Are you selling what your customers want? And pardon us for using the word "selling" when talking about academic marketing. We realize this word makes folks bristle, to say the least. However, the schools you find yourself marveling at, the ones advancing on the US News and World Report ranking, are the ones with the capacity to grit their teeth and apply hard business criteria to their marketing and sales activities. The school names you often hear bandied about as the market leaders, the ones your leadership reference in meetings saying things like, "Well, X university tripled their international student population in the past 4 years. Why can't we do that?" -- these are the schools that segment their markets and tailor their messages to the customers most likely to buy what they have to sell. Ooooph! Did we just say that?
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