Top Business Schools’ Marketing Concerns

Branding was the primary presentation topic of the day at the recent American Marketing Association Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education (#amahighered). However, the B-school roundtable revealed some meatier issues that kept those marketers up at night. The 50 or more in attendance voiced concerns were varied, yet many were shared. This infers there is not one central issue to rally around, but rather a variety of challenges facing today’s higher education marketer, especially in business schools. I believe many of these issues are directly transferable and relatable to other university colleges and schools as well.

The following top issues were almost equally distributed in importance and urgency:

• Lack of direction from university leadership.
• Not changing programs to keep pace with student needs or technological advances. This related to courses of study as well as teaching method.
• Under resourced and under budget to meet the expectations of internal constituencies. This was voiced by both centralized and decentralized marketing departments.
• Changing school name affecting branding and name recognition.
• Changing skill set requirements with existing staff skill set especially with social media and mobile marketing influences.
• Defining, obtaining and analyzing metrics (what’s working, what’s not).
• What happens to the lead when it’s handed off to admissions, referencing lead nurturing.
• 30 second elevator pitch; being prepared to talk to prospective students or influencers in a non-campus setting.
• Consistency in messaging across all schools and colleges within the university, especially with regard to brand guidelines.
• How to maintain database inclusive of segmentation.
• Mobile site or app – when and how to choose.
• Social media analytics – establishing KPIs, measurement methods.
• Branding was last on their list of concerns.

CBD Marketing will be addressing each of these concerns in upcoming blogs and e-newsletters. Please feel free to comment and help our fellow higher education marketers move their brands forward.

@strass

Tags: AMA, AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, American Marketing Association, B-schools, Business Schools

Process Insights Highlight Higher Education Symposium

Whether you are looking to revitalize your brand, establish robust metrics and measurement or better target adult learners, there was plenty of  roadmaps to success presented at the American Marketing Association’s 2011 Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education.

Themed ConnectEd, the conference built more than a solid case for focusing on integrated marketing efforts, but delivered practical how-to advice for accomplishing goals.  Starting with the keynote address on Monday morning, Richard Lyons, Dean, Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley, outlined how to create an authentic brand.  His clear steps included leveraging the processes of change management laid out by John P. Kotter renowned Harvard Business School professor.  Chief among his advice is to create a sense of urgency.  Lyons encouraged institutions to use capital campaigns as the impetus to drive brand urgency.  Critical to Berkeley’s success was also its ability to elevate faculty involvement to the level of ownership.  Otherwise, they interpret “brand initiatives” to mean things they don’t have to do.

Another process highlighted at the symposium was Purdue University’s program for building a culture a measurement.  There was clear envy and furious note taking  in the room as Teri Lucie Thompson, Vice President of Marketing and Media  listed their metrics which included everything from awareness and web analytics to QR code scans to app feature usage.  Most importantly, the quantitative data she and her team analyze often leads the Board of Trustees to provide incremental funding for marketing.

These are just two examples of specific content that provided action plans that could be applied immediately to any institution’s marketing activity.  But they boil down to important process take-aways:  build momentum and measure everything.

Tags: 2011 Symposium for Higher Education, AMA, Berkeley, ConnectEd, Haas School of Business, Harvard Business School, Harvard University, higher ed marketing, Higher Ed Sypmosium, higher education insights, Higher education marketing, John P. Kotter, Purdue, Purdue University, Richard Lyons, symposium for the marketing of higher education, Teri Lucie Thompson, UC Berkeley, University of California Berkeley

Back from the 2008 AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education

Well, we had a great time speaking last week at the Symposium. Thanks to all of you wonderful attendees for your insightful questions and enthusiastic response to our presentation: Be The First Responder: How to Acquire and Retain More Students. And special thanks to Tasha Patterson of DeVry University for presenting with us.  We enjoyed meeting so many of you, and we hope to join you again next year.

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Tags: AMA, American Marketing Association, Higher Education, marketing, marketing in the education sector, Symposium