Jeffrey Rich, Vice President of Marketing & Innovation at Stamats, Inc., presented a workshop on building effective integrated marketing plans. The workshop covered defining integrated marketing communication and the customer experience, developing a brand platform, assessing academic programs, and using the four Ps of marketing - product, price, place, and promotion. The goal was to help participants develop their own integrated marketing plan to communicate their institution's brand effectively.
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Discuss Stamats
Marketing use to be an activityLater, it became a process that involved activitiesToday, it’s an organization. Discuss the need to create an organization able to scale across all the mission critical functions needed to make an institution successful today.
Integrated Marketing is defined by many as syncing your message and the look and feel of your advertising across media channels.It’s actually broader than that. Think about IMC in the context of the prior point I made about marketing now being an organization vs an activity. Integrated marketing communications is the activity the marketing organization engages in and it needs to be institution-wide internally and in complete syncronization externally. We have really tough jobs.
Recognizing that IMC is holistic, let’s talk about the differences between brand marketing and direct marketing
A brand is not a logo – it’s all the things that come to mind when you see the logo. Good brands evoke an immediate perception of something, a feeling, a belief, even emotions.
Who is responsible for the holistic customer experience at your organization?
Can you even interject into these experiences or is your organization silo’d and with little cross-functional collaboration? This is the case in many universities across the country.Make cross-functional collaboration your rallying cry!
You can start with what you can control within the marketing and communications functions within your business unit. Involve other departments – even if that’s just telling them what you’re doing through internal communications efforts Integrate and syncronize your communications across marketing channels and look for the touch points where you can engage the customer – that could be using data when they call you or visit
For most schools, your brand already owns space in the minds of certainly the internal university community, your job is not to invent, or reinvent it. It’s to uncover it and communicate it in meaningful ways
Sub-brands need to work collaboratively with the Institutional super brandLet’s look at some examples…..
The University of Minnesota seeks to be the preeminent research institution in the countryA degree from the University of Minnesota will enable you to make an impact in your chosen career and your communityLand grant, research institution, innovative, diverse, International etc..
It’s important to map out your brand platform or brand portfolio
Brand promise – The College of St Scholastica will prepare it’s students for lives of leadership, scholarship and serviceGraduates of St. Scholastica have made invaluable contributions to their community from serving the public good through holding public office and enacting legislation that helps those less fortunate, to helping prepare students reach out and touch the world by becoming educators and furthering knowledge and intellectual curiosity
The brand attribute matrix is nothing more than your brand attributes mapped across your sub-brands to determine which attributes each sub-brand has in-common. This will help you sync your messaging across sub-brands and help them work together in forging a common perception in the mind of the consumer. Tag lines – Driven to Discover, Learning to Touch the Work,
Find ways to propagate your institutions elevator speech – put it on the back of business cards, mouse pads, your internal kiosks and monitors. Work to takes steps so everyone in the institution can recite it
Even the best marketing can’t sell a bad product.
How does your organization roll out new academic programs? How are they created? Is it driven by a faculty member who has an interest in a particular subject? Or is your institution studying market demand, competition, job trends, etc. and creating programs that not only fit your academic mission, but have the chance to succeed because they’re in demand, or differentiated from others in the market place.
It’s OK to talk about price – 70% of students and family look no further than your sticker price. We are moving into a world where most schools will have to compete more on price. How can you help your students? Federal, State and Institutional aid, internships and assistantships, employer subsidies from a corporate outreach strategy
For many students education is about jobs. Bring career outcomes and earning potential into the conversation when it helps overcome perception of cost. You can start with the value of a college degree then expand by UG major or graduate program
Let’s talk about online… does your institution have a distance learning strategy? The proliferation of for-profits schools and online learning is at the heart of much of the disruptive changes sweeping higher ed. A distance learning strategy may no longer be about expanding market share but protecting market share.
Segmentation is at the heart of successful marketing plans. Media fragmentation has made our jobs really difficult. In the 60’s and 70’s a TV campaign would insure everyone who needed to know would. Today, understanding media consumption by segment is complex.
People see the billboard, or the google display ad and think marketing is really simple. “I could have written that headline on that billboard or that display ad”. They have no idea of the analysis, planning and segmentation that went on behind the scenes to put the right message in front of the right audience promoting the right product using the right media, at the right time. What we do is complex… it just looks simple. In the end, everyone thinks they’re a marketer.
Politics are everywhere. Creating policies to govern marketing activities can help avoid major hurdles. Who gets their own logo?How many FB accounts can we have?
We’ve gone from mass production to mass customization and customers expect you will have programs that fit their situation and need (online, flexible schedules, accelerated programs)
Our challenge is to break from the pack and standout. It amazes me how many schools still put the smiling student on the billboard with some a statement that does nothing to break from the norm.Take a chance, use humor, strive for the unexpected.
Don’t confuse media with marketing. As we talked about earlier, marketing is an organization and set of activities. Media are the channels available to deliver compelling messaging to your target audences.
There are more media channels available then most realize. From traditional media to digital to guerilla… think creatively about how to intersect with your key audiences.
If your not doing image and perception research you need to be. It needs to be measured across your key audiences and measured overtime to determine success or failure in growing brand awareness and positioning your brand and key messages over time.
This is the real key to branding. This is a long-term endevurethat never ends and will in the end determine your success in establishing, positioning or growing your brand.
Use Best Buy customer centricity exampleSometimes 80 or 90% is OK. What’s the opportunity cost to get to 100%??Speed is life from this day forward
Higher ed was late to the game in terms of CRM… Other industries have adopted CRM and databased decisions and it’s transformed every aspect of their operation.
Organizations are great ad adding things but seldom stop doing things.
Few institutions have the dollars to move the needle quickly. For an industry that has just recently recognized it’s a business and has to compete for students, the level of funding will be slow to catch up to the goals. Reallocating dollars from non-mission critical activities is a great way to start. It’s time to rethink your business.
I can’t stress the importance (and difficulties) associated in involving the campus community. Marketing is easy to critisize because it’s so visible. The best way to avoid the critism is to find ways to bring others into the process.
These are important activities… if you can’t address them through internal staff, seek outside help from a research firm or consultant
Too many marketing groups work in a vacuum. You can’t the outcomes are too visible and they represent the interests of the entire organization and all it’s stakeholders. Think about marketing as being a public trust.
The vocal minority will always be on the no side with a few less vocal strong advocates for what you are doing. The vast majority will be somewhat ambivalent.
Publics could be competitors, state government, businesses, as well as the consumer.
Check out the tag line database on the Stamats website
IMC goal seeks to deploy a message that effects an outcomeIM goal involves broader activities than just messaging
StrategyTacticStrategyStrategyTacticTactic
70% core activities that can be sustained and measured20% against new activities that you can test and shiftHold 10% in reserve to address new opportunities
IKEA wanted to open a new store and the marketing director was given only $20,000 to promote it. Rather than buying advertising they painted a big yellow square in the parking lot and invited the media and general public to come and pick a free piece of furniture. The value of the PR effort got them all kinds of coverage in the news which did far more than what their media budget would have supported.