The Fractal Higher-Ed Marketing Audit

A practical, affordable review of your higher-ed marketing, giving you clarity you can act on.

Higher-ed marketing is harder and more competitive than its ever been.

Budgets are tight. Revenue targets matter. Engagement is declining as platforms change their feeds and reduce organic visibility. With so many channels, tools, and stakeholders involved, it can be difficult to tell what is actually working and what is not.

If your team:

Is under pressure to deliver enrolment and revenue results with limited budgets
Has marketing spread across multiple platforms, teams, and vendors
Is unsure which channels or tactics are contributing to outcomes
Lacks confidence in attribution, analytics, or reporting

The Fractal Higher-Ed Marketing Audit will help you make better marketing decisions.

The Fractal Higher-Ed Marketing Audit provides a clear, evidence-based assessment of how your marketing is planned, executed, measured, and experienced by prospective students.

Inside the Audit Report

You’ll get a 20-page report detailing findings and outlining fixes in the following categories:

Marketing Foundations

Audience journey

Mapping of how students move from awareness to application, identifying friction and drop-off points.

Messaging and creative

Assessment of value propositions, differentiation, and alignment between messaging, creative, and audience perception.

Internal alignment and goal clarity

Review of where goals, metrics, and responsibilities may be misaligned across teams.

Media & Creative

Spend and channel mix

Review of budget allocation and performance across channels, with attention to rising costs and shifting engagement patterns.

Channel configuration review

A review of how each channel is configured, with special attention paid to budgets, bidding and optimization strategies, audience targeting and sizing.

Website

Website user experience

Identification of friction affecting discovery, engagement, or conversion.

Data & Tech

SEO/AEO/GEO

Assessment of search visibility across traditional SEO and emerging discovery environments, including AI-driven answer engines and generative search.

Other Deliverables

Pre-Audit Working Session (1.5h)

A collaborative session to align on objectives, priority audiences, key programs, and success metrics. This ensures the audit is grounded in your institutional context and strategic goals.

Post-Audit Strategy Session (2h)

A guided walkthrough of findings and recommendations, with a focus on prioritization, implementation pathways, and how to translate insights into actionable next steps across teams.

Action Prioritization Framework

Clear guidance on which recommendations to address first, based on impact, effort, and organizational readiness.

Let evidence guide your marketing decisions

Platforms change constantly behind the scenes. Last year’s setup will not perform the same way today, and without active refinement, performance will decline. That leads directly to wasted spend and lost revenue. An audit is a small, focused investment that delivers outsized value. It provides a clear, comprehensive view of your marketing ecosystem, identifies immediate opportunities to improve performance and reduce waste, and creates a shared, objective foundation for decision-making. It ensures your future investments are informed, efficient, and aligned.

About Fractal

Fractal is a strategy and marketing consultancy working with universities, research institutes, and public-interest organizations across Canada. We focus on making complex marketing systems easier to understand and easier to manage.

"Fractal is my go-to-fixer; for marketing problems, research gaps, and strategic brainstorming. They never let me down."

Kevin Kee

Dean, University of Ottawa, Faculty of Arts

Request an Audit

If you are not confident in what your marketing is producing, you are not alone. Start with an audit. Get clarity you can act on.