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Trader Joe’s knows exactly who it is. Does your college?
Updated: 19 hours ago
They don’t chase trends. They don’t compete on price. Yet they’ve built one of retail’s most fiercely loyal customer bases. Higher ed should probably be taking notes.
Only once in my life have I intentionally driven an hour and a half to a grocery store. (And no, it wasn’t because rural Kentucky left me without closer options. Though, heard.)
I went because I wanted two very specific things I couldn’t get anywhere else: Orange Chicken. Cookie Butter.
If you already know which store I’m talking about, well, that’s kind of the point: Trader Joe’s.
Trader Joe's shouldn't work
Honestly, it shouldn't.
They carry fewer products than a traditional grocery store. They don't have a loyalty program. They barely advertise. Their store brand covers almost everything on the shelf, which sounds like a liability until you realize their private-label products are exactly what customers come back for.
And yet, Trader Joe's generates more revenue per square foot than almost any other grocery chain in the United States. And frankly their customer loyalty is the stuff of marketing legend. People don't just shop there. They evangelize!
So what's actually happening? And what does any of this have to do with enrollment?
More than you'd think.
The Trader Joe's Playbook
Strip away the Hawaiian shirts and the clever product names and what you find is a brand built on a few very deliberate, very disciplined choices:
Radical clarity over endless options
Deep investment in experience over advertising spend
A specific, consistent point of view about who they are and who they serve
Surprise and delight as a strategic tool, not a gimmick
Staff who seem legitimately happy to be there
None of these things are accidental. They're the result of a brand that decided, a long time ago, to stop trying to be everything to everyone, and instead become exactly the right thing for a specific kind of person.
I don't know about you, but I've heard that before in higher ed.
And, it's a lesson most colleges haven't learned yet.
The Enrollment Marketing Problem Trader Joe's Already Solved
1. Stop competing on features. Compete on feeling.
Click into most college websites and you'll find the same list: strong academics, vibrant campus life, career services, internship opportunities, diverse community, small class sizes (if applicable), beautiful campus (always).
These features are real. They also don't differentiate you from literally anyone. You could put just about any institutions name on those features.
You know what Trader Joe's does? It doesn't compete on selection. They compete on the feeling of walking in the door. You probably know it or can envision it right away: the warmth, the discovery, the sense that this place was designed specifically for you and people like you.
To be effective, you need to make students feel something specific, not just informed about features. It creates a feeling of recognition: this is my place.
💡 What to try: Audit your homepage and your top five visited web pages. Count how many sentences describe features versus how many create an emotional experience or tell a story. If it's heavily feature-weighted, you're marketing like a grocery store — not like Trader Joe's.
2. Curate ruthlessly. Don't overwhelm.
Trader Joe's carries roughly 4,000 products. A traditional grocery store carries more like 30,000 to 50,000.
Insane, right? Why would anyone go to a grocery story with an eighth of the offerings?!
Trader Joe's made a strategic decision to curate — to carry only what they believe in, rather than stocking everything because someone might want it.
Let's adapt this to a college.
Look at a typical college program page. Or a financial aid landing page. Or an admitted student portal. The instinct in higher ed is to include everything, anticipate every question, provide every link. The result is pages that feel like a warehouse rather than a boutique.
Students, and especially the overwhelmed, first-time-navigating-this students we most want to reach, don't need more information. They need better organized, more curated information that helps them make one decision at a time.
💡 What to try: Choose three things you want a prospective student to know, feel, or do on each major page of your website. Design the page around those three things. Remove the rest or move it to secondary pages. Curation is a form of respect for your audience's time and attention.
3. Surprise and delight is a strategy, not an extra.
Trader Joe's is famous for its unexpected finds (and not gonna lie, it's one of my favorite things about the place). Things like seasonal items, products you didn't know you needed (or even EXISTED), a cookie butter that somehow became a cultural moment.
Discovery is baked into the experience. (Pun only slightly intentional.)
Most enrollment marketing is honestly pretty darn predictable.
Students know they'll get an email after they inquire.
They know there will be a campus visit invitation.
They know a financial aid package will arrive.
Nothing surprises them. Nothing delights them.
The moments that create genuine loyalty in enrollment — the moments students remember and tell their friends about — are the unexpected ones. The personal handwritten note from an admissions counselor. The text from a current student ambassador before Admitted Student Day. The small, specific gesture that says: we see you, individually, not just as part of our funnel.
💡 What to try: Identify one moment in your enrollment funnel where a small, unexpected act of generosity or specificity or could create a disproportionate emotional impact. It doesn't have to be expensive. It has to be genuine.
4. Hire (and train) for warmth and empathy.
Trader Joe's crew members are famously friendly. Not in a scripted retail kinda way, but in a way that feels genuinely human. And you better believe that's a very specific hiring and training priority.
In enrollment, the counselors and staff who interact with students and families are the brand. Every email, every text, every campus tour, every phone call is either building trust or eroding it.
And yet, training for the relational, emotional, human side of enrollment work is honestly an afterthought, something covered briefly in onboarding and then assumed.
Warmth and empathy are skills. It can be taught, practiced and improved. And in an environment where many institutions are competing on the same features, the institution that shows up most consistently human wins.
💡 What to try: Listen to or review five real student interactions this week, whether that’s calls, emails, texts or visit conversations. Don’t just assess accuracy. Look for warmth, empathy and whether the student feels like a person rather than a task to complete. Then identify one behavior your team can practice more intentionally.
5. Know exactly who you're for.
Trader Joe's isn't for everyone. They know it. But they're also completely unapologetic about it. They're for a specific kind of shopper — curious, value-conscious, open to discovery, not brand-loyal in the traditional sense — and they build every decision around serving that person exceptionally well. (I feel like this is the definition of Millennial moms. Or maybe it's just me.)
The "de-positioning" principle applies here: institutions that try to be everything to every student end up being compelling to none.
The ones that know precisely who they serve, and build every communication, every program, every experience around that person, build something that lasts.
While this may seem like being exclusionary, it's not at all. It's about being honest, specific and confident about who you are and who thrives in your environment.
Clarifying that is what helps identify you as a genuine fit. And genuine fit retains.
💡 What to try: Ask your team to finish this sentence: “The students who thrive here are…” If the answers are vague, generic or wildly different, your positioning probably is too. Get specific about who finds belonging, momentum and success at your institution, then make sure your marketing actually reflects that.
The Bottom Line
Trader Joe's didn't become a cult brand by trying to out-grocery the grocery industry. They became beloved by making a series of deliberate, disciplined, human-centered choices and then sticking to them.
The enrollment marketing teams that will win in the next decade aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. (That should be good news to many of my small college partners!)
The ones that will win will be the ones with the clearest sense of who they are, the most consistent commitment to the student experience, and the willingness to surprise and delight rather than just inform and remind.
Square One Consulting helps higher ed marketing and enrollment teams build strategies rooted in human behavior, real student experience, and clear identity.
