A few years back, I was a core-team member of the Marketing and Admissions department of a bschool that was testing waters in terms of introducing new programs and starting to look at enrolling good number of students from across India.
I had enough interactions with the media (all forms of media, for the record) during these times wherein we were planning to go ahead with the admissions season activities. Since, most activities are related to BTL things that a bschool can do to optimize cost and probably reach out to maximum number of candidates, there was money that we needed to spend carefully.
During these interactions and the subsequent plans that many of the top media houses in India provided me with, I realized that the best way lose money in that domain was to listen to these top-notch newspapers and the special things that they do for you.
Some came with readership data, while others with special editions. They were there to make money and the best "bakra" that they found were bschools who let these people feel that education industry in the next best industry to spend good amount of money on Ads. When you show the carrot and dont have any knowledge of how to use it, the donkeys will have a gala time. And thats exactly what I figured out in the next 6 months time of my tenure.
Special editions are the worst possible things that can happen for anyone who is putting in money in newspaper ads. Special ads mean - there will be too many similar ads from BSchools across the geography (taking advantage of some discount) leading to 'Ad-Blindness' that kills the entire plan right away. So what do you do when you dont get response? You feel 'Oh, I guess another impression is required'. You go ahead with repeating the same mistake again and again.
Newspapers were never able to develop anything worthwhile for Educational institutions. It is not a medium that will give you anything. It has been losing sheen for quite sometime now, and the fact that there are certain institutions who spend crores to get Full Page Ads in TOI goes to show that credibility can be bought by those who have the money to do so. As an upcoming Bschool, you dont have the option to compete with those institutes.
Another way that bschools lose money is by participating in God-Foresaken educational exhibitions which are conducted in such a lousy fashion that the best thing one can expect out of these fairs are good lunch and picnic like travel and stay of the bschool representatives.
No event in India has been conducted with some thought. It is like book a space, throw in all sorts of institutes (bschools, finishing schools, modelling schools, lingerie making schools, etc.) and consultants (study abroad, study in India, etc.), throw in all kinds of students (10th standard students asking about MBA) and let everyone decide what they want to do. I know of institutes who "do not have any other choice" but to participate in these hillarious 'melas' in order to get some result. Invariably, everyone always complains about how things did not work. Every BSchool Diro tells the admission team that 'Ek bachcha le karke aana" then they break even for participating the event.
The problem of losing money and losing their minds is primarily because of the shortsightedness of these bschools. Neither they have the professional talent to think through winning strategies and implement the best ATL/BTL activities to get results, nor do they ever think of "zero-based" marketing plans. The best that they do is to plan according to the experience they had from some location last year. It takes a half-brainer to understand that things are dynamic and that the same results cannot be reaped from the same market with more money perhaps. Plan smartly and plan with some vision.
But for all of these to really happen, bschools will have to restructure themselves, think of raising the average intelligence quotient of students every year, and then looking at creating systems that will sustain development. I have personal doubts about 70% of the institutes i know of who cannot think of meeting ends (of getting the number of seats filled and then getting the money in through fees). Is there hope? I really dont know.
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