And Carrie On

Happy July, yall! For many universities on a fiscal year, July means a new budget and the chance to purchase new items.

As more and more is asked of our teams, budget resources continue to be stretched really thin.

This holds especially true if you’re working at a community college or regional public university.

Last year, I wrote a blog post about ways to stretch your budget in the new year. I want to add to it a bit and share some of my favorite free resources but also talk about where we should spend the limited resources we have available.

Three Free Tools to Consider

1. Chat GPT (or some sort of AI) – If the old adage is correct that time is money, this is a tool we should be using. As multiple experts have said, it won’t replace strategy and insights, but it can help us to work smarter not harder. I have saved countless hours using this tool over the last month and can see more opportunities to continue using it to help finesse writing, help brainstorm ideas and help lighten the load on myself and my team. If you’re not sure where to get started, the great folks at Element 451 put together a cheat sheet to help. This has tools, commands and ideas to make the work easier.
2. CASE Circle of Excellence Awards – I included this last year, but it worth repeating. The CASE Circle of Excellence Awards are a must-visit. The latest awards were released at the end June, so it is sort of new, right? These awards are the best of the best across marketing and communications, advancement, alumni, etc. If you’re looking for inspiration, this is a great place to look and learn from others. Even if an idea doesn’t translate completely for your institution, it can help you jumpstart planning for something that aligns with your needs.
3. Fold Factory’s Fold of the Week – Our design team is always trying to think strategically about print marketing. We know the print we send has to matter, stand out against the competition, and make an impact. I really enjoy watching the weekly fold of the week to get ideas for how we can come up with creative concepts for our content. With breakdown by budget and included dimensions, this allows our team to elevate our print game, even if we don’t have something in our sample box.
4. Membership engagement groups – There are so many of these across the professional spaces. CASE offers ToGathers. HighEdWeb offers community groups. UCDA offers CreativeConversations. Simpson Scarborough offers the CMO Lab. These are free gatherings for members of like-minded individuals to discuss a particular topic, share about a success or brainstorm a challenge. These groups are important because they help build community (ie. people we can connect with if we have a future challenge). However, they also have value in helping us to take a step back from our own institutions and think more systemically, about how we approach situations we face and larger challenges that can impact our industry.

Where We Should Spend Budget

I want to talk about where we should invest resources for our teams. These are the areas outside of the traditional marketing and communications spend (We all know we should be advertising, social listening, telling stories).

1. Professional development memberships – These provide access to free tools, provide discounts on conferences and help our teams do the work better. We try to be members of all the professional associations to best support our teams and give them the most tools in their toolbox.
2. Conference attendance – I want our teams learning as much as they can. So much in our marketing and communications world changes (just look at the interruption of Chat GPT). As such, the more our teams can attend conferences to learn about these topics, the better off we can address these challenges. (For our conference attendance, we require a 2-2-1 to share with the full team).
3. Equipment – This isn’t sexy, but it matters. The universities where I have served have supported me in setting up a rotating equipment plan. The idea is we invest in technology every single year. This helps keeps equipment functioning, allows budget for maintenance (as opposed to repairs) and helps ensure we are less likely to end up in a critical purchase situation that wasn’t budgeted. This strategy applies to computers but also cameras, lights, lenses, etc. This big purchases sting, but they certainly sting a little less when I can plan for them.
4. Branded Goodies – I know there are all sorts of opinions about this. And it is also important to be sustainable. However, especially when we’re looking at future students coming on campus, I love to support these groups with branded items. A prospective student camper may hang on to that t-shirt, lanyard or stickers. Even if they don’t, just receiving it may bolster their impression of our institution. Same thing with legacy alumni. These are prospective students who likely have an affinity with the institution, so doing branded goodies for these groups can help strengthen that affinity. However, this is a group more likely to keep/use the goodie which can also help with our brand awareness overall.

That ended up being quite a long blog post but hope it’s helpful! What are the free tools your teams love? What are the items you think are worth spending our tight resources on? Can’t wait to hear from you all!