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Growth Strategy

GET A PARTNER WHO CONNECTS MARKETING TO ENROLLMENT GOALS

Growth isn't simply a channel problem. It's a system problem.

Turn market signals, enrollment data, audience insight, and institutional realities into a focused plan for sustainable growth with us. Higher education lead generation work should start before the campaign, with the right programs, audiences, positioning, conversion path, and measures of success.

We connect higher education market research, portfolio strategy, recruitment planning, messaging, funnel design, and enrollment operations so teams can make sharper choices and act on them quickly. The result is a lead strategy built around the needs of right-fit prospects at every stage of the funnel. Because raw volume is meaningless without integrated growth planning.

Find Where Your Funnel Needs Fuel—And Where It Doesn’t

One thing you’ll quickly learn about us: We’re a curious bunch. In fact, some of our experts may or may not have received in-school suspension for asking too many questions in math class. Luckily this is a value add for you, because we never assume. Some institutions need more awareness of their brand. Others need a more strategic portfolio, better higher education lead generation, a stronger conversion path, or better alignment between marketing and enrollment. Viv will ask strategic questions, conduct in-depth research, and help you pinpoint the blocker(s) before prescribing the fix. Then we’ll help you develop practical priorities that your team can move on.

Integrated growth strategy allows you to invest with purpose, improve what is already working, and stop spending energy on tactics that can’t actually solve the problem.

+18%

increase in domestic applications YOY for Babson College graduate programs

+35%

increase in accepted offers YOY for Boston University School of Hospitality Administration

+72%

increase in app starts YOY for Simmons University graduate programs

+130%

average increase in key events (inquiry, application, etc.) on program pages YOY in 2025 for Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development

Meet the Integrated Growth Planning Experts

Suzan Brinkerin Concord, MA
Lauren Wamelinkin Chapel Hill, NC
Amanda Cascioin Hattiesburg, MS
Rylee Plourdein Washington, D.C.
Colleen Sabatinoin Lancaster, PA
Flannery Burdickin Colorado Springs, CO

Work That Fine-Tunes Your Funnel

Viv can help your team see the whole growth system, make strategic choices to boost growth in a realistic way, and build the operating plan to establish new processes. We can implement strategies for you too.

Market Research & Focus Groups

Use higher education market research, audience interviews, focus groups, surveys, and demand data to understand what people value, where opportunity is, and what may be holding a program or portfolio back. This work makes your university enrollment marketing decisions clearer.

Competitor Analysis

See how competing institutions and programs position themselves, structure their offers, reach priority audiences, and communicate value. We identify crowded territory, meaningful gaps, and practical ways to make your institution easier to understand and harder to overlook.

Institutional Advancement & Fundraising Strategy

Connect institutional priorities to the audiences, stories, areas of need, and engagement paths that motivate your donors and partners to give back. We help advancement, development, philanthropy, and fundraising teams focus their message and build a practical plan for growth.

Strategic Planning

Turn ambitious institutional, divisional, or program goals into a focused roadmap. We help teams clarify opportunities, set priorities, define ownership, sequence the work, and establish measures of success.

Organizational Alignment & Facilitation

Bring the right people into conversation through workshops, retreats, strategy sessions, and working groups. Viv helps marketing, enrollment, academic, advancement, finance, and leadership teams agree on the problem, the opportunity, and the next move.

Measurement & Continuous Improvement

Set useful milestones, connect marketing signals to downstream outcomes, and revisit the plan as data rolls in. The strongest enrollment growth strategies create direction without becoming static and keep investment accountable to real-time outcomes.

See More Work

The Viv team has become an integral extension of our marketing team almost immediately since we began working together. They immersed themselves in our vast programming and audiences, quickly providing recommendations and optimizations for our paid media strategy. Their knowledge, attitude, and work ethic has impressed me since day one, and we quickly expanded the scope of their work with us to further integrate their expertise into our marketing goals.”

Anna Perelman

Director, Marketing & Enrolment Management at York University, Osgoode Hall Law School

Clear Choices + Steady Momentum

We don’t just drop a plan in your lap and walk away. You’ll get a collaborative partner who helps you build a connected path from insight to enrollment to advancement. For example, in our standard paid media performance reporting, we build clear KPI frameworks with full visibility across the funnel and make recommendations for optimizations biweekly.

Viv can set up live dashboards, deliver biweekly performance insights and recommendations, and build monthly deep-dive reports, all while taking a highly consultative and strategic approach.

We tackle all services with a growth strategy mindset.

While we’d love to get the eagle-eye view of your institution with a full integrated growth planning project, we look for blockers and opportunities across every service we provide.

See Digital Marketing See Branding & Storytelling See SEO & AI Search

FAQS

How do you build a higher education marketing strategy?

Start with your institution’s goal, the audiences most likely to advance it, and the evidence behind their decisions. Then connect market position, program value, message, channels, conversion points, ownership, and measurement in one operating plan. The strategy should be specific enough to guide choices and flexible enough to improve as results come in.

How can colleges improve lead quality and enrollment conversion?

Define what a right-fit lead looks like, prioritize fit over volume, and make the next step clear and useful. Stronger higher education lead generation also depends on what happens after the inquiry: fast follow-up, relevant nurture, clean handoffs, and reporting that connects sources to applications and enrollments.

How can graduate schools improve inquiry-to-application conversion?

Graduate schools can reduce friction by matching communications to prospects’ real questions about career value, cost, flexibility, timing, and program fit. Effective graduate student recruitment strategies coordinate landing pages, email, SMS, admissions outreach, events, and reminders so every touchpoint helps a prospect make the next decision.

How can market research help grow graduate enrollment?

Research can reveal which audiences have real demand, what they value, how they compare options, where your programs stand out, and what makes prospects hesitate. Those insights help teams refine the offer, prioritize markets, improve messaging, and test changes before making a major investment.

What are the biggest enrollment marketing challenges for universities?

Common challenges include changing demand, crowded categories, undifferentiated messaging, fragmented data, slow internal decisions, weak lead follow-up, and pressure to prove return on investment. The solution is rarely to add one more tactic. It is to gain a shared view of the whole system and develop a step-by-step plan for improving it.

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