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FOR HIGHER ED CMOs & MARCOMM LEADERS

Institutional marketing that survives the committee.

Brand systems, admissions campaigns, & the website that becomes the framework the rest of your brand is built around. Sixteen years in Higher Ed. Team of four. Direct line to Mark on every engagement.

No slide deck · No pitch · Just a real conversation

Four problems we solve for institutions.

01

Your brand died in committee.

Three years of workshops, two agency contracts, four provosts. What shipped is a slightly cleaner version of what you started with. Committee-safe design is committee-safe outcome.

02

Your site speaks to your board, not to prospects.

It reads like an annual report because it was signed off by trustees. Meanwhile the 17-year-old you're trying to enroll bounces after four seconds.

03

The enrollment cliff is here. Your marketing plan isn't.

Demographic decline is public math now. Peer institutions are rebuilding brand, sharpening positioning, and revamping funnels. If your plan is still 'more Google Ads,' that's the plan of a school that will lose share.

04

Your accessibility debt is a lawsuit waiting to file.

The site was last rebuilt in 2016. Retrofitting for WCAG 2.1 AA after the fact costs more than building compliant from day one. Higher Ed is a top ADA lawsuit sector and DOJ enforcement just tightened.

Higher Ed clientsNDMU · MUIH · MOL
Active engagements3
Newest partnershipMarylandOnline · winter 2025
MB team4 · Mark leads every engagement
LocationDC · Detroit · nationwide

Institutional systems we work in

Registered 18 NAICS codes · cap statement available
CMSWordPress custom themes · Primary
WEBHand-coded · no page-builder debt
SEOTechnical & content foundations
ADSMeta, LinkedIn, Google, YouTube, TikTok
BRANDSystems that survive committee
TRAINCMS training & documentation post-launch
EVENTSponsorship & membership marketing
RFPFormal HE procurement response
BOARDTrustee & provost-facing decks
GOVCommittee-safe approval workflows
3
Higher Ed institutions today
16 yrs
MB, since 2009
1
Lead on every engagement · Mark direct
0
Account-manager layer between you & Mark

The full stack, not the retainer scraps.

01

Full website rebuilds

Custom WordPress themes engineered for the long haul. Sub-second page loads. Editorial CMS your team can actually use. Not a template with your logo dropped in.

02

Brand systems that survive committee

Design that reads distinct on your provost's screen AND your dean of admissions's. Built with governance in mind so it doesn't die in workshop three.

03

Admissions & enrollment campaigns

Multichannel campaigns tuned for the funnel: awareness, consideration, application, deposit, melt-prevention. Measured against enrollment KPIs, not vanity metrics.

04

Faculty & internal comms

The comms your CMO doesn't have bandwidth for: faculty announcements, board decks, town-hall decks, provost memos, president letters.

05

Capital campaign & advancement materials

Case statements, gift-level collateral, campaign microsites, donor honor rolls, foundation reports. Design that reads as institutional gravitas.

06

Digital advertising & campaign strategy

Meta, LinkedIn, Google, YouTube, TikTok. Campaign strategy & media buy for enrollment, brand awareness, & event promotion. Attribution modeled to your funnel, not vanity metrics.

MB took a broken theme, a demoralized team, & a website nobody could edit — and shipped a cutting-edge rebuild. Different firm entirely.

Notre Dame of Maryland University · Marketing team · 2026
Case in focus · Notre Dame of Maryland University

A full institutional rebuild — brand, website, marketing infrastructure — on a compressed timeline.

NDMU inherited a broken WordPress theme, a marketing team stretched thin, and a website nobody on staff could safely edit. Enrollment had softened. The board wanted a rebrand. The provost wanted a functional CMS. The dean of admissions wanted a funnel that worked.

MB was engaged for the full rescue — not just the front-end redesign. We rebuilt the theme from scratch (custom WordPress, no page-builder debt), rearchitected the information architecture around prospective-student journeys, ported the entire content library, established a brand system the committees could ratify, & trained the internal team to operate it.

0
Page-builder plugins in the new build
Custom
Hand-coded WordPress theme
1
Lead partner · Mark, direct line
Read the full case study
If you're in an active procurement

Reading this as part of an RFP evaluation?

Bring the pursuit. First conversation is 30 minutes with Mark — we'll walk through your evaluation criteria, our proposed approach, and where MB is honestly the strongest & weakest fit against your rubric.

Book with your pursuit in mind

Where we've shipped.

We've worked with
Higher Ed: Notre Dame of Maryland University  · Maryland University of Integrative Health  · MarylandOnline. HE-adjacent: Notre Dame Business Council. Additional work with membership organizations & professional associations across Maryland, DC, & nationwide.

Six phases. Built around shared governance reality.

01

Discovery & stakeholder mapping.

Thirty-minute intake with the primary sponsor (CMO, VP Marcomm, President). We map the stakeholder set — board, provost, deans, faculty, IT, advancement — and their competing priorities. No pitch, no deck.

02

Scoped proposal & governance path.

Written scope with hours by workstream. Clear governance path showing which decisions live where (staff-level, cabinet, committee, board). Reviewed and approved before any billable work begins.

03

Kickoff & weekly cadence.

Standing weekly check-in with the core team plus scheduled stakeholder reviews at the pre-agreed governance checkpoints. Written progress reports every Friday. No surprises to your board.

04

Execution.

Design, campaigns, content, materials, whatever the scope. Culturally fluent for Higher Ed. Built with accessibility best practices in mind. Editorial workflow that respects faculty voice.

05

Governance ratification.

Structured presentations at each decision checkpoint — cabinet, committee, or board — with materials appropriate to the audience. We show up prepared.

06

Launch, training, & handoff.

Live launch coordinated with your team's calendar (not ours). CMS training for editors. Documentation. Post-launch monitoring window included. Your team owns the site day one.

Billing: Time & materials or fixed-fee, negotiated up front. Milestone or monthly installments available for larger engagements. Works with fiscal-year budget cycles.

When we're not the right firm.

01

You need a full SIS/CRM implementation.

We build the marketing surface that lives around your CRM & SIS — we don't stand those systems up. If your engagement is a Slate, TargetX, Ellucian, or similar implementation, hire an implementation-specialist partner. We'll help you evaluate one.

02

You need staff placement or in-house team hiring.

We don't recruit or place internal marketing hires. If the mandate is 'build out the internal marketing team,' hire an executive search firm. We'll refer you to good ones.

03

You require a firm on a specific state master contract.

We are not currently on state-of-Maryland, USM system, or other master contracts. If your procurement rules require a schedule holder, we can team through a partner who is, but we don't hold one directly.

04

You need certified WCAG or Section 508 audit sign-off.

We build with accessibility best practices but do not perform certified compliance audits ourselves. If your engagement requires signed WCAG 2.1 AA or 508 certification, we team with a certified compliance auditor — happy to introduce.

What institutional buyers actually ask.

Do you understand shared governance?
Yes. We've operated inside institutions with boards, cabinets, faculty senates, and student government — often all commenting on the same brand refresh. Our process maps stakeholder authority up front so decisions land at the right level and don't get relitigated at the wrong one.
Do you work with our CRM or SIS?
We build the marketing surface (website, campaigns, content) that lives around your CRM & SIS — connecting via standard API surfaces, embedded forms, or file exchange as your systems support. We do not stand up, configure, or migrate CRM/SIS platforms themselves. If your engagement is a full CRM implementation, hire an implementation-specialist partner — we can recommend one.
Do you handle accessibility?
We build with accessibility best practices from day one — hand-coded WordPress themes, semantic markup, proper contrast, keyboard navigation. For formal certified WCAG 2.1 AA or Section 508 audit sign-off, we do not perform the audits ourselves — we team with a certified compliance auditor. If your engagement requires signed compliance certification, plan that partner into scope up front.
Have you responded to formal Higher Ed RFPs?
Yes. Higher Ed procurement is our home ground. We understand rubric-based scoring, written response formats, oral presentation stages, references, and pricing tables. If you need any of our RFP response artifacts for reference, ask.
Can you present to a board or cabinet?
Yes — Mark presents personally. Materials prepared for the audience (a trustee reads differently than a dean of admissions). We show up rehearsed, on-time, and with the right printed leave-behind.
What's a typical engagement size?
Higher Ed engagements range from single-project scopes ($40K-$150K for a website rebuild) to multi-year programs (brand + web + ongoing campaigns, low six figures annually). Scope is fit to the pursuit and the fiscal cycle.
Do you have references at peer institutions?
Yes — NDMU (recent full theme rescue & rebuild), Maryland University of Integrative Health (brand & web), MarylandOnline (consortium marketing partner, started winter 2025), plus Notre Dame Business Council and additional Maryland & DC membership-organization clients. References available on request as part of any formal evaluation.

Every first conversation is with Mark. Every engagement, too.

Mark Bohay founded MB in 2009 after two decades in marketing, digital, & strategy. University of Notre Dame (Finance + Psychology). Georgetown University (MA Public Relations & Corporate Communications). Higher Ed is home institutional territory — the vocabulary, the cadence, the constituencies.

He leads every institutional engagement personally, from the first call through governance ratification & launch. Higher Ed buyers work with the person they meet. No account manager class. No handoffs to a junior team after signing. If Mark answers your first call, he's answering your fifteenth.

For peers & trustees

Introduce MB to a peer institution.

If a peer is looking & you think MB is worth introducing, we return a credit on your next engagement.

When a Higher Ed peer, board member, or trusted introducer refers MB into an institutional engagement that becomes a paid contract, we return a 10% account credit on the value of that first contract. The credit applies toward your institution's next engagement with MB. Capped at $50,000 per match. Referral is documented up front & credit issues once the referred institution's first invoice is paid.

10% credit on first contract·$50K max per match·Applied to your next engagement

Three ways to start, depending on why you're here.

Thirty minutes. That's the whole ask.

Whether you're leading a rebuild, running an admissions season, or evaluating vendors for an RFP — the first conversation is thirty minutes with Mark. We'll tell you honestly whether MB is the right fit & what a scoped engagement would look like.