Many college presidents believe that hiring an advertising agency will solve an institution’s marketing problems. This is especially true in smaller schools, who do not always have the budget for an in-house marketing department, and don’t know where to turn for help. Unfortunately, hiring an ad agency often does not solve marketing problems, for two reasons:

The Nature of Advertising Agencies

Advertising agencies often do good work, but work with them can be hit and miss. Higher education advertising is different than what agencies are used to, neither product nor service. It’s also difficult for agencies to always be on target for an institution as they often have done only superficial research. An educational institution is a complex thing to market, defeating many attempts to apply standardized product or service analysis and research. Agencies do tend to be strong on creative, and sometimes strong on copywriting, and many have good, talented people working for them. The problem is getting the good people assigned to your account.

Ad agencies will take on colleges and universities, but your marketing spend per quarter is a drop in the bucket compared to big corporate accounts. So the best visual design people and the best copywriters are, naturally, given to the accounts that bring the most income to the agency. That’s just business in the highly competitive world of advertising. Higher education often is put on a back burner, especially smaller schools, and those assigned to college and university accounts are often junior members of the agency.

Finally, ad agencies, like Hollywood movie producers, are highly interested in winning awards that will increase their profile and help then snag larger accounts. Higher education advertising simply does not win awards, other than the occasional minor education-specific award.

All in all, except for the handful of agencies with significant higher education expertise, the very nature of an advertising agency dictates a careful and measured use of their services. They certainly cannot solve an institution’s marketing problems, nor should they be given responsibility for driving your branding and enrollment goals.

Advertising is not Marketing

Ad agencies, good or bad, can implement your marketing plan but they cannot nor should they be allowed to write your strategic marketing plan nor your program/campaign/quarter specific marketing plans. A good marketing plan comes from a team effort between the members of the institution and marketing professionals who take the time to learn the institution’s story, discover their unique selling proposition, their strengths and weaknesses, and work to understand the institution’s student demographic. That’s a big job, often requiring work over a period of time, and simply cannot be compressed into a two week consulting visit. Marketing is more than the development of a good ad. Effective marketing is dependent on an institution-wide analysis of communications, coordination of advertising, public relations and branding, and adopting a marketing mindset. In short, integrated marketing.

Integrated marketing is such a mindset. It is a holistic approach to telling the institution’s story with consistency and effectiveness. It is an efficient way to cut through marketing noise and create interest. Though complicated in execution, integrated marketing is basically an understanding of the interactions between marketing types, while striving for a consistent message across all types. Josephine Grove, in her MBA Thesis The Marketing Aspect of Enrollment Management, revealed her research conclusion that in the marketing of education, the marketing mix is the single most important determinant of marketing success. Dr. Robert Sevier, in Thinking Outside the Box wrote that there is no single definition of integrated marketing in the field of higher education, but that the concept has the following features:

• An outward focus
• The desire to address strategic problems strategically
• Strategic, organizational and message integration
• Active listening to the customer
• Database dependence
• Coordination of messages

None of that can be left in the hands of an agency. It is tempting to think that marketing can be outsourced, but your marketing will be most effective if it is a community effort within your campus, drawing on outside expertise to direct and shape the effort. Once a marketing plan has been developed, and buy-in has been achieved among staff and faculty to the principles of integrated community marketing, your marketing will begin to pay off as it never has before.