In my dissertation research from Texas Tech University on how marketing can be utilized to help mitigate the enrollment cliff for regional public universities, a key finding was the idea that marketers (in many cases) are and have the potential to be change agents for the university.
First, let’s unpack a common working definition of a change agent. Here’s an official definition:
A group or individual whose purpose is to bring about a change in existing practices of an organization that have become entrenched routines.
Oxford Reference
Organizationally, these are people who ask why something has always been done a specific way. These are also people who can and enjoy serving as a catalyst for revisiting processes and procedures.
Four Strategies
As I’ve spent time thinking and serving in marketing for over a decade, here are a couple of ways that marketing leaders can fill this role.
Bring people together for broken processes – This is probably the most obvious, but it’s one of the hardest. Marketing teams work with much of campus, so they often see broken and confusing processes. It’s easy to say, “that’s how it is.” However, as a change agent, marketing teams can bring the groups together to start working to address the problems or at least develop an understanding among all parties about what is the issue that needs to be addressed. These are deep, systemic problems, and they usually take years to address. It’s easier to just accept them. However, it’s also incredibly valuable when marketing can build the coalition needed to solve them, and because we work with the entire campus, we’re more likely to have the time and energy to stay focused on them until they’re finished.
Use data to have bigger conversations – Marketing teams historically have only been brought in to promote. For example, we’re often asked – “can you help us get the word out?” We can do that, but that is stopping short of how marketing teams can help. Sometimes we have access to data that can play a key role in pricing strategy, placement, or ways the product itself should be created. Marketing teams must do better at asserting ourselves into these conversations to help our university make the best overall decisions. We have been timid to raise our hands as a profession and share our website analytics, market data, and messaging best practices. That data could help everyone across campus work smarter and not harder.
Regular assessment – One of the things I advocate for is a culture of assessment across all of marketing. Doing this helps marketing teams continue to elevate our work. However, doing it with campus partners helps to make the assessment process more robust and meaningful. For example, we may revisit undergraduate funnel printing campaigns and internally have insights. However, engaging with our admissions partners makes that work even better. When this culture exists, both areas begin continuously thinking of how we can improve projects every time we do them. That kind of thinking can have a ripple effect across campus, helping the entire university continue to push the needle and innovate.
Build partnerships – Partnerships are one of the best ways to impact change. Strong campus partners help with communication, understanding of challenges, sharing of resources, and so much more. By identifying key campus collaborations and investing time and energy in those partnerships, marketing teams can start moving the needle on things that impact enrollment, retention and funds raised — all valuable things in our industry. Because everyone is busy, it really falls on marketing teams to put forth the initial effort to build the partnership. However, in working to create these, I’ve found others quickly begin to see the value of these partnerships as well.
Where to Get Started
Marketing teams who are hearing this and ready to go, I would challenge you to get started by looking at your campus…. what are the broken processes, where can partnerships help, what data can you provide.
Start small and find one to two places to begin for the academic year. If you’re successful with those, you can always take on additional processes and ways to do this work.
Can’t wait to see how our professions steps forward to make an impact!
And Carrie On 