RIDE™ is a step-by-step methodology for putting Information Discovery Optimization to work. It lays out the processes and actions needed to move from research to strategy to execution across all information-discovery channels where prospective students and parents discover, compare, and choose a college today.
RIDE™ stands for Research, Integrate, Deliver, and Evaluate.
As the official methodology for delivering the IDO™ Framework, it provides marketing, communications, and enrollment teams with a shared way to plan, deliver, and review their work along the student decision journey. Each stage has a clear purpose and a defined output.
Together, they form a continuous cycle that keeps teams aligned with how students actually search, compare options, and make enrollment decisions.
Research – Understand how prospective students and parents explore their options, what they need to know at each step, and how your institution currently shows up in that journey.
Integrate -Turn those findings into clear strategic initiatives about where to focus, what story the institution needs to tell, and where and how it will show up across all touchpoints.
Deliver – Execute initiatives defined in the Information Discovery Strategy across all relevant discovery platforms. It assigns owners, plans tasks, assesses resources, budgets, time, materials, systems, and governance to ensure the team can deliver the plan.
Evaluate – Review how the strategy has performed across the term by analyzing performance data and connecting the results to the initiatives that were delivered. The goal of this stage is to understand the factors that influenced signals, the enrollment pipeline, and how different initiatives contributed to those outcomes.
Read next section: The Research stage
