"Every enrollment team knows the pressure.

Applications are down. Yield is flat. Leadership wants results. And the instinct — almost every time — is to spend more on marketing. More ads. More campaigns. More budget behind the same strategy.

But what if the real problem isn't marketing at all?

That's the question at the heart of a recent conversation on the Onya Mic Podcast, where Ashley sat down with Ryan Morabito — a brand strategist who has partnered with over 125 colleges and universities, including NYU, Marquette, Baylor, and Old Dominion. What came out of that conversation is something enrollment and marketing professionals in higher education need to hear.

Marketing Is the Icing. Branding Is the Cake.

One of the most common mistakes institutions make is confusing a branding problem for a marketing problem.

Ashley put it simply during the conversation: marketing is the icing, but branding is the cake. You can add all the icing you want, but if the cake isn't there, it doesn't matter.

Ryan expanded on this by walking through the four P's of marketing — product, price, place, and promotion. Most institutions, he explained, are investing almost entirely in promotion. But if the programs aren't viable, if the delivery modality isn't what students are looking for, or if the value proposition isn't clear, no amount of promotional spend will move the needle.

More investment in marketing won't fix a branding gap.

Branding Is the Reason They Choose You

So what exactly is a brand? According to Ryan, it isn't a logo, a mascot, or a tagline.

A brand is every association people make with your institution. And branding is the process of intentionally shaping those associations over time.

That distinction matters enormously for enrollment. Branding, Ryan explained, is the reason why students choose you. Marketing is how they find you. When institutions lose sight of that difference, they end up pouring resources into tactics that generate traffic but don't convert — because the brand underneath isn't doing its job.

And building a strong brand takes time. Not weeks. Not months. In many cases, years. The schools that are winning enrollment right now started investing in their brand well before their results showed it.

What Silos Are Actually Costing You

One of the patterns Ryan has seen repeatedly across 125+ institutions is the damage caused by internal silos.

Marketing and enrollment teams often end up in their own lanes — not because they don't want to collaborate, but because high workloads and unrealistic expectations push well-intentioned people back into their own areas. The result is cooperation without true collaboration.

The institutions that are thriving, Ryan noted, are in lock step. There's a shared understanding across teams of what prospective students are actually looking for, what influences their decisions, and how the brand needs to show up at every touchpoint. When that alignment exists, everyone's work gets easier.

When it doesn't, the gaps become expensive.

Students Are the Heroes of the Story

Perhaps the most powerful shift Ryan described is a simple one — and yet it's one most institutions haven't fully made.

Students are the heroes of the story. Not the institution.

When Ryan asked a student why he ultimately chose his school, the answer was immediate: everywhere else he visited, it was about them. When he came to this school, it was about him.

That difference is fundamental. Prospective students don't want to see rankings or campus photography. They want to see themselves reflected in the stories being told. They want to hear from current students who look like them, come from where they come from, and have gone on to thrive.

Authenticity in higher ed marketing isn't just a buzzword. It means telling enough student stories that anyone encountering your brand can say — my age doesn't matter, my background doesn't matter, I know I can find my place here.

A Framework for Meaningful Brand Change

For institutions wondering where to even start, Ryan offered a clear three-step framework.

The first step is assessing perception. Not what leadership believes the brand to be, but what the market actually thinks. The gap between those two things is where the real strategy lives. Data that exposes that gap becomes a powerful tool for justifying resources and setting realistic timelines.

The second step is building a strategic narrative. A North Star that guides every message, every campaign, and every piece of content — and that is strong enough to outlast leadership changes because it's rooted in the institution's mission, not its current administration.

The third step is creative execution, with a real investment in social media. The institutions that are winning aren't outsourcing their story. They're building internal capacity to tell it — through student ambassadors, faculty voices, compelling video, and authentic photography. People follow people, not organizations.

The Takeaway for Enrollment and Marketing Teams

If your enrollment numbers aren't where they need to be, the instinct will always be to look at the marketing.

But the real question is whether the brand underneath the marketing is doing its job. Are you telling your institution's story, or the student's? Are your teams aligned around a shared understanding of what prospective students are looking for? Do you have a North Star narrative that guides everything — or are you running tactics without a strategy?

Those are the questions worth sitting with. And they're exactly what Ryan and Ashley dig into on this episode.

It's one worth listening to more than once.

🎧 Catch the full conversation with Ryan Morabito on the Onya Mic Podcast.

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