How to increase enrollment in higher education with full-funnel ads

TL;DR: The pool of new high school graduates peaked in 2025 and shrinks from here, so the old move of buying more search clicks and retargeting gets more expensive every cycle. The schools that grow enrollment now run ads at every stage of the funnel at once: streaming video and social to get on the list, consideration content to stay there, and conversion and yield campaigns tied to real application and deposit data. Then they measure the whole thing by enrolled students, not by inquiries.

The problem: the cliff is here, and last-click budgets make it worse

If you run marketing for a college or university, the math changed this year. WICHE's Knocking at the College Door report projected U.S. high school graduates would peak in 2025 at about 3.9 million, then fall steadily to about 3.4 million by 2041, a 13% decline. The drop isn't even. WICHE projects Illinois down 32% and Michigan down 20% from 2023 levels, while states like Tennessee and South Carolina grow.

It's no surprise that "how to increase enrollment in higher education" is one of the searches Google suggests as you start typing the question. And the usual answer is a trap. When budgets tighten, most teams protect search and retargeting because they "convert," and cut streaming, audio and display because they only "build the brand." That feels disciplined. It's actually how you shrink your own pipeline, because the people searching for your name in March are often the people your awareness ads reached in October.

EAB's 2026 Higher Ed Marketing Outlook, built on a survey of more than 120 higher ed marketing leaders, describes the squeeze: flat budgets, smaller teams, rising paid media costs and more pressure to show enrollment results. Under that pressure, a full-funnel plan isn't a luxury. It's the only version of paid media that still adds students instead of just recapturing the ones you'd have gotten anyway.

What "full-funnel" actually means for a campus brand

Full-funnel doesn't mean "spend some money on everything." It means each stage has its own job, its own creative and its own metric, and the stages are wired together with data.

• Awareness: get onto the consideration list of students and families who don't know you yet. Connected TV, streaming audio, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok do this well. The metric is reach in the right households and lift in branded search, not clicks.
• Consideration: give people a reason to keep you on the list. Student stories, program outcomes, cost and aid clarity, campus life video. The metric is engagement with that content and visit or event registrations.
• Conversion: turn interest into a request for information, a campus visit or an application start. This is where search, lead ads and retargeting earn their keep.
• Yield: keep admitted students from drifting to a competitor. Deposit reminders, admitted-student events, financial aid explainers and peer stories aimed at people who've already said yes once.

Most schools are decent at stage three and weak at stages one and four. The examples below show what happens when you fix that.

Three campaigns that worked, and why

University of Iowa: streaming TV and Snapchat aimed at a named list

Iowa already had a strong in-state brand, but it wanted to grow in three new out-of-state markets. According to the case study from its agency partner AmbioEdu, the team built a custom audience of 53,000 high school juniors and seniors from top feeder high schools in three target states, then reached their households with connected TV and OTT ads while Snapchat ads drove action. In 75 days the campaign reached more than 203,000 households, generated more than 5,700 qualified leads, and was credited with 35% of all new requests for information, applications and event registrations during that window.

Why it worked: the "awareness" spend wasn't aimed at everyone. It was aimed at a defined list of the students Iowa actually wanted, on the screens those families already watch, with a social channel right behind it to catch the response. Awareness and conversion ran at the same time against the same people.

How to use it today: start your awareness plan with an audience list, not a channel. Feeder schools, geographies where your yield is strong, and lookalikes of past enrolled students. Then buy the channels that can reach that list.

Niagara University: research first, then one idea across every channel

Niagara, a private university facing rising costs and the enrollment cliff, worked with Crowley Webb on a campaign called "Find Your Wings." The published case study says the theme came out of primary quantitative and qualitative research, and ran across broadcast TV, connected TV, paid social, display and outdoor billboards aimed at both students and parents. Reported results: a 15% year-over-year increase in enrollment, a 120% increase in impressions, a 75% increase in website clicks and a 40% increase in conversions.

Why it worked: it had one clear idea, and that idea showed up everywhere. TV made people feel it, billboards repeated it, and social and display gave them somewhere to go. It also spoke to parents, who influence the decision and pay much of the bill, instead of treating the 17-year-old as the only audience.

How to use it today: do the research before the media plan. If you can't say in one sentence why a student should pick you over the school down the road, more impressions won't fix it. And plan a parent track alongside the student track.

Golden Gate University: wiring enrollment data back into the ad platforms

Golden Gate University's problem was different. It had paid media running, but, as its agency Swish describes in the GGU case study, the school couldn't tell how ads affected application starts, completions or enrollments. The fix included adding awareness campaigns on TikTok, Google Demand Gen and LinkedIn on top of in-market and retargeting audiences, and syncing Salesforce stage data (lead, application start and complete, admit, deposit, enroll) back into the ad platforms so campaigns could optimize past the inquiry form. Swish reports a 34% drop in CPM from 2024 to 2025, a 9% drop in cost per lead alongside roughly a 25% smaller media budget, more than 18,300 additional leads in 2025, and three straight years of beating application and enrollment goals for the programs paid media supported.

Why it worked: the ad platforms were finally being told which leads became students. Without that signal, every platform optimizes toward cheap form fills, which are often the people least likely to enroll.

How to use it today: if your CRM doesn't send application, admit and deposit events back to Google and Meta, fix that before you add budget. It's plumbing, and it's the highest-return project most enrollment teams aren't doing.

How to defend awareness spend in the budget meeting

The hardest part of full-funnel isn't planning it. It's keeping the top of the funnel funded when someone asks what streaming TV "returned." Last-click reporting will always say zero.

A recent marketing mix modeling analysis from EducationDynamics is a useful answer. It modeled eight months and about $19.9 million of always-on media for one university using Google's open-source Meridian framework, and found media drove about 46% of all enrollments. Search returned about $9.63 in tuition value per dollar and paid social $5.54, but OTT returned $5.36, audio $5.29 and display $4.61, close to the "workhorse" channels. Audio, small on its own, made display, search and social each 71% to 79% more effective when it ran alongside them. The authors are clear that these figures are specific to one campaign, so treat them as proof of the method, not a benchmark for your school.

The point stands: if you judge OTT and audio by search's cost per enrollment, you'll cut them. Judge each channel by its job, and use a model that can see channels working together.

A full-funnel checklist for your next recruitment cycle

1. Name your target students before your channels. Which geographies, feeder schools and programs matter most, and where is your yield already strong?
2. Split the budget by stage, on purpose. Write down what share goes to awareness, consideration, conversion and yield, and what each stage is supposed to move.
3. Build one idea that works on a TV screen and a phone. Test it with real students and parents before you buy media.
4. Plan a parent track. Different creative, different channels, same idea.
5. Send enrollment stages back to the ad platforms. Application start, complete, admit, deposit and enroll, not just the inquiry form.
6. Fund yield as its own line. Admitted students who don't deposit are the most expensive leads you'll ever lose.
7. Measure by cost per enrolled student. Report inquiries, but don't let them set the budget.
8. Use modeling, not last-click, for the top of the funnel. Even a simple holdout test by region beats arguing from click reports.

Questions to ask before you approve the media plan

• If we turned off all awareness media tomorrow, how would we know what we lost?
• Do our ad platforms know which leads became enrolled students?
• Which states or regions in our footprint are shrinking fastest, and are we shifting spend accordingly?
• What are we doing between admission and deposit, and who owns it?

The enrollment cliff isn't a forecast anymore. The schools that keep growing through it will be the ones that treat recruitment like a consumer brand would: earn attention early, stay useful in the middle, convert with real data, and measure the whole funnel by students who actually show up.

If you're planning next year's recruitment campaign and want a partner for the creative, video and media plan across every stage, J2 Marketing is happy to talk it through.