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 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.
Analytics and attribution
Assessment of tracking, reporting, and the connection between marketing activity, leads, inquiries, and enrolments.
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
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.
