Less selling, more relationships

When did the process of marketing higher education become more about the ‘sale’ than about actually cultivating relationships with students?

Smaller schools don’t have a choice but to engage in these personal relationships and it’s an advantage they use to pick off achievers who might look elsewhere if they felt comfortable or welcomed.

I was reading a blog post that effectively said, “Yes, the prospective student wants to hear from a real student, but not everyone’s comfortable buying a $150,000 product from a 20 year old. (Like parents.)”

When did the college search process become akin to shopping for a new car? I’ve been guilty of using this language about salesmanship, but it’s usually just reflective of the transition. It’s just serves to further legitimizing the shift from some holistic form of admission to an “enrollment management” mentality that places bean counting over projecting an authentic message of “our mission is more than about dollars and cents.”

Higher education isn’t the only field afflicted by this, as much of what dominates the health care discussion these days is an ability to pay, rather than focusing on getting people better.

But back to higher ed. I’m tired of hearing about new forms of “marketing” that we can “use” to reach students. I recognize that you have to make sure that your message is being heard. You need to ensure that the people you’re trying to reach can hear you or else, you’re wasting time and valuable resources for naught. But there’s a big difference between helping a young person choose  a good school and pushing them to buy a used Miata with too many miles and no warranty.

In our ever constant desire to push the boundaries and to “reach” more of our audience –parents, students and alumni — that we don’t encroach on their right to ignore us. Not every message will be heard, not every campaign will resonate. The best thing we can do is use experience to figure out what might reach our audiences, target them effective and then do the follow-on work to discover whether our appeals really worked or not.

But the language of sales would be best left behind. College isn’t a Cadillac.

“Be All You Can Be” marketing

The military is an marketing tour de force. I mean, at their core, they have the worst product to sell of any marketer outside of funeral directors. They sell war.

Kids these days sure like playing war games on their Playstation 3, but the vast majority aren’t interested in fighting in them.

With such an unsavory product, the services have to find other ways to convince people to serve. You know all of this. What you don’t know, is how much colleges and universities can learn from these marketing tactics.

1. You don’t need a million dollar marketing campaign to be an effective recruiter.
Military recruiters create personal relationships. You’d be amazed what recruiters will do, to get a kid to join the service. Help them get drivers licenses, bank accounts, buy them food and more. It’s not about lying to kids, as they do get a bad rap for that. (And for some, there’s a reason for that tag…) But the bottom line here is creating a connection and making them feel like they belong, well before they get a uniform and rank.

The recruiting commercials, video games and web site might bring them in to talk, the power of persuasion comes once they’re at the recruiting stage and the sale begins.

2. Your key influencers are the success stories you generate.
Even if someone has no one close to them who has ever served, having people say “I was in the military and then I had [insert success here]” is a powerful message. How many folks, especially these days are able to say that about their alma mater. The ones who have such stories are probably somewhere being successful and aren’t coming into contact with the people of whom would be influenced by these stories.

For every sad story of someone who dies in the horror of war, there are dozens more who are integrated into society, able to tell the story of how serving their country meant something to them.

These days, college kids graduate and lament their ballooning student loan debt and how they learned more outside of school than they did when they were attending classes. Military veterans talk about discipline, motivation, self-respect and personal growth.

I’m not saying that college should be like the military, but it’s clear that we’re failing at something.

3. The sale doesn’t end after they’ve matriculated.
For military folks, the hard part is the beginning. As you grow in your career, you’re given opportunities to prove yourself in real world environments and your newfound confidence is tested early and often. You feel like you’re good enough, because you’re basically tested to believe it.

For college kids? It’s a mixed bag. The “you get out of it what you make it,” adage applies here, but we can do a better job of providing students with support once they’ve reached campus. I know lots of schools are thinking about this more and more, but, there is still a great sense of alienation and loneliness that sets in from being in an environment that these days, resembles high school far more than a pre-professional growth opportunity.

4. Never be afraid to change it up.
People scoffed when the Army abandoned its longtime slogan “Be All You Can Be” and went for an Army of One. Folks thought this was heresy. The Air Force has gone through strange marketing conversions over the past few years and all the while, the Marines seemed to keep chugging away with their same campaign that’s worked well for them. (The Few. The Proud.)

But one thing that’s been consistent is not a failure to adapt to modern times. The services have bigger budgets than most colleges and universities and unparalleled access, sure. But they’re not afraid to use the resources at their disposal to change their approach, to reflect a change in the times.

Meanwhile, we have a lot of colleges and universities that are still doing the same things they did recruiting in the 1980s, that they’re doing now, only with better computers and printers that aren’t dot matrix.

So, are there any other ways we can truly change the way we market in higher ed? Or am I completely off my rocker?