How a Holistic Communications Strategy Can Improve Enrollment

Cathy Baur is something of a communications superhero.

Her first internship was with the communications division at California State University, Fresno — her alma mater. Later, she moved on to Cal State San Marcos as the Associate Vice President for Communications, and before her retirement in 2020, she served as Vice President of University Advancement.

Having joined the institution less than two decades into its lifespan, Cathy established its holistic communications approach from the ground up, a move that garnered incredible benefits in areas from advancement to enrollment and recruitment.

“It really feels like I’ve come full circle,” she says.

Cathy, who now serves as the CEO and President of the San Marcos Boys and Girls Club, has also managed to weather some pretty intense crises, including a natural disaster, a crisis of confidence within the university, and of course, COVID-19.

Cathy sat down with us to share some words of wisdom about holistic communications plans, advancement strategies, and crisis communications on an episode of Higher Education Coffee & Conversation.

Implementing an Integrated Marketing Strategy

We’re all familiar with university advertising collateral — brochures with glossy pages and flashy social media ads are the standard.

Maybe an image can tell you if it’s a West Coast or an East Coast school, but a simple image “doesn’t really tell the story of that institution,” Cathy says.

Oftentimes, the image lacks authenticity because it’s stock or produced using by people who aren’t familiar with the institution. Or, maybe the entire university’s marketing campaign lacks consistency, which can create confusion among prospective students and community members.

Great storytelling is all about authenticity and consistency, both of which require collaboration.

Using an integrated marketing and communications strategy means getting down to the core of what that institution’s key messages are and integrating those messages universally.

“You know you’re doing a good job when someone can pick up a collateral piece or see a poster from across the room and say, Oh, that’s Cal State San Marcos, or That’s MiraCosta Community College, because you’ve been so consistent in your messaging,” Cathy says.

Reaping Benefits Across Your Institution

How does one even begin the change to an entirely different marketing and communications strategy?

Luckily for Cathy, Cal State San Marcos was founded less than two decades before she joined the marketing team. The youthfulness of the institution allowed her to help build the Communications Department from the ground up.

If you aren’t blessed with the same opportunity, try convincing your department to allow an integrated marketing “trial period”. Sometimes, this is all it takes to encourage an institution to take the leap.

The change in strategy will immediately demonstrate its value as the institution sees the cost savings.

“You don’t have to expend as much to get the message across because everything is running in sync. You meld all aspects of your marketing communications together, and you really start to reap the benefit.”

Integrated marketing can improve an institution across multiple areas, including student enrollment and advancement.

Student enrollment

Enrollment is always on everyone’s minds and enrollment communications that isn’t integrated can be counterproductive. But it’s easy to see how enrollment marketing can become fragmented. The process requires marketing to a variety of populations at different stages of the enrollment or decision process and can involve a variety of independent programs, departments and divisions.

For Cathy and Cal State San Marcos, following an integrated communications model meant the Communications Department reviewed even the smallest of details, such as letters mailed to students, family members, or anyone who needed to be in the loop about the enrollment cycle.

“In doing so, we’re took a much more holistic view,” she says. “We looked at our students and thought about the messaging that they’re receiving throughout what we’ll call the ‘student life cycle.’”

That cycle begins before students even apply to a college and continues long after they graduate — when they become potential donors – which is why it’s imperative that students are experiencing the university in the same manner as they did when they first applied.

“We’re really building brand loyalty. We’re creating an environment that gains an additional commitment to the university,” says Cathy.

Building institutional loyalty is an area where four-year colleges tend to succeed, but community colleges tend to miss out as communications professionals are strapped and focus on semester-to-semester enrollment gains.

Advancement

Cal State San Marcos’ Advancement Division encompasses three major areas: Communications, Alumni Engagement, and Development.

Development is all about relationships — relationships that are established and maintained through regular and consistent communication as well as engagement with alumni and community members.

“It’s all about understanding the audience, understanding the needs of the audience, and being able to build and communicate from that perspective. So development is so closely aligned with that public relations aspect,” says Cathy.

If you’re doing the job right, you’re not asking people for money. You’re helping them fulfill a dream of having an impact on the institution. Cathy and her team achieve this by:

Connecting on an individual level and identifying personal passions: Ask the potential donor what they’re interested in and show them how that interest can benefit the community. Remember, you’re gaining somebody who could become a supporter of your institution for the rest of their lives.
Following up: Don’t forget to show your donor how their gift has helped your institution. Send progress reports on their initiative or a profile of a scholarship recipient’s achievements.
Building a culture of philanthropy: Encourage current students to participate in your institution’s Giving Day or establish a student philanthropy council. Host letter-writing days where students can thank donors for their gifts. “As they become alumni, it becomes natural for them to want to provide that same kind of opportunity that the other generation provided to them,” says Cathy.

Communicating During a Crisis

One of Cal State San Marcos’ most impressive strengths is its crisis communications strategy.

When a crisis arises, students, faculty, and community members will immediately have questions. But bungling a public response makes it difficult to re-establish confidence.

The importance of providing immediate communication with your audience in the event of a crisis — whether that be a natural disaster or a crisis of confidence in institutional leadership — cannot be overstated.

Cathy, throughout her career, has masterfully dealt with each of these crisis categories, thanks to her holistic communications approach.

She shares a few pointers on how to use a holistic approach to your advantage during a crisis:

Use all of your resources to begin communicating immediately

In May 2014, just days before the scheduled commencement ceremony, wildfires erupted throughout San Diego County and reached the Cal State San Marcos campus.

The campus was immediately evacuated and shut down.

But the Communications Department quickly jumped into action at a separate location off-campus, where four staffers (instead of the usual two) monitored social media and responded to messages from community members while Cathy laisioned with the executive team on the major decisions.

“It really was a time when you could see the importance of communications and the ability to work with social media to quickly identify that rumor mill and be able to counter it. We got information out there to fill the void very quickly,” Cathy recalls.

Turn a negative into a positive

Cal State’s 2014 commencement wasn’t an immediate win.

There were bumps in the road. After an initial announcement that the ceremony would be canceled — quickly followed by public outcry — Cal State’s communications team had to put out that fire, too.

At the time, leadership didn’t know how long they would have to postpone the ceremony and made that clear to students. As soon as they were able to schedule a new event, they used as much of their previous marketing materials as they could.

They created a sticker and social media campaign to get the word out about the new event: a graduate parade (an event that continues to this day).

The Communications Department leveraged a new narrative about a resilient class of 2014 that attracted attention from local media.

“It enabled us to start more on that healing factor of getting over the fire and the trauma that had happened. That commencement really brought the campus community together, working on that little project,” Cathy says.

Be transparent

In 2019, a whistleblower filed a complaint with Cal State San Marcos regarding a former dean’s improper spending. They also went to the press.

The president, who had only recently stepped up to the role, quickly opened up the lines of communications with board members, faculty, and academic senate leadership, telling them a story would come out in the paper soon.

Note that the president conducted these communications, not a PR figure.

She also acknowledged errors in oversight and pledged to make appropriate changes.

“Because of the transparency, because of the commitment to ensuring that we had better practices, it didn’t impact our donors from our perspective of folks losing confidence. People stood by us,” Cathy recalls.

Cal State San Marcos is a perfect example of how good communication during a crisis — taking transparency, timeliness, and accountability into account — can save your institution in a sometimes inevitable crisis.