Colleges and universities face a unique set of marketing challenges. They’re serving multiple audiences at once—prospective students, current students, parents, alumni, faculty, and community stakeholders. Their offerings are complex, their organizational structures are layered, and their internal teams often operate in silos. To reach their goals, they need more than just good creative. They need strategy, structure, and systems that actually work.
At M&R, we help higher education clients make sense of that complexity. Whether we’re designing a new website, streamlining program messaging, improving accessibility, or supporting enrollment initiatives, our work is built around each institution’s goals and internal realities. We focus on clarity, usability, and brand cohesion, delivered through tools that empower campus teams to grow and evolve.
The following examples highlight just a few of the ways we’ve helped institutions across Georgia modernize their communications, sharpen their digital presence, and create lasting infrastructure for success.
A New Visual Identity for a Reinvigorated School
Brewton Parker Christian University
Advertising itself as “the only Christian college south of Macon, GA and north of Jacksonville, FL” Brewton Parker Christian University was, until recently, known as “Brewton Parker College.” The campus in Mt. Vernon, Georgia, is home to about 600 students, with another 600 commuting in for their studies. Now carrying the “University” appellation, the institution approached M&R for a new visual brand identity that represents the campus community and its foundation in Christian faith.
After a series of in-depth discussions and a thorough review of the institution’s existing branding, our award-winning designers got to work. Brewton Parker’s new logo needed to showcase the school’s past and its longstanding position as a home for Christian education while remaining modern, clean, and accessible.
From integrating the shape of the school’s distinctive entry arch to the Latin cross detail at the logo’s center, everything about Brewton Parker’s new logo says, “This is an established, recognized institution, guided by the principles of Christian faith.”
Focus Groups and Deep Discovery Lead to Website Success
Middle Georgia State University
Middle Georgia State University, with its five campuses across the Middle Georgia region, has grown significantly in the past twenty years. In 2012, the University System of Georgia combined two institutions—Macon State College and Middle Georgia College—to form the new Middle Georgia State College. By 2015, the institution had been granted approval to offer graduate degrees, and the name changed again to Middle Georgia State University (MGA).
The following year, the University approached M&R with a single request: build a website that created a unified, enrollment-forward website that anchored the institution’s various campuses and academic subunits with a single user experience.
The challenges were manifold:
- MGA has five campuses, each with a unique “feel” and one or more specific academic focus.
- The University’s academic offerings are extensive, ranging from art degrees to highly technical programs including Aviation programs like Flight and Aviation Maintenance Management.
- The university continued to grow, adding degree programs and other initiatives while we worked together on the website.
Delivering on such a massive project required a tremendous amount of discovery work. We worked with the University’s Office of Marketing and Communications to schedule and conduct several focus groups with MGA students and some with high schoolers who were currently looking for a college.
In our focus groups, we went in-depth with what these most important website users were looking for when they visited a college’s website. We picked up a lot of feedback to inform our website development, along with some solid entries on the “What not to do” list. The focus groups’ feedback also helped our partners in Marketing and Communications more effectively manage institutional expectations by giving them a unified, expert opinion that allowed them to prevent scope creep on their end.
Now, almost a decade later, the University still relies on the same flexible design M&R developed in 2016-17, and it keeps it updated with regular style and layout updates to keep the look fresh without requiring a complete site renovation.
Simplifying a Sitemap for Success
Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College
A common problem faced by college and university websites is size creep. Over time, as programs and initiatives are added to a school’s offerings, the website has to be updated to reflect them. Since change is the norm in higher education, keeping up with the constant edits to a site can lead to bloat as unneeded pages are left in place, programs end up with multiple duplicative pages, and other bloat occurs.
That was one of the challenges facing Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College (ABAC) in Tifton, Georgia, when they approached us in 2023. While their site was effective, it had become disorganized and inconsistent. It relied heavily on PDFs to convey important content, which was causing its SEO performance to suffer.
As part of our larger design project with ABAC, we started with simplifying their sitemap. Our SEO experts on the copywriting team dug deep into the institution’s existing site. They identified duplicated information, unused pages, unnecessarily complicated navigation structures, and several download-only documents that needed to become browsable pages on the new website.
One significant change was made in how the site promoted the school’s myriad degree programs. Prior to our involvement, each individual academic subunit handled its programs differently. Some gave detailed descriptions of their degree programs on the unit’s home page. Others simply linked users to the appropriate pages in the University’s catalog. Either way, the presentation limited each program’s SEO impact and hindered the school’s appearance in high-value searches.
To combat this and help improve the visibility of all of the school’s programs, we developed a template for degree-specific pages, complete with a summary of the course of study, elective options available, and potential career paths related to the degree.
Today, a user is never more than two clicks away from a detailed page containing all of the pertinent info that a current or future student could need about their specific interest or program.
A New Web Design for a Growing Institution
Oconee Fall Line Technical College
Oconee Fall Line Technical College (OFTC) serves eleven counties in east-central Georgia, offering more than 100 associate degrees, diplomas, certificates, and continuing-education programs. Its mission is to support economic and workforce development through quality, student-centered technical, adult, and industry services.
When OFTC approached us, their existing web presence felt dated—busy pages, heavy layouts, and diluted brand messaging. Though the college had accumulated valuable content over time, the design no longer reflected its mission or effectively served users.
We retained and audited all existing content, ensuring nothing was lost. From there, our creative and UX teams collaborated closely with OFTC stakeholders to reframe the site in a modern, accessible design system. Key improvements included:
- Streamlined page layouts featuring whitespace, visual hierarchy, and clear calls‑to‑action to reduce cognitive load and guide prospective students.
- Accessible design enhancements, from improved readability and responsive layouts to color contrast aligned with WCAG standards.
- Visual branding reinforcement, aligning college colors, typography, and imagery into cohesive templates that underscore OFTC’s identity.
Rather than rebuilding from scratch, we created a modular design framework. This allowed OFTC editors to reuse components—program listings, event modules, and feature callouts—ensuring consistent presentation across pages and simplifying ongoing maintenance.
The result: a refreshed site that feels contemporary, supports ease of navigation for key audiences (from adult learners to dual‑enrollment students), and amplifies institutional branding without losing continuity with prior content. By merging usability best practices and scalable modular design, OFTC now has a dynamic platform that meshes content preservation with enhanced brand clarity and accessibility.
Web Development of a Different Stripe
Building Sites on Higher-Ed Focused CMSs
Most of M&R’s clients have sites developed using the widely adopted WordPress content management system (CMS). WordPress, however, isn’t always the best choice for the kind of highly distributed content management structure of a college or university. These sites require dozens or even hundreds of internal contributors, each with a focus on their section of the site, but also required to keep their branding consistent across a massive sitemap.
Fortunately, M&R’s web development team can work with almost any content management system, especially those favored by higher education. One specific CMS we’ve had considerable experience with is Hannon Hill’s Cascade CMS.
Cascade is a platform designed specifically for higher education websites. Its focus on distributed content management and baked-in compliance features make it popular for institutions with complicated content dependencies and shared governance structures.
Developing sites for higher ed requires a slightly different mindset, one that we’ve used on sites for Mercer University, Middle Georgia State University, ABAC, and Oconee Fall Line Technical College: modularity. In order to let the institution take complete control of web updates and expansion, we design highly flexible modules that can be easily pieced together to create or update specific web pages.
At the end of the process, the school not only has a beautiful-looking site, but they’re also able to continue growing and editing the site as their institution grows or changes, without needing to worry about maintaining brand consistency. It’s already baked into the building blocks of their entire site.
Let’s Simplify the Complex Together
Your institution’s marketing challenges deserve more than off-the-shelf solutions. Whether you’re unifying a multi-campus brand, overhauling a website, or building internal buy-in, M&R Marketing brings the experience and tools to make it easier.
Let’s talk. Contact M&R Marketing today to explore how we can support your higher ed marketing strategy from start to finish. Call 478-621-4491 to talk to one of our friendly Sales team members.
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