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Lessons Learned 2 Giving them what they want?

April 2, 2010 by larrylauer

      Following my first posting there was a comment about faculty members objecting to marketing because they don’t think higher education should be subject to giving students what they want.  I have encountered this objection many times over on campuses, and also with some nonprofits. So I respond here as my second lesson learned.

   When I am called to help address issues related to integrating marketing on a campus the situation often is that a number of academics are raising serious concerns. And I must say as a lifelong academic myself I can empathize with faculty members who are skeptical about basing education content on what students think they need.  Indeed, an experienced faculty member will know better than students what they will need to know to be successful. So its very important to understand that  just giving students what they want is not what educational marketing all about.

      Marketing research indeed asks both students and parents about their perceived needs and expectations.  And what we learn tells us how to make a connection with them.  But that’s it.  The process that follows is much more sophisticated.  Integrated marketing communiation properly carried out exposes students to choices they never knew they would have.  And when they finally arrive on campus the faculty will open a whole new world of ideas and possibilities they never knew existed.

     Public speakers have been told for years that they need to begin a speech by demonstrating that they know what the audience wants and needs. Then the challenge is to craft the balance of the speech so as to lead the audience into new insights and awarenesses. Even the car salesman asks what you expect in a car. He then shows you one that meets those needs but also shows you features you never knew existed.

    Marketing research and analysis then merely provides the point of departure. The faculty must take it from there. This same situation applies to many other organizations. We begin finding out the needs of people and then take them into whole new worlds.

Posted in Integrated Marketing, Internal Politics, Lessons Learned, Planning | Leave a Comment »

Lessons Learned

March 22, 2010 by larrylauer

After spending 40 years in higher education working to help institutions become better understood, I find myself thinking back on the “lessons I learned.”  Most of them were lessons learned the hard way, sometimes wasting years laboring under misconceptions about how things really work, or stifled by my own lack of confidence to find a way to just keep pushing ahead.

So years later, it now has become a passion of mine to find talented marketers, skilled communicators, and high potential institutions, and to help them save as much time and pain as I can. While it’s not advanced rocket science, success in institutional marketing requires a nuanced combination of art and science nudged ahead with a good dose of seasoned experience and savvy.  Join me in the months ahead and I will share what I think I have learned.

Lesson #1

Much of the reluctance to embrace marketing in nonprofit institutions, NGOs, associations, government agencies and universities is based on the misconception that to do so will commercialize the enterprise and turn it into a retail sales organization. And, of course, most professionals in these institutions find this inappropriate to their purposes.

But, much to the contrary, marketing is a way of thinking that enables an organization to align its competitive advantage strengths with changing social needs and trends.  It is a management practice of considering products, programs, their price, their distribution and their communication, simultaneously. It is the assertion that it is impossible to successfully promote a product or program that does not connect to a real need in society, or is not priced appropriately, or is not delivered conveniently. Successful institutional marketing, then, is merely making a genuine connection between the right product or program and a real need in the marketplace.

Most program executives, university administrators, or faculty members who come to see marketing as a way of thinking, rather than as a way of commercializing, are able to understand how this tool can become a powerful way of making the institution better understood, and thus more successful.  My suggestions is to always begin explaining institutional marketing to institutional executives with these words: Marketing is a way of thinking…”

Each week we will identify and discuss more hard learned lessons, and respond to your reactions and ideas. Welcome to our conversation.

Posted in Leadership, Lessons Learned, Planning | 3 Comments »

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