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Fresh Thinking.
To illustrate my approach to presenting new, innovative thoughts here are a series of short presentations that take the prospect's point-of-view and asks the question: What would help them choose your institution over another?
Each focuses on a different aspect of education marketing. They don't provide any silver bullets, but hopefully ideas for developing new marketing programs.
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Positioning Programs.
Differentiation. We all make the claim that an education leads to a better career. But exactly how does that work? This presentation provides an answer to the question "How Do Prospects Use a Degree?" When a competitive set of programs are plotted according to the specialty of the curriculum and the specialty of the institution four different segments are created.
Key Message: prospects choose a program based on how they expect it to help them.
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Leveraging the Curriculum.
Battling Sameness. Once the big three questions are answered (financing, timing, and credit transfer) prospects end up with several schools in their consideration set. And as Seth Godin argues, they all look pretty much the same at this point and it is up to the sales skills of admissions to turn interest into enrollment. Courses and faculty can help make the difference.
In prospecting, conversion and remarketing curriculum-based content can help meet objectives.
Key Message: free the course catalog from the shackles of a 19th century document to help differentiate your programs.
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Marketing by Degree.
Fragmentation. All categories splinter into sub-categories, each with its own strategy, audience and market leaders. Eduction is no different. However, all too often the same approach is applied to both the level of degree (Associate, Bachelor, and Master's) and stage of the relationship (inquiry, admissions, and remarketing.)
A simple framework looking at the needs of prospects is provided to help refine and improve creative plans.
Key Message: segment by degree and stage as you develop marketing campaigns
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Organizing the Myriad of Questions.
FAQs. Like any high-consideration product, education spawns 1,000+ questions from prospects. To ensure that they are all adequately planned for this presentation introduces a simple way for organizing your content..
All prospect questions can be reduced to three topics:
- Program - Institutional
- Placement - Career or job centric
- People - Social
Key Message: build out a content library around the 3 Ps of education marketing: Program, Placement, and People.
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Marketing Master's Degrees.
They are Different. All the research, both real and annecdotal, suggests that people seeking Master's degrees don't think or behave like other prospects. They tend to be more deliberate in their process and often have a longer time horizon. If Master's Degrees weren't the new black maybe we could get by with traditional marketing. But this sector is one of the most attractive segments to focus on.
Maybe what the industry needs is a comparative shopping engine or matching program that focuses on the prospect's decision-making process.
Key Message: faciliate the natural tendancy of Master's seekers to compare programs.
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