Marketing Strategy Template

This tool provides a template for writing the marketing or recruitment portion of your proposal.

The marketing strategy (or recruitment strategy) report is the section of your proposal that outlines the competitiveness of your program. In other words, why students will choose your program over the competitor institutions. This section provides a look at competitor programs, career opportunities for students, and from where students will be recruited. 

You may have an office of marketing or institutional research with whom you can work to produce this section of the proposal–do not be surprised if their report is succinct. This section does not have to be long, but it must be included in the proposal. For a major, masters, or graduate certificate, you are showing that this program will attract new students to the university. This section may not be necessary for a minor or baccalaureate certificate since those are not expected to attract new enrollment. 

  1. Competitive Landscape
    • List of similar programs at geographically local universities [Consider within 50 miles for urban/suburban and 200 miles for rural schools. If no local school has your proposed program, then show that. Remember to include information from the HHC Toolkit listings on Baccalaureate and Graduate programs.]. 
  1. List of similar programs at your peer, aspirant, and competitor institutions. [These are not necessarily located geographically close but are similar in mission, size, student draw, Carnegie classification. This list will come from an institutional research and marketing analytics (IRMA) report that can be found from an office of internal research, academic affairs, or marketing. You can also check the list of Baccalaureate and Graduate programs on the HHC Toolkit.] 
  2. Why would students choose your university’s program over those of your competitors? [Your answer might include reputation, loyalty, location, mission, history, quality, national rankings, alumni network, internship opportunities, etc. In addition, if your institution does not already have a Health Professions program, using CIP 51.3204 for your Health/MedicalHumanities degree or certificate will show your institution in College Navigator as offering a Health Professions program, thus drawing in pre-clinical students in their college search.]
  1. Graduate Employability
    • Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts on job growth in the area. Since the Health/Medical Humanities CIP code is new there is not a BLS report on this specific field. Instead, look for forecasts on “healthcare-related careers and “Life, physical, and social science careers.” 
    • Include any information from within the institution that include data on where students go after graduation (further school, jobs, etc). [Your advising office and alumni office may have information on this]
  1. Potential to Recruit Students
    • Most recent Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) report for proposed Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) code
    • Check National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) College Navigator
    • Check Peterson’s Guide (graduate) and SAT College Search (undergraduate)
    • Include other information on recent trends and growth of the field [news articles, opinion pieces, reports]
    • Conferring with local businesses and health care systems can offer a list of qualities they seek in employees. This step would not require a formal study, but just asking a few leaders in health industries in your geographic area, “What qualities do you look for in an employee?”. 
    • Include information on target demographics [For a major–size of the 18-22 year old population in your region; for a baccalaureate minor or certificate–number of students at the university who might be interested and what majors they are currently in (you can do a brief informal survey here; you can also find out how many students are in each major. For example a health humanities major may attract a percentage of pre-med and pre-clinical students who are currently biology and chemistry majors. Administrators will also want to know what new students you may attract (students who are choosing the university because your program exists). For a graduate degree–number of your undergraduates who intend further clinical studies but take a gap year, number of people working in healthcare in the region. You can find some of this information from the U.S. Census Bureau and google searches “number of healthcare workers in [city]]. 

Table 3.2 Project Enrollment and Completion

How to Cite This Document

Health Humanities Consortium. “Marketing Strategy Template.” HHC Curricular Toolkit. https://healthhumanitiesconsortium.com/publications/hhc-toolkit/. August 2021.

© 2021 Health Humanities Consortium. The HHC gives permission for this text to be used in part or in whole for the writing of any health humanities related proposal without attribution to this source. 

<Return to Toolkit>