Marketing and Communications
At Concordia University Irvine, marketing is a comprehensive and collaborative process in which administrative and academic leadership work together to develop and manage revenue-generating, mission-aligned programs for multiple higher education markets.
Essentially, the role of marketing is to understand market dynamics and leverage them to our advantage in ways that are ethical and consistent with our mission.
Thus, the university’s marketing planning process focuses on offering market-sensitive academic programs (product), convenient delivery system options (place), inbound and outbound marketing strategies (promotion), and competitive tuition and financial aid (price).
The Office of Integrated Marketing and Communications
The Office of Marketing and Communications leads marketing and branding initiatives for the university, collaborating with university and program leadership to advance the mission and brand of the university, and to assist its programs in recruiting students and in fundraising by developing promotional strategies.
Our work is largely at the top of the admissions funnel for tuition revenue programs, and at the bottom of the giving pyramid for our fundraising program. In other words, our work is about content creation across channels and platforms, establishing and affirming the brand, increasing name awareness, and generating inquiries and applications.
Although we’re involved beyond those points in the purchase and donor cycles, Undergraduate Admissions, Graduate & Adult Admissions, the University Foundation, and program personnel largely lead conversion and cultivation strategies and tactics.
The MarCom team is composed of Concordia employees, contracted partners, and vendors that provide expertise and develop data-based strategies and tactics across channels and platforms to meet university goals. Our work includes:
- Branding (external and internal)
- Website (development, design, content strategy)
- Search engine marketing (SEO, AdWords, display, retargeting)
- Communications (print publications and internal communications)
- Direct mail and email
- PR (press releases, pitching news stories)
- Social Media (university accounts, management of social media community managers)
- Graphic Design (for most external audiences and for selected internal projects)
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM, used by admissions offices)
- Video production (short-form and long-form storytelling)