What does a marketing manager do?

What are the responsibilities and key skills required for a marketing manager for a higher education institution?

  • A recruiting agency contacted me for a marketing manager position at an education consultancy that was established to work exclusively for a prestigious university in London. There is no job description but all here's what they told me The want a Marketing Manager for their Marketing department. Must have between 8-10 years solid marketing experience with good overall vendor coordination. Must have knowledge and experience working with and managing marketing activity concerning the admissions department (they kept telling me to tailor my resume to focus on this point). I understand the other requirements, but what is the nature of managing marketing activity concerning the admissions department? What are the responsibilities that I will take care of in this industry? What are the key skills I have and should include in my resume? I did not reply to them yet, I just want to make sure I'm a good fit for the position. Thanks in advance.

  • Answer:

    As mentioned in another answer here the main responsibility for you would be to have the school's presence prominently reach the potential customers (in this case students). You'll have to work on getting together a strategy on how you will get this done. Plan out some metrics say which regions you will target, will you go to trade shows, advertise in different avenues, have social media presence more ramped up, plan email campaigns, follow-ups, interviews - to name a few, of going about getting marketing done for this school. You have to be cognizant of where the schools' marketing is currently lacking and how you will do better than that. The fact that you were contacted means you have some marketing knowledge. 8-10 yrs of vendor co-ordination is way too much of a requirement IMO. Someone with smart working ability can certainly do the job and well too. As to the responsibilities you will take care of in the industry - you have to know a bit about working of educational institutes, the trends that are currently in. So do some research on that to acquaint yourself with it or better still reach out to someone who knows and have a chat over coffee if they are available and willing. As to skills you have, that you'd know better but to what you should put look for the job description or if not given ask for it. Match your skills with the job description and how you will fit the description. Do some self evaluation and see if you have the skills that make you a fit. Even if you don't have the skills, ask yourself if this is something that you think you want to do and will help your career. If your answer is Yes then put in the hard work and go for it.

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Other answers

I believe the role / skills will be the exact same as being a marketing manager in any large institution. However academia is a different animal in that I believe you will need a comprehensive 'internal' marketing strategy to get the various 'silos' on the same hymn sheet.

Jim Kelly

I'll try to answer this question with best of my understanding, so bear with me. 1 Nature of managing marketing activity would be the generation of leads, handling, lead nurturing, organizing and educating them to opt for courses given by university. At the end you should be able to quantify marketing activities to bring business to the university. 2 Your premier responsibilities will be as liaison officer with school and hubs where students are present. Ensue marketing activities that attracts them to university courses and finally leads to conversion. 3 Probably all your relevant marketing experiences in Education Industry will do good. Rest please see to it, you've a background of this sort previously as the employers want experience 8-10 years of vendor coordination or start building a strategy to get things rolling if you're serious about the job. Best of luck in your job-hunt.

Vinay Johar

Most of the education institutions have tie ups with agencies & lead aggregators that are located at various locations (even internationally). So since they have specifically mentioned vendor management, liasion with these agencies could be a predominant role you'll get to play, and that may include but not restricted to: 1. Defining the quality, quantity and composition of these leads 2. Understanding how to best incentivize these leads (pricing - determining ideal cost per lead and managing it) 3. Making channel decisions and helping the agencies make the best use of your brand - while monitoring it periodically 4. Making budgetary allocations and design programs / collaterals to help promote your programs and values among the agencies Apart from this, the rest would be pretty similar to any other Marketing role i'd guess. Digital Marketing is a huge channel (for lead aggregators as well as the institution itself) for reaching out to Global audience and hence a good understanding of that would be a huge plus.

Sandesh Sathyanarayana

You need to find out all of the details regarding this position and regarding the requirements in place. This industry is very competitive in China and comes with many companies that are perfectly honest with others that are so much of a scam or a crook with no companies in the middle ground!  If there is an agent involved in the hiring process you must find out your relationship with them as well as who you are paid by and the company that your work permit and residence permit visa will be held with. Do ask questions. You will not be sorry later or be in trouble later for asking. Knowledge or being pre-informed (e.g. no surprises later) is key. Often times in China, particularly in the education industry there are middle companies some of which will only pay you, and others will be the company that is involved for the facilitation of your work permit and residence permit visa, or both. You would ideally want it all direct with the actual employer because you do not want any issues if there is a fall out between the two companies that is beyond your control. It is important to recognize and respect that such industry in China is huge. It has become the in style and popular thing for students to study overseas with the top destinations being the USA and the UK. These 'agents' for schools - some of them are actual agents for the schools, while others are not. Some institutions look down upon agents, while others reluctantly welcome them, and others welcome them with open arms (including that of giving the agent a certain number of seats to fill, for example). There are also those agents that claim an association with a school; however, they in fact actually just send students there and the school does not have any relationships with any agents/consultants. It sounds like what this company wants you to do is to contact admission departments in the UK to sell their company to them and the access to China that the UK school would now have; however, what you also need to question is based on what - there would be likely no proof or evidence, and such sales is very difficult as I would think today many of the schools in the UK obtain many such inquaries. Furthermore, even if they cannot produce a job description, the fact that they cannot write in detail a description about their company/offer/how they want you to cooperate is a bit odd in itself. Many companies in China also live in dreams of the type of candidate that they hope to recruit; although, it often times does not likely come to pass because of many factors including but not limited to lack of access to find such a candidate, pay and overall package, etc. I sincerely hope that this helps you.  If you have specific questions or concerns feel free to contact me in a reply, here, or confidentially privately.

Julian Mintzis

His/her job is to convince the world that this college is the bees knees. To do that, knowing all of the leading journalists and restaurants in London is absolutely vital. As is being able to eat a huge lunch and dinner every day and two bottles of wine without putting on weight You must also be real fun to be with - if you can recount all the latest gossip and tell funny stories you have got it made. I appreciate that some people will think this is an appalling answer and very cynical but the only way you know anything about anything is via the media. The media is written by human beings - fat, lazy, cynical and self indulgent people. Given a choice of a superb meal with a really entertaining guy (or hot chick - she will pay too) or stay in the office reading press releases which would you do? I spent 20 years on the edge of this world and know how it works. The back scratching, the petty jealousies, the nepotism, the naked ambition, the endless sexual intrigues ... have fun!

Bob Cory

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