Why Content Marketing Is the New Admissions Tool for Universities
Brian and I have been working on a content marketing project for a major university, and I started thinking about how much has changed since I applied to colleges. I might be dating myself here, but when I was looking at colleges, I had to request a brochure by snail mail.
In 2025, 23% of seniors used AI tools like ChatGPT to explore colleges. EAB predicts that in 2026, AI-powered college search will be ubiquitous among Gen Z and millennial students.
So, yes, I feel old. But I also feel energized because this means higher education admissions websites just need more content written by an actual human. If you've been following along, you know that in 2026, search engines and AI reward expert-driven content that doesn’t read as if a robot wrote it.
If schools want to show up on AI’s radar, the writing is on the wall (pun intended).
With that in mind, I thought we could dig into how academic marketing teams can build a content strategy that meets students where they are.
What Is Content Marketing for Universities?
Prior to the digital age, the main source of promotion for colleges was paid ads, everywhere from billboards and ads on public transportation to TV commercials and direct mail campaigns.
Once marketing moved to digital platforms, paid advertising continued, just on a different turf–social media platforms, search engines, and college ranking sites.
These days, marketing tactics are not overly promotional or disruptive; they are quietly inserted into prospective students' everyday lives. Content marketing in higher education educates, inspires, and informs across different platforms—from blog and social media posts to virtual tours and TikTok videos.
Map Content to the University Enrollment Funnel
Each piece of content is part of a larger university marketing strategy and focuses on a prospect at a specific stage of the decision-making process. This is what we mean by a marketing funnel–different prospects in different phases of decision making.
If we think of the funnel as an upside-down triangle, the top represents all prospective students, where the goal is awareness and visibility. Top-of-funnel campaigns focus on getting your school's name out there through content such as blog posts about student life and career outcomes. Or short video city guides and sports celebrations.
The awareness phase is all about showing up in places where prospective students hang out online. This phase filters out a good portion of the prospective students, ushering the remainder to the middle of the funnel–the consideration phase.
In the consideration phase, prospective students are learning whether the school is a good fit through informational and educational materials such as:
program guides
faculty Q&A posts
webinars
virtual campus tours
In this phase, an AI tool would come in handy and save a lot of time on road trips.
“Claude: tell me about liberal arts schools located in NYC but with a traditional campus, including a wrought-iron gate.” – If 17-year-old Lauren had AI. (The only right answer would've been Fordham University Rose Hill Campus).
Once the audience is further whittled down, we're left with a small audience of red-hot leads. These are students who are seriously considering your school. They’ve popped their list of potential schools into ChatGPT, begging it to make some decisions for them. In this case, alumni testimonial videos, data-driven infographics, financial aid explainers, and a chatbot can help this group cross the finish line and apply.
It doesn't end there–there's another part of the funnel. The yield or retention phase, in which the student has agreed to go but still has the option to bail. If you work in admissions, you probably know this as the “summer melt," where students “melt" away during the summer due to logistical overwhelm or lost momentum. The content in this phase is much more direct outreach–that's where personalization comes in through email marketing, texting, and DMing on social media.
High-Impact Content Strategies for Higher Education
So what does content marketing for higher education look like in practice? Here are five proven content marketing tactics that universities can use to market to prospective students:
(1) Student-led content & social takeovers for authenticity
What better way to show prospective students life than live streaming from the eyes (or phone) of an energetic student on campus? Not only is this great for authenticity, but it also meets students where they are, which is on social media, searching for videos.
(2) Faculty spotlights to signal academic credibility
Campus life is just one piece of the puzzle for students. For some students who are there to learn or conduct research, academic rigor is equally (or more) important than campus life. Spotlighting faculty is a great way for universities, especially research-focused ones, to signal academic credibility.
(3) SEO-driven non-branded blog content
Blogs don’t always have to be student features or faculty highlights—they can also tell their story through blog content that focuses on the research and career outcomes. For example, an R1 research school can gain traction with search engines and AI by featuring its research in a blog post on the topic.
(4) Infographics for complex data
During one of our other higher ed projects, we suggested an infographic to showcase the career outcomes of a particular program, as it felt clunky and confusing to explain in text. In another case, we suggested a timeline visual for the application process so important details were loud and clear.
(5) CRM-powered personalized email sequences
One of the most powerful ways an admissions team can build relationships with accepted students is through personal outreach. This doesn’t have to be a fully manual process—it can start as an automated one through a CRM and then move to human engagement. Use CRM data to tailor content to the student’s interests, especially during the retention period.
There are many more ways to engage with prospective students, and the right approach depends on your school's strengths, bandwidth, and goals.
At Lauren Perna Communications (LPC), we help schools dissect content marketing strategy all the time. It starts with understanding your audience and then creating a strategy based on that understanding.
Check out our audience analysis tool to better understand your audience.
Building and Managing Your University Content Engine
So this may sound great, but there's an elephant in the room—all this content depends on many different people and departments. And interdepartmental collaboration can be challenging in a complex, red-tape-ridden environment like higher education.
Here are some suggestions to realistically build and manage a content engine in higher ed admissions:
Before creating any content, you need a content marketing strategy as your roadmap. If you don't have a strategy to lean on, it's much easier to lose momentum and sight of the long-term goals.
If you’ve been following LPC for a while, you know we are seriously obsessed with repurposing, reusing, and recycling content. With the right permissions, repurposing content from other departments reduces stress for everyone.
Another thing we do for clients, and ourselves, is create a content cache during slow seasons. That way, no one is pulled in many directions during the busy season.
These days, any fast-moving content engine incorporates AI tools, chatbots, and CRM systems to reduce time-consuming tasks and enhance relationship-building tactics.
When we engage with complex organizations, such as academia, we hold regular meetings with various departments to ensure everyone stays on the same page.
Of course, no content marketing list would be complete without the mention of a content marketing calendar. We suggest creating an interdepartmental calendar to improve visibility and track campaigns. Keep the calendar very simple and easy for everyone to understand.
So while it’s easy enough to say, “build a cross-departmental content calendar," the reality is that without the right resources, it could just sit and collect dust. That’s why it’s important to have a dedicated person to own the calendar and the process. That person could be in-house or a content marketing contractor, or some combination of both.
Measuring What Matters in Your Content Marketing
Once you have that content engine churning, you can’t just leave it going and hope it works. You have to always be tracking the metrics. The type of metrics depends on where the content lies in the funnel.
For example, impressions and social media followers are important for the awareness phase. In this phase, you want to answer the question: how many people saw the content?
In the consideration phase, you’ll want to understand how people are interacting with the content. Track engagement metricssuch as social media comments, shares, time spent on page, and scroll depth.
In the conversion phase, you want to track more in-depth conversion metrics such as Google Analytics events, application submissions, and deposit rates influenced by specific pages.
In the retention phase, you want to track metrics that signal continued interaction, such as email open rates and engagement on community platforms.
As with any content marketing campaign, the metrics help you understand how the content is performing and whether it is successful. Tracking data gives you the opportunity to make changes in real-time. If you aren't tracking the success of your content, you could be spinning your wheels and not realizing it.
Content Marketing Is a Requirement for Universities
Here’s the TLDR: content marketing isn't a nice-to-have for maintaining enrollment and retention—it's a requirement.
At LPC, we have experience working with academia through our work in the life sciences ecosystem. This means we have the technical skill and marketing expertise to address the unique demands of academic content and writing.
Ready to build a content strategy that fills your enrollment funnel? As experts in content marketing for universities, we'd love to help. Send us a message.
