Strategic Pillars are the foundation of the IDO™ Framework. They define how a college or university builds influence across the full student decision journey, from awareness to enrollment.
Instead of treating visibility, trust, and choice as separate goals, the pillars link them as stages that shape one another, with one clear aim: to move prospective students from discovery to confident enrollment decisions.
This reflects the way students actually decide: they first become aware of an institution, then decide whether to believe its promises, and finally choose where to apply, deposit, and enroll.
IDO™’s three pillars help institutions line up their strategy with that journey, so they are seen, taken seriously, and ultimately chosen.
Get Found
Get Found is about earning visibility before and during the time a prospect is in the market for a school. It focuses on being discoverable as early as possible in a prospective student’s journey, when they begin asking questions, exploring programs, or trying to understand their options.
The institution needs to understand early discovery signals that appear in those early moments, wherever they happen, across the whole discovery ecosystem.
The goal of Get Found is for the institution to be visible with its brand, answering all questions its students have in all relevant channels and addressing their pain points with helpful, clear information that makes the institution part of the conversations its prospects are having and strengthens its brand visibility.
Get Trusted
Get Trusted focuses on building credibility after discovery, so prospective students believe what an institution says about its programs, value, and outcomes. Claims need to be backed by visible proof, and each interaction should build confidence rather than doubt. This pillar is about credibility, consistency, and clarity.
In practice, that means accurate program pages, real student stories, clear outcomes, reviews, rankings profiles, visit experiences, and counselor conversations that all line up. Trust grows when students and parents keep seeing the same honest narrative wherever they check, so they feel certain about what is being offered and what life at the institution will be like.
Get Chosen
Get Chosen is about making the final enrollment decision feel clear, confident, and low risk for the student. It focuses on what happens after trust has been built, when a prospective student is actively comparing institutions, narrowing down programs, and deciding where to enroll.
Every part of the experience and messaging at this stage should reinforce why choosing this institution and these programs makes sense.
This pillar covers the final steps of the journey: RFI submissions, completing applications, college visits, financial aid clarity, deadlines, enrollment, admissions, and communications. The aim is to remove friction, answer remaining questions, and help students move from interest to attending.
This pillar serves as the point of alignment between marketing and admissions by making enrollment a shared responsibility throughout the full decision-making process. It removes silos by aligning both teams on what success looks like.
When you apply the three pillars through the RIDE™ methodology – researching how your students discover and decide, integrating that insight into strategy, delivering concrete initiatives across channels, and evaluating what moved the signals – you build a system that evolves with student behavior and technological change.
IDO™’s strategic pillars help you close the Visibility Gap by giving you a practical, evidence-based way to ensure your institution is found when students begin exploring options, trusted as they evaluate alternatives, and chosen when they make their final enrollment decision.
Read next section: Core Concepts
