Most campuses don't have a marketing challenge

I've now interviewed more than a thousand people about how they chose a school — students, parents, guidance counsellors, faculty, the people who answer the phone in admissions. The thing that surprises leadership teams is never what prospective students dislike. It's how little of the message reached them at all.

A campus will spend eighteen months refining a positioning statement, then discover that the moment which actually decided a student's application was a two-minute phone call with a program assistant, or a residence photo on a forum the institution doesn't monitor. The strategy wasn't wrong. It just never made it to the places where the decision happened.

Map the decision, not the funnel

A funnel describes what you wish people did. A journey map describes what they actually do, including the parts that embarrass you — the dead-end page, the form that asks for a student number they don't have yet, the four-week gap between application and any human contact.

The exercise is uncomfortable because it relocates the problem. It's much easier to commission a new campaign than to fix the fact that nobody answers email in July.

What to do first

Before the next brand refresh, do three things:

• Interview twenty people who chose somewhere else. They will tell you things your enrolled students no longer remember.
• Walk your own funnel with a stopwatch, from first search to first human reply.
• Find the moment of highest anxiety in that walk, and put a person in it.

None of this requires a new logo. Most of it requires admitting that the institution has been talking considerably more than it has been listening.