This week, we continue our series on the jobs you don’t know you have. We will discuss marketer. Let’s get the technical definition out of the way before we explain marketing’s importance to you, a PI who needs to get your research funded.

What the heck is marketing?

According to the American Marketing Association, marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. 

You can think of marketing as the activities you do that increase awareness of and trust in you and your research.

Where does marketing happen?

Marketing happens all over, including on campus:

📰 The news office promotes the accomplishments of faculty through publications and press releases so the popular press can pick up these stories.

🎒 The admissions office encourages high schoolers to apply and accepted students to enroll to impact admissions metrics.

💲 The alumni and development offices outreach to alumni and donors to increase monetary contributions to the institution.

The goal is to build awareness and trust and, by doing so, move a process along to the desired outcome.

Building awareness

Awareness of you is critical because if people don’t know you or your work, they can’t engage with you. Meeting someone once does not ensure that you will stay in their awareness. The number of times a person needs to encounter another individual before they remember the person is increasing. I’ve heard this number may be as high as 30 instances. This is why people need to see you again and again.

Building trust

You need to build trust because after someone is aware of you, they then have to decide whether or not to ‘do business’ with you. For example, a seminar organizer won’t invite a speaker unless they believe the person will do a good job. Trust goes both ways: In the classroom, students gain trust in the instructor when they show up to teach week after week. And, instructors gain trust in students who consistently show up and pay attention in class.

How this relates to funding

Awareness and trust are vitally important to funders. Trust may seem obvious, but let’s consider awareness in the context of funding. Funders are responsible for maintaining awareness of developments in their discipline. Funders must define an investment strategy, avoid duplication of effort, and brief higher-ups on the state of the field and their portfolio.

Maintaining awareness is a big part of this. You want your research to be in funders’ awareness so that they can consider investment in that area. You want to be in funders’ awareness so they can consider engaging you as a subject matter expert, inviting you to workshops, to serve on a panel, or for informal conversations.

Even ‘small’ awards of $300k are a vast amount of taxpayer resources. A funder must trust that you can perform the proposed work. Mission-driven funders may want your research to evolve into a collaboration with government scientists or engineers. Evidence that you have successfully collaborated with others outside academia can increase trust that you will do so again. Showing the world your activities helps enormously to build trust.

What you can do

There are many ways to use marketing to build awareness and trust, and I’ve listed 10 below. The best activities are the ones that you are most comfortable with. You don’t need to do all of these.

1. Keep a current website that people can get to easily, such as from your email signature

2. Maintain a complete and reader-friendly LinkedIn profile

3. Post research and career updates on social media

4. Comment and reply to your colleagues’ posts on social media

5. Regularly update sponsors, the news office, collaborators and colleagues on your research progress

6. Go to networking events at conferences (virtual or IRL) and elsewhere and introduce yourself to people

7. Upload a headshot (i.e., photo of your face) to your email account, directories and elsewhere, rather than use the default ‘circle’ graphic

8. Start a YouTube channel to share your research, lab tours, teaching or anything else career-related

9. Send a weekly or monthly email newsletter 😉 

10. Enlist your students to help with marketing activities for your lab group. They will benefit, too.

Like the famous marketer Seth Godin says below, once you have attention (awareness) and trust, the next step is action. That is, good things happen.

Planning an NSF CAREER submission?

I’ve published the latest installment of my free training on preparing for NSF CAREER proposal submission in July 2024. We are just 3 months away from the deadline, and this is a not a proposal you want to throw together at the last minute. In this video, I discuss how you can build trust within your Project Description by providing details on your outreach and educational activities.

Also, be sure to check what resources are available at your institution. Many have CAREER workshops but a lot of them are wrapping up around this time of year when PIs hunker down to do their writing. Getting in the loop on this now is a great way to set yourself up for next year if a 2024 submission isn’t in the cards.

When you are ready, here’s how we can help

Need to get your research funded, this year? Check out our 10-week program to get you there.

Want a done-for-you website that highlights your research impact? Let us do that for you. (We even write all the content for you!)

Ready to book a call to discuss our training, websites, or to have Dr. Barzyk provide training at your institution? Let’s chat!