Hi, I am Cheryl Broom, CEO of GradComm and host of Higher ed conversations sponsored by Ed Tech Connect. And I am here with this month's quick take, and this is a fun topic and something that I keep hearing as I'm talking to community colleges across the nation. So I, I keep hearing, different people at colleges.
Saying that they are either running their college marketing department like an agency, or they want to run their college marketing department, like an in-house agency. And I absolutely love that goal. And I've sat on both sides of this. So I worked on a college campus as a marketing director and had.
Small but mighty staff of designers and writers and the college switchboard of all things. And now obviously today I run an agency and we have 11 full-time employees and probably about 20 subcontractors, that work with us to service community colleges and occasionally K 12 and public higher education institutions across the United States.
And I can tell you when college communications teams truly start. Operating like an agency, really everything changes. You can become more strategic, you can become more respected on your campus. And honestly, I think you in many ways become more effective. But here's, here's the thing, you don't, this isn't just for large teams.
You don't need a team of 20 and your college marketing department to really run it like an in-house agency. You can do this even with a small team, and I can guarantee if you take the time and the effort. To think through how you want this to look. It really can revolutionize how you're operating your college department.
So today I wanna help you, if this is you. If you've been thinking, gosh, I really want the college to see me like an in-house agency, I wanna be used like an in-house agency. This is the episode for you. Or if you're a college that's already gone down this direction and consider. Your department, like an in-house agency, but you wanna get better.
I have some tips for you as well. So I'm gonna share five things that I think that you need to be doing and doing well if you want to run your college marketing department, like a true in-house agency. Number one, be seen as a strategist, not as a vendor. So the best agencies out there are not just production shops, they are strategic partners.
And there's a difference. If your role on campuses make that fire, build that email, post this on social, come take a picture. Then you have positioned yourself as a vendor and with AI tools becoming more accessible. Disposition is getting more and more fragile by the day because everybody can start making the things that you make.
Everybody on campus can become that vendor and what they can't do. What you have to remember that most people can't do is they cannot solve problems. So our best clients, the colleges that we love to work for the most, and actually I would say like 80 to 90% of our clients are those that don't come to us just asking for deliverables.
They come to us asking questions, how do we grow enrollment? Why isn't this campaign working? What should we be doing differently? And that's strategy. So if you wanna operate like an agency, you have to consistently show your value in that way. And that means communicating what you're doing and why you're there and doing it often.
So maybe another podcast on how to do that. Not gonna have enough time if I tell you how to do that in my 10 minutes here. So number one. Be seen as a strategist, not as a vendor. Maybe with a part two coming out on how to do that. Number two, tip number two, learn how to turn down work. So this one's really hard.
It's even really hard for us. I'm, I'm a person. I, I don't like turning down work. I wanna help everybody. If you have a project, I don't care. I don't care that your budget's small, just give it to me. I wanna help you. But you know what? I, you can't say yes to everything. I know you wanna be responsive, but agencies and a strong internal teams, they know that not every project is a good project.
Sometimes the budget is too small to be effective. Sometimes the timeline is unrealistic, and sometimes the request itself isn't actually gonna solve the problem. And saying yes in those situations doesn't make you helpful. It makes you ineffective. And I'll tell you what, being busy does not mean being impactful.
So if somebody comes to you with $500 and expects a miracle that's not a marketing problem. That's, that's a misalignment problem. And so running an agency, running, whether that's. An agency like GradComm or an in-house agency means setting expectations. It means having honest and sometimes hard conversation, and it really means protecting your team's time and energy so you can focus on what actually is going to work.
Okay. Number three, build in flex time because things will pop up. Here's something that we've learned the hard way. If your calendar is a hundred percent full, you're already behind because something will happen. A leadership request, a crisis, an opportunity, a last minute campaign. Here at GradComm, we intentionally keep 20% of our time open each week for what we call client emergencies.
It doesn't even have to be an emergency, but that's just what we call it because these things always show up. And if your team is maxed out, every new request feels like a disruption. And people get mad and they get annoyed, but you, so you gotta build in space for your team and that way that you can say like, Hey, this is really important.
We're gonna take this on. And you know that you have the time to do that, and you can respond to the requester with calm, clarity, and speed. So running an agency doesn't mean being busy, busy, busy, busy, busy all the time. It means being ready. And I can tell you I do these like don't tell marketing posts on LinkedIn and a lot of them have gotten a lot of attention and something I consistently see, is people attacking marketing in those posts saying, can't you just tell marketing to speed things up? Why does a flyer take six weeks? Or, we are doing this and using our own colors and our own logo and our own brand, and doing our own things because marketing won't help us because they're taking too long.
And so. Look at your calendar. Can you get rid of meetings? Do you have to answer all those emails so quickly? Can you build in some space so that when somebody really has an emergency that's important you can respond to it. Okay, so what did we talk about already? We've talked about be seen as a strategist, not a vendor.
Learn how to turn down work, build, and flex time. Number four, understand billable versus non-billable time. If you understand this, this is gonna help you with number three, with your flex time. So this is a big mindset shift. So in an agency and in a business, we think about time in two ways. We think about billable time, and that's work that directly serves clients.
That's what we're gonna get paid for. And then we think about non-billable time, and that are, that's meetings, emails, internal work, professional development. PTO at GradComm, we aim to be like 65 to 75% billable. So that means if we're 75% billable in a 40 hour work week, 30 hours are focused on client work.
Now, I know that college environments are different, but this concept still matters because if your team is spending, you know, more than 10 hours a week in meetings, answering emails. Sitting in conversations that don't require marketing expertise aren't directly project related, then you don't have the capacity to do your best work.
So time tracking can be really informal, even eye-opening. I know you're all like moaning. I don't wanna track my time, but we track our time here at GradComm our project management system. We have the ability to track our time, and at the end of the week we see are we spending too much time in meetings?
Are we spending too much time on things that aren't client related, aren't project related? And is that impacting our ability to respond effectively to clients? I will tell you, people ask me why I left my job at MiraCosta College where I was the marketing and communications. Director for 10 years. And honestly, there, there are a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest ones was I felt like my job had become going to meetings.
I was not doing my best work anymore. I was spending, I'd say, 60% of my time in meetings and I wanted to do my best work and not just be running around campus, going to meetings all the time. So if you can look at that and be honest, are we spending enough time on the projects we need to be spending on.
Or are we spending too much time on certain projects? It's gonna help help you a lot, manage your staff. Alright, last tip number five. Even agencies need help. And this, this might be my favorite one. 'cause there's a myth that being an agency means that you do everything and you'll even hear agencies say, we're a full service agency.
Meaning like everything is in house. But that doesn't mean that you're doing everything. The best. Just because you do it in house doesn't mean that it's doing it the best it. I don't think that that's necessarily a great bragging point. I believe in knowing what you do the best and protecting that and protecting the time that you need to do your best work.
We subcontract things. A lot. We have a bookkeeper. I don't do my own bookkeeping. I don't pay my own taxes. Somebody else has got way more expertise in that. We have a international partner for media buying because I want my clients to have the best digital media buying experience they can have. And that means that I partner up with a company that has experts in every single platform that has partnerships with.
Google and Meta that has access to new tools. Like we're one of the first higher ed agencies in the country that is allowing our clients search engine marketing to show up in AI search summaries. Pretty cool. And that's because I have a partner, not because I wanted to keep it all for myself, even if I would've made more money doing that.
We bring in specialists like animators when needed because our designers and our creative and art directors don't have time to learn how to do animation. So we might come find a great animator to help us on our project. But anyway, that's just, that's just. An example. So we know our strength. Our strength is strategy, our strength is support.
And we are gonna lean into our strengths. And if we need assistance in other parts of our business, we go out and we get help. And I think, you know, you should do that as well. And that's why GradComm is here, frankly, because you might hate media buying and we love it and we're gonna do that for you, or you might really need help.
Building a new AI custom AI tool to solve a problem for your college. And guess what? We do that, and, and you can save time and energy to do the things that you need to do on campus. So in closing if you learn anything from this podcast, I want you to learn this. You can absolutely run your marketing department like a business, like an agency.
I think you're gonna love it, but it's gonna take some big mindset shifts. And these are just the five that I think are the most important. So, one, be seen as a strategist, not a vendor. Two, learn how to turn down work. Three, build and flex time because things will pop up. Four, understand billable versus non-billable time and five.
Even agencies need help. Ask for help when you need it. I help. This gave you some food for thought on how to be a better leader and how to run your department more effectively and efficiently. I'm always here for conversations. Reach out to me at cheryl@gradcomm.com. Connect with me on LinkedIn and let's keep this conversation going.
Thanks so much for listening, and until next time.