The Opportunity
BG was engaged to increase enrollment for the Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA), the only college devoted exclusively to graduate fine arts education offering artists and writers a transformative educational experience. This MFA program enrollment marketing initiative focused on attracting artists and writers seeking a transformative educational experience.
VCFA offers six MFA programs: Film, Graphic Design, Music Composition, Visual Art, Writing, and Writing for Children & Young Adults. These programs target individuals who want to further their practice, advance their careers, and join a vibrant artist community. Facing declining enrollment, BG focused on driving applications to VCFA’s core MFA programs and increasing the school’s brand awareness among artists both regionally and nationally. This was combined with the change of its on-campus program residencies, an element of each MFA program curriculum, from its historic Vermont campus to a new campus at Colorado College, which was a challenge to overcome against those already familiar with VCFA.
The Strategy
BG implemented a multi-channel paid media strategy that incorporated new channel activations and reinvigorated the enrollment marketing funnel for VCFA with a significant shift away from a pure lead generation strategy used previously to a full-funnel conversion strategy aimed at increasing the number of quality applicants. With each program being uniquely positioned in the market and targeted towards prospective students at different points in their artistic journey, BG developed distinct paths to conversion with messaging targeting the right student for each program at different phases of their personal and professional lives.
Throughout this process, BG helped VCFA redefine the brand and visual identity for each program. Creative assets were redeveloped for use in paid campaigns and incorporated into organic and nurturing channels unique to each program. This included updating brand and ROI message points for each program with a particular focus on redefining VCFA’s position in market from a brand awareness perspective.
The Result
This ongoing campaign (which is now going into its 2nd year) is consistently supporting enrollment needs for each program. Between FY22 and FY23, overall applicant quality metrics have also increased — overall inquiries to started application conversion rate increased from 5% in FY22 to 22% in FY23, and inquiries to completed applications conversion rate jumped from 3% to 12%.