Nicole Hoyt and I worked together for the last few years, during her time as director of marketing strategy and project management for the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College. Recently, Nicole transitioned to a new role at Rhodes Advisors as head of marketing.
Q: Tell us about Rhodes Advisors and your new role as head of marketing. Why was now the right time to make the move from a university to a company, and why this company and role?
A: Rhodes Advisors is a strategic higher ed advisory and implementation firm focused on helping our clients build capacity to effectively run and grow their portfolio of online and residential programs. We’re the next generation of higher education advising support, a post-OPM model that I believe is representative of where the industry is heading. While we don’t fit the mold for a traditional consulting firm, we are focused on building sustainably: giving clients more control and ownership over what’s theirs (i.e., data, systems, processes) and building long-term capacities so they’re not reliant forever on outside parties to keep growing.
My move to Rhodes Advisors was squarely about impact. Life is short. Find something you want to spend your limited time on, where you feel you can have an impact. We’re in such an interesting time in higher education right now, and while transformation can absolutely happen within a college or university, sometimes an external partner is what helps to steer the ship in the right direction. I’m excited about our current clients and what we can do to help additional institutions prepare for what’s next.
Since I’m a marketer, I think about providing value through that lens. I sit at the intersection of strategic thinking and operational execution. When done hand in hand, these two things are a recipe for success. You can have the greatest vision in the world, but if it’s not executed well, it won’t matter. Our team is small but mighty: Individually, we are each subject-matter experts in our own disciplines across the enrollment life cycle, and our knowledge and expertise come together into a partnership to build, improve, grow and ultimately transform the institutions we serve. That’s the work I get to be a part of every day … work that I get excited about when I wake up in the morning and why I made the change.
Q: How is AI changing the landscape of online program marketing? How should universities be responding?
A: This is a new frontier and an exciting one, even though it’s the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. We’ve entered into a new world order, one that’s not governed by humans alone, but also by machines. Before AI, the value of a person in the workplace was about how much knowledge you had. Now, I think it’s more about how much information you should and can act on and how quickly, all while staying nimble. Human critical thinking is becoming more important, not less, now that AI is here to stay.
As far as what this means for marketers in higher education, universities need to respond to this shift now. They cannot afford to wait. Here’s why: By the end of this year, over 50 percent of traffic to an institution’s website will be from bots, not people. If bots can’t find, access or parse information from your university’s website (which is the case with many institutions), then essentially your brand is invisible.
At the same time, the cost to acquire a new student is rising; pay-per-click advertising costs are increasing while simultaneously becoming less and less effective at reaching prospective students. Together, these factors are putting pressure on acquisition costs and marketing budgets in a way that we haven’t seen before.
Prospective students doing research may never land on a school site until they’re ready to apply. That’s a missed opportunity to educate that prospect about your school’s brand. These prospects are more likely to be using ChatGPT or other LLMs to do research, and there’s compelling evidence that most Google searches these days no longer end in a click-through to a school’s website.
If universities are operating under the assumption that their websites exist to serve people and people alone, these institutions are going to get left behind and rapidly. Under the new world order, prospective students may never reach an institution’s site or learn about the brand until they’re ready to apply. This is problematic because every university has competition. The competitors who do take action to make their own sites become more visible in LLMs will win out over you every time. I like to call this concept AI visibility, but the more technical term is often called answer engine optimization and/or generative engine optimization.
When it comes to how higher ed marketers should respond to these changes, I have three recommendations. One, audit your school website’s AI visibility on the web. Two, take your findings and get in a room with IT. Real solutions will come from those two domains talking to each other directly. And three, consider reallocating some marketing dollars from elsewhere in your budget toward the AI visibility investments your audit points you to.
The good news: The solutions themselves aren’t the hard part. The real work and the real opportunity is getting your colleagues and leaders across the institution aligned enough to implement them.
Q: Over the course of your career, you have worked in government, for universities and for companies. What advice do you have for early and midcareer professionals seeking to build toward a leadership role in education?
A: Find your North Star. By that I mean something that you can believe in that’s grounded in reality or the world that you see. I like to think about my own journey starting out at George Washington University, where I studied international affairs, which helped me understand how the world works and gave me a grounding across government, business, nonprofits and politics.
Whatever path someone chooses, they can switch paths, recover and be just fine. That North Star may not always be known right when you graduate college or enter the workplace. It’s something you come to understand over time with experience.
I am truly happy where I am in my career, and I have no regrets about any of the pathways that have taken me to get to where I am. It has certainly been a nonlinear progression into higher ed marketing and leadership. I dabbled in politics. I dabbled in independent consulting. I’ve worked for universities. I’ve worked for large public corporations and OPMs and I’ve worked for start-ups. I like to think that all of those experiences have contributed to where I am today and what I believe in.
That North Star, for me, comes down to two things:
- Return on investment. If you can’t justify where you’re spending your efforts and you can’t quantify it, then you shouldn’t be spending money on it. I always try to wear a business-minded hat. I earned my M.B.A. while working for one of the country’s largest OPMs. Even though higher education operates in the nonprofit space, I think it could use a little bit more data-driven, business-minded focus to help it keep up with market demand and how student needs are actually changing. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten from a colleague was “don’t bring feelings to a fact fight.” Businesses use data to inform their decisions. I think the higher ed space could use a bit more of that philosophy, too.
- Find people that inspire you, mentor you and charge you up. Never think you’re the smartest person in the room, because you aren’t. Always be looking for somebody that knows more than you. It is an honor to get to work with my colleagues at Rhodes Advisors, as it has been for other places I’ve worked. I consider working with great people part of my lifelong journey in education. Be humble and recognize that collective brainpower is better than the brainpower of one. I’d also extend that to learning to responsibly use AI these days, although that’s a conversation for another day.
Sometimes, making decisions in your career is more about what you choose not to do than what you choose to do. It’s helpful to have that North Star to reflect to yourself and say, “Oops, I’m not headed to my true north. Let me course correct.”
