The challenge of marketing a business school - strategy, staff, budgets and more

02 April 2026

Ian Hawkings thinks about the struggles facing business school marketeers and how they can get insights to enhance performance in the new Knowing Me, Knowing You study.

Before I started working for CarringtonCrisp I worked as a communications consultant for business schools, and one thing always struck me. Despite being a critical function within the organisations I worked with, those in marcomms routinely felt as though their department was not sufficiently supported.

Too few staff, not enough training, small budgets.

When we ran the first ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’ study in collaboration with Roe Communications and EFMD, we found that these feelings were still there. Indeed, 47% of  respondents said that ‘insufficient budget’ was the biggest problem they faced, followed by ‘short-term thinking’ and ‘lack of a clear strategy’.

Over half the respondents said that their budget had either stayed the same or reduced over the previous five years. In an increasingly competitive and volatile marketplace this was a difficult position for business school marketers to be in.

At the time we made a few recommendations to marcomms professionals in schools:

• Find the right balance between short-term activity and more strategic actions
• Actively build a brand
• Make some noise about your wins internally
• Don’t stand still – the sands are shifting
• Develop talent, invest in training

Much has changed since that last report, so we are running the study again - it will be interesting to find out what has changed for those at the marcomms coalface; no doubt AI will get a mention.  Have budgets improved? Are schools thinking more strategically? Or has AI blown everything out of the water?

And this is where you come in – if you are a marcomms professional in a business school, we want you to fill out the survey. It should only take ten minutes.

We will unveil the results at the EFMD Global Marcom, External and Alumni Relations conference in Malaga in May, and everyone who completes the survey will receive the full report upon publication.