Author's Note: The ability to measure your brand is not just important; it's essential for your institution's success. For many marketing leaders, the decisions you make around measurement—and articulating success and impact—are critical to making the case for marketing investment.
Our AMA pre-conference workshop, featuring our partners at Chico State, highlighted the importance of developing a holistic measurement strategy for building a long-term approach to marketing, decision-making, and impact. Chris Huebner, Director of Strategy Planning, delves into the workshop’s highlights in the article below. Special thanks to Associate Director of Analytics Strategy, Cassie Golda, for her many contributions to this presentation!
Marketing leaders face unique challenges in measuring their impact. With competing priorities and tight budgets, demonstrating the effectiveness of marketing efforts is crucial yet often elusive. Without a formalized measurement framework, marketing teams risk missing out on insights that could drive strategy, optimize spend, and strengthen brand outcomes.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, we found that less than half of CMOs agreed that they have measures in place to track their institution’s brand impact per our most recent CMO Study. In fact, one of our major takeaways this year was that many institutions - public and private alike - grapple with the challenge of holistically and consistently showcasing the impact of their branding efforts.
In some cases, going from zero to 90 may seem daunting. The biggest step forward in developing a holistic measurement system is simply beginning to have productive conversations about measuring your brand.
Why a Measurement Framework Matters
A measurement framework serves as a strategic guide, aligning marketing activities with institutional goals and objectives. Institutions today face unprecedented pressures: enrollment challenges, heightened competition, and evolving student expectations. Measurement frameworks give higher ed marketers a structured approach to defining success, setting key performance indicators (KPIs), and tracking progress. Here’s why such a framework is essential:
- Alignment with Institutional Goals: By grounding marketing activities in broader institutional priorities, a measurement framework ensures that every campaign or initiative contributes directly to goals such as student enrollment, retention, and community engagement.
- Clarity on Success Metrics: A formalized framework provides clear, shared definitions of success, fostering accountability and transparency. This clarity is especially important for communicating impact to institutional leaders who may not fully grasp the nuances of marketing metrics.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: Institutions can reduce reliance on intuition by setting up a framework that systematically tracks campaign outcomes. By using consistent, comparable data, marketers can make informed choices about where to allocate resources, what channels are most effective, and what messages resonate best.
- Continuous Improvement: Regular performance monitoring enables higher ed marketers to identify trends, adjust strategies, and improve results over time. With a framework, CMOs can create a cycle of learning that benefits future campaigns, helping to drive long-term success.
Building a Measurement Framework for Enrollment Growth
Facing nearly five consecutive years of enrollment decline, Chico State needed to reverse this trend to maintain the institution’s overall health. College-bound populations were shrinking, and the market was facing steep competition from new entrants and increased competitor advertising spending. 
These challenges underscored the need for a structured approach to reshape perceptions, increase brand awareness, and ultimately boost admissions-related actions. Together, we developed a measurement framework tailored to these goals, incorporating specific objectives, KPIs, and strategic alignment with institutional priorities.
This is the step-by-step approach we used to develop a measurement framework aligned to specific institutional goals at Chico State.
Define Clear Objectives Aligned with Institutional Goals
Chico State’s primary institutional goal was to increase enrollment. To develop our campaign strategy, we first needed to identify barriers to growth or partners found in enrollment trends. We assessed the current marketing situation and found that if Chico State wasn’t a prospective student’s top school, there was a very small chance they would enroll. Secondly, we needed to find ways to drive admissions-related decisions earlier in the college search process to start shaping perceptions once Chico State became part of the competitor set. Those two insights formed our campaign priorities, ultimately shaping our objectives.
- Priority/Objective #1 Raising Brand Awareness: Reaching prospective students and parents earlier in the college search process to drive familiarity.
- Priority/Objective #2: Driving Admissions-Related Actions: Encouraging engagement with key enrollment-related resources such as application pages and information requests.
Align Measurable KPIs
In the case of Chico State, each campaign priority was supported by:
- Marketing Goal: a more broad, long-term goal that guides overall marketing efforts
- Media Goal: the role in which media should play to meet the marketing goal
- Communications Goal: what we want our target audience to get from our messaging
We then connect key performance indicators (KPIs) - values that demonstrate how effectively a marketing effort is achieving a specific objective - to each goal.
This comprehensive set of metrics enabled Chico State to track the full marketing funnel—from awareness to action—providing insights into what was working and where adjustments were needed.
In the case of the first campaign priority, our marketing goal was to support an increase in brand awareness, measured by a survey measuring aided awareness. The role media would play to support this goal is to employ channels that allow us to reach as many prospects as early as possible. We’d track the success of reach by CPM across channel types, as well as set up campaigns in-platform, using that goal. Finally, the goal of our communication would support this by crafting a message that helped to shift perceptions of academic quality.
Implement Targeted Campaigns with Strategic Messaging
Our marketing goal was to increase the number of admissions-related actions to meet the second campaign priority. This would be measured by landing page conversations. Our media goal would be to use media that allowed us to target high-intent audiences. So when a prospective student moved “in-market,” we could deliver a well-positioned message--relative to competitors in the target market–which defined our communications goal.
Each campaign creative element was then tailored to fit different stages of the enrollment funnel, ensuring that Chico State engaged prospects at the right moment with relevant messaging.
Consistent Monitoring and Reporting
Chico State’s measurement framework facilitated productive conversations with stakeholders on reporting calls and communicating impact with internal stakeholders. By clearly demonstrating how marketing activities translated to enrollment impact, the marketing team could foster a shared vision of success and gain greater institutional support for their initiatives.
Results
The impact of this structured approach was significant. Chico State saw a 20% increase in brand awareness among prospective students and a 7% increase in visits to application-related pages. Web sessions on campaign landing pages surged, showcasing the effectiveness of the targeted digital campaigns in driving engagement.
For higher education marketing leaders, Chico State’s experience highlights the transformative power of a well-defined measurement framework. By aligning marketing efforts with institutional goals, defining success metrics, and using data-driven insights, higher ed institutions can navigate the challenges of today’s competitive landscape. At the end of the day, a measurement framework isn’t just about tracking metrics; it’s about creating a strategic foundation that enables continuous improvement, enhances transparency, and strengthens an institution’s brand for the long term.
To dive deeper into Chico State’s success and learn how to implement a measurement framework at your own institution, download our full AMA Workshop Presentation.
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As Director of Strategy Planning, Chris brings strategic rigor to the intersection of media and brand communications, uncovering the perfect blend of media, moments, and messages. He has worked in higher ed marketing, both agency and institution-side, where he has planned and executed comprehensive marketing and recruitment strategies across multiple program types and institutions. When away from the office, Chris enjoys trying new coffee shops (café au lait, always), visiting upstate breweries, and trekking through the Blue Ridge Mountains with his wife and two children.
