Today’s marketers aren’t just communicators, they’re storytellers competing for attention, emotion, and connection. In this episode of Higher Ed Conversations, GradComm CEO Cheryl Broom sits down with Kelly Hiller from Purdue University to unpack how higher ed marketing has shifted from simply delivering information to crafting meaningful, human-centered stories that actually resonate.

Together, they dive into Purdue’s brand transformation and what it took to build something that is both distinctive and scalable across a decentralized institution. If you’ve ever felt the pressure to make your college “everything to everyone,” consider this your reality check. Because knowing who your brand is not for is just as powerful as knowing who it is for, and that clarity is what leads to stronger, more ownable storytelling.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why higher ed marketing must evolve from information delivery to emotional storytelling
• How to uncover and leverage the human truth in your institution’s stories
• Why your brand shouldn’t try to appeal to everyone (and what happens when it does)
• How Purdue built alignment across a decentralized campus
• How to create messaging frameworks that resonate with different audiences

Thanks for listening!

Connect with GradComm:
Instagram: @gradcommunications
Facebook: @GradCommunications
LinkedIn: @gradcomm
Send us a message: GradComm.com

Higher Ed Conversations is hosted by Cheryl Broom, CEO of GradComm, a marketing and branding agency specializing in community colleges and public education.

Website search is one of the most-used tools on a college website, but for many institutions, it’s also one of the most frustrating. Prospective students often type a question into the search bar only to get outdated meeting minutes, random PDFs, or irrelevant pages. In this Quick Take episode, GradComm CEO Cheryl Broom is joined by Joel Goodman, VP of Growth Strategy at Squiz, to unpack why this happens and what colleges can do about it. They discuss the limitations of common search tools, especially free solutions like Google Programmable Search, and why they often fail to deliver helpful results on college websites.

Also, Goodman shares how institutions can improve the experience by focusing on two key areas: better content strategy and smarter search technology. When colleges organize their content clearly and pair it with modern search tools, they can make it dramatically easier for students to find what they need.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why Google-based search tools often fail on college websites
• The impact that poor search experiences have on prospective students
• How AI is changing the way users search for information online
• Why content strategy plays a critical role in search performance
• Practical ways colleges can improve website search and user experience

Thanks for listening!

Connect with GradComm:
Instagram: @gradcommunications
Facebook: @GradCommunications
LinkedIn: @gradcomm
Send us a message: GradComm.com

Higher Ed Conversations is hosted by Cheryl Broom, CEO of GradComm, a marketing and branding agency specializing in community colleges and public education.

Is your marketing really working, or are you just measuring the wrong thing? In this episode of Higher Education Conversations, GradComm CEO Cheryl Broom sits down with Jeff Greenfield, CEO of Provalytics, to tackle one of the biggest challenges in higher ed marketing: proving ROI in a world obsessed with clicks.

For years, marketers have relied on clicks as the gold standard. But Greenfield argues that overemphasizing last-click attribution has led institutions to misallocate billions in ad spend, often cutting the very channels that are filling their enrollment funnel. If you’re tired of defending your budget with incomplete data and want a smarter way to connect marketing to inquiry and enrollment growth, this conversation will change how you measure success.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why clicks may be the most overrated metric in marketing
• How attention and impressions drive awareness (and eventually applications)
• The hidden “carryover effect” of advertising
• The danger of shiny object syndrome in higher ed
• How predictive modeling and incrementality testing can help you move from guesswork to proof

Thanks for listening!

Connect with GradComm:
Instagram: @gradcommunications
Facebook: @GradCommunications
LinkedIn: @gradcomm
Send us a message: GradComm.com

Higher Ed Conversations is hosted by Cheryl Broom, CEO of GradComm, a marketing and branding agency specializing in community colleges and public education.