Performance Measurement in Higher Ed: Navigating the Shifting Landscape

In our final article addressing the findings of the latest SimpsonScarborough CMO Study, our executive team looks at issues surrounding data and measurement. While the CMO Study was titled and focused on “Brand Measurement,” our team quickly pointed out that “performance measurement” is rapidly becoming the more important gauge of the impact of marketing. The consensus is that a fresh look at what and how we measure will not only enable leadership to make more informed decisions but will also ease the transition from seller’s to buyer’s market by providing a reliable means of evaluating efforts.

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

Shifting from branding to performance marketing

As has been noted, the shift from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market has necessitated a change in how higher ed views marketing. As Noodle Chief Partnerships Officer, Stephen Green, puts it:

Historically, marketing leadership at universities has been hired largely for communication or brand-building–if you build it, they will come-–but now they have been pulled into performance marketing because enrollments are down, fiscal realities set in, dramatically increased competition for students. And so, incumbent marketing leaders are being asked to get really quickly up to speed on performance. While some universities are looking at CMOs with a for-profit—aka performance—background.

Noodle COO & President, Keri Hoyt adds the importance of having a clear mission and vision that leadership and marketing agree on: 

All too often universities are focused on a vision or a mission that are too amorphous that they can’t latch onto it, whereas people who are really trying to change the way we educate students or change the approach, come in with a much stronger leadership and a commitment to results. And everybody on that leadership team is there because they want the same thing, and they’re not all just doing their own thing. This is one way centralized marketing and budgeting can be more effective and efficient.

The value of measurement

With shifts in the way prospects and parents view their higher ed decisions, increased competition for enrollments, and flat or very slightly increased budgets, meeting institutional goals becomes much more challenging. Institutions can no longer rest on their established brand laurels, nor can they afford to be casual about capturing accurate performance metrics to guide future actions.

Stephen Green:

Measurement is all about getting ‘it’ right the first time or refining based on data to get ‘it’ right next time. It’s about minimizing waste. And that just underscores the importance for small schools or schools with very tight budgets of being highly efficient and intentional and optimized about every dollar they are spending. They just don’t have any wiggle room right, like, they have no room for error? Big institutions that have other large sources of revenues-–whether it’s tons of research dollars coming in or substantial revenue-generating sports-–they’ve got more disposable income, so they can miss, right? They can stay in this legacy communicative space forever or for some period of time because they’ve got the small fish getting eaten up before it impacts them in a way that they can feel. But under that logic, you do eventually run out of small fish and have to take matters into your own hands.

CCA President, Dan Kehn:

According to the study, a fair number of institutions haven’t done any quantitative brand research in the last three years. If you begin a new branding exercise, for example, thinking that your four- or five-year old research is going to be of benefit, you not only risk making decisions based on outdated perceptions, but you also jeopardize misunderstanding challenges or overlooking key opportunities that could impact the institution’s brand market position and overall effectiveness.

Noodle Chief Product Officer, Alan Mlynek:

Our products go to great lengths to ensure that marketing data gets tied to the enrollment data gets tied to the student success data gets tied to the learning data gets tied to the faculty data. That’s what we work on every day. And at the end of that effort, you can have more interesting insights, because you’re not just looking at data from Google Analytics like was mentioned in the Simpson Scarborough report. You’re looking at data from across the student life cycle and trying to find predictors of student success and persistence that were observable during the marketing effort. Did a particular campaign or outreach strategy yield more successful students? 

How and what to measure

The CMO Study pointed out that the measurements that institutions should focus on have evolved, just as the types and ways of measuring have evolved. Alan Mlynek agrees:

I think a lot of marketing metrics don’t matter. People talk about clicks and impressions and page views and bounce rates, but it’s so noisy and can lead to a case of more data equals more problems. That’s not to say that ‘more’ data is bad, but it has to be meaningful. 

Noodle CMO, Rich Kochman:

A lot of data is interesting, but if that data can’t be used to help improve performance, then it’s not useful. Clicks and bounce rates can still be helpful because they suggest which messages get attention and what is or isn’t resonating with prospective students. Having mechanisms to track prospects from site visit through all stages of the application process and enrollment is a great way to not only understand the efficacy of your enrollment team’s activities, but it can also shine a light on where your processes might be confusing or overly arduous. 

Dan Kehn:

Quantitative data in higher ed can be particularly helpful when presenting recommendations to the wider college/university community, among which there continue to be many marketing “skeptics.”  Qualitative is also helpful for establishing/building hypotheses that one can test quantitatively in an effort to inform decision making with more confidence.

Using measurement to build a marketing culture

A key point in our previous discussions has been the importance of building support for marketing among institutional leadership as a way of breaking down silos. Perhaps the best way of making a case to academics and administrators is through proof of performance.

Dan Kehn:

With the right metrics, you’re not only going to get validation that marketing is valuable, you’ll get guidance on how to move your brand forward most efficiently and effectively. Maintaining a disciplined approach to data use sets the expectation that evaluation is an ongoing, integral part of the strategy. It also fosters a culture where marketing is recognized as the driving force in ensuring the institution’s brand is positioned to thrive. 

Stephen Green:

When institutional leadership starts to accept the whole student-as-consumer paradigm shift, they’re going to need to change their view on data. And that becomes a double-edged sword for CMOs, right? Now they’re going to live by the data or die by the data. I mean, every multi-million, multi-billion dollar company that is going after consumers, you better believe, has a back-end technology infrastructure that allows them to see the ROI on every penny that they are spending. If CMOs are going to use performance data to make a case for additional funding, they have to accept that level of scrutiny.

Rich Kochman:

So there’s one thing that I think is really important, and I think schools should consider and really embrace. To have one person that heads marketing and a different person that heads enrollment is, I’ll say it’s ridiculous. Two very big benefits are realized when schools unify marketing with enrollment. First, it should result in messaging being more consistent throughout the prospect journey. Second, it cuts down on the potential finger pointing that can occur if you’re not meeting enrollment goals. Too often I’ve seen marketing complain that ‘the enrollment team isn’t doing a good job’ while enrollment is saying, ‘Well, marketing is giving us really poor quality leads.’ And sometimes both of those things are true, but having two senior people complaining to their management about each other is not productive at all. 

Conclusion

As universities face declining enrollments and intensified competition, marketing leaders are increasingly expected to focus on measurable outcomes and efficiency. While the Noodle executive team agrees with the CMO Study’s arguments for the importance of expanded brand measurement and integrating marketing across units, they felt that the report missed an opportunity to shine a light on the critical role of performance measurement. Success in the new student-as-consumer paradigm will come from connecting marketing data with enrollment, student success, and learning information, while also expanding data collection beyond old-school metrics like clicks and impressions. 

Taken together, the areas explored in this series point to a clear conclusion: that higher ed must be willing to adapt marketing principles and practices from the for-profit arena in order to succeed in the new buyer’s market. Critical elements of this evolution will be:

• Increased support for and institutionalization of marketing from leadership
• Integration of marketing across units with centralized budgeting and direction
• Expanding data collection and taking a more holistic approach to its analysis
• Revisiting budget allocations with the goal of increasing efficiency and synergy