The hidden - and not so hidden - costs of neglecting content strategy in schools and universities
Whether you work for a large prestigious university or a small specialist international school, a common theme across the education sector is the need to balance tight budgets while maintaining a competitive advantage in an ever-shifting market. Yet many institutions continue to overlook a drain on their resources, and the impact on the user experience, that’s created by a bad or lacking content strategy.
From wasted staff time to applicants lost to other institutions. From confused prospective donors to disengaged community members. The lack of a content strategy might be hurting your institution in terms of your purse and profile much harder than you think.
Developing an effective content strategy might feel like an investment, but it’s almost always one that will pay off.
Let’s consider some of the ways in which an ineffective or absent content strategy might be hurting your school, college or university.
1. Wasted staff time and resources
Poor content strategy leads to many inefficiencies across institutions, including:
Marketing teams spending hours creating content that never gets used or seen
Academics duplicating efforts by being asked to write the same or similar content in multiple places (e.g., separate department websites and internal systems)
Web and content teams constantly firefighting to fix outdated or incorrect information instead of focusing on strategic improvements
Content teams having to allocate time to serve vanity projects, instead of focusing on clearly defined and endorsed strategic priorities.
The hidden cost:
Hours of staff time lost every week, adding up to significant operational inefficiencies and salary costs.
2. Lost student conversions and enrolments
Content that is unclear, outdated, or difficult to navigate creates barriers for prospective students. When your institution is creating more barriers than your competitors, you will lose your applicants to them instead. Some of the most common issues that we see in our consultancy work at Pickle Jar include:
Confusing course pages that lack clear calls to action
Complex navigation that increases cognitive load for prospective students to find what they’re looking for
Inconsistent messaging across the website, social media, and printed materials
Overwhelming messaging and content coming at them from multiple different departments all from the same institution
Slow response times due to poor content workflows, leaving prospective students disengaged.
The hidden cost:
A breakdown in trust, and increased frustration from prospects. This causes lost conversions for applications and enrolments, resulting in lost tuition revenue while they engage with institutions that have invested in their content strategy instead.
3. Brand damage and loss of trust
In education institutions, we rely on having a great reputation in order to attract students, staff, donations, research funding and more. Trust is foundational to our success. And yet a disjointed content strategy can harm that reputation in several ways:
Inaccurate or conflicting information damaging institutional credibility
Outdated or broken content making the school or university appear behind the times
Confusing messaging causing audiences to lack confidence in who you are and what you stand for
Lack of inclusive and accessible content alienating important audiences that we must engage
The stories that really showcase an institution’s brilliance and worth getting buried or just not seen enough.
The hidden cost:
Lower rankings in reputation-based league tables, reduced student satisfaction, reduced student enrolment numbers, and increased difficulty in attracting top-tier faculty members, funders and partners.
4. Poor SEO and an inability for audiences to discover us
Search engines are often the first point of contact for prospective students, researchers, and funders. With the growth in AI, that dependence on third party technologies to discover answers and institutions will keep rising (see “The rise of zero-click behaviours and what it means for university marketing and engagement”). Without a solid content strategy, schools, colleges and universities risk:
Poor search rankings due to duplicated or poorly structured content
Missing search terms because content is written from an institutional perspective rather than a user-first approach
Inability for AI tools to use, understand and surface your content due to poor content structures and mark-up
Broken or outdated links that frustrate users and reduce credibility.
The hidden cost:
Decreased organic traffic, leading to lower application numbers and reduced engagement with institutional research. Increasingly this isn’t just about organic traffic too, but also our institutions being seen in AI-generated results and summaries too.
5. Compliance and legal risks
All schools, colleges and universities need to meet many regulatory and compliance standards through their content. When there’s a lack of content governance, no content operations strategy, and no clear process for content maintenance, we will see:
Outdated policies or incorrect tuition fees or accommodation costs being published, leading to potential legal challenges
Accessibility failures that put the institution at risk of non-compliance with WCAG and other regulations
Inaccurate marketing claims (often from outdated data) that could lead to advertising standards complaints
Data privacy breaches due to improperly handled student information.
The hidden cost:
Potential legal action, fines, and reputational damage.
6. Increased support costs or poorly used support time
When content is unclear, missing, or misleading, audiences will turn to other channels for answers instead. They will send emails or submit support requests. They’ll pick up the phone and ask for their questions to be answered. This increases demand on:
Admissions and student support teams, who have to answer the same questions repeatedly
Social media and community managers who have to answer those same questions instead of spending time creating high quality and engaging content
IT and digital teams, who have to troubleshoot systems, website and content issues
Academics and faculty, who need to clarify inconsistencies in course information.
The hidden cost:
Increased operational costs and staff burnout due to avoidable support queries. Decline in student conversion, enrolment and retention - especially amongst underrepresented communities - because the students with the most complex support needs aren’t being supported enough while staff spend time answering questions that don’t really require human intervention.
7. High staff turnover of good content, UX and marketing staff
Despite not always paying the highest salaries, education institutions are able to recruit excellent staff to content, UX and marketing roles. Many brilliant people want to work in the education sector as they feel it gives them a stronger sense of professional purpose. But those same brilliant people also want to work to a clear strategic direction, and to feel that their time and expertise is making a real difference. The lack of a robust and endorsed content strategy can lead to:
Brilliant staff choosing to leave the organisation in search of roles more closely aligned to a robust strategy
Remaining staff disengaging and “checking out” of their commitment to change
Staff spending time firefighting and constantly juggling between a state of servicing “business as usual” with strategic initiatives.
The hidden cost:
Increased recruitment and training costs associated with replacing staff. Inefficient use of the skills of existing staff. Staff burnout and disengagement leading to lower levels of productivity and commitment.
Creating an effective content strategy
An effective content strategy can change so much within an institution, all leading to financial return and a thriving reputation. The steps to achieving it don’t have to be hard.
In all of our schools, colleges and universities we can turn this position around by investing in that content strategy. Whether through a dedicated support partnership with a team like Pickle Jar, or by ring-fencing dedicated time to produce it in-house yourself. Our resources through ContentEd+ can also support you with that.
You simply need to:
Set those strategic priorities and get senior leadership support for protecting them as priorities
Commit to a proper always-on process for content auditing and maintenance
Establish a clear content operations strategy, including governance, content ownership, workflows and approval processes
Obsessing about user needs and an empathy-led approach to your content structures and substance
Prioritising search and discoverability of your content to ensure prospective students and other priority audiences can always find the right information at the right time.
A well-executed content strategy isn’t just a marketing tool. It’s a financial and operational necessity. And at Pickle Jar, we are the sector leaders in helping schools, colleges and universities create theirs.
To get started, you might consider using our totally free Content maturity assessment tool.
Or email hello@picklejarcommunications.com to discuss how we can help you through training and bespoke consultancy packages.