Marketing Budgets: Navigating the Struggle for More Resources

In this second article of our series commenting on the findings of the SimpsonScarborough CMO Study, our executive team discusses the issue of budgets, how they impact institutions’ efforts in the new buyer’s market, and what CMOs can do to maximize their chances of meeting goals with what most consider to be insufficient funds.

Our contributors again are:

• 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

The CMO Study was very clear in reporting that the majority of marketing leaders feel their budgets are not only inadequate, but due to persistent siloing, many are not even sure how budgets are being spent:

• Only 1 in 4 surveyed think their budget is appropriate given expectations of marketing
• Only 1 in 4 surveyed think they have the budget/staff to meet expectations of leadership
• 50% of CMOs couldn’t estimate the % of marketing spend coming from a central marketing budget

Noodle’s Chief Partnerships Officer, Stephen Green, considers this last bullet a particularly harmful result of legacy marketing approaches and ongoing siloization:

This bureaucratic legacy of decentralized spending and lack of accountability dilutes the effectiveness of outreach efforts. Leadership and CMOs need to dig into the tough questions like what are we actually spending? Why are we spending? How is it relating to conversion? How is it related to our profitability? How do all the pieces in our marketing ecosystem actually tie into this? This is a difficult, but critical, shift that institutions need to make to successfully evolve from a history of “soft”  brand building to impactful performance marketing.

Some of these issues will be addressed in our final article on the shifting landscape of performance measurement, but for now, our team shares their thoughts on the two most likely options CMOs are considering in the current environment: make the most of what you have or make a compelling case to leadership to increase funding.

Making the Most of What You Have

Nail the basics

Getting more “bang for the buck” starts with getting the basics right, or as Noodle CMO Rich Kochman says:

Are we doing the basic blocking and tackling? For example: does the website speak to the prospective students’ needs and interests in language they will understand, or is it “higher ed speak” that resonates more with administrators? Is messaging across the website consistent, and is it easy to navigate so visitors can easily find the information they want?  Do we make it easy for them to request information so we can more deeply engage with them?  Is our information up to date? We have to do a better job of nailing the basics.

Spend strategically

It’s also critical that we be exceptional stewards of the funds that are provided. As Stephen Green points out, this is especially true for smaller schools:

You’re never going to be a small school and outspend a better-funded larger institution, but you know what that means? That means you’ve got to be more thoughtful, more sophisticated—about your tech, about your talent, about the work that they’re doing—to be able to grow.

Rich Kochman:

Higher ed marketers have to start learning how to be good at working in channels and getting interest in your program from sources other than Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. These channels will continue to get more expensive every year which means that to maintain the same enrollment, you’ll have to either spend more money, or be more creative in the ways and channels you use to find and nurture prospects.

Spend to your strengths

Knowing who your institution is and where it stands in its own competitive environment helps to reduce wasted spending. Rich Kochman:

Find what you’re good at and lean into it as deeply as possible. Leading with messaging about “transformative education” and “best faculty” is nice, but it’s somewhat generic and doesn’t set a school apart from competitors – especially when most of them are saying the same thing.  Differentiation is key. A good exercise is for schools to think about the following statement: “For students who want X and Y, our program is the obvious choice.” Once you determine X & Y, those should be the key pillars of your messaging matrix. 

Manage the pipeline

As students and parents become more sophisticated and discerning shoppers, they are also taking longer to make up their minds. Rich Kochman sees this as an opportunity to tap an existing pool of prospects:

Many schools think about this year’s marketing budget as the driver for this year’s enrollment targets. To be sure, new inquiries represent the greatest opportunities, but especially for the graduate market, I’ve seen new cohorts of students in which over a third of those students originally requested information about the program over a year ago.  Regularly reengaging people who inquired about your program 6-36 months ago is an incredibly cost effective way to drive new enrollments. Said differently, if you only focus on your most recent inquiries, your total enrollment will always be capped by the amount of money you can spend in a single year.

Keep filling the funnel

As the once ubiquitous–and funnel-filling–standardized tests have become increasingly optional, both the size and the value of these once prized sources of prospects have decreased. How can CMOs reach prospects cost-effectively?

CCA President, Dan Kehn:

Since 2019, the number of students that were captured and turned into enrollments through purchased names has dropped about 70%. So, as of 2023, colleges are, on average, getting 43 enrollments for every 100,000 names purchased. Add this to increasing privacy concerns and finding prospects has suddenly become much harder. Institutions need to be thinking cross-departmentally. For example, are we leveraging alumni effectively? There are tremendous opportunities for innovation in that space.

Noodle COO & President, Keri Hoyt:

Whether internally or through outsourcing, institutions need to expand their student search methodologies and take advantage of-–not be afraid of—the opportunities presented by new technology. Social media platforms and other online communities; virtual events and webinars; user-friendly and strategically-designed websites; there is no shortage of affordable resources, just perhaps the manpower to utilize them.

Staff and outsource strategically

Higher ed overspends on labor compared to for-profits, making outsourcing a cost-effective way to access expertise, improve efficiency, and reduce in-house workloads.

Keri Hoyt:

Institutions need to take a hard look at which core competencies they should have internally versus which they should outsource. One consideration is career advancement for internal hires versus outsourcing. External partners, like Noodle, have the benefit of serving a lot of universities, so we can offer career progression to people who want to go into SEO or people who want to go into media buying that institutions can’t match. So, how does a university partner compete with an external firm—who can attract awesome talent who are looking to grow and are looking to build their careers—without losing control over strategy and messaging?

Noodle Chief Product Officer, Alan Mlynek

Besides providing the kind of talent that higher ed can’t always afford or attract, outside support provides a set of fresh eyes on legacy practices. Once we establish that we are experts and we’re not threatening, then it’s easier to have conversations like, ‘Well, you know, the best practice here is actually to remove questions from your admissions form, because we can see that you’re not using the data. For example, why are you asking for five letters of reference when we can see that you’re only looking at one?”

Invest in martech

Higher ed should commit to closing the gap with for-profit spending on martech, including AI, to enhance optimization and customization opportunities.

Keri Hoyt:

When you look at a college that doesn’t have a massive budget, are they leveraging technology to the fullest? The one thing that was just so striking in the study was that smaller schools spend around $40,000 on martech. You can’t even have an online application for that!

Rich Kochman:

I’m particularly intrigued by agentic voice AI. One particularly interesting use of this in higher ed is a voice AI agent that does outbound calling to people that have inquired about a program to answer initial questions, judge interest, and even set up a meeting with a human enrollment specialist from the school.  It’s very cost efficient, and it also benefits from 100% compliance with all regulations and completely accurate information being shared with prospective students.  

Leverage Free Resources

Leverage user-generated content, faculty expertise, and access to students to maximize impact without additional costs.

Keri Hoyt:

I am fascinated by the concept of utilizing students. How do you tap into that talent, especially when it comes to marketing in today’s day and age where everything’s influencer marketing? You’ve got people, ambassadors, who are at your institution who can help you market in a way that is relatable to peers either through groups or by creating content of their own.

Rich Kochman:

I find that campus advisory groups are highly underutilized. Members tend to be alumni and business leaders in the local community with great influence in their own networks, and many of them have senior roles at organizations whose customers, members, or employees may be a great fit for your school’s programs.

Justifying budget increases

As the majority opinion in the study is that marketing is not only under-funded, but also under-respected, making a pitch for additional dollars is a challenge. We discussed ways of guiding leadership to a more marketing-centric perspective in our first article, and many of the same approaches can help justify funding increases as well as centralized control of marketing funds

Stephen Green:

If I was a CMO, and I wanted to argue for resources I would create a business case, right? Like, here is what we need, from a talent and expertise perspective to drive the kind of performance that’s going to increase enrollment and drive greater revenue. In order to get that, I need these profiles of people or expertise. And here’s the configuration of what I want to do. I want to use these providers. I want to hire these kinds of people to manage them. And part of the deal is that I will provide measurable results to justify these changes.

Keri Hoyt:

I see an opportunity in the way they were talking about the number of people who are working with a new president or a CMO that is also new in the role. You have a lot of new teammates, with new demands, working in a changed landscape. There’s an opportunity for leadership and CMOs to get on the same page and align their goals. But they have to move fast because it doesn’t take long for inertia to set in. 

Alan Mlynek:

What’s going to convince leadership to increase budgets is results, right? Data that inarguably validates that our efforts have been successful. But it has to be the right data. You can’t just try to serve leadership dashboards full of Google Analytics information. It’s too much, a lot of it’s not relevant, and it doesn’t actually lead to better decision making. Find meaningful metrics that actually give you more information about the students so you can connect with them more effectively.

And thank you, Alan, for setting up Article 3 on performance measurement so nicely.

Conclusion

Marketing’s importance has grown, expanding the role of the CMO with it. Supporting and funding CMOs effectively is essential for institutional success. Leaders are encouraged to embrace marketing’s evolving role, offering autonomy and flexibility if budgets are tight, and being open to increasing funding when provided with data-driven justification. CMOs, in turn, should focus on strategic creativity, measurement, and proving ROI to secure continued support and resources. The old ways no longer work—adaptation is key.