Last time, we looked at the current state of academic marketing. We concluded that there's not much there. This time, we will talk about what academic marketing could be. So far, we've seen that academic marketing is limited to the most high-level kinds of thinking and communication. Most thinking is about the brand. We might even say that universities obsess about this part. I am a believer in strategy, but too much is almost certainly not worth it. When this thinking does lead to tactical communication, it's also very high-level. Most pieces are vague brand-building. And most are in the service of attracting donations. So, what should this kind of marketing be? At the risk of being obvious, I think that academic marketing is not essentially different from marketing. To be sure, there are many nuances, just like there are nuances in any specialized industry. Three crucial pieces of marketing are missing in academic marketing. The first is an understanding of the audience. The second is an understanding of motivation to action. And the third is directness. To sum it up, the academic world doesn't do a good job of communicating directly to its (proper) audience and motivating action. In the postings to come, we will address each of these in turn.