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.”

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