A six-month approach to grow qualified demand, improve the path to enrollment, and tell the NOLS story with the same clarity, confidence, and purpose NOLS brings to the field.
Start with a clear objective. Prepare carefully. Learn by doing. Read the environment. Adjust from evidence. Keep moving toward the outcome.
Build sharper audience and intent signals across search, paid, content, partnerships, social, and email so NOLS reaches people when the idea of an expedition, semester, certification, or leadership experience first becomes relevant.
Translate programs into the outcomes prospective students are actually choosing: capability, confidence, certification, leadership, community, challenge, and a different sense of what they can do.
Use analytics, user behavior, landing-page testing, CRM follow-up, and clear calls to action to make the next step obvious, then measure which improvements actually change enrollment behavior.
Every touchpoint should answer the next question a prospective student is asking. Marketing becomes more effective when SEO, paid media, content, email, website UX, and storytelling operate as one journey.
Search, paid campaigns, organic social, partnerships, referrals, alumni, and relevant editorial content.
Clear program positioning, course comparison, outcomes, expectations, FAQs, and audience-specific landing pages.
Instructor credibility, student voices, safety and risk-management expertise, alumni outcomes, and real field stories.
Clear CTAs, course availability, simplified pathways, applications, email follow-up, and sensible retargeting.
GA4, Looker Studio, funnel reporting, campaign analysis, testing, and budget shifts based on evidence.
Lead with transformation, challenge, leadership, community, and the confidence that comes from real responsibility.
Identity + OutcomeLead with field credibility, trusted instruction, professional relevance, and the confidence to respond when the environment gets uncertain.
Trust + UtilityConnect the NOLS learning model to organizational outcomes: leadership, judgment, resilience, communication, and team performance.
Outcome + EvidenceUse belonging and continuity. NOLS is not only an experience someone remembers. It can remain part of how they choose to live and learn.
Belonging + ReturnMake impact tangible through people, access, wilderness, education, and the downstream leadership NOLS helps create.
Impact + ProofDifferent audiences, one NOLS promise: meaningful challenge, expert education, and leadership learned through experience.
Consistency + RelevanceThe first six months should produce both results and infrastructure: better campaigns now, plus a stronger operating system for every campaign that follows.
A dashboard should not be a museum of metrics. It should make the next decision easier: where to invest, what to fix, what to test, and which audience is moving.
Qualified traffic, branded vs. non-branded search, organic visibility, paid efficiency, audience growth, and cost per meaningful visit.
Course-finder behavior, program-page depth, return visits, CTA interaction, content-assisted journeys, and email engagement.
Inquiry, application starts, completion, enrollment, deposit behavior, funnel drop-off, CAC, and campaign contribution.
Test velocity, creative winners, audience differences, landing-page lifts, message performance, and what we will change next.
NOLS has a structural advantage most brands would envy: real people doing difficult things in consequential environments. The content system should preserve that authenticity and make it useful throughout the enrollment journey.
One field story should become a family of useful campaign assets, not disappear after one post.
What was the student uncertain about? What almost kept them from choosing NOLS? That is often the exact question another prospective student has now.
Capture the specific point where challenge became learning: a decision, leadership moment, rescue scenario, difficult route, or team conflict.
Make the transfer visible. How did judgment, confidence, skill, leadership, or community show up after the course ended?
Use the same authentic core across a paid creative, landing page, email, social cut, blog feature, retargeting proof point, and admissions follow-up.
The external agency should extend NOLS’ capabilities, not become the owner of NOLS’ strategy. Internally, stakeholders should be contributors to one marketing system rather than customers of separate marketing requests.
Audience priorities, enrollment goals, product knowledge, brand truth, customer insight, budget choices, and the final definition of success stay close to the organization.
Media execution, platform expertise, creative iteration, channel optimization, and technical support become more valuable when the brief, scorecard, and testing agenda are explicit.
I have spent my career translating meaningful experiences and expert knowledge into action. My background combines hands-on outdoor leadership with integrated marketing, audience growth, SEO, CRM, analytics, storytelling, partnerships, and organizational leadership.
I would approach this as a working marketing manager: close enough to campaigns to understand what is really happening, analytical enough to know what the data is saying, and collaborative enough to move the work across teams.
The goal is not louder marketing. It is a clearer connection between the person searching for what comes next and the experience that can change what they believe they are capable of.
