A Brand and Marketing Engine for a Higher Education Consultancy Where Deep Expertise Finally Got a Name of Its Own

From Behind the Partners to In Front of the Market

Doctums

Project Type: Brand Evolution, Marketing Partner, Marketing Momentum
Agency Role: Strategic Foundations - Brand & Identity - UX/UI & Web Design - Brand Salience and Reputation - Demand Generation
Location: Chicago
Year: 2023

Doctums is a higher education technology consulting firm built to make technology work for higher education. Founded by experts in IT, EdTech, and the academic and administrative functions that keep universities running, it helps institutions across the U.S., Canada, and Latin America optimize their operations, systems, and student experience. For years, most of their work reached universities through tier-one consulting firms that sold the projects and subcontracted the delivery. The expertise was real. The brand wasn’t. When those partner contracts began winding down, Doctums decided to step out from behind other firms’ engagements and build a market presence of its own.

Results

Category owned: Higher Education Consulting

Always-on channels

Parallel tracks: brand and granular campaigns

Coordinated brand building blocks

The Business Problem

Most of Doctums’ work came through tier-one consulting firms, alongside a smaller base of direct clients. The model worked, but it had reached its limit, and Doctums wanted to grow through new channels and build its own position and footprint in the market.

That meant starting almost from zero. Beyond a name and a logo, there was no brand and no marketing team, and brand decisions ran through a large committee of founders, consultants, product, and sales. Many buyers read “Doctums” as document management. And as a consultancy solving many problems in many ways, its message risked being too technical to resonate, or too generic to be credible.

The Communication Challenge

Doctums had two problems to solve before it could say anything else. The first was the name. Many buyers read “Doctums” as document management, a category that sits right next to the university world. The name actually comes from docto, someone learned, which is exactly what you’d want from a consultancy. But no one should have to work that out.

The second was the audience. Doctums speaks to university IT directors and senior administrators who know their systems inside out. Too technical, and the message wouldn’t resonate. Too generic, and it would sound like a firm that doesn’t get them, like a banner promising headache relief at a neurosurgeons’ conference.

The Strategic Idea

Category first. Differentiation second.

Instead of trying to say everything, we anchored Doctums in one clear category: higher education consulting. It is broad enough to hold every service and explicit enough that no one has to guess, and the name never appears without it. With the category set, we organized and prioritized the service portfolio beneath it, then layered in differentiation: an agile, client-close, technology-focused firm.

Execution: launch the essentials, then keep shaping

Through Agile Brand Development, Doctums went to market with its brand essentials first, the fundamentals that don’t change, and kept building around them. Working on Doctums is like working with clay: the shape reveals itself along the way, together with the client and the market. Research and real visitor behavior keep showing the gap between what a company believes about its market and what’s actually happening, so the brand is never finished. Two tracks now run in parallel: brand marketing that owns the category, and granular campaigns by service, vertical, and buyer persona.

Client's feedback

27Zero helped Doctums refine its brand message and develop a comprehensive marketing framework. Now, we see results: a stronger pipeline and broader market recognition.

DoctumsFounder and CEO at Doctums

The approach: be remembered, be found.

Higher education buyers don’t move on a single email. Most purchases go through RFPs and committees, on the institution’s timeline. So instead of chasing instant attribution, we built the strategy around two goals: mental availability, so leaders associate Doctums with the problems it solves, and physical availability, so they find it the moment they search. The job is to be present, consistently and authentically, until the need arises

What We Built

In the first six months, we built the Brand Essentials: messaging and positioning, tone and voice, a visual system, the website, presentations for sales, marketing, customer service, and leadership, proposal templates, and the basics for social and email. Every point of contact was covered from the start. Because there was no product marketing team, we co-created the service packaging with Doctums, grouping and prioritizing its offer under the category. Then came the engine: LinkedIn organic and paid, newsletters and email, SEO and GEO, offer and category campaigns, and Forefront, an initiative that spotlights Doctums’ experts, capabilities, and clients.

The Shift

At the beginning, universities bought from people. They trusted the founder and the consultants they already knew. Today they increasingly recognize Doctums itself. That trust now belongs to the brand, which means it can scale beyond any one relationship. The shift happened inside too. Bringing the packaging to market helped Doctums’ teams organize how they deliver every service, and gave the firm a clearer picture of itself. Marketing changed as well: from good plans with little execution to a framework that runs every day, with a partner that challenges its communication, its offer, and its positioning.

Doctums-granular-marketing-campaigns-ABM

Our Results

Doctums now shows up where its buyers look. Today it ranks on the first page of search results for every category in its offer, reaching high-intent buyers through Google and AI answers alike. The business has grown with the brand. The team has expanded across demand generation, sales, and consulting. And three years in, the partnership keeps evolving with every strategic shift.

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