Institutions of higher education are learning that there are new and effective ways of attracting corporate clients and the money they hold, but it hasn’t been an easy path. Part of the problem is that approaching the corporate world requires a certain amount of skill in consultative selling, and sales is something that higher education administrators often don’t do well. In fact, many are uncomfortable being pressed into the role.

A recent industry report by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) estimates that about $2.9 billion is spent by American employers on external services that contribute to employee learning and development. These external services can include anything from consultant trainers to university contract education programs. A great deal of that $2.9 billion is open to colleges and other institutions of higher education that are willing to work to fulfill the needs of these companies. The need is clear and the money is there, but it’s hardly low-hanging fruit.

To adjust, many colleges and universities are now prioritizing efforts to appeal to corporate clients. These efforts include the addition of customized programs and value-added services that will draw corporations and their dollars as a part of their employee learning and development programs. Savvy schools are working to create sales and marketing strategies that will build and reinforce relationships with the corporate world.

This moves institutions of higher education outside their traditional academic comfort zones in order to cater to the needs of employers while remaining competitive within their own scholastic environment, quite a balancing act.

A trend to increase flexibility in courses offered, and how they are delivered, can be seen on many campuses, in the hopes that their offerings will be more appealing to employers. Thus far, however, the clash between the goals of traditional academics and the needs of corporate employers have limited much of the interchange to specific departments and programs. By insulating the programs with a stronger job training focus, colleges can maintain their academic credibility while courting corporate money.

Schools are also developing entire post-baccalaureate programs within the areas of greatest need for employers. Such programs include human resource management and information technology. While some of the courses may be applied toward a Master’s program as credits, others are stand-alone programs that have been created solely for meeting the needs of the employers in the area or the market of the school.

It will be interesting to see how this trend develops. Do colleges and universities want to produce theoretically grounded, comprehensively educated or focused, highly skilled technicians ready for the workplace? Workers or leaders? This is an ongoing discussion on many campuses, one that will define the future of their institutions.

What has all this got to do with higher education marketing? Comprehensive marketing outreach is needed for higher education to effectively reach the corporate world. Executives, steeped in the world of business, use a language and style quite different than that of the academic world. They are practiced in the evaluation of marketing collateral, and quick to decide who will and will not get that hoped-for return phone call.

Colleges and universities have a lot of experience in developing marketing communications for students, their parents, donors and alumni, but often do not understand the language and needs of business. To succeed in this highly competitive arena, higher education institutions will need to draw on their own resources, industry advisory councils, consultants and others to transform academic prose into effective corporate marketing materials.

It’s work the trouble, though: that $2.9 billion figure is already two years old, and the market of opportunity for higher education is growing almost daily.

Marketing plans are well-written, thorough, and meticulously researched action plans that will be evaluated by individuals and organizations both inside and outside the college or university. Though traditionally used in businesses, this document is now considered to be indispensable for institutions of higher education. Overall, a higher education marketing plan is a document which:

• Makes team members responsible for marketing efforts look more diligently and carefully into the past marketing decisions which have been made.
• Causes marketing staff to look outside the school to better understand their target market.
• Encourages the setting of challenging, yet achievable goals for the future, while providing specific direction for the marketing efforts that will allow the college to reach those goals. These efforts will need to be understood by everyone within the organization, with support available when required.

Higher educational institutions will use marketing plans primarily for the following reasons:

• To organize and plan marketing efforts for the school.
• To introduce a new specialization, department, feature, or other “product” that will be attractive to the current target market, or appeal to a new target market.
• To establish a new solution to an existing problem.
• As a portion of the overall business plan being created for the college.

A comprehensive higher education marketing plan will typically have a nine-part approach. This format includes the following divisions:

1. Mission Statement
2. Vision Statement
3. Situational Analysis
4. Vivid Descriptors
5. Marketing Goals
6. Target Audience
7. Action Plans
8. Budgets
9. Timelines

This marketing plan style aims at specific programs, offers, and degrees, but can be adapted for overall use or more strategic purposes. Unlike the traditional six-part marketing plan used by businesses, the nine-part approach for institutions of higher education creates a marketing plan that is more than simply planning; it includes actions, budget and timelines/deadlines to ease implementation and give a sense of reality to the plan. This encourages the implementation of the marketing plan, for as many marketing plans are written by colleges, few are actually put into practice.

It is important that professional marketing principles be practiced when an effective marketing plan is being created. Often, an outside expert is hired by colleges to help with the organization of thoughts and concepts, and the application of marketing principles. It is not always common for such experts to be available in-house, and outsourcing is therefore required. Several companies in the higher education market provide such services, varying in specializations. Some work primarily with large institutions, such as Stamats and Eduventures, while others serve smaller or specialized institutions (such as alternative health colleges and universities, one of our areas of expertise).

No matter how an institution goes about developing strategic plans, such as marketing or enrollment management plans, if your institution lacks these basic tools, now is the time to get started. Next fall isn’t as far away as it may seem in the cold month of February.

Integrated marketing communications as a whole is essentially telling a story. It synthesizes the message of an institution of higher education, and delivers it by any medium in which the message’s sequence and interactivity may bring understanding and meaning to its recipients.

In the case of most colleges, however, the marketing is often confused and disorganized, from the perspective of the target audience. In fact, the messages are often unspecific and without a target. The messages lack engagement.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are reading a bed-time story to a child. Now, imagine that the bed-time story contains only the elements that are prominent in your institution’s marketing. “One pig built a straw house, using award-winning materials that provide the best in straw color, while adding to winter warmth through the use of thatching on the roof. Structurally, it was the leading house in the area, with many happy pig residents of similar houses giving glowing testimonials. Not only that, but the builder of the house is none other than a Harvard trained straw-house expert, and the house was chosen as a 2008 huffing and puffing Olympic training facility.” How popular would your bed-time stories be?

Of course, marketing is not the same as children’s stories, but when marketing communications are coordinated and properly targeted, prospective students are much more likely to hear the message. A persuasive story may be able to draw the attention of the perspective student away from the various distractions in his or her life and allow him or her to take notice of the college’s website or telephone number.

How does a college compose a story? Many marketing coaches will recommend a focus on statistics, while others want to plug as many features as possible. Yet others stand by the thought that the reputation speaks for itself. However, even with a comprehensive list of facts and a solid reputation, students may not be any more interested in an institution of higher education than they were before the message was sent out.

What is missing is a good story. A good quality marketing story for colleges will include the following:

• A promise – it must be a bold promise, but not overconfident. Unless the promise is exceptional and answers the question “what’s in it for me?”, most students won’t feel it is worth listening to.
• Believability – trust is an important part of an effective marketing story. Remember, your target audience cut their teeth on marketing messages, receiving hundreds, even thousands each day. They have finely tuned filters for marketing that lacks believability.
• Subtlety – students don’t want a hard sell. They want to feel that they are making the right choice for them, not visiting a trade show.
• Appeal to the senses – facts are necessary, but the story itself should appeal to students’ emotions. Higher education is as much an emotional choice as a logical one.
• Targeted – good stories aren’t aimed at everyone in general, but have a specific target market in mind.

When colleges market themselves through stories, they stand a better chance to engage the students, and then deliver an important message in a way that reaches them on more than just an intellectual level. It is in this way that the story makes the difference.

Never before has there been such a vital need for schools of all kinds, including colleges and universities, to communicate effectively with their target audiences.

Dr. Robert Sevier – author, director of research studies, and Senior Vice President at Stamats – stated about educational institutions that:

These institutions face staggering obstacles to effective communication. Members of their target audiences receive an average of 3,000 messages a day. Target audiences are distracted and seldom give the messages they receive their full attention. To compound the problem, institutions often send out messages that are conflicting or fail to address audience needs.

When basic communications theory is applied to institutions of higher education, the following barriers to communication in college and university marketing are unearthed:

• The higher education marketplace is a noisy one, with many marketing messages inundating the same target market. All too frequently, a school’s message simply isn’t heard.
• Prospective students for higher education are typically involved in a great deal more than college selection. Frequently, they are still in high school, and must balance their education with a part time job, friends, family, and any other extracurricular activities in which they participate. Therefore, they can only give a full evaluation to a small number of colleges and universities, instead of giving equal attention to all potential schools.
• Higher education schools will, all too frequently, market themselves by listing their features, but fail to explain why these features are meaningful to their prospective students. All marketing materials must address the “what’s in it for me?” question posed by every prospect.
• Beyond logical and rational components to be marketed, colleges must also remember to give their school a good “feel” and boast their strong reputations. These factors are as weighty as other motivating factors for college and university selection.

The fact is that institutes of higher education too frequently forget to whom they are selling. Prospective students are people facing many different issues in their lives, and schools must address much more than basic scholastic needs in their marketing materials. As direct marketing expert, Dick Canterbury, states about what he calls the Clouds of Late Adolescence, “ We are asking them to make the most important decision of their lives, and they just discovered they have a pimple on their forehead and they have a big date on Friday.”

There has been an awful lot of buzz about disruptive marketing among businesses lately, however, in higher education, the disruptive marketing perspective has not yet gained as much attention as it should. The idea of disruptive marketing implies breaking through all of the clutter that we face every day by using graphics, color, or packaging different from what has been previously prepared. This method can be applied in many different areas to create disruption in the higher education marketplace, such as with technology, marketing, and other techniques. Keeping its competing schools busy allows a higher education institution to take on a leadership position.

Disruptive marketing in higher education isn’t just about the external market – it is about the way in which students are managed and assisted. It requires that schools keep themselves up to date in terms of changing demographics, styles, technologies, and expectations. By changing the way things are done within the higher education institution, it allows the school to remain on top of disruptions and changes in the marketplace. By being able to both create and capitalize on disruptions in the educational marketplace, this technique allows for substantial gains and successes otherwise unavailable.

Consider the following from “The Innovator’s Solution” A Game Plan for Disruptive Marketing:

Target only those customers and markets that look unattractive to every established competitor. If an idea is sustaining (an improved version of an already available and popular product) relative to even a single competitor, the idea will not succeed as a disruption.

Try to compete against nonconsumption: customers who are currently unable to use currently available products at all, either because they can’t afford them or are too inexperienced to use them. These markets have the most potential because these customers will compare your product to having nothing at all, and so will be thrilled to buy it even if it’s inferior to current available products.

If there are no nonconsumers available, explore feasibility of a low-end disruption instead: customers who can’t use all the functionality they currently have to pay for and who won’t pay premium prices for upgraded products. If this isn’t possible either, and you’re not an industry incumbent, don’t invest in the idea.

Schools need to exploit the disruptive marketing opportunity that is presented to them in the current education marketplace – especially within the current US economic lull which has created a hesitation to take on tuition among prospective students. Here, disruptive marketing functions both on a pragmatic level and in terms of teaching techniques. It opens the doors to many opportunities previously unconsidered by higher education institutions.

Enrollment management in schools of higher education has been greatly assisted by integrated marketing as it creates and maintains a singular goal and unifies those applying that goal, as they share the same purpose: the enrollment of students, and the success of those students.

Marketing is, after all, the initial stage of any higher education institution’s strategy for generating a pool of potential candidates who will later become the applicant pool, and then the student base. However, that is not its only benefit. Marketing in higher education also functions to direct faculty and staff toward the creation of a new and solid image among the members of the school’s entire community. In other words, by implementing an integrated marketing strategy among the team members of the school, effective branding will result.

In order for integrated marketing to work in higher education, a holistic approach must be taken. It should be consistently implemented on every level of the school, encouraging the same reliable and effective message throughout. This technique breaks away from the more “obvious” methods of marketing and advertising, such as posters, commercials, pamphlets, and other common materials, and spreads the message at a more fundamental level.

Though the initial execution of integrated marketing can seem rather daunting and complex, it is in essence, a comprehension of the interactions among the different marketing types, as a consistent message is applied across each format. This mix is most crucial to successfully marketing higher education.

There isn’t any specific technique for marketing higher education, and therefore, it must take on a less traditional and more outward focus. It must be strategic and function on every level of the institution, actively coordinating and expressing the message.

This is what is required for branding in higher education. Although it cannot entirely replace direct advertising, it is equally important and must be consistently upheld. Its integration ensures a cohesive group of people who strive toward the same goal, and ensure the overall success of the institution and its students.

Once an institution’s image and message become a common purpose, the distribution and acceptance of this message becomes part of the general functions of the school, and is implemented effectively, naturally, and automatically.

Dear College President,

Your 15-17 year-old prospects are much smarter about what they read. To them, platitudes and “we’re the best” just don’t cut it any longer, and marketing-speak is simply so much noise to be skipped over. Content is more important than ever, and more than ever institutions need to segment by age and income demographics.

For an older group of adult students, such as parents of students, clever ads with a lot of repetition may still work. Yet while it’s true that parents have enormous influence in the selection of colleges and universities, students don’t ask their parents about colleges that they don’t feel good about.

Your youngest prospects, who cut their teeth on Internet searches and learned early how to separate wheat from chaff, have learned to filter traditional marketing messages and regard most advertising with a degree of skepticism. Authentic facts sell to this group, and an examination of how you present your institution and its programs is needed, and needed now.

You can’t write to 15-17 year-olds as if they are adults, but you shouldn’t try to use their buzzwords and talk either. Colleges have often tried to write as they imagine 15-17 year-olds talk, with mixed results. As one Boston teenager told me recently, “It looks like an old white guy trying to be hip.”

Your institution is the place where these teenagers will transition from child to adult. Your marketing materials to them should match this aspiration: they should be written just a little ahead of them, showing glimpses of the maturity these students hope to achieve at your institution. Many colleges have begun working with students at earlier and earlier ages, and the key to doing this effectively is to engage those students in academic planning for their future. Help the student create a vision of an interesting (and fun) future at your college and you are much closer to both enrolling and one day graduating that student.

The key to success is consistent communication, both written and verbal. Colleges are constantly communicating with teenage prospects, through website content, publications, letters, email and reviews. Every time one of your faculty, or staff, or a current student, talks with a prospect, this becomes part of that prospect’s perception of your institution. Too often, these various communications bear little resemblance to one another, making a murky soup of conflicting facts and opinions about your college or university.

When considering the effectiveness of your marketing, don’t forget your on-campus communications. Effective communications begin from the bottom up. Work with your faculty to gain buy-in for your mission and basic marketing messages, keep staff and students up to date on marketing efforts.

Make sure that your internal messages about your campus match the theme of your external marketing messages, or it is only a matter of time before savvy teen-aged prospects will discover disconnects between on-campus and off-campus communications. It’s simply too easy to surf through your website and notice that the admissions pages and the department pages say very different things. A quick search engine query can uncover writing by your students and faculty.

Think of your marketing communications as the cover of a book. If the cover reads “100 Fun Trips to Spain” in bright colors with snappy graphics, but the contents are an engaging Spanish language textbook, your message loses its authenticity. No matter how good the cover or the contents, you have lost the opportunity to effectively communicate about either topic.

That’s how college marketing gets a bad name.

When developing a marketing campaign for higher education – as in any area of business – it is vital to know your market. Knowing to whom the campaign is directed is crucial to its efficacy.

Consider the example of the Boston higher education marketplace. Boston is considered the pinnacle of challenging locations for a higher education institution. As is so commonly said among higher education marketing professionals in Boston, if you can make it in Boston, you can make it anywhere.

The fact is that Boston is the single most competitive higher education market across the country. It presents the largest number of educational institutions to its shrinking pool of college-ready students.

In fact, the Manhattan Institute’s Jay Greene states that while Massachusetts’ current high school graduation rate is 73%, the college readiness rate is 33%. Greene’s definition of college readiness is “the bare minimum qualifications necessary before a college will even consider their applications.”

The Massachusetts Department of Education agrees with similar numbers, saying that the high school graduation rate is at 72% (2005). Among their surveys of 11th and 12th grade students, 56% of Boston’s high school graduates intend to go to college, but only 12% attend two-year schools.

These statistics are useful in marketing. Well-targeted marketing addresses likely prospects with communications designed to appeal to that target audience. In higher education, market segmentation can be a more difficult process, as realities of incoming student pools often clash with desired demographic distributions. Still, it is important to segment the market as much as possible, and target marketing communications to those segments.

To continue with Boston as an example, the Manhattan Institute found that women are more likely to attend college than men, and that it is more likely that black, Asian and Hispanic students will attend public colleges instead of private colleges. Financial issues are greatly to blame for this discrepancy, as public tuition is much lower than private tuition. Greene also found it important to mention that a large number of minorities refrain from enrolling in college as a result of a lack of preparation in high school.

Statistics such as these are helpful toward estimating the relative ease or difficulty of recruiting from a particular demographic. To one group, an emphasis on program excellence and academic flexibility may be the most effective message. To another, messages about financial assistance programs and career potential will be more effective.

This being said, it is challenging for higher education institutions to draw enough quality students, as the market is ever-decreasing. Even with substantial recruitment and marketing efforts, the quantity of Boston high school graduates, for example, presents an exceptionally competitive marketplace.

By studying the market and understanding who is seeking higher education and where they are, institutions dramatically increase their chances of augmented enrollment rates even without a larger marketing campaign. It is a matter of targeting the right people.

Dear College President,

In the Washington Post there is an interesting story called “Pearls Before Breakfast” by Gene Weingarten. Joshua Bell is a world-class violinist who has filled concert halls and is the violin behind the soundtrack of the movie “Red Violin.” The Washington Post recruited him to play as a street musician to see how many people would stop to listen and how many would donate money. He played for 45 minutes at a Washington, D.C. metro station, on a busy Friday morning while approximately one thousand commuters passed by.

The acoustics were surprisingly good, and he opened with Bach’s “Chaconne,” an extremely difficult piece. The result: he went unrecognized and unrewarded, earning a total of $32 in donations.

What does this mean? Appearances count. People make judgments about quality based on context. There are other stories about master musicians playing cheap instruments in world-class venues, without the audience ever knowing the difference. Again, context matters.

What does this have to do with your Office of Admissions?

I have had occasion to visit (and work in) a number of admissions offices. What is the first impression given by many of them? A room full of messy cubicles, papers strewn about, boxes of publications to be mailed, general disorder. What impression does this give to students? To parents?

For many colleges and universities, admissions office space seems almost an afterthought. Too often, the office entrances are difficult to find and once found, the admissions area is hardly one of the highlights of the college tour. I’ve seen admissions officers attempt to prevent parents and students from seeing their offices by arranging meetings in open spaces on campus, or at a library or student center.

Does it matter? As Angela, parent of a college freshman in Boston, told me last year,

“After seeing the Northeastern University admissions office, we looked at a lot of other schools. But I couldn’t get the NEU office out of my mind. I kept thinking that if they put that kind of money and attention into admissions, of all things, I wanted to see what they did with the rest of the university.”

Your admissions area is your first impression, and as the old saying goes, you only have one opportunity to make a good first impression. What does it take to make an attractive admissions area? Not much, really. Better signs and directions to guide visitors. Some friendly faces (reception), a lack of clutter, organized materials to browse and pick up, warming colors, art, flowers, and a good flow of movement across the room. Basic office design concepts. Combine a clean, friendly, attractive space with a customer service approach in admissions and you have a winning combination. As Joshua Bell found, appearance and location can have a profound impact on perception. It’s the little things that count.

Take a walk through your Admissions Office and try to see it as a visiting student or parent might see it. After all, all the slick marketing in the world can’t turn a prospect into a student if their first impression doesn’t match the promises of your publications.

Just as branding is a vital concept in the marketing strategies of businesses of all sizes – at-home businesses to global corporations – so is the concept vital to higher education. After all, a college doesn’t want to be a school. It needs to be the school.

Consider this:

“I just couldn’t attend that other school. Even though it offered me more aid and even though it was in a more attractive location, I really had not heard of it before they started sending me stuff in the mail. I decided to go to a college I had heard of.” - From a focus group of high school seniors in the Midwest.

Marketing and recruiting professionals know that there is a big difference between creating a strategy for an educational institution with an established brand and the job of trying to draw students to a “generic” school. After all, we’re a brand-centered society. We are educated consumers who depend a great deal on what we know about a school – or any other purchase – to make our final decision. Even without visiting a college’s campus, there are many ways in which it will already have been judged. Awareness of the brand will go a long way toward credibility, trust, and overall appeal.

There are many different factors that students must consider when they are making their choices for applications and attendance. With brand awareness, the college will be in the mind of the student – which is always a good start. Furthermore, the student will have a concept about program options, geography, services, and reputation. When it comes down to such a competitive market, colleges must depend on making a good impression, not just looking good once you’re on the campus.

Research is increasingly confirming that students base their decision to attend a school largely on what they’ve heard about it. They link the reputation of the institution to their knowledge of its existence.

Fred Gehrung, of Gehrung and Associates, a media relations firm in New Hampshire, agrees: “In today’s uncertain economy and intensely competitive environment, there is one thing a college or university cannot economize on – its reputation. Prospective students and families need to be even more certain about the institution they select, about the quality of the education it offers, and about the outcome, meaning the return on the investment of effort and money. Reputation now is more important than ever. . . Like it or not, the public equates high profile with quality.”