Know What
You Don’t Know
What Every Higher Ed Leader Needs to Understand About Marketing
Ask Better Questions
Avoid Costly Mistakes
Lead With Confidence
The Essential Guide Every Higher Ed Leader Needs To Make Great Marketing Decisions
If you are a higher education leader seeking the marketing literacy needed to evaluate strategy, challenge assumptions, and lead through disruption, “Know What You Don’t Know” is your guide.
Discover how to:
-
- Ask the right questions to evaluate marketing plans and budgets.
- Strategically align marketing, enrollment, and your broader team.
- Identify the common mistakes that waste hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Challenge the assumptions about what works for enrolling today’s students.
- Leverage Generative AI to save time and money.
- Make decisions that move students from interest to enrollment.
Too often, I’ve watched senior leaders repeat the same marketing missteps, simply because they didn’t know what they didn’t know. This book draws from my 35 years of experience to bridge the gap between marketing and institutional leadership. It’s designed to help higher ed leaders ask better questions, avoid costly blind spots, and make smarter, more informed decisions.
My hope is that it empowers you to lead with greater clarity and confidence.
What You’ll Uncover In The Book
Your institution deserves strategic marketing clarity; here are the key insights every leader needs!
Marketing Does Not Equal Advertising:
Understand the full scope of marketing beyond promotions and ads.
Be a Zebra in a Herd of Horses:
Learn how to craft a differentiated brand that boldly stands out in a crowded market.
Think Like a CEO:
Explore what it means to lead where marketing, sales, and customer service intersect.
The Website Is Not a Catalog:
Learn how to turn your website into an enrollment tool designed to engage and convert.
Marketing with AI:
Discover how to leverage generative AI as a collaborator, switching from a typewriter mindset to a word processor.
Persona Marketing:
Understand why you are not the audience and how to focus on prospective students and their influencers.
Data Driven Marketing:
Get foundational knowledge to unsilo your data and ask the right questions for smarter insights.
Meet Bart Caylor
Bart Caylor’s passion for education began at Anderson University, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude with much more than a degree. As a first-generation college student, Bart experienced firsthand how a Christian liberal arts education could alter the course of his life, and his career is a testament to those transformative years at AU.
Over the last 35 years, Bart has become a nationally recognized voice in higher education marketing, known for his practical, real-world approach and deep commitment to mission-driven institutions. His insights have been featured in the industry’s top-ranked education blogs, and he’s a sought-after speaker on topics ranging from marketing strategy and generative AI to the intersection of faith and education.
Before founding Caylor Solutions in 2011, Bart built a successful career working with global brands like AT&T, IAMs Pet Food, Motorola, RCA, and GE, as well as respected nonprofit organizations including the American Bible Society and the Lumina Foundation for Education. Today, he and his team serve colleges and universities of all sizes, combining best practices from the corporate, nonprofit, and education worlds to help institutions reach the right students with the right message.
Bart is also the bestselling author of Chasing Mission Fit, a guide for higher ed marketing leaders looking to clarify their institutional purpose and attract students who truly belong. He also co-hosts The Higher Ed Marketer Podcast, where he shares straightforward, actionable advice to help marketing and enrollment leaders face today’s challenges with confidence. He has been named one of the “Top 10 Higher Ed Marketers You Should Follow” two years running by the Social Media Strategies Summit.
Bart continues to stay ahead of the curve for the future of marketing by consulting and delivering solutions in both print and digital mediums for his clients. When he needs to unplug, he spends time with his family and finds quiet moments to flyfish in the closest river.
If you would like to book Bart for a speaking engagement or invite him onto your podcast, you can here!
Praise for Know what you don’t know
Let Me Give You Some Background
Bart introduces a few key concepts from the book and why he wrote it.
Why This Book Is Essential For Higher Education Leaders
You’ll get answers to questions like:
- How do I know if our marketing team is asking the right questions?
- How can I effectively evaluate our digital ad spend and overall marketing ROI?
- How do I confidently lead my team on emerging technologies like Generative AI?
- What traditions or assumptions are we clinging to that no longer serve our students or our sustainability?
- How can we align our academic programs with real marketplace demand?
- How do we ensure our sales and enrollment teams are structured for success?
As a leader, you feel pressure to innovate and deliver results, but the real challenge is often knowing what questions to ask when you aren’t the expert.
Many higher education leaders fall into the trap of assuming someone else has everything figured out, delegating marketing before building a strong foundation of literacy. This can lead to flawed strategies going unchallenged and decisions being made (or avoided) without the necessary knowledge.
You don’t have to be an expert in SEO, digital ads, or artificial intelligence to be a good leader. This book is your guide to know what you don’t know so you can engage in meaningful conversations and steer the ship effectively. It’s my way of helping you, the strategic leaders, find the clarity and courage needed to ensure your institution thrives in this new era.
Higher education doesn’t suffer from a lack of effort, it suffers from a lack of informed courage. Bart Caylor’s Know What You Don’t Know is a call to leaders to stop outsourcing judgment and start leading with curiosity, discipline, and moral clarity. I’ve had the privilege of working alongside Bart in consulting environments and as a client institution president, and what separates him is his insistence on accountability—to data, to students, and to mission. This book doesn’t coddle leaders. It equips them. And that’s exactly what this moment in higher education demands.
Inside Know What You Don’t Know
I believe that every higher education leader is facing unprecedented challenges and needs clear, objective strategies. Through this book, I offer you the foundational knowledge required to ask the right questions and better guide your institution’s marketing efforts.
The problem is often not one of capability but of literacy. The real strength in leadership is not in having all the answers, but in being able to work the problem.
The goal lies in understanding market realities, challenging ineffective strategies, and leading your team with the courageous clarity needed to thrive.
Chapters
Pages
Chapter 1: Trust, but Verify
Chapter 2: Marketing Does Not Equal Advertising
Chapter 3: Marketing with AI: Switching from Typewriters to Word Processors
Chapter 4: Marketing for Generations: *Thumbs Up* = Passive Aggressive
Chapter 5: Marketing Programs: How Do I Sell Something Nobody Wants to Buy?
Chapter 6: Digital Marketing: $1200 on a Keyword!?
Chapter 7: Website Marketing: The Website Is Not a Catalogue
Chapter 8: Persona Marketing: You Are Not the Audience
Chapter 9: Enrollment Marketing: A Ferrari Can’t Pull a Boat
Chapter 10: Brand Marketing: Be a Zebra in the Herd of Horses
Chapter 11: Marketing Through Leadership: Think Like a CEO
Chapter 12: Data Driven Marketing: Unsilo the Data
Chapter 13: Courageous Leadership
Additional Resources
Get it Now!
THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE EVERY HIGHER ED LEADER NEEDS TO MAKE GREAT MARKETING DECISIONS
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