Our New Staffing Model Playbook for Higher Ed CMOs

Many higher ed marketing and enrollment teams are not equipped to keep up with today’s changing recruitment expectations in the race to attract and enroll prospective students. Teams need to master data-driven digital marketing and seamless web experiences to attract leads and nurture them to applicants and enrolled students.

This is a challenge I felt acutely in my previous role as a higher ed CMO. Now, in my work with chief marketing officers, vice presidents of enrollment management, and other leaders at institutions of all shapes and sizes, I see colleagues staring down a “build vs. buy” challenge. Insourcing areas like digital marketing or enrollment-focused web strategy limits scale, stifles innovation, and leaves you exposed to today’s high staff turnover rates.

So how can CMOs adapt their staffing models to meet today’s staffing and market realities? Here are three practices higher ed CMOs should consider.

1. Insource core capabilities aligned with strategic assets

Your brand is more than a logo—it’s a strategic university asset that encompasses the creative expression, key messages, and storytelling that define your institution’s identity. As such, your brand should be managed closely by in-house experts. Critical assets like the university’s website and social accounts should be managed by in-house resources with digital fluency: baseline skills in content strategy, web development, and web measurement and analytics skills, are necessary to ensure these assets are not only safeguarded but also enhance relationships with prospective and current students.

WHY ASSETS LIKE YOUR WEBSITE AND SOCIAL CHANNELS ARE KEY TO REACHING STUDENTS

2. Outsource functions where you need scale, specialization, and staffing support

While maintaining your university brand and digital presence is best done in-house, not all marketing functions can or should be owned internally. Consider tapping into external resources to achieve scale, access specialized expertise, elevate your prospects’ digital experience, or when you can’t insource or scale work easily.

Scale: Coordinated and responsive outreach to thousands of leads across social, email, text, snail mail, and other platforms can be daunting—or even impossible—for small university marketing teams. Partnering with enrollment solutions providers can offer the scale and resources to reach prospects effectively.

HERE’S HOW A SMALL MARKETING TEAM GREW GRAD ENROLLMENT BY 29%

Specialized expertise: Agency-grade marketing talent is not easy to come by or retain, nor does it always make sense when these resources are readily available on a project basis. By outsourcing to experts in content strategy, SEO, digital media buying, user experience, data science, and enrollment-specific content strategy, your institution can access cutting edge talent in short order. And working with external experts advances your internal marketing and enrollment organization’s digital maturity while ensuring these teams deliver better digital experiences that drive results.

Staffing support: Having agency partners you’ve worked closely with can make you less vulnerable during periods of high staff turnover or attrition. Agencies can often provide instant scale in terms of skills and resources when key university staffers leave their roles.

3. Elevate digital experiences while advancing in-house skills