The power of digital marketing capabilities: The case of higher education

This study seeks to understand what specific digital marketing capabilities higher education institutions expect from digital marketing managers. After analyzing 255 job advertisements for digital marketing managers in North American, European, and Asia-Pacific countries, we identified 79 specific digital marketing capabilities, which were organized into 6 main themes, namely: market, results, management, media, stakeholders, and learning. Anchored on the dynamic capability framework, this study shows that 56 capabilities have not been addressed in the existing reviews of literature and 26 others were not required in the job advertisements. We also found that there is no difference in terms of digital marketing capabilities between regions or experience levels required of higher education institution managers. The findings of this study provide a framework to assess achievement in digital marketing, recruit new staff, and design digital marketing curricula for educators. This work can also serve as the basis for analyzing emerging capabilities and rebalancing the resources dedicated to new and traditional digital marketing capabilities. Finally, the capabilities presented in the framework could be further explored in order to fill the gap in the literature.