The AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education increases knowledge on the best uses of marketing principles and practices for colleges and universities. Through the Symposium, marketers increase their abilities to build and advance strong brands, improve reputation, achieve enrollment and fundraising success, improve competitive positioning, and maintain financial strength. Sessions focus on the practice of higher education marketing, provide ideas and offer solutions participants can apply at their own institutions.
Currently, we’re striving for an experience that would include options for an in-person gathering on November 6-8, 2022, in National Harbor, MD, as well as online education. As a submitter, you’ll be given the option to select whether you’re open to presenting in-person, online, or flexible to either.
Proposal submissions are now closed for this event.
Who Should Submit?
- Practitioners at colleges and universities
- Practitioners for graduate, professional and specialized schools
- Research and planning specialists
- University leaders and policy makers
- CMOs at colleges and universities
- Diversity and inclusion leadership/subject matter experts
- Agencies, consultants, and solution providers with experience serving higher education
Vendor sales pitches are not acceptable session content. Vendor-only proposals have a very low acceptance rate, but will be considered if they share proven methods across a number of successful clients or industry landscapes. All proposals are peer-reviewed by a committee of professionals in the higher education space. To increase the chances of selection, vendors should invite a higher education institution to co-present. If vendors do not wish to go through the proposal process and would like to present alone, they are encouraged to reach out to our Alliances VP, Julie Schnidman, about a sponsored session slot.
University faculty and Ph.D. students wishing to present research papers are encouraged to submit to the AMA Winter Academic Conference in February 2023.
What You Receive
Conference presenters advance the profession of higher education marketing, expand their network through an audience of peers, and raise the visibility of their institutions or companies. Presenters also receive:
- Complimentary conference registration for one presenter per selected in-person session
- Complimentary conference registration for one presenter per selected virtual session
- Their name on the conference agenda and biography on the AMA website
What Topics Are Preferred?
Below are the conference track topics we’re hoping to address at this year’s Symposium.
- Solutions implemented during the pandemic that may endure
- New institutional policies that have a marketing impact
- The evolving role of marketing professionals
- Ongoing/Evolving response to societal issues
- New efforts in and effectiveness of DEI initiatives
Using tools to understand and respond to audience needs and desires. Assessing if your efforts are working and refining execution based on qualitative or quantitative measurements
- Market research best practices or innovations – qualitative or quantitative
- Market identification or segmentation
- Competitive analysis
- Dashboards and analytics
- Measuring marketing performance – traditional and digital measures
- A/B testing and optimization strategies
- Program effectiveness assessments – academic or extracurricular programs
- Refining marketing tactics based on research or assessment
- Diversity and inclusion metrics (what to measure, how to measure, how to align with and be relevant to university strategic plans and marketing strategy)
Strategies for refining your brand promise, value proposition, messaging and approach to content delivery
- Brand development, launch and evolution
- Internalizing the brand, brand as catalyst for institutional change
- Building academic reputation
- Innovative storytelling through visuals, messaging, media, experiential marketing and more
- Brand identity management
- Ensuring brand alignment or co-development with strategic plans or capital campaigns
- Licensing, sponsorship and merchandising
- Branding for diverse audiences/populations
Delivering marketing messages whether in physical, digital or omnichannel spaces
- Advertising – traditional and digital
- Innovative use of traditional or digital channels
- Content marketing: planning, creating, distributing and evaluating
- Social media management: engagement, monitoring and analysis
- Use of emerging technologies for audience engagement
- Prospect marketing
- Reaching and engaging specific strategic audiences
- Employee communications and engagement
- Board, stakeholder, volunteer, donor and/or alumni engagement
- Inclusive audience engagement
Best practices for managing “up, down and across”
- Organizational and funding structures
- Insights into recruitment and retention
- Advancing an equitable and inclusive culture
- Fostering incremental and radical innovation
- Doing more with less—people, budget, time
- Leading change
- Crisis and issues management
- Marketing yourself: advancing your career
- Building marketing collaboration, buy-in and consensus on campus
- Case studies
- Post-crisis communication best practices
- Tactical work
- How-Tos (CRMs, social media calendars, video strategies, etc.)
Important Dates
- Call for Proposals Due: Monday, April 18, 2022
- Decisions Sent: Week of July 4, 2022
How Do I Submit My Proposal?
Our submission portal is hosted Ex Ordo. Once you are there, you will need to create a separate account to access the Call of Proposal information and forms.
On that site, you’ll also find more details about what you’ll need to submit, our selection process and more.
Proposal submissions are now closed for this event.
Questions?
If you have any questions, please reach out to Tracey Zdravkovic, Associate Director of Content Production at the AMA.