MARKETING HIGHER EDUCATION A periodic electronic Newsletter to help you market your school, community college, college, or university. Vol. XI, no. 10, October, 1997 -------------------------------------------------- TABLE OF CONTENTS The Impact of Tourism on Higher Education Marketing: a Personal Experience, by Marc Whitt Downsizing: Smart Move or Suicide? by Robert (Bob) S. Topor Key to the Future: A Special Article by Robert (Bob) S. Topor & Professor Liz Pollard -------------------------------------------------- THE IMPACT OF TOURISM ON HIGHER EDUCATION MARKETING (A Personal Experience) By Marc C. Whitt Vice President for Advancement Campbellsville University, Campbellsville, Kentucky PREFACE: Imaginative use of creative ideas is how I preface this article by Marc Whitt, Vice President for Public Relations at Campbellsville University in Kentucky. I admire Marc's abilities to get things done and his thoughtful approaches to marketing his institution. I hope you read this article carefully and think about how you can apply similar historical ideas at your school. Good work, Marc! -Bob Topor, publisher Tourism is quickly becoming one of the nation's fastest-growing industries. States spend thousands and thousands of dollars in order to attract people to visit various historic sites, museums, theme parks and so on. Tourism IS big business. But unfortunately for most colleges and universities, tourism is often never considered to play a vital role in an institution's overall marketing program. Even though fine arts and athletic events attract several hundred people to our campuses each year, we still have not taken the time to investigate the potential tourism can have by luring others who are possibly unfamiliar with our institutions to our campuses. In Kentucky, tourism is a major source of income for this Southern state. According to recent figures provided by the Kentucky Department for Travel Development, 55 percent of all tourists visiting this state come because they wish to see a Civil War site, battlefield or shrine. So in Kentucky, the American Civil War is very big business. All schools should determine their niche in the marketplace. Too many of us seek to mirror what our competition is doing rather than us stepping out (sometimes on faith) and becoming the market leader rather than the market follower. At Campbellsville University, a private, church-affiliated institution of nearly 1,600 students located in rural south central Kentucky, we had such an opportunity to "step out" among the pack and create something exciting that would attract state, regional and national media attention; that would attract people who were really not that familiar with the institution but who could become "partners" with us in our educational pursuits; and that would fit our desire to develop a nationally-recognized and respected academic program. Acknowledging the fact that the university is located in the heartland of Kentucky's major Civil War battlefields and that there was not another college or university in the nation that had an academic center dedicated to the study of the war in Kentucky and the Western Theatre (Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Arkansas, and Texas), Campbellsville University established two years ago what has become known as The American Civil War Institute. The Institute sponsors symposia, preservation efforts, historic research, and literature honors, and is becoming a focal point for Civil War preservation organizations across Kentucky to come together and discuss ways to promote further preservation efforts. Giving guidance to The American Civil War Institute is Kent Masterson Brown, noted Civil War author and lecturer, and a national advisory board of 15 who, collectively, have authored more than 75 leading books on the Civil War. The reputation, alone, of these individuals, has brought about great recognition and interest from other Civil War historians and "buffs." On a modest budget, Campbellsville University's American Civil War Institute sponsored this past summer its first of what will become an annual event-- the Civil War Summer Symposium. This year's topic was "The War in Kentucky." For six days during the last part of July and the first part of August, 120 people from 15 states and a Canadian province came to the campus of Campbellsville University-- most for the first time-- to hear and learn from the nation's leading authorities on the Civil War as well as to tour battlefields, hear period music from a reenactment brass band, and walk through living history encampments and much more. The result-- at the end of the symposium, the vast majority of the attendees, who represented places stretching from Ontario, Canada to St. Augustine, Florida; from Charlottesville, Virginia to Houston, Texas, left excited and wanting more. This group has now connected with Campbellsville University and has formed a bond that is real-- the result all of us seek in higher education for our programs. Before these Civil War enthusiasts left for home at the symposium's conclusion, the majority of them were making plans to attend upcoming symposia the Institute would be sponsoring. Media across Kentucky and the nation have done extensive coverage on the Institute. One national magazine, with a readership of 800,000 people, has already led to tour bus operators, historic societies and church groups calling requesting information about the Institute AND the university. The study of the Civil War is a passion for many in America. And thanks to the efforts of Campbellsville University, its American Civil War Institute is filling a niche not provided by other colleges and universities. For more information on The American Civil War Institute of Campbellsville University, contact the Institute's Web site at www.campbellsvil.edu/cupage/acwi1.html or e-mail Marc Whitt at whittm@campbellsvil.edu.) Marc C. Whitt Vice President for Advancement Campbellsville University ********** NOTICE: As a subscriber to this electronic newsletter, you have permission to reproduce and use this article on your campus. All others please note ©1997, Topor Consulting Group International. Comments about, or requests to reprint should be directed to Bob Topor at topor@marketinged.com. ********** -------------------------------------------------- Downsizing: Smart move or suicide? by Robert (Bob) S. Topor Driven on by corporate examples, a declining economy and a zeal to control escalating costs, many schools, colleges and universities have chosen to downsize staff. It's been happening for many years at some schools as successive waves of cuts and budget "give-backs" nip away at smaller and smaller budgets. Given that, for most schools, the greatest overhead costs are personnel, salary and benefits, a seemingly logical place is to scale back budgets in the personnel line... your salary and salaries of your colleagues. Over the years administrators have grappled with the problem. In some cases, perhaps at your school, technologies have taken the place of people. The pc and so-called desktop publishing have, at many institutions, taken the place of fte's (full time employees.) In some cases decisions to cut personnel have been wise insofar as people's skills have not kept up with evolving technologies. So it has been possible, at some schools, to do more with less by replacing staff with equipment and hiring more highly skilled people at lower salary costs, the combined result is the ability to be able to do more with less. This Darwinian survival of the fittest may be a natural progression in marketing higher education. Or it may not. I am concerned, when out on consulting assignments for example, to find schools that have cut staff to the bone, the result being very ineffective survivors without colleagues to accomplish necessary work, or, in the worst cases, with staff but with little operating budget to do anything! That's kind of like cutting all the ship's sailors, leaving the captain, with no ability to get the lines cast off and the ship's anchor weighed! In some cases, for one school I can think of, staff has been cut in centralized service to become virtually invisible and powerless, while departments have replicated skills on their own. This results in a situation where each department does its own thing with little regard for cross-pollination, marketing synergy, institutional positioning, or for basic communications concerns such as identity and cohesive imagery. The result to the consumer is fragmentation and in-house competition, department against department, with little regard for the parent institution. Can you imagine what would happen if each Sears store gave up corporate identity, took on its own identity, developed marketing strategies, imagery, advertising, pricing strategies and competed with each other? Wouldn't that be silly? In fact, that's what's happening on many campuses today with schools and departments vying against each other! Talk about waste and inefficiency! It's very troublesome for me to find schools who have allowed internal staff to be cut and still expect to survive in an ever-increasing and more sophisticated marketplace. Doesn't it seem that the more logical decision would be to "beef up" internal marketing, communications, news and advancement staff rather than cut that which is your lifeline to success? People on sinking ships do not throw away lifesavers. But it seems to me that many in higher education are doing precisely that. I have seen some major institutions, most recently Stanford, scale their communications staff back with little seeming regard for the future. I'm suggesting that may be a mistake. But who will listen? I know one institution, for example, that has cut back significantly in its public affairs staff to the point that, should a serious problem occur, the school would be ill prepared to deal with it effectively. It is unable to put together campaigns to improve its image, despite failure to dominate the marketplace. That, to me, makes little sense. It suggests that key administrators in higher education do not understand marketing principles, and more importantly, do not understand the results marketing can achieve on their school's behalf. It's understandable. Many key administrators and institutional leaders migrated to their current leadership position at times when marketing was not that necessary (Was there ever such a time?). In the 50s and 60s higher education was similar to health care... a seemingly undiminished market and escalating pricing that seemed to get public acceptance. We have seen where that has led! Ask your family doctor how she/he feels things are today in health care! So what can you do to get a better understanding on the part of your school's key faculty and administrative leaders? Ironically, education is the answer. Helping your school's leaders learn about marketing, marketing research and how it is applied in contemporary higher education is a key idea. I suppose, for that reason, we find many more key leaders, presidents, VPs, Headmasters, Board members and Deans subscribing to this electronic newsletter. I have been getting more and more assignments from schools building marketing teams and creating marketing plans. If you want to join them call me at (650) 962-1105. I'll be happy to try to help you. One reason we include success stories (like Marc Whitt's at Campbellsville) in this electronic newsletter is to encourage those who do not understand marketing's potential to get information about it. As well, our annual admissions survey is a good way to get others thinking about how marketing might improve their work. We don't have all the answers (who does?) but we do try to make every effort to assist you by giving you "ammunition" to stir others to action. Having worked behind higher education scenes for many decades I know how difficult and frustrating that can be. Books we write and publish, such as "No More Navel Gazing" are designed to carry similar messages. We get lots of positive feedback from readers that tells us we often succeed in delivering important marketing messages to those who most need it. I believe my best contributions to help you are the two books available for downloading from this web site (Marketing Higher Education -A Practical Guide" and "The Complete Guide to Focus Group Marketing Research for Higher Education"). You can make unlimited number of copies for use on you campus. If you use those resources and put together a hard hitting campus marketing committee you are on your way to success. ***** Written by Bob Topor, owner of Agora web site, publisher of this electronic newsletter and author of many books about marketing higher education, lecturer and one of the Stanford founders of PowerAnalysis, a marketing research application technique for higher education marketing communications. ********** NOTICE: As a subscriber to this electronic newsletter, you have permission to reproduce and use this article on your campus. All others please note ©1997, Topor Consulting Group International. Comments about, or requests to reprint should be directed to Bob Topor at topor@marketinged.com. ********** Bob Topor Topor Consulting Group International e-mail: topor@marketinged.com -------------------------------------------------- SPECIAL OFFER For Marketing Higher Education newsletter subscribers ONLY. Download the updated second edition of Bob's "classic" book, Marketing Higher Education - A Practical Guide, directly from his Web site at http://www.marketinged.com Special Deal: As a subscriber to this newsletter you have permission to make copies and distribute on your campus... a great aid for marketing committees! Make as many copies as you like (limited to your campus). You can get this book from the Home page on Bob's web site. It costs $40 (U.S.) It is easy to download to your computer, then you can reproduce it in your print shop or make photocopies. The first edition of this book has been one of CASE's best selling publications and has been used around the world. If you have questions call Bob at (650) 962-1105. -------------------------------------------------- Key to the Future: A Special article by Robert (Bob) S. Topor & Professor Liz Pollard What will MARKETING higher education "look" like in the future? This is an issue I have pondered for a long time. What should we anticipate? How will it work? Who will do it? What form will it take? This article explores some of the futuristic ideas I have been thinking about. Marketing higher education will rely on INFORMATION. The focus of marketing will rely on computer gathered and communicated information. Information will be the engine driving higher education marketing. This information will be used to fuel admissions (recruitment), development (fund raising), alumni activities, publications, news, public relations, community relations and many other conventional areas of activity. Where will this information come from? Who will be responsible for gathering it? Let me daydream here and project into the future.... TAKE IT TO THE BANK! What if this department, part of a college or university administration, were dedicated to gathering and disseminating information? I believe this kind of function could be integrated into educational activities... kind of information libraries! What a radical idea! (said smugly). This function would be split into two parts; educational activities and advancement work. This would be the "brains" of the institution, where strategies and activities which occur are born. The information source, called "infobank" would be a central resource.... one to which many would turn to support activities they are planning and executing. OVERDUE! I admit this may be seen as kind of "science fiction-like" from this point in time. And I admit this idea is an outgrowth of what has been the central facility on your campus right now. It is the LIBRARY. Watch the evolution of the library on your campus to find how this will happen. I am asking my partner, Professor Emeritus Elizabeth Pollard to add a section to this article because I believe Liz, with her background as librarian and leader in computer applications for information gathering will have some wonderful ideas to put as adjunct to this article. Her thoughts and ideas will be important to this marketing prediction. In fact, this is why I have formed an alliance with Liz (because I believe she holds the key to the marketing higher education future). Here is how I visualize this working: Professionals in advancement offices and admissions (enrollment management) will look to the infobank to get valuable INTERNAL information about the curriculum, current students and EXTERNAL information about prospects, channels of information, and other factors we all know about now. Once armed with this information, strategies and implementation plans will naturally follow. At the same time, the infobank will be serving faculty and students in their educational endeavors. The infobank will become, whether it wants it or not, the brain source on campus. Smart marketers will realize the value of this source. Of course, consultants (like me) will develop their own infosources commercially and make them available to institutions which, for one reason or another, are reluctant to participate or ones without the means and ability to keep pace with this activity (marketing higher education). I assure you that this new process will resemble the most incredible "roller coaster" you can imagine. It promises to be a wild ride....lots of ups and downs! TIMETABLE? When will this happen? It is literally happening now. Information systems are being developed as you read this. You can plan on throwing away all the old baggage (manuals, books, methods) you have brought along to your job. The revolution promises to change everything we now do in higher education. This is NOT an early warning signal! It is already too late to decide if you want to participate. If not, I hope you like packing groceries for a living or driving a UPS truck! The change will be incredible. How can I say this with such assurance? Quite simply, I look around me here in Silicon Valley and see what people are working on. It does not take a "rocket scientist" to image the applications. I do not pretend to be an expert as you know....just a student of this interesting marketing niche (higher education). I'll now defer to Professor Pollard to allow her to expound her ideas about this subject. (Let's see if she agrees!) PROFESSOR POLLARD: I could not agree more with Bob. The future of marketing higher education, as of higher education itself, will lie in information storage and retrieval. Even more important, communicating that information between departments will be crucial! The format in which the information is transmitted will be critical to its efficient utilization! The possibilities, in fact, are so vast, I can cover only a few examples here! EXISTING DATABASES - There are already large databases of information stored in computers by nearly every part of a college or university, beginning with Admissions, going right on through every phase of administration, including the library, and none of them speak to each other in most cases! What is more, they are accessed on most campuses primarily through printed reports, not through electronic formats which lend themselves to further manipulation! The data in these "infobanks" should all be instantly accessible from a single workstation, armed with appropriate password permission for that workstation's need to know! INTEGRATION - What is needed among all these databases is integration. Integrated online library systems are making use of that principle on most campuses now, but they need further integration with other areas of campus. Why not use them as models? Registration records, for example, can be downloaded to some library systems now and manipulated to produce student records for circulation purposes. Those student records are linked to item records whenever a student checks out a book, and unlinked when the book is returned. If the book is overdue, the fine record is maintained for a specified length of time, and then if unpaid, is transferred to financial records which may affect the student's future registration. This is integration in database functions! Why not make that function automatic? Why not do the same thing with other information banks all over campus which rely on data from each other? The typical objections now on most campuses have to do with privacy and security, but that is manageable with careful preparation and programming. SECURITY & INTEGRITY CONCERNS - Where data is sensitive, password security by individuals and by position functions can be used to ensure that only those parts of the data are dispersed that should be, WITHOUT revealing individual identities. Valuable information can be made available WITHOUT the capability to change a record, since workstations at a distance work with a COPY of the information anyway. POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS - Marketing departments on campus need access to student applications and registration records for demographic purposes. This data can be mined to find out what socioeconomic groups are enrolling, and from what geographic areas. One could also determine from this data which groups are being retained to graduate and which do the best. Admissions could use that information to focus its efforts on the most promising prospects! Administration as a whole could use that same information to analyze the college's offerings and determine where the institution's strengths are, and marketing can use those results to highlight the areas where their attention should be concentrated, as well as what groups of potential students will be interested! On some campuses, printed reports are produced from the various databases now to analyze such details at the request of various departments and divisions. Why should those reports not be available online at the click of a button? Wouldn't it be handy to combine that data with demographics from large commercial databases to produce strategic databases that would enhance marketing efforts? THE LIBRARY'S ROLE - Most college libraries have inexpensive access to commercial data sources NOW, as well as to the Internet, but they are seldom utilized by other campus departments, although the benefits should be obvious! Most college librarians are trained to mine the data available in these sources to the best advantage. If your campus lacks this kind of access, isn't it time some planning and preparation is done to provide it? Your administration, faculty, and students need access to these same information sources if they are to compete! COMMERCIAL & INTERNET SOURCES - If library access to these sources really ISN'T feasible at your institution, there are commercial research services which can provide the same data, and the results can often be delivered by e-mail, fax, or other convenient methods in a format easily plugged into existing databases. Engaging such a service, or of a consultant who can investigate the possibilities and lay out a cost effective plan for you should quickly pay for itself! What I'm advocating here is more cost effective use of existing computing resources and pooling of information through linking or integration. With this kind of collaboration, an institution should be able to maintain all the data and channels to data it needs in one central source and integrate the functions and access to it of every office on campus. The workstations in those offices will no longer sit unused when this happens, and the whole institution will benefit from it! topor@marketinged.com Higher Education Marketing Evangelist Web site: http://www.marketinged.com lpollard@smokesig.com Smoke Signals Enterprises Web site: http://www.smokesig.com ********** NOTICE: As a subscriber to this electronic newsletter, you have permission to reproduce and use this article on your campus. All others please note ©1997, Topor Consulting Group International. Comments about, or requests to reprint should be directed to Bob Topor at topor@marketinged.com. ********** -------------------------------------------------- NEW! "The Complete Guide to Focus Group Marketing Research in Higher Education" book is now available for downloading to your computer... Bob Topor's 55-page practical guidebook for running focus groups is now available for downloading. As subscriber to this electronic newsletter you have permission to purchase this book and make unlimited copies for use on your campus (copyright free). Regular cost is $32 in printed copy. You can purchase it for only $25. It is a great guide for how to do focus groups and has been Bob's best selling book ever! Don't miss this special offer! It's easy to order (secured credit card) and download... just log on to Bob's web site at http://www.marketinged.com and find it on his home page. Questions? Call Bob at (650) 962-1105 or e-mail him at topor@marketinged.com -------------------------------------------------- Original posting: 10/30/97 Marketing Higher Education Newsletter is published by Topor Consulting Group International (http://www.marketinged.com). Newsletter posted by WEBB Internet Marketing & Consulting (http://www.firstchapter.com). copyright 1997 Topor Consulting Group International