How to write a marketing plan workshop

presented by

Jeffrey Rich
Vice President, Marketing &
Innovation

Stamats, Inc.
Cedar Rapids, IA 52406
(800) 553-8878

Introductions – Jeffrey Rich
 Vice President of Marketing &
Innovation

 25 years marketing experience across
higher education, corporate, and
agency settings

 Served two comprehensive universities
as Vice President of Marketing, PR and
Enrollment Management

2 | Building an Effective Integrated Marketing Plan | © STAMATS 2013

Introductions

Tracy Thomson

Stuart Spires

Sr. Client Consultant

Sr. Client Consultant


Today’s Agenda
8:00 a.m.
8:30 a.m.
10:30 – 10:45 a.m.
12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
3:30 p.m.
5:00 p.m.

Continental breakfast and registration check-in
Workshop begins
Morning break
Lunch buffet
Afternoon break
Wrap-up



8:30 to 10:30 - Review and discuss Integrated Marketing Communications
 Examples of compelling messaging



10:45 to 12:00 - Top 10 Marketing Mistakes Colleges and Universities Make



1:00 to 3:30 – Plan development workshop
 Creating your own plan



3:45 to 5:00 - Discuss plans
 Four Good Ideas


About Stamats

Stamats is recognized and respected as the
nation’s higher education integrated marketing
thought leader. Our comprehensive array of
innovative services has set the standard for
pairing insightful, research-based strategic
counsel with compelling creative solutions.
We promise our clients the highest level of
professional service and attention to detail in
the industry because, in the end, we know our
success is measured entirely by theirs.

Research, Planning, and
Consulting

■ Brand clarification and development
■ Image and perception studies
■ Recruiting and marketing
assessments, plans, and counsel
■ Tuition pricing elasticity and brand
value studies

Strategic Creative

■ Institutional, admission and
■
■
■
■


advancement websites
Mobile and social media solutions
Recruiting and advancement
campaigns and publications
Virtual and experiential tours
Full media advertising campaigns

Evolving Definition of Marketing (AMA)
 “The performance of business activities that direct the flow of goods
and services from producer to consumer or user” (1960)

 “The process of planning and executing the conception, pricing,
promotion, and distribution of goods, ideas, and services to create
exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals” (1985)

 “An organizational function and a set of processes for creating,
communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing
customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its
stakeholders” (2004)
We talk, you listen
We make, you take


- Old IBM motto

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)
 IMC is an institution-wide effort to communicate your core values in ways
that target audiences notice, understand, and respond to

 IMC includes brand marketing, direct marketing, and internal
communication
IMC is a subset of integrated marketing


Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)


Direct Marketing (DM)
 Designed to generate a response
 Sometimes called direct response marketing
 Primary direct marketers:
 Admissions – want to visit, apply, attend?
 Advancement – want to give?
 Historic DM channels:
 Telephone
 Postal mail
 New(er) channels:
 Email
 Social media
 IM
 Blogging (and all its permutations)

Brand Marketing
 A brand is not a look
 Rather, a brand is a compelling promise a college, university, or school
makes to its most important audiences to meet a need or fulfill an
expectation
 Perry Forster: “A brand is a promise expressed as a benefit that your
target audiences value”
 Truly successful brands are perceived by the target audience
as the best, or even only, solution to a particular need
 Brands give permission


Internal Communication
 Most organizations overlook the strategic importance of
internal communication
 Engaged employees as a channel
 Keeps internal audiences informed about
 The day-to-day
 Progress toward achieving your vision
 When internal audiences are engaged, they are more likely to become
advocates


Integrated Marketing


Customer Experience Management
 What is it that we sell, anyway?
The sum of all the experiences that a student has on campus (and
off campus) and the opportunities they have when they leave

“80% of organizations believe they
deliver a superior customer experience,
but only 8% of their customers
agree” – Bain & Company
 Your experience and your brand are closely tied


Remember the Eight Percent?
 Unlike most organizations, which reflexively turn to product or service
design to improve customer satisfaction, experience leaders pursue three
imperatives simultaneously:
 They design the right experiences for the right people (customers)
 They deliver on these experiences by focusing the entire organization
with an emphasis on cross-functional collaboration
 They develop their capabilities to please customers again and again—
by such means as improving the product experience, training people
in how to create and deliver new customer experiences, and
establishing direct accountability for the customer experience


Who Pleases Customers?


Experience Marketing or Brand Engagement
Defined
 The identification and management, to a specific end, of the key touch
points that define an experience that a customer has with a product or
service
 Have you diagramed key student and donor experiences?
 Admissions area?
 Financial aid?
 Registrar?


Brand Engagement through Integrated
Marketing, or Just Promotion?


Core Beliefs About Brands
 Strong brands demand: 1) Current and comprehensive market research;






2) Respect for your school’s heritage; and 3) A clear and shared vision
A brand strategy will more likely involve the clarification of your
institution’s current core values rather than the creation of new core
values
The goal of a brand strategy is to establish and hold a position of
perceived and real value in the minds of your most important internal
and external audiences and thereby return measurable value to the
institution
The brand strategy should engage, equip, and energize the campus
community
An effective brand communication strategy demands message discipline
and channel creativity


Options for Reputation Building
 Academic quality – high selectivity: Do you attract the best students in the







country?
Academic quality – faculty research: The quality, amount, and type of
faculty research is a significant indicator of brand equity
Big-time sports: Athletics are the front door. Win big or lose big, but don’t
do six and six
Image-building: Institutions that work hard to build a strong local, regional,
and even national image will build brand equity
Co-branding (alliance marketing): Marrying your brand with
another, perhaps more prestigious brand, or a brand of particular interest to
a target audience, is often used to jump-start a brand (U.S. News & World
Report; NYT, Battelle, Boeing)
Endowment: $500 million in the bank might be a brand unto itself


Building a Brand That Matters

Clarify and confirm
the stated and
unstated
institutional core
values that will
drive your overall
brand strategy

Settle on, or commit
to, a single brand
positioning strategy


Convey involves both
communicating the
brand and living out
the brand.

What Problems Do the Following Brands Solve?








Volvo
Mont Blanc
Gatorade
Disney
FedEx
Target
Yale



What problem does yours
solve?


Drive Safely

Sample Brands
 MIT: Premier technological university in the world
 Yeshiva: Comprehensive Jewish institution of higher education in the
U.S.
 Appalachian State: Serve the people and communities of Appalachia
 Biola: The nation’s only comprehensive, urban, evangelical university
*Positions held or desired (and likely to be achieved); positions valued by
both internal and external audiences


Focus on the Sweet Spot
Brand Sweet Spot


Brand Architecture
 A systematic way of viewing and organizing your institutional (super)
and sub-brands, attributes, and graphic identity so as to achieve
greater clarity, synergy, and leverage
̶ House of brands or a branded house
 A clear brand architecture is especially critical as brand contexts
become more complex with multiple sub-brands and product offerings

Institutional Super
Brand

College I

College II

Adult Ed
Program


Law School

Medical
School

Athletics

Architecture – continued



“House of brands”

House of Brands




“Branded house”

Branded House

Your Brand…
 Begins with your mission and vision
 Is “rooted” in your brand promise
 Is communicated via your brand
attributes

 Comes alive through brand stories,
culture, and creative campaign

 Recruiting messaging
 Fundraising messaging
 Internal communications


The Brand Platform
Institutional Brand Promise
(super-brand)

SubBrands

Brand
Attributes

Brand
Attribute
Matrix

Verbal and visual vocabulary

Tagline

Elevator
Speech

Single
Word

Proof
Points

Brand
Rationale

Graphic
Identity

Creative
Boards

Brand Platform - continued

 Brand portfolio: An assemblage of your key brand elements into a
cogent, integrated whole. The creation and use of a brand portfolio
ensures brand continuity and promotes brand synergy
 Brand promise: A pledge you make to your most important
audiences to do a certain thing and/or act in a certain way. It is who
you are and what you want to be known for. Also known as a
positioning statement or USP

 Brand rationale: A written explanation as to the logic behind your
brand promise and why you believe your constituents will value it


A brand rationale is not an explanation of how the brand
promise was created

•

Often includes supporting evidence, stories



 Sub-brands: Separate, complementary brands that are developed
when the larger institutional brand is too broad to differentiate the
benefits or unique attributes of a particular department or school
 For example, sub-brands are created when a college or
university wants to clearly associate an entity—such as a law
school or football program—with the larger institution

 Brand attributes: A series of words or phrases—implied in your
brand promise—that you want to position in the minds of your most
important target audiences
 Over time, as a result of your brand communication plan, you
want your most important audiences to repeat these attributes
back to you, and to others. Words you want to “own”
•

Also known as benefit segments and vivid descriptors



 Brand attribute matrix: A set of institutional brand attributes that
have been translated for such sub-brands as law schools or athletics
 Single word you want to own
 Tagline: The brand promise expressed in “shorthand”



 Elevator speech: A memorized statement that summarizes, in a
meaningful way, the essence of your brand and your institution. This
“speech” is given, usually verbally, when someone says, “tell me
about your school”
 Graphic identity: The visual, graphic portrayal of your institutional
brand promise and attributes
 Not to be confused with a brand identity which often has
psychological and relational (associative) overtones
 Creative boards: An initial creative
idea that visually and verbally
captures the flavor (essence) of the
brand promise


The Four Ps
 # 1: Product
 What is your product?
 How does your product compare/compete with similar products
from other colleges or universities?
 Is your product in demand? How do you know?
 Will students and donors overcome real and imagined barriers to
exchange their values (time and money) for your product?

Q

What kinds of educational institutions tend to be more
willing to customize their products? Why?


A valued and differentiated product is the
most important of all marketing assets


Academic Program Marketability
Assessment
 Fine-tune your academic offerings to increase share and tuition revenue. Identify
which programs to build/expand
 Quality indicators:
 Graduation rates by major
 Student satisfaction within major
 Job placement by major
 Graduate school placement by major
 Percentage of students employed in their major or in graduate school
within six months of graduation
 Demand indicators
 Prospective student interest in major
 Enrollment by major
 Estimate of unused capacity by major
 Job and employment trends
 Percentage of top five competitors that offer this major

Develop a Business Approach to New Majors
 Four major decision areas:
 Strategic
 Marketplace
 Economic and resource
 Promotion


The Four Ps - continued

 # 2: Price
 How much do you charge for your product?
 Do all customers pay the same price?
 How does this price compare with that of competing colleges or
universities?
 What are the dollar and non-dollar costs of your product?

Q

What are the dangers of positioning yourself
on the $ variable?



 A big part of the cost equation is the relationship between perceived
cost and perceived benefits
What is your value proposition?

Costs


Benefits


 # 3: Place (distribution)
 Where are your programs offered?
 Are people willing to take classes in those places and at those
times?
 Impact of asynchronous learning
 Brick and click
 What alternative delivery modes are available?



 # 4: Promotion
 To what media are your audiences most likely to respond?
 How do your promotional strategies compare with those used by
your competition?
 Remember the media mix?


Iceberg Theory of Marketing
Most people only “see” promotion
Promotion

Product

Price

Place

But there’s really quite a bit
more lurking below the surface


Why Are We So Preoccupied With
Promotion?
 Few senior decision makers understand the difference between
integrated marketing and promotion
 Decision makers, faculty in particular, almost automatically assume that
the problem cannot be related to product
 “We are a …”
 “We just need to get the word out!”
 The Fifth and Sixth Ps: policy and politics
 For the most part, product, price, and place issues are strategic and
require the input of stakeholders
 Promotion is usually tactical and of less interest to stakeholders


The Four Cs (represents a major paradigm
shift)
 Customer (or consumer)
 Not the product, but the customer; you can no longer simply sell
what you want to produce, you must sell what customers want to
buy
 Within constraints of mission
 Cost
 The dollar and non-dollar costs the customer is willing to “pay” to
meet a need or want
 Convenience
 Not place, but issues of “easiness” and access
 Communication
 Not merely promotion, but active listening and message
customization

We Are Hard Wired to Notice the Different


Terms - continued

 How are you different from your competitors in ways that target
audiences value?
 Differentiate along the four Ps


Seeking Points of Differentiation

Expecteds

Drivers

high in relevance,
low in differentiation

high in relevance, high
in differentiation

Neutrals

Fool’s gold

low in relevance, low
in differentiation

high in differentiation,
low in relevance

Source: McKinseyQuarterly.com

Distinctive or Compelling?


Terms - continued

 Media mix: Mass and personal channels of communication and
promotion
 Many components of the media mix such as advertising, public
relations, publications, and direct mail are often called “marketing”
by the uninitiated


Media Mix (enriched)
Constituent relations:
• Public
• High school
• Alumni

•
•
•

Donor
Community
Business

Media work:
• Homeowners
• Features
• Wild art

Interactive media:
• Web (social media, blogs, et al.)
• Email

Direct marketing (response marketing):
• Telephone
• Postal mail
• Email

Publications including variable digital
printing/print on demand

Sponsorships, publicity, event marketing

Internal communication

Collaborations, alliance marketing
(co-branding)

Word-of-mouth (buzz marketing)

Facilities and environmentals:
• Buildings and grounds
• Signage and perimeter marking

Traditional media (advertising):
• Magazine and newspaper
• TV/cable
• Radio
• Outdoor/out of home

Engaged employees as media
• Training


It’s Only Communication if They Respond!


Terms - continued

 Image: A set of attitudes or beliefs that a person or audience holds about
a college or university
 An image is how you are perceived, not necessarily how you are
 Because perceptions guide behavior, it is very important that you know
how you are perceived by the audiences you value most
 Institutions have multiple images
 Images change over time
 Moments of truth
 Bricks and mortar


Terms - continued

Transmitting a Strong Image
Image Formula = (Accuracy + Clarity + Consistency) x Continuity

– Accuracy: Honest and provable – 95% who you are and 5% who you
want to be
– Clarity: Is your message understandable/memorable?
– Consistency: Is everyone singing off the same song sheet?
– Continuity: Over time


Terms - continued

 Positioning: The act of placing an institution in the mind of a prospective
student or donor
 Position statement – where you are now (based on research)
 Positioning statement – where you want to be
 Competitive positioning: Developing and communicating powerful and
meaningful differences between your offerings and those of your
competition

Q

When people hear your name, what do they think about?
What are your vivid descriptors?


Brand Association Web
Internal

External

Academic reputation
Friendly, engaging
atmosphere

Quality of faculty
80

34

51

Job and grad school
placement success

Value for the money

36
69
24
23

Breadth and quality of
internships

65
44

Location

Study abroad programs

Campus amenities

Note: Scores on each attribute are shown from the most recent execution . Scores indicate the extent to which the
brand is associated with the indicated attribute. Scores range from 1 (lowest) to 100 (highest).

Integrated Marketing
 Firm commitment to the Four Cs (or Four Ps)
 Horizontal integration
 Brand marketing
 Direct marketing
 CEM
 Internal communication
 Vertical integration
 Strategic
 Organizational including internal communication
 Message
 Active listening and remembering
 Database dependent  gather and act on data
 Ongoing evaluation and modification

Is Everyone on the Senior Team Rowing
Together


Many marketing problems are actually
political problems in disguise


Organizational Integration
President

Vice President for Market Relations

Academic Vice President

Db Manager

Marketing

Public Relations

Publications

Student Recruiting

Advertising


Web

Student Services

Advancement

Alumni

Fund-raising

Vice President for Finance

When You Can’t Change the Organization
 Adopt an ad hoc, team-based approach
 The integrated marketing team (IMT)

 Teams vs. committees or taskforces
Organization


Centralized or Decentralized
 Lately, a question we are routinely asked is whether marketing functions
should be centralized or decentralized
 In most cases, the answer is both
 Coordinated under one plan, with the larger institutions in mind:
– The brand function (awareness) is centralized
– The direct marketing function (generating response) is decentralized in
functional units
 Recruiting
 Fundraising
 Special events


Message Integration
 Involves coordinating all messages so they share a common
look, sound, and feel across different media and audience segments

 Sometimes termed integrated marketing communication (IMC)
 Extension of the old “family look”


A Market-Oriented Institution …
 Embraces a comprehensive definition of marketing
 Recognizes marketplace dynamics
 You do compete, you are compared:
 Students
 Donated dollars
 Public and media attention

 Is driven by transforming, compelling vision
 Nanus and Albrecht


The Importance of Vision
Burt Nanus defines vision as “a realistic, credible, attractive future for your
organization”
There is no more powerful engine driving an organization toward excellence and
long-range success than an attractive, worthwhile, and achievable vision of the future
that is widely shared
Karl Albrecht uses a metaphor, “the northbound train,” to describe how important
vision is to an organization
Albrecht says that the image of a northbound train
conveys an unwavering commitment to a particular
direction

The idea of a moving train also conveys a strong sense
of momentum, of unstoppable, implacable movement in
an unambiguous direction


Market-oriented Institution - continued

 Audience centric and not institutional centric
 Uses new definitions of quality and success
 Less emphasis on edifices and finances and more emphasis on student
outcomes
 Embraces a culture of “Now!”
 A sense of entrepreneurship
 Risk taking is encouraged
 An attitude of immediacy
 Understand the too-high cost of perfect
decisions and plans
 Consensus is not a goal
 Focus on fixing problems and not affixing blame
 Individual and group accountability
 A commitment to followership

Market-oriented institution - continued

 Stresses data-based decision making
 A willingness to collect, analyze, and act on objective information
Database is a state of mind

 Features variability of product, price, place, and promotion based on
customer needs and expectations
 Establishes return on investment (ROI) criteria a priori


Developing an Integrated Marketing Plan


Developing an Integrated Marketing Plan
1. Lay the foundation
2. Undertake a situation analysis
3. Define target audiences
4. Settle vivid descriptors
5. Refine your target geography

6. Establish marketing goals
7. Write marketing action plans
8. Assemble and debug the plan
9. Execute and evaluate

Integrated Marketing Plan Outline
 Mission statement



 Vision statement
 Planning assumptions
 Situation analysis (prioritized)
 SWOT
 OT
 Prioritized target audiences



Prioritized marketing goals
 IM
 Four Ps
 IMC
 Brand
 Direct
 Internal
Marketing action plans (MAPs)
 Short-term
 Long-term

 Vivid descriptors
 (Brand attributes)



Budgets

 Target geographies



Timelines/GANTT charts


The Final Written Plan
 While your final plan can take a variety of shapes and forms, this general
outline will work in most instances
– Mission
– Vision
– Planning assumptions
– Situation analysis (prioritized)
– Prioritized target audiences
– Vivid descriptors
– Target geographies
– Prioritized marketing/communication goals
– Action plans for year one
– Budget
– Timeline

1
½
1
3
½
½
½
1
15–20
1–2
1–2

page
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pages
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The Parking Garage


More Than Dollars…Will
 Many college and university administrators believe that the biggest





requirement for a successful brand marketing strategy is cash
While you will spend dollars, there is another currency that is even
more important than dollars: institutional will
For a brand marketing strategy to be successful, you must have the
institutional will to conduct the research and respond strategically
A critical element of brand marketing, therefore, is the decision to
focus outward rather than inward, the decision to first understand and
then respond to customers
One final word about dollars: You will spend dollars to create and
maintain a brand
 More than new dollars, you will spend coordinated dollars, dollars
already being spent; now coordinated—and maximized—under one
overarching brand marketing strategy


People and Groups
 The champion: The spark or true believer (the visionary)
 The sponsor: Runs interference for the champion
 The large steering committee or task force: The politically appointed
planning team; largely ineffectual as a true planning body
 Transition to advisory group status
 The planning team: The champion and
the team who actually do the heavy lifting
̶ Involved with both developing and
implementing the brand


The President as Sponsor
 The president is the chief marketing officer. The signals he/she sends—to senior
staff, middle managers, and faculty—will telegraph whether marketing is a
legitimate institutional commitment

 As such, the president must:
 Have a vision for how marketing can help the institution. Without this personal











vision there will never be personal commitment
Commit his or her power and prestige to the marketing efforts
Commit institutional time, talent, and treasure
Make tough decisions in a timely fashion
Provide authority to the chief marketing officer, department, and/or team
Convey that marketing is an institution-wide commitment and responsibility
Clear away organizational and policy roadblocks
Insist on shared goals and resources among senior administrators/staffs
Go toe-to-toe with recalcitrant administrators
Demand departmental and even individual accountability
Be the champion’s sponsor


Campus Involvement
 Key issues:
 If your plan involves the public declaration of previously settled core
values, then there is less need for campus engagement
 If your plan involves the clarification of core values, then there will be
a greater need for campus engagement


Key Steps in Engaging the Campus







Help the campus community understand the process
Clarify their role in the process
Build their confidence in the process (solid defendable research)
Give the campus community access to the process
Clarify the role of campus members in executing the plan
Aggressively communicate outcomes


Finalize the Marketing Mandate
 At this point you must completely understand the president’s marketing
mandate (what he or she hopes to see the plan accomplish)
 If you do not have a clear understanding of the president’s mandate, it
will be very difficult to keep the planning process on track
 It is against this mandate that your president will examine:








Target audiences
Vivid descriptors (brand attributes)
Target geography
Marketing goals
Individual action plans
Budget


Foundation - continued

 Designate a champion
To succeed, your marketing efforts must have a champion who is:

Knowledgeable
Trusted/Respected
Powerful
Passionate about marketing

It is almost always a mistake to have the marketing effort
driven from “below”



 Assemble and build the marketing team
 While the exact composition of the marketing team will change
depending on the marketing mandate, most marketing teams include
someone (or someones) from the following areas:
 Public relations
 Recruiting and admissions
 Academics/faculty
 Student services
 Advancement and alumni
 Institutional research
 Athletics
 Finance office
 Don’t forget a secretary/coordinator/document handler
 Will also need to learn the planning software

Remember…
 The job of individual team members is to investigate and represent the
interests of their stakeholders and constituents
 They need to conduct:
 Conversations and interviews
 Review of secondary data
 Document review
 Quantitative research
 Focus groups



Two Tensions
Keep the Team Size Manageable

Spread Ownership

 The Key: Keep the actual planning team small and:
 Have it periodically report to larger campus-wide advisory
team
 Have the smaller planning team serve as liaison to larger
campus community

Remember:
While everyone may not be on the marketing team, the interests of
everyone in the campus community must be presented by someone on
the marketing team.


Typical Response to Marketing Proposals

No

Perhaps


Possibly

Yes

Questions That Must Be Answered
 If you can’t get the following questions answered, proceed cautiously
 What is the president’s mandate?
 Clear, definite, articulated, shared, and reasonable?

 Who is the champion?
 How long will the plan run?
 Minimum of three years

 What is the budget?
 Sustainable over plan’s life


Step Two: Undertake a Situation Analysis
 A situation analysis (SA) is a systematic evaluation of your institution and
its environment from a marketing perspective
 Most SAs use one of two models:
 SWOT
 Strengths: Internal qualities upon which you can capitalize
 Weaknesses: Inherent flaws, something to be overcome
 Opportunities: Things in your environment of which you can take
advantage
 Threats: Dangers in your marketplace that could cause you
problems
 PO
 Major problems (internal and external) facing the institution
 Major opportunities (internal and external) facing the institution
 Your president’s mandate should provide the basic direction of the SA

Situation analysis - continued

 External/Environmental Analysis
 Linkages and exchange relationships with important publics

 Opportunities for sponsorships and collaborations
 How the institution is perceived by external publics
 Local, regional, national, and even international
demographic, economic, and employment trends

 Met and unmet needs
 Institutions with which you compete for:
 Students
 Donated dollars
 Media attention

 Others?

Situation analysis - continued

 Internal/Institutional Analysis
 Appropriateness of mission and vision
 Quality of leadership
 Campus climate
 Existing planning documents
 Market research
 Recruiting and fundraising programs
 How the institution is perceived by internal audiences
 Product, price, place, and promotion (or
customer, cost, convenience, and communication) strategies
 Facilities and physical plant

 Communication strategies
 Others?

Time Out for Research
 Your initial situation analysis may reveal that you need to take a time-out
to do some research
 Do you know enough about the audiences suggested by your
president’s mandate?
 Perceptions
 VALs
 Interests
 Media habits
 Opportunities to serve
 Research must be
 Legitimate
 Timely
 Date needed to establish baseline

Possible Research Studies
 Recruiting and retention
 General prospects
 Noninquirers
 Nonapplicants
 Nonmatriculants
 Influencers (parents, guidance



General
 Faculty and staff
 Movers and shakers
 Media
 Church leaders
 Legislators
 Business leaders
 Community residents
 Peer institutions



Environmental
 Demographic
 Economic
 Job trends
 Competitive analysis

counselors, club advisors)
 Current students
 Withdrawing

 Fundraising
 Alumni
 Current donors
 Former donors


Research Cycle
 Studies done annually



 Studies done every two years



 Studies done every three years




Managing the Situation Analysis
 Options for input:
 Administrative
 Staff
 Faculty
 Student
 Alumni



Input options:
 Surveys
 Focus groups and forums
 Ads in student newspaper
 Personal interviews
 Bulletin boards and Internet

 Important issues:
 Confidentiality
 Anonymity
Goal: As much input/ownership as possible


Possible SWOT/PO Questions
 What do you feel are your greatest strengths or assets?
 Which of your qualities do you think prospective students and donors
value most?
 Students?
 Donors?
 What are the most significant recruiting and/or marketing
opportunities and challenges facing you?
 Opportunities?
 Challenges?
 If you had the responsibility, and a reasonable budget, what
marketing/recruiting strategies would you immediately initiate?

 If you could change one aspect of your institution, what would it be?


Sample PO
 Liberal arts college in Kentucky
 Problems
 Changing demography
 Perception of college as a commodity
 The demands of information technology
 The dual commitment to quality and accessibility

 Opportunities
 Changing demography
 The liberal arts and sciences experience
 The XXYYZZ “experience”
 Our national reputation


As You Develop Your
Situation Analysis, Keep in Mind …

Circle of
Concern

Things you really can’t
do anything about

Source: Covey

Circle of
Influence

Things you can
change

Pay-off Matrix
 As you struggle with reviewing the range of possible strategic issues, it is
easy to get lost in the minutiae
 Juran’s the “vital few and the trivial many”

 Focus on those things that will help you
directly address your president’s mandate


Step Three: Define Target Audiences
 Target audiences
 A target audience is the person or group whose behavior or attitude
you want to change or whom you wish to influence or inform
 Define target audiences by
 Age
 Geography
 Household income
 Ethnicity
 VALs
 Others?


Possible
Audiences

Students

Donors

Others

Alumni

Faculty

Prospective students

Current donors

Staff

Nonmatriculants

Former donors

Administrators

Withdrawing students

Prospective donors

Parents

Foundations

(remember, focus)

Current students
• Undergraduate
• Of color
• Talented/gifted
• Graduate
• Continuing ed
• International
• Distance ed

High school influencers
Business leaders
Board members
Community members
Church and religious
leaders
Government
leaders/officials


Decision Point – Target Audiences
 Limit yourself to a handful of target audiences in
year one; add others in subsequent years

 Audiences must “mesh” with president’s mandate
 Before proceeding, the president must sign off on
the target audiences


Guiding the Discussion on Vivid Descriptors
 Keep them simple; avoid lengthy dialogue
 May need to translate for key customers and stakeholders:
 How do different target audiences define “academic quality?”
 Remember, not all target audiences will be interested in all descriptors
(remember, segment the message mix)
 Illustrate your descriptors in ways that your audiences find meaningful


What Five Words Do You Want to Own
 What five words/phrases/descriptors do you want to own?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.


Descriptors - continued

 Vivid descriptors must emanate from your mission and vision
 Because they represent core values, they are long-term and enduring

Your vivid descriptors will become the
central themes for taglines,
advertising, publications, media
relations, and other media


Decision Point – Vivid Descriptors
 Just as you limited the number of target
audiences, you must limit the number of vivid
descriptors to four or five

 Keep them simple (or else they won’t be vivid)
 Vivid descriptors must be consistent with the
president’s mandate

 The president must sign off on the vivid descriptors


Step Five: Refine Your Target Geography
 Primary and secondary markets
 Think “small” (or in other words, focus)
 Analyze support structures
 Feeder high schools
 Alumni clubs
 Population centers
 Airline hubs
 Athletic conferences
 Analyze data
 Competitors
 Image “fall-off”
 Consider geospatial mapping

Decision Point – Target Geography
 Think “just big enough”

 Watch out for institutional ego
 Geography should represent key overlaps

 The president must sign off on the target geography


Step Six: Establish Marketing Goals
 Marketing goals
 A goal is the thing you want to accomplish (often called “objectives”)
 Integrated marketing communication (IMC) goals are designed to:
 Create awareness (brand)
 Generate a response (direct)
 Sample IMC goal: Within two years, increase the percentage of high

school students within a 50-mile radius of Williamsburg who can
identify one or more of our brand attributes from seven percent to
17 percent

 Integrated marketing goals address the Four Ps
 Sample IM goal: Increase the first-year-to-second-year retention

rate from 66% to 75% over a three-year period

Goals - continued
 Goals, audiences, and action plans
 Goal:
 Within two years, increase the percentage of high school students within a 50-

mile radius of Williamsburg who can identify one or more of our brand attributes
from seven percent to 17 percent

 Target audience: Prospective students that fit our profile
 Action plans (sometimes called strategies or tactics):
 Determine which high schools have students that fit your profile
 Identify your graduates that work in those high schools
 Develop talking points for graduates and recruiters (compare and contrast)
 Place quarterly full-page ads in regional high school papers
 Conduct quarterly mailing to alumni parents within target geography
 “Match” college faculty with high school faculty
 Send student “stars” back to their high schools


General Marketing Goal Topics
 Depending on your mandate, marketing goals are generally drawn from one or
more of the following strategic areas:
 Finance
 Marketing
 Brand, direct, internal
 Recruiting
 Student services
 Retention
 Customer service
 Facilities
 Technology
 Programs (academic mix issues)
 Quality
 Array
 Fundraising
 Human resources

Sample Goals – You Be the Judge
 Of the following six goals, which are strategic goals (what) and which are tactical
actions (how)? What else is missing from these goals?

1. Increase awareness and communication to residents and students in the
district

2. Plan and execute a minimum of four events to increase awareness of the
programs and services the college offers

3. Develop a prospective student database
4. Work with Institutional Research to utilize research tools to measure
marketing effectiveness

5. Develop and implement a comprehensive marketing plan for the high school
component of the Online to College program

6. Improve and expand the district web presence

One Year, Two Years, Three Years or More
Year One

Year Two

Year Three

Marketing Goals

1.
2.

Brand
Recruiting UG

1.
2.
3.

Brand
Recruiting UG
Annual fund

1.
2.
3.
4.

Brand
Recruiting UG
Annual fund
Recruiting grad

Target Audiences

1.

Prospective UG
students
Prospective donors
Parents
Business leaders

1.

Prospective UG
students
Prospective donors
Parents
Business leaders
Former donors
Regional media

1.

Prospective UG
students
Prospective donors
Parents
Business leaders
Former donors
Regional media
Community residents

2.
3.
4.
5.


2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Goals – continued

You are much more likely to be judged for the things you
failed to do than for the things you accomplished.
Under-promise and over-deliver

If at all possible, delay politically sensitive goals until the
second year of the plan. This will allow you to build on the
credibility you established during the plan’s first year of
operation


Decision Point – Marketing Goals
 Are your goals:
–
–
–
–

Important?
Believable?
Achievable?
Consistent with your president’s mandate?

 The president must sign off on the marketing goals


Step Seven: Write Marketing Action Plans
 Marketing action plan (MAP)
 A marketing action plan outlines the activities that are designed to
accomplish or help accomplish a goal
 Who does what, when?
 How they fit together
 The goal is the thing you want done
 The target audience is the people at whom the goal is directed
 The marketing action plan is how you accomplish
the goal


Action Plan Template
1. Goal to be supported: ______________________________________
2. Description of action plan: __________________________________
_______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________
3. Target audiences
1. Audience A: ______________________________
2. Audience B: ______________________________
3. Audience C: ______________________________
4. Begin date: ____________ End date: ____________
5. Budget: _____________
 Request for new dollars

 Reallocated from my budget

 Reallocated from other budget
6. Assigned to: _____________________
7. How/when evaluate: ________________________

Dissecting a Marketing Action Plan
Description of Marketing
Action Plan

Create a media database of all print and broadcast media
writers/reporters within a 100-mile radius of the institution

Which goal does this MAP
support?

Within two years, increase the percentage of high school
students within a 50-mile radius of Williamsburg who can
identify one or more of our vivid descriptors

Target audiences

Regional editors and writers

MAP (step-by-step)

• Buy directories (1/15)
• Select database software (1/30)
• Input data (3/15)

Begin date

1/15

End date

3/15

Budget

$1,600

MAP assigned to

Bob S.


Sample GANTT Chart

Source: Marketing Calendar

Action Plan Exercise
 As a group, let’s complete action plans for the following goals:
 Goal: Increase the annual fund contribution rate from 23% to 40%
over a five-year period
 Action:
 Action:
 Action:

 Goal: Increase the number of adult students from 180 to 240 over a
three-year period
 Action:
 Action:
 Action:


Step Eight: Assemble and Debug the Plan
 Does the plan focus on the president’s mandate?
 Are you spending priority time and money on priority goals?
 Does the plan shake hands with existing plans?
- Strategic
- Recruiting






- Advancement
- Marketing

Is there a clear delineation of who is doing what?
Does it have a strong internal communication component?
Does it meet the overall budget goal?
Is there a solid, workable timeline?


Step Nine: Execute and Evaluate (and Learn)
 Just do it
 Monitor budgets and timelines
 If an important goal is stalled, be willing to reallocate resources
 Time
 Money

 What can we quit doing?

Q

How do you evaluate the plan’s effectiveness?
How do you know when to update your plan?


Execute and evaluate – continued

 Evaluate and learn
 Provide data for mid-course corrections
 Determine the effectiveness of completed strategies





• Demonstrate effectiveness
• Adjust plans for next year
• Gain credibility
To evaluate and learn
 Brand: repeat research studies to measure progress against the
baseline
 Direct: measure response
Marketing progresses according to the quality of its measurement
tools


Budgeting
 The budget will be directly affected by the scope of the mandate
 Remember:
 Don’t begin something you can’t sustain
 Anticipate that your marketing efforts will heat up the marketplace
 It is more about coordinating existing dollars than new dollars


Factors That Impact Your Marketing Budget
 Will require more marketing $
 Will require less marketing $
 No strategic direction
 Active alumni
 Large, political marketing committee
 Strong or well-known athletic
program
 Weak champion
 Narrow focus and reasonable goals
 No integration
 Timely decision making
 No baseline data
 Smaller target geography
 Can’t make a decision
 Fewer target audiences
 Highly competitive marketplace
 Smaller target geography
 Expensive media market
 Open position
 More target audiences
 More valued position
 Contested position
 Simple position
 Less valued position
 Complex position


Apportioning Marketing Dollars

70-20-10

Change the Emphasis
 In the old days (last year) 10% of the creative dollar was spent on the
idea and 90% on the placement
 Now, the emphasis is on the idea and if the idea is good enough, the
placement is free


Who Is Responsible?
 Marketing begins with strategic vision on how marketing can help
 Usually this is from the president
 The president must
 Establish a clear institutional direction
 Enact enabling policy and remove organizational roadblocks
 Allocate realistic resources
 Link programs to budgets

 Provide authority
 Assign responsibility
 The president can demand results

 Commitment is spelled $

Planning Postmortem
 A postmortem recognizes that planning is an ongoing process
 The postmortem is designed to help you evaluate the planning process
you just completed so that your next planning cycle will be more effective
and efficient
 Talk to the team
 Talk to the folks your team represents


Final Question
Based on this presentation, and your experiences at your institution, what
ducks do you need to get in a row before you can begin the planning
process?
1.
2.
3.


Books by Bob Sevier

Available from strategypublishing.com


Good Promotional and Brand Spots
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2udiWBzETJg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijeg-jeTUBs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jboRPUGR
MJY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9y7N4n_
Avs
http://www.youtube.com/user/lyndapodcast
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jme8jQUdI
b8


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