Rondeau's Roundtable

A lot of people are competing for the attention of your prospective adult students.  Each day, every one of them may see or hear hundreds of advertisements for a dizzying array of products.  Some may be from competing institutions seeking to enroll students who might be a perfect fit for your program.  Are there effective ways to rise above the clutter and effectively communicate with them?

Your marketing communication strategy, the media you use and the marketing tactics you choose can make a big difference.  Sending the wrong message to the right people can make you look bad to your best prospects.  Sending the right communication to the wrong people wastes both opportunities and limited resources.  Using the wrong media may mean that your best prospects may never receive your message – or won’t act on it if they do.

And, if your message is the right one, how you present it can make a big difference.  An experience from private industry illustrates this point.  When sales of their Wave Radio were flat a few years ago, Bose Corporation of Cambridge, Massachusetts hired persuasion expert Robert Cialdini, PhD to review their advertising.  He recommended changing one line, the headline on their print, Internet and public advertisements.  Store traffic increased so much that sales rose by 45%.
 
One to One Communication Gets the Right Help to the Right People

In establishing a marketing communication strategy for your program, it is, of course, vital to accurately assess the needs of the groups you’re trying to reach.  Are you trying to promote a graduate or degree completion program? Your prospective students recognize the value of higher education; with this group you need to differentiate your institution from your competitors. But if you’re trying to reach students who have no college background, discussing your programs’ merits will mean little.  These prospects might need to be convinced that furthering their education will truly help their job opportunities. Or they may need to be helped to see that college is not beyond their reach. 

How can you deliver the right message to the right people?  Having the right data can make all the difference.  Knowledgeable marketers can access data on the demographic groups that live within certain zip codes.  They can help you narrow down lists for targeted direct mail campaigns.   Is this approach truly effective?  Professors George and Michael Belch of San Diego State University reported,

Porsche developed a direct-mail piece that was sent to a precisely defined target market:  physicians in specialties with the highest income levels.  This list was screened to match the demographic of Porsche buyers and narrowed further to specific geographic areas.  The direct-mail piece was an X-ray of a Porsche 911 Carrera 4 written in the language of the medical audience.  This creative campaign generated one of the highest response rates of any mailing Porsche has done in recent years.

You may feel that students have little in common with doctors shopping for sports cars.  But studies with college students show that they really do pay attention to relevant communication.  No medium can do this better than customized, personalized direct mail.  Integrating this approach with other media and using research to further focus your message can magnify its effectiveness.  You’ll see how in Part Two of this series.