Woo-hoo!
After years of hard work and struggle, we higher ed marketing leaders finally earned a seat at the table.
Sort of.
Many of us came to the table ready to wrestle with the real issues facing the institution only to realize we were invited after the main course was already served. By the time we sat down, the real decisions were settled. Programs approved, budgets set and enrollment priorities already in motion.
Basically, we’re there for dessert.
Promotion, campaigns, and brand execution.
Important work? Yes. Visible? Sure. But it’s not where the decisions that matter get made.
Sometimes it feels like marketing is treated like a cake pop.
It looks great. It’s fun. It gets attention.
But one bite and it’s gone.
Not very filling.
Think back to your first Marketing 101 class: Product, Price, Placement, Promotion. If all we’re tasked to do is promotion, we’re leaving 75% of our job capacity untouched.
Marketers can bring insight and perspective to a number of critical processes:
- Understanding the market
- Stress-testing program ideas
- Clarifying positioning
- Identifying where real demand exists and where the institution is guessing
When marketing leaders are part of those conversations, decisions are more informed, plans more durable, and strategy more vetted. So when we’re only there for dessert, our role is reduced to making the pre-decided strategy look good.
Sometimes we’re able to build on a strong foundation of a well-thought-out plan.
Other times, we’re just putting lipstick on a pig and hoping for the best.
Even though we all see this dynamic play out all the time, far fewer have leaned in to change it.
If you want to move beyond promotion and start contributing to the decisions that come before it, here are a few places to start.
- Ask about the decision, not just the deliverable.
When a request comes in, don’t immediately jump to execution. Ask what they’re trying to accomplish and what success looks like.
Sometimes you’ll uncover a better solution. At minimum, you learn more about the thinking behind the decision and start changing the conversation from “What do you want us to make?” to “What are we trying to accomplish?” - Learn the organization beyond marketing.
If you want to contribute to conversations about enrollment, programs, pricing or institutional priorities, you need to understand them well enough to have something useful to say.
Know the numbers. Understand the pressures. Learn how decisions get made and what matters to the people making them.
Marketing expertise gets you only so far. - Find one place to prove you belong upstream.
Don’t try to insert yourself into every strategic conversation at once.
Find one issue where marketing has something meaningful to contribute, like a new program launch, an enrollment problem, or a market opportunity. Bring your perspective and help make the decision better.
Doing that a few times earns you the receipts to show you should be involved earlier the next time. - Bring recommendations, not just observations.
Seeing something others missed is table stakes. Saying what the institution should do about it is what starts changing your role.
Bring the signal. Explain what you think it means. Recommend a next move.
That’s a much different contribution than reporting what happened after the fact.
None of this changes overnight. If you’ve spent years being really good at delivering what people ask for, it takes real work to change how they see you, and how you see your own role.
That’s a big part of why I created the Marketing Leader Performance Accelerator.
It’s a high-touch, small-group working lab for marcomms pros moving from service provider to strategic partner.
If you’re tired of being treated like a cake pop, this is for you.
Join the waitlist for the upcoming cohort
