What is College Access Marketing?

Since the late-1990s, more and more public and private organizations have experimented with creative marketing techniques to try to increase college participation. The result is the emergence of a new and important field: College Access Marketing.

College Access Marketing (CAM) is a kind of "social marketing" that encourages people to continue their education. CAM campaigns try to reach specific audiences, such as children of parents who didn't go to college, and get them to take specific actions, such as finishing high school, securing financial aid, or applying to colleges.

College access marketers get their messages across in many ways. The best CAM efforts consider a wide range of options and choose marketing techniques that fit the audience they're trying to reach, the actions they want their audience to take, and how much money they have to spend.

While few campaigns can afford to use TV advertising on a meaningful scale, there are many other ways to reach and influence potential college students. Examples include direct outreach and events, radio ads, classroom curricula, the Internet, and creative print materials like fast-food tray liners and bus or subway billboards.

Who is doing College Access Marketing?

Most major CAM campaigns are initiated by state education agencies, commissions, or partnerships. Examples include College Goal Sunday, the California Student Aid Commission, Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, College Foundation of North Carolina, and Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Campaign participants often include representatives from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

There is also some CAM activity at the national and local levels. National campaigns such as KnowHow2Go often involve ads and messages with broad appeal; local efforts range from creating original campaigns to adapting state or national material to better meet community needs. National participants include foundations, membership and advocacy organizations, businesses, and the U.S. Department of Education. Local participants range from community-based organizations and scholarship funds to school districts and college consortia. (It should be noted that College Access Marketing differs from the efforts of individual colleges who market themselves to attract students; CAM, on the other hand, is focused on changing the behavior of underserved students by motivating them to enroll in any postsecondary institution.)

The other key CAM players are the communications and marketing professionals that help create each campaign. Usually hired as contractors, they conduct focus groups and other research, produce ads and brochures, organize press events, and sometimes take the lead in developing a campaign's overall strategy. Some campaigns work with "full-service" agencies, while others create their own teams of specialists.

What's next for this emerging field?

Since 2003, CAM pioneers from around the country have met periodically to compare notes, share best practices, and discuss the future of this emerging field. CAM practitioners are producing a growing body of work that holds important lessons about college access. The next, critical step is to share the lessons learned and apply them to a new generation of CAM campaigns.

By pooling what we've learned from our own successes and stumbles as well as from other fields such as social marketing, college access marketers can build a stronger, more informed community. We can help both newcomers and seasoned practitioners make the most of available resources and achieve the ultimate CAM goal: increased college access and participation.

This web site is designed to help support the CAM field as it grows and develops. Here you can see past campaigns, learn how to develop a successful campaign of your own, and share your process and results with the whole CAM community.