Another new year means another new season of budget planning for higher education.
Each February and March, many colleges and universities begin the process of planning their next fiscal year budget. As part of that process, CFOs will work with institutional leaders (hopefully including marketing…) to develop a new annual plan for the year ahead.
For marketers, it can be a particularly challenging season for a few reasons:
First, there’s the need to fight for your seat at the table, as many marketers are surprisingly excluded from the process.
Second, is the ask of marketing and enrollment leaders to precisely predict where upcoming Fall enrollment will land, despite many months left in the recruitment process.
And finally, marketers are often asked to surgically predict the ROI of all marketing activities, including new strategies and tactics they’re hoping to introduce in the new fiscal year.
It’s the third item that is the subject of today’s newsletter, as I’ve found there’s a simple anecdote that can serve as an antidote, should the question of ROI arise.
The Difference Between Mining And Marketing
In the world of mining, core sampling is a core concept.
The idea is that before a mining company deploys significant capital in opening up a new operation, the organization invests in a prospecting effort that has them drill core samples in the area they’re considering working in.
The core samples don’t make the mining company any money - in fact, it can be a very expensive process - but it does provide the organization with objective insights into just how valuable the potential project could be.
The result is that mining organizations invest in research and development to determine the viability of new activities before they actually commit to them.
What Marketing Gets Wrong
While core sampling seems like a simple concept, in the world of education marketing it can often feel foreign.
Many times over the course of my career, when I suggested we try new strategies or tactics, Finance would ask me to predict the ROI of the new activity. When I couldn’t, I’d often be discouraged from trying something new and nudged towards repeating strategies of the past, in an effort to build a budget we could more confidently rely on.
This requirement - that all new marketing activities be precisely predictable - is an underlying cultural challenge in our industry. It’s a restrictive approach to planning that limits innovation in marketing and reduces the probability that an organization will take the bold risks needed to find new ways to grow.
So What Is A Marketer To Do?
It wasn’t until I started using the mining vs. marketing anecdote that things finally started to change for me in higher ed.
It’s a simple story that seems to resonate well with presidents and board members. The idea is that sometimes we pay to learn and sometimes we pay to earn. In the case of opening up new marketing efforts, we need to invest just enough to prove viability first, before we expand our spend and expect a return on our investment.
So the next time you’re pitching a new marketing plan, be sure to remind folks of the difference between ROI and R&D. Because if we want new marketing activities to drive real value, we have to invest in proving they’re viable first.
Editor’s Note
If you haven’t already heard, after 10 years away from the microphone, I’ve decided to step out of podcast retirement and join my good friend Mallory Wilsea as co-host of a new show - Higher Ed Pulse - on the Enrollify network.
Each week, we drop a new 15 minute episode designed to be a spotlight on the latest happenings in the world of higher education marketing and enrollment.
You can check out Episode 1 here.
Thanks,
Seth
About The Author
Seth is the founder and CEO of Kanahoma, a San Diego-based performance marketing agency on a mission to build a better agency for organizations building a better world.
You can learn more about who we are and what we do at www.Kanahoma.com.