video storytelling
Student, alumni & faculty stories
Viewbooks, white papers & downloadable assets
SEO & AI Search
Get found in traditional search, AI search, and answer-driven discovery with content that’s structured for machines and meaningful to people. Discoverability should ideally be built into your broader higher education marketing strategies.
Traditional SEO
AI search, AEO, GEO & schema
Website and AI search audits
Website optimization for SEO and AI
Generative engine marketing
Content structure and internal linking
As Simmons’ first Director of Marketing for Graduate Programs, one of my first decisions was hiring Viv. From day one, they have operated as true partners in helping build and scale our enrollment marketing function. Their team did not simply execute campaigns; they helped establish strategy, processes, and standards during a critical period of growth and transition.” (+)
The account management team has been exceptionally flexible, highly communicative, and deeply invested in our success. They consistently demonstrate a strong commitment to their clients and take ownership of outcomes, not just deliverables. They look beyond surface-level performance metrics to evaluate lead quality, intent, and downstream conversion, ensuring our investments are driving meaningful enrollment impact. That level of rigor and partnership gives us confidence that our brand, budget, and growth goals are in expert hands.”
Anice Barbosa
Director of Marketing, Graduate Programs at Simmons University
Simmons University Master’s Degree Programs
Building a Scalable Enrollment Engine to Drive Measurable Growth
25%
increase in grad applications
FAQs
Get answers to frequently asked questions about what agencies do.
What does a higher education marketing agency do?
A higher education marketing agency helps colleges and universities clarify their value, reach the right audiences, and move prospects from awareness to inquiry, application, enrollment, giving, or engagement. Viv builds higher education marketing strategies across research, positioning, creative, paid media, SEO, AI search, content, analytics, and enrollment operations so the work connects instead of splintering by channel.
What should I look for in a higher education marketing agency?
Look for a partner with deep higher ed experience, senior-level strategy, transparent reporting, and the ability to connect message, media, content, and conversion. Strong higher education marketing services should help your team see what is working, what is not, and what to improve next.
How can a marketing agency help a university increase enrollment?
A marketing agency can help a university increase enrollment by strengthening the full enrollment journey through improved market insight, audience targeting, program positioning, campaign creative, landing pages, nurture communications, lead quality, and conversion tracking. Viv develops university marketing strategies that make each part of that system easier to understand, test, and improve.
How can colleges connect marketing performance to enrollment outcomes?
Colleges can connect marketing performance to enrollment outcomes by tracking the right milestones, from traffic and inquiry quality to application starts, completions, deposits, and downstream conversion. Viv helps teams turn reporting into decisions, so college marketing strategies are judged by forward movement, not activity alone.
What marketing services do colleges and universities need?
Most colleges and universities need a practical mix of research, positioning, content strategy, campaign creative, paid media, SEO, AI search optimization, landing pages, nurture communications, CRM support, analytics, and reporting. The right higher ed marketing services depend on the audience, goal, funnel stage, market pressure, and internal capacity.
What types of marketing services help universities increase enrollment?
The services that most often help universities increase enrollment include research-backed positioning, paid search, paid social, landing pages, SEO, AEO, GEO, email and SMS nurture, retargeting, creative testing, program content, and funnel analytics. These work best when they are part of connected higher education marketing strategies rather than separate one-off tactics.
Results
University of Chicago Physical Sciences Department
Customizing Enrollment Marketing and Content-First Lead Generation for STEM Programs
Duke University Pratt School of Engineering
Turning Engineering Stories into Enrollment Momentum
Boston University College of Communications
Rebuilding Domestic Enrollment Momentum