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).

This is what I call Bob's scale of marketing association. It graduates from the lowest level of marketing association to the highest. This can be used for many purposes...admissions, alumni development, fund raising, image development, retention, etc. In higher education marketing each market segment requires thoughtful and coordinated marketing management.

Once you identify the target audience, you must decide what response is expected. The ultimate response an institution looks for, of course, is an ultimate commitment to the institution, the highest level of association!. But commitment is the result of a long process of client decision making. The institution needs to know where the target audience currently stands.

A current or potential client may be in one of six stages with respect to your educational organization: awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction, or commitment. Let's examine each stage (state of mind).

Awareness. How aware of the institution is your target audience? The audience may be completely unaware of your institution. The audience may or may not recognize its name. Or the target audience may know something about your institution. If most of the target audience is unaware, your job is to build awareness-or perhaps even name recognition. This calls for messages repeating your institution's name. It calls for constant repetition at every available opportunity in every available way-speaking, writing, electronically, printing. Building awareness takes time and requires constant effort, especially when communications are directed to new audiences or when old audiences change. Building awareness requires consistent messages. Delivering conflicting messages results in self-imposed fragmentation.

Knowledge. The target audience may be aware of your institution but may not know much about it. What is it? What does it do? How can it help me? An effective communications response to this situation is to transmit key information through various forms and media. Image perception is important. This image needs periodic testing to determine its accuracy and validity.

Liking. If the target audience knows about your institution, the next question is, "How do they feel about it?" Imagine a scale:

dislike very much dislike somewhat like somewhat like very much. If the target audience views your institution unfavorably, you need to find out why and develop marketing communications that will create favorable feelings. If, of course, the unfavorable view is rooted in real inadequacies of products (i.e., curricular programs and offerings), a communications/marketing campaign will not do the job. The job then is to improve programs and communicate their qualities. Effective marketing calls for "good deeds followed by good words." One cannot reverse the process!

Keep this in mind: the best way to kill a BAD product is to market it!

Preference. The target audience may like your institution but may not prefer your services to others. Your services may be among several others acceptable to the client. In this situation you need to promote your institution's quality, value, performance, and other positive attributes. You can check success by measuring or surveying the target audience to see if preference for your institution has changed.

Conviction. A target audience may prefer your institution but may not develop conviction. It's your job to convince the target audience. Building conviction is a difficult task. It requires the coordinated efforts of administration, staff, and faculty.

Commitment. A member of the target audience may have conviction but may not be committed and ready to participate. He or she may be waiting for additional information, may plan to act later, and so on. A communicator's job is to lead the client to take action. In the commercial sector, this would be called "closing the sale." This is the final step in client acceptance.

The six stages can be grouped into subgroups:

• cognitive (awareness, knowledge)
• affective (liking, preference, conviction)
• behavioral (commitment).

This article is available for use at your institution IF you are a subscriber to Marketing Higher Education e-newsletter.

Both books, and others, are available for purchase on Bob's site by easy (secured credit card) download by going to Bob's Bookstore and following the link to the "books" section, or click the link here:

...you're confused about where to start, how to organize, what to include, organizational communications strategies and other complexities involved?

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