When developing a marketing campaign for higher education – as in any area of business – it is vital to know your market. Knowing to whom the campaign is directed is crucial to its efficacy.

Consider the example of the Boston higher education marketplace. Boston is considered the pinnacle of challenging locations for a higher education institution. As is so commonly said among higher education marketing professionals in Boston, if you can make it in Boston, you can make it anywhere.

The fact is that Boston is the single most competitive higher education market across the country. It presents the largest number of educational institutions to its shrinking pool of college-ready students.

In fact, the Manhattan Institute’s Jay Greene states that while Massachusetts’ current high school graduation rate is 73%, the college readiness rate is 33%. Greene’s definition of college readiness is “the bare minimum qualifications necessary before a college will even consider their applications.”

The Massachusetts Department of Education agrees with similar numbers, saying that the high school graduation rate is at 72% (2005). Among their surveys of 11th and 12th grade students, 56% of Boston’s high school graduates intend to go to college, but only 12% attend two-year schools.

These statistics are useful in marketing. Well-targeted marketing addresses likely prospects with communications designed to appeal to that target audience. In higher education, market segmentation can be a more difficult process, as realities of incoming student pools often clash with desired demographic distributions. Still, it is important to segment the market as much as possible, and target marketing communications to those segments.

To continue with Boston as an example, the Manhattan Institute found that women are more likely to attend college than men, and that it is more likely that black, Asian and Hispanic students will attend public colleges instead of private colleges. Financial issues are greatly to blame for this discrepancy, as public tuition is much lower than private tuition. Greene also found it important to mention that a large number of minorities refrain from enrolling in college as a result of a lack of preparation in high school.

Statistics such as these are helpful toward estimating the relative ease or difficulty of recruiting from a particular demographic. To one group, an emphasis on program excellence and academic flexibility may be the most effective message. To another, messages about financial assistance programs and career potential will be more effective.

This being said, it is challenging for higher education institutions to draw enough quality students, as the market is ever-decreasing. Even with substantial recruitment and marketing efforts, the quantity of Boston high school graduates, for example, presents an exceptionally competitive marketplace.

By studying the market and understanding who is seeking higher education and where they are, institutions dramatically increase their chances of augmented enrollment rates even without a larger marketing campaign. It is a matter of targeting the right people.