Most of what we see practiced as higher education marketing across business schools, Universities, and different institutions, are reflections of certain deep rooted but defunct marketing literature of the past.
Not much research and analysis has gone into what really should work for Higher education marketing and whether there should be a different marketing model practiced for institutions so that they are able to comprehend and implement brilliant marketing programs or campaigns.
In my personal experience, higher education marketing lags way behind even the basic marketing advancements of recent times. So if the basic issue here is to catch up with current trends and then hope to make them work, higher education marketing will always fail to produce any substantial result and learning.
There are a few components in higher education marketing:
- Internal Teams and marketing experts at an Institution
- Consumption behavior of aspirants when it comes to communications on higher education
- Changing preparatory patterns
- Student Communities
- Existing perception of the generic value of programs offered
Awareness of the above factors is missing at most times. Therefore the way these factors integrate themselves into marketing success is something that is also missed.
Most higher education marketing today is designed for a specific time span - probably for 6-12 months. This ensures that thought processes and top grading processes reflect such short-sighted behavior. What is amazing though that such a broken process is repeated year after year. Teams after teams in higher education marketing are specializing in generating short term results. The problem is that no one has any answer to shrinking marketing budgets and failing accountability in marketing returns. The very definition of Marketing returns also seems to be incorrect and therefore the post activity analysis are also faulty.
If an Institution intends to stem the rot and then work for better returns on a significant investment center, then they ought to top-grade their marketing staff and intent. Since this is an investment that the institution cannot do away with, they should take a priority attempt at getting the following things done asap.
(1) Make learning and implementing new age marketing initiatives as a standard KPI for all marketing staff:
This includes checking for such inputs during the recruitment process. Please don't hire someone just because he/she has been in the domain for some number of years doing the same mistakes you want to now avoid. Make learning systems for marketing staff and provide incentives (non-monetary) to people who attempt new marketing tools and systems. Encourage common knowledge sharing projects wherein people from across the teams can give inputs and have an external marketing change agent work closely with these teams.
(2) Go for "Zero" base marketing plans:
Most of higher education marketing plans are repeated attempts using the same components or channels and only tweaking 10-15% of the inputs depending upon the contributions from these channels in the previous year. Current marketing literature (available for reading) has already proved that given the multi-channel attribution to results from marketing, no measurement - that takes into account final conversions from a certain channel to decide on its investments - is correct. So start working with "zero" based marketing plans. Each year, draw up marketing channel based on "data" and not past usage. Get access to this data, and in today's world you may need to have a strong social media and online strategy alongside your offline marketing inputs. Please note that having a page or account in social media is not a strategy - its a joke. Identify where your buyers are, their behavior, decision making patterns, user communities they belong to, intent based point of contacts, and the time they would engage with your brand or organization. Everything - including budget allocations, resource allocation, etc needs to be strategized with new inputs from current year's research and strategy design
(3) Re-train your front line resources:
Sometimes, we use the same resources to handle campaigns that now require a different set of skill sets and mental agility plus knowledge to get the best out of. Your front line people are the biggest risk of things failing and they would be the greatest resistance that you would face while implementing new marketing systems and thoughts. Make their work more enriching by helping them participate in this entire makeover. They should know that they will affect the returns that this organization or institution would get this year, and they will be rewarded accordingly for the same. When such well defined jobs are redesigned, you will need to ensure that participation is a must.
(4) Destroy status-quo
Do this regularly, and keep your team on its toes. Most marketing professionals tend to work on structures or frameworks and then stick to the same. Post this, they tend to optimize these structures into their own ways and change definitions that reduce friction in the system and status-quo. For brilliant higher education marketing, you ought to ensure that you are responsible for regular check on status-quo issues and then pushing the team to get better in designing new strategies and communications that would give great marketing returns.
(5) Integrate your marketing activities:
Your Higher Education marketing strategy cannot have separate components that have different agendas, communications, artwork, themes, etc. This is one of the major reasons why most higher education institutions fail to get great results from their marketing activities. Every component (Above-the-line or below-the-line, or even online) needs to have a central theme, and would need to have integrated components that are monitored and tracked easily. Once the marketing mix is decided, the best way to go ahead would be to find integration points across all channels in the mix, and then figure out which activity result would become the input for which channel. At the end of this exercise, you may have a system that strongly interconnected, and would not allow for any user or applicant to drop off the system without an alert coming to you.
(6) Don't copy everything about your competition:
This is a practice amongst institutions across the geography, wherein the herd behavior is a deciding factor in creating the marketing mix and mostly the BTL plan/strategy. This is one of major reasons why newspaper supplements and special editions on education institutions sell. Anyone who knows the design team behind these supplements, are aware that these are sales products, that target the very DNA of thought process (and therefore the weakness) of institutions. The whole pitch of "this is a party you can't miss coz you will look cool with others being there" - is a lie. Normally, with those special editions and supplements, there is so much Ad-blindness, that people don't remember much of what they see there.
(7) Marketing returns = "Goodwill + reputation + personal-communities":
Not all marketing people believe that marketing returns can also be attached to generating goodwill (that in turn improves the DEMAND function), reputation (that is essential in our socially connected world), and personal communities (creating ones own micro community that involves alumni, current students, and applicants). However, current research in generic marketing suggests that such things are an integral part of any organization or brand's marketing strategy and success.
You need the right team to make this happen, along with a vision to support such endeavors. Time is ripe for this kind of a change to happen, and if you are not doing this for your own institution, then you will contribute negatively to its growth. I am sure that as a marketing practitioner, you too would find this experience exhilarating that you are able to implement the best practices and advancements in global marketing for your institution.
For queries on how such a system can be designed, you can mail me and I will be glad to help.
