What is branding?  According to Al Ries, author of “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding”, a branding program should be designed to differentiate your product from all the other cattle on the range, “even if all the other cattle on the range look pretty much alike.”  In this crowded, competitive world if you’re not a brand you’re just a commodity.  How are you currently seeking to distinguish your school from the competition and creating a lasting impression in your prospect’s mind?  Here are five steps to successfully branding your school:

• Create one unified message based on what makes your school different, who you are, and what you do.   What distinct benefit(s) does your school deliver?

  o Ball State “Education Redefined”
  o University of Maryland “Keep Me Maryland”
  o UCLA “Here. Now. UCLA”
  o University of Phoenix “I am a Phoenix”

• Focus on public relations not advertising that creates a sense of belonging through engagement.  Staff, faculty, administrators and students all play a key role in delivering an institution’s brand promise.  Engagement through your web site (promote news on campus; encourage online engagement); social media (be mindful of what you are trying to say, looking at posts “likes”, connect with stories; share information in both directions; maximize your involvement with “whole” people that require a name and/or some consistency of membership); video (rotating key feature stories that reflects different programs, community member or reflects the student body as a whole), push video content to mobile devices.; engage with local cable TV/media; create interactive view books on USB drives that can be handed out at an open house or mailed to prospective students that feature video clips or information about your school relevant to the programs you are promoting.
• Build a brand promise based on academic offerings, student experience, or an institution’s prestige.  Develop brand strategies that reflect the emotional and psychological dynamics (alumni giving, staff culture, student experience, recruitment efforts, instructor reputation, faculty engagement, and community relations) of an education institution as a whole.  These dynamics will influence and shape the perceptions of your brand in the marketplace.
• Create a brand experience through updated curriculum. Curricula must be relevant in today’s global marketplace through new academic subjects.  Institutions must also be aware of the
  growing  population of nontraditional students, aging student population, accommodate more online and distance learning as well as continue to offer broader spectrum of student needs.  Doing so will strengthen your brand’s position in the marketing place.
• Build an emotional brand experience that creates loyalty.  If you build it they will come.  If the emotional connection between your brand and your prospect is strong, the brand experience will bring active/continued referrals as well as increased profitability to your school.  Loyalty means higher retention rates as well as reduced marketing costs.  Create loyalty by understanding your market segments as well as offering convenient locations/hours, having an employer influence (corporate alliance), pricing, timing, or flexibility with schedules for example.

Powerful brands increase market share and loyalty.  The power of a brand lies in the minds of your students’ perceptions:  what they have learned, heard, felt or seen as a result of their experience overtime.  Ultimately your students determine what your brand means.

–demographic information about our students found through modeling; cluster analysis and multivariate statistical technicques;   St Thomas profile:  age 44; HHI over $100k; 87% 4 year degree ; 38% grad degree; 17% some graudate work

–use information (segmentation) to make more strategic decisions; understanding adult learners

–primary objective of the research was to identfiy relevant market segments for non-degree continuing education

–Framework:

adult learners see themselves as customers as well as students; imperative to devleop a research approach consistent with understanding consumer expectations from an external perspective; constructs of customer loyoalty, satsfaction, and expectations become the underpinning of the framework for addressing the issues; if individuals are loyol they will come back time again and refer other people to your product/service/edu institution.

key constructs of the framework include:  preference (institutional brand reputation + curriculum+ instructor reputation); experience (perceived value + recommendation+ curriculum + Instructor + recruitment efforts + registration process + learning experience); choice (preference + experience+ employer influence + location+price+ timing)

–methodology:  qualitative and quantitative; random sampling; past participant sampling; alumni survey; alumni participation in focus group

–segmentation:  attitudinal variables were more insturmental in understanding the overall choice and experience of the student:  improve skills for career change, networking for career change, gain in competitive advantage over peers; enhance resume;  type of quantitative learner:  personal  42% of their students (learn something) vs. career aspirations  8% of their students (movement up the corporate ladder) vs. seekers  31% of their students(not sure why they were coming back to higher ed)

–qualitative learner:   geared towards curriculum; want a professor that understands/teachers  from an adult perspective

–where to spend resources to make sure student is having postive experience and recommend the institution:  content and instructor (teaching style)

–do things that earn media

–how do you make news not just ads;  mascot can be your brand element; use your mascot to make news and engage people;  Take “Herbie (mascot)” on the road to planned stops.   The Herbie Husker Good Will Tour.  Herbie hit the road.

–Herbie went over 1,000 miles in the state of Nebraska.  Great coverage in rural areas:  photos, captions in newspaper (free publicity)

–Handed out posters/flyers; banks/grocery stores and walked Herbie around (had fun).  Reached out to schools asking them if they would be intersted in having Herbie visit for class achievement.

– Buy a lot of gatorade for the mascot as the uniform is hot and sweaty

–Maybe we can do more with this and think creatively and what we hope to get out of it as communicators.

–Share message of what we were doing; solution for low budget:  cost $1300; earned thousands in publicity

2.  believe in strategy- develop strategy through sophisticated approach:  be specific.  do you want to impove communcation?  brand awareness?   emerging markets?

3.  listen to audiences-  any social media campaign should have some attempt to listen to the audience (monitoring campaign/brand awareness);  listen to key audience and build a program based on what you hear from them.  what kind of content would be intersting; how do you want to hear it; format:  podcast, blogs etc.   if you build a social network will your audience respond?

4.  Let them make content-  respond to comment section on website in realtime.  build a feedback loop.  others collaborate and tell your story.

5. Establish measurable criteria- qualitative ways: trend topics, how many people on your social web;  people talking is more important than number of views (video);  use strong influencers

6.  favor relationship and message-  favor relationship ethic and also put your brand in it at the same time.  Always offer content, information, resources.

7.  make your site social-  go below the fold; captive /bold words

8.  become professional-  explore other networks:  NING, Linkedin; make/build your own network

9.  be crreative- ways to make things happen among people; how can I spark conversation that have great sharing potential; achieve convergence

10.  keep it simple

When Tough choices Count:  How to Use Trade off analysis as Part of the market Research Tool kit.  DePaul University talked about web based research:  finding market opportunitites through analysis and methodology.

–Hypothesis

–State objectives

-choose a summary method

-develop survey items

-program the survey into the software

-evaluate the questionaire

-get approval from stakeholders

-pretest survey

-final proof

-launch survey

–Enrollment highlights

–Educational attainment of adults

–State funds for higher-ed operating expenses = $78,527,989,000

–Projections of college enrollments (all levels)