How to Market a University

How can universities implement strategic integrated marketing to effectively build and communicate their value?

At a time of declining public support, a shrinking pipeline of traditional college-bound students, and a steady rise in tuition and discount rates, higher education leaders have never been under more pressure. How can they ensure steady or growing enrollments while cultivating greater philanthropic support, increasing research funding, and diversifying revenue streams? In How to Market a University, Teresa M. Flannery argues that institutions can meet all of these goals by implementing strategic integrated marketing in ways that are consistent with academic culture and university values.

Flannery provides a road map for college leaders who want to learn how to build value—both in terms of revenue and reputation—by differentiating from competitors and developing personalized, supportive, and long-lasting relationships with stakeholders. Defining marketing while identifying its purposes in the context of higher education, Flannery draws on nonprofit marketing scholarship, the expertise of leading higher education marketing practitioners and administrators, and her own experiences over two decades at two different institutions. She teaches readers how to

• set up their marketing leadership for success
• find or build the necessary organizational capacity
• set a firm foundation through market research
• establish a differentiated value proposition and strong brand strategy
• encourage enterprise-wide integration of marketing and communications
• consider technical and resource requirements to succeed in digital marketing
• develop appropriate and rigorous measurement
• plan for appropriate investment
• anticipate and prepare for future trends

This practical guide reveals how to cultivate student, alumni, donor, and partner loyalty through strategic marketing. How to Market a University offers leaders and their CMOs the language, examples, and even questions they should discuss and answer in order to build or refine their marketing strategy.

Teresa M. Flannery is interim vice president for marketing and communication at Stony Brook University. Previously, she was a policy fellow in the Center for University Excellence at American University, where she served as the vice president for communication for eleven years. She was also the first marketing director and chief marketing officer at the University of Maryland.