Reputation Is a Performance Metric: Manage It Like One

Show notes

Most universities can quote their application numbers to the unit, but not how their reputation has moved. I make the case for tracking reputation by audience and putting it on the same agenda as admissions and income.

• Track reputation separately for academics, employers, prospective students and policymakers.
• Read rankings, survey data, share of voice and recruitment funnels side by side.
• Review reputation with senior leadership every quarter, alongside admissions and income.

Read the article: Reputation is a performance metric. Manage it like one.

Full transcript

Hello, and welcome to Marketing Greats in Higher Education. I'm Jonathan Sabarre, your host, and this is where we explore the ideas shaping how universities are seen, chosen and trusted around the world. Everything I share on this show is my own personal view.

Most universities can tell you their application numbers to the nearest unit, their research income to the nearest pound and their student satisfaction scores to one decimal place. But ask how their reputation has moved in the last twelve months, and with whom, and you usually get a story rather than a number. Sometimes a good story. Often a very confident one. Still a story. I think that gap is one of the biggest blind spots in university leadership!

Reputation sits upstream of almost everything. It shapes who applies, who partners with you, who funds you and who wants to work for you. Every number you track so carefully is downstream of how you're perceived. Treat reputation as soft and unmeasurable, and leadership teams end up deciding on instinct: which markets to prioritise, which partnerships to pursue, where the marketing budget goes.

Measuring reputation properly is genuinely hard. But the institutions that manage it well do three things. First, they define the audiences that count: academics in your disciplines, employers in your region, prospective students in priority markets, and policymakers. Each holds a different view of you, and a single brand health score hides far more than it reveals. You can be highly regarded by academics and almost invisible to employers on your own doorstep. An average of the two tells you nothing.

Second, they connect perception to performance. Rankings, survey data, media share of voice and recruitment funnels tell you far more together than apart. On their own, each is a partial picture, owned by a different team and reported in a different meeting. Side by side, patterns appear. You see where strong reputation isn't converting into applications, or where research strength hasn't reached the people who need to hear about it.

I saw this first hand at Newcastle University. When we brought those views together, it changed the conversations with academic leaders. We could show where perception lagged behind reality, and where it ran ahead. Both matter. A lag means there's a story you aren't telling. Running ahead means there's a promise you'll need to keep. Those conversations started from shared evidence rather than competing opinions.

Third, they act on the gaps. Measurement is only worth the decisions it prompts. Sometimes the right move is a campaign. More often it's sustained, unglamorous effort: better academic engagement, more visible research partnerships, and a sharper story told consistently by everyone who represents the institution. None of that makes an exciting launch event. All of it moves the dial.

This is where many institutions get stuck. They invest in measurement, produce a beautiful dashboard, and it sits in a shared drive until next year's review. The data was never the problem. What was missing was a moment in the calendar where somebody senior had to look at it and decide what to do differently. If a number never leads to a decision, it's decoration.

So start small. Pick the two or three audiences that matter most to your strategy and agree how you'll track each. Then review the picture with senior leadership every quarter, on the same agenda as admissions, income and research. You don't need a vast programme or a new system. You need a few well-chosen measures, and the discipline to keep coming back to them.

It's remarkable how quickly reputation stops being a matter of opinion once it sits on the same agenda as everything else. People stop debating whether the institution is well regarded, and start asking where, with whom, and what we're going to do about it. That's when reputation becomes something you can lead, rather than something you hope for. It's already one of your most valuable assets. It's time we managed it like one!

Thank you for spending this time with me. If this episode sparked something for you, hit subscribe, so you never miss the next one. And our full season, with guests from leading universities around the world, is coming very soon. Head to Jonathan Sabarre dot com and sign up, so you're the first to know when it launches. Until next time, keep building something great.