Empowering CMOs: Letting Experts Lead the Way

The recent release of the biennial SimpsonScarborough CMO Study prompted lively discussion among the Noodle executive team. The report raised several significant industry issues, including the changing role of CMOs, the state of marketing budgets, and the need for a fresh take on research and measurement.

In this set of three articles, we will share our team’s insights and recommendations in each area. Our contributors include:

• Keri Hoyt, Chief Operating Officer & President + Learning Service Team Lead
• Stephen Green, Chief Partnerships Officer + Sales and Corporate Marketing Service Team Lead
• Rich Kochman, Chief Marketing Officer + Marketing and Enrollment Service Team Lead
• Dan Kehn, President, Creative Communication Associates
• Alan Mlynek, Chief Product Officer + Tech Solutions Service Team Lead

Our intention is to speak peer-to-peer: to respond to the CMOs who shared their challenges but also to engage with institutional leaders who are developing a new understanding and appreciation of marketing in light of the numerous changes impacting higher ed.

That evolution of leadership attitudes toward marketing comes at a critical time.  As we continue adjusting to the new educational world order, we must also respond to the anticipated  enrollment cliff, unknown challenges that come with a new federal administration, and declining public trust in traditional education.

All of this exists in the context of an industry that spent decades teaching effective marketing while actually doing very little of it. As Noodle’s Chief Partnerships Officer, Stephen Green, puts it:

Higher education never had to really operate in that space. It was, ‘We’re going to build great campuses and have great faculty, and you’re just going to want to be here.’  But now, students are more sophisticated buyers who look at the most expensive purchase in their life with a higher level of expectation: considering different options, wanting to know about price and ROI, how they’re being treated … the same metrics that they would expect to consider in the rest of their life.

And yet, many institutions and leaders cling to old ideas of how higher ed should be marketed (if at all). Again, Stephen Green:

There’s a reason why schools across the country are closing doors, right? It’s because they carried this legacy of largely passive branding, but this entire paradigm shift is moving toward performance marketing. Now, when you say this in higher education circles, people are viscerally opposed. ‘What do you mean we have to view the student as a consumer?’,  but that reaction is the problem, right? Which is why marketing leads are in this space of, ‘How do we represent our value? How do we get the resources that we need?’

Unfortunately, many of our CMOs are fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. Actually, it’s more like both arms and both legs, because not only are outside forces conspiring against them, but our own leadership actually questions their value. To succeed, institutional leadership must embrace and champion marketing. As CCA President Dan Kehn sees it:

You might not have tons of dollars, but if you have a leader that is effective at supporting, empowering, and operationalizing marketing, you’re going to get not only validation that marketing is valuable, but you’ll begin to tear down silos that have led to inconsistent student experiences.

Noodle COO and President, Keri Hoyt adds:

Universities are under a lot of financial pressure, so the President is looking at their Provost who is looking at the CMO and saying, ‘Fix my revenue problem.’ And the CMO says, ‘I can’t fix your revenue problem if you’re not willing to support me or invest any money.’

So, if we can agree that institutional leadership must become bigger cheerleaders for marketing, how do we empower our CMOs and set them up for success?

1. Give them a seat at the table

Not only does this broadcast leadership’s endorsement of marketing throughout the institution, it also ensures alignment of marketing goals with institutional goals. 

Dan Kehn:

I think the future of successful marketing in higher education is giving marketing leadership a direct line to the President, a seat at the Cabinet, and full authority and expectation of leading not just their discrete unit, but cross-functionally and cross-departmentally.

Noodle CMO, Rich Kochman:

I believe it’s not only in the CMO’s purview, but it’s really their mandate to bring university leadership critical market insights that drive overall university strategy.  Not only do they have their finger on the pulse of what prospective students are and aren’t looking for in an education program, they are also the first to see what other schools are doing in terms of positioning, programming, and messaging.  All of these are key factors in identifying the biggest opportunities for the university writ large to pursue.

2. Institutionalize marketing, aka knock down silos

Coordination of marketing budgets and management results in more efficient spending, control of messaging, and a greater consistency of the student experience with institutional positioning.

Noodle Chief Product Officer, Alan Mlynek:

Here’s this big write up about the CMO, and there’s barely a mention of the way enrollment is interwoven with marketing, the way program design affects marketing, the way the student experience ties into marketing. And so, to a certain degree, these industry reports reinforce the whole silo-ization of campus in a way that’s just totally counterproductive.

Keri Hoyt:

What makes somebody who works at a smaller school happier, or at least as satisfied, even though they have fewer resources and less money? It’s something about the smallness and the connectedness, the less bureaucracy and the less siloing that gives them greater satisfaction.

Stephen Green:

In any consumer-oriented space, the company’s objective is for you to feel a level of continuity and love throughout your journey, not just in shopping, but in actually purchasing and in support thereafter. The decentralization, the fragmentation of schools can actually make a horrific experience for students. On campus, the school of business treats its students differently than the school of education which is different from the school of law which is all different from what the marketing on-ramp or shopping experience was. The right answer is centralization that governs the entire student experience.

3. Consider CMOs from outside Higher Ed

The shift from a seller’s to a buyer’s market requires a more “retail” mentality and a different view of institutional reporting structure.

Stephen Green:

How do you attack the student-as-consumer paradigm shift? You have to go get people who actually understand it. How many of our higher ed CMOs would be hired by an e-commerce-oriented company, which is entirely about performance, right? Very few. And so what you’ve got in higher ed is people hired for communication, not expertise in performance. But, universities resist hiring a CMO that comes from the corporate sector because of this kind of bureaucratic legacy thing, right? And to be fair, we (Noodle) wouldn’t hire a CMO from a higher education institution, would we? No, because we are, by design, performance-oriented.

Keri Hoyt:

Think about how universities have operated for decades—flash foward—the world has changed and universities have to change their organizational structure to manage that change, and that’s hard, especially when turnover is so pronounced. It is hard to make sure that all departments are talking to each other, staying connected, informed, and in sync. It takes intentionality to shift to a marketing mentality. Are universities investing in this? Bringing in commercial CMOs can be an important first step in shifting traditional higher ed culture.

Dan Kehn:

They would certainly bring a business acumen and experience that help them navigate the rapidly changing and competitive higher ed landscape, but at the same time, sometimes we see non-higher ed leaders still facing uphill challenges, including gaining trust to put into play new strategies that challenge ‘the way things have always been done.’

4. Take a strategic approach to staffing vs. outsourcing

CMOs at small institutions reported spending 50% of their total budget on salaries while large schools spent 66%. Conversely, for-profit corporations spend only 25% on salaries.

 Keri Hoyt:

Universities are so protective, appropriately, over their brand and don’t want anyone messing with their brand and as a result feel like they have to do it all in house, and yet they can’t find the talent that they want or need because they can’t provide a career for them. They need to find one person who is an SEO expert and one person who’s this and one person who’s that. And therefore they can’t offer any of them a career trajectory, because there’s nowhere for them to go. Yet they’re spending all this money on these people who will stay for a year and leave if they don’t see a place where they can progress their careers.

Alan Mlynek:

I do think there’s a role we play on campus as an outside third party, where we can say things out loud that other stakeholders are thinking but for whatever political organizational reason, they don’t say out loud. Once we establish that we are experts and we’re not threatening, then it’s easier to have conversations about real best practices.

Stephen Green:

It’s a tricky thing, because what happens in higher education is there’s this territorial space, right? And so people get very nervous about us replacing anybody or replacing what their teams can do. So it’s crucial that we articulate to them that we are, in fact, augmentation, not replacement, where you’re getting the best of what you need without having to hire a bunch of people. The reality is, you do a lot of things that we won’t be able to do, and we do a lot of things that you won’t be able to do, so why not make us a part of your toolkit. Then you can take the credit for performance, right?

5. Revisit marcom budgets

Are budgets really too low? Or are they just being spent inefficiently? More on this in our next article.

Stephen Green:

This is especially challenging for smaller schools. I think it just underscores the importance of being highly efficient and intentional and optimized about every dollar they are spending. 

Rich Kochman:

Sometimes budgets truly are too small to achieve desired enrollment goals. To be sure, a higher budget is almost always helpful to a CMO. With additional budget, a good CMO will always find new opportunities to build awareness, reinforce the school’s brand, and build interest in the school’s program. A great CMO will not only find the most efficient use of any budget, but will also ensure that every ounce of value is extracted from each asset. For example, if you’re creating content for the website, make sure it’s amplified through social and other organic channels. If you’re running an alumni event on campus, consider inviting current prospects to participate as well.

The shift from a seller’s to buyer’s market caught many institutions flat-footed, clinging to traditional views about how institutions interact with prospects as well as outdated approaches to the business aspects of running institutions.

Successful higher education leaders will benefit from adopting relevant business practices from the for-profit market such as resource allocation, integration of technology, data-driven decision making, and more. With specific regard to marketing, consider that the concepts our marketing professors teach are as valid for higher education as they are for business. As we ask more and more of our CMOs, we must be ready to trust in their expertise by giving them the resources they need and the support and endorsement they deserve.