Strategy, patience, and passion! Welcome to The Marketing Accelerator Podcast featuring three insights in about three minutes. I'm Drew Dinkelacker, and I walk alongside business leaders and guide them along their marketing journey, delivering confidence and results. If you have a marketing conundrum, let's talk. Today, I'm speaking with Gil Rogers. He is the founder of GR7 Marketing. That's a fractional CMO firm specializing in higher education. Gil, naturally, I have an appreciation for what one can do as a fractional CMO. Why did you choose higher ed as a focus?

Gil Rogers: I chose higher ed specifically as a focus in large part, one, because I'm laser-focused on supporting better student outcomes. I've worked in higher education my entire career. And so, as I've worked in different roles at education technology companies, specifically in marketing and leadership development, I've realized that over the past 15-plus years that there's no shortage of entrepreneurs and business leaders who have the next big idea that's going to solve all of higher education's problems. The challenge that they have is that oftentimes they don't speak the language, or they don't understand the landscape, or both. And so I serve as their guide or their Sherpa through the process to help them with understanding that landscape to accelerate their message and better define their story.

Drew: What have you found to be the common denominator challenge when marketing higher ed companies?

Gil: I honestly believe that a lot of the challenges that ed tech companies specifically have are not necessarily unique to ed tech, but they do bear repeating. I think a lot of times marketing gets brought to the table when the sales pipeline is weak or the sales conversion isn't happening or they need to accelerate revenue. At the end of the day, then that turns into, Hey, where are the leads? I think the challenge then for marketing is that they're put in this position where they have to look at short-term gains versus long-term strategic thinking. Those two don't always necessarily go hand-in-hand. I think the challenge for a marketing department in that case is that you don't ever get to the point where you build a sustainable brand that's actually tied to your mission and tied to your "why". You're just doing things that generate leads for sales because that's the metric you're being judged on.

Drew: Yes, from my experience, I can tell you that's not a problem unique to higher ed. What do you see is the opportunity coming up for business, especially in higher ed?

Gil: I firmly believe that ed tech companies specifically have a unique place, especially in the business landscape, because they have a different mission than a lot of other companies or a lot of other verticals. Ed tech companies at the end of the day should be thinking about what am I doing to support better student outcomes and support institutions in achieving those types of objectives. For business leaders in ed tech companies, you have to kind of decide, do I want to keep that student at the core, or do I want to take that buyout of $25 million or whatever it is to bolt my company onto something else? Sometimes that works for accelerating the objective of the company and achieving your goal faster. That's not to say that merging or being acquired is a bad thing. That is ultimately the goal for many. But in the short term for pipeline and building a brand, marketing has to have a seat at the table in that type of a regard.

Drew: There's no doubt that the core or your true purpose for being in business is critical for long-term decision-making and that applies to any business.