Episode
Ep. 91 - Mallory Willsea: Activity vs. Strategy—Why Higher Ed Marketing Measures the Wrong Things
- Podcast
- The Signal
- Published
- Jun 12, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1894
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Summary
After nearly 20 years watching colleges pour millions into sameness—the same viewbooks, the same home page videos, the same taglines—Mallory Willsea has a message for higher ed: stop mistaking activity for strategy. In this episode, Jeff Dillon sits down with Mallory, a strategist and consultant who has been shaping digital marketing in higher ed since the early days of social media. From her early experiments with YouTube recruitment videos at St. Michael's College to co-founding Higher Ed Icons and hosting the Higher Ed Pulse Podcast, Mallory brings a rare longitudinal view of what actually works—and what doesn't. Mallory argues that the real enemy isn't polish; it's sameness. When every institution claims to "develop the whole student" without showing what the chemistry department actually does at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday, trust erodes. The fix? Specificity. Real people. Proof behind the claims. She also tackles the AI shift head-on, warning that SEO strategies from 2019 are no longer enough when students start their search in ChatGPT, Reddit, or AI overviews. She urges institutional leaders to audit where their audience is actually finding information—and to accept that they no longer control the front door. Packed with stories , practical advice on building executive visibility on LinkedIn, and a sharp critique of how higher ed confuses outputs with outcomes, this episode is a must-listen for any marketer, enrollment leader, or ed tech founder trying to cut through the noise. Key Takeaways Activity Is Not Strategy: Many colleges measure their teams on how busy they are (outputs) rather than whether they changed a prospective student's mind (outcomes). Confusing the two keeps institutions spinning their wheels. Sameness Is the Real Enemy, Not Polish: The problem with hi…