Ep 81: Quick Take: The Three T's Behind Better College Marketing

College marketing takes more than announcing the launch of a new program and hoping students will show up. In this Quick Take episode, GradComm CEO Cheryl Broom shares her strategic framework for developing successful college marketing campaigns: the Three T's of College Marketing.

Cheryl explains why effective campaigns first identify the right target audience, second build messaging around the transformation students are seeking, and third choose the tactics that will best reach them. From high school students and entry-level workers to adult learners, career changers, veterans, and first-generation college students, this episode explores how colleges can move beyond generic messaging and create marketing that speaks directly to the audiences they want to reach.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why identifying the right target audience is the foundation of effective college marketing 
• How different programs attract different types of students 
• Why transformation should be at the center of your college marketing message 
• The importance of making the student the hero of your marketing message
•  How to choose the right marketing tactics based on your audience and goals

Thanks for listening!

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Higher Ed Conversations is hosted by Cheryl Broom, CEO of GradComm, a marketing and branding agency specializing in community colleges and public education.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Cheryl Broom: Hi everyone. I'm Cheryl Broom, CEO of GradComm and host of Higher Ed Conversations, and I am here with you for this month's mini podcast or quick take. And I had the great opportunity this spring, just about, gosh, two months ago, to give a workshop to faculty, to staff, and to administrators who are working on some amazing work-based learning programs in the Los Angeles region.

[00:00:36] And we dove deep into how to market these programs. So it was a fantastic workshop and had a lot of fun, great attendance, and I, I wanted to teach them 'cause these were individuals who don't necessarily have backgrounds in marketing and whose jobs don't include marketing, but who have grants to market some really cool new programs.

[00:00:58] So I wanted to go back and kind of teach the basics of marketing from a college perspective. And as I was doing this, I thought, gosh, this would be a great mini podcast. So for some of you out there listening, this may be kind of old news, but I'm hoping that you might. Get something out of it. Maybe something will spark an idea or change the way that you think about some of them, the ways that you market programs, and for others who are listening that might not have a great marketing background.

[00:01:27] Please listen because I hope that this will guide you as you decide how to market programs and where to spend your marketing dollars. So the title of the workshop I gave was the Three T's of College Marketing a Formula for standing out and being Chosen. And for those of you that have come to my workshops, they started with a really fun game.

[00:01:52] I try to make these interactive. So we played a great game that talked about some of the challenges that are facing higher education, and some of what I covered in that game is actually in last month's quick take. So. If you're interested to hear what we're up against in terms of demographics and changing student populations and trust in higher education, go back to last month's podcast 'cause I gave a lot of those statistics and that analysis as part of that podcast.

[00:02:18] So fun game. We played that kind of set the tone and also set the tone that more and more colleges are finally recognizing that they can't just create new programs and expect people to show up on campus. They actually need to market them. Back when I started community college Marketing back in like 2005, I think it was.

[00:02:39] I always have to think about when was my older son born? Now, back up a couple years. Marketing budgets were teeny, teeny, teeny tiny. And our entire marketing strategy was mailing the class schedule. That was it. We didn't do much else, and we really thought like, oh, if we offer a new program, we offer a new service.

[00:02:56] People will just come. They'll just show up. 'cause we're so great. And we've learned that that doesn't happen. You actually have to inform the public. You have to tell them, you have to announce programs, you have to get people excited. You know, you have to market. And we've seen, I've seen a great change, a fantastic change in believing in the power of marketing and investing time and resources to telling your story.

[00:03:19] I see nationwide, there's data that shows that most colleges, and this includes community colleges and four year colleges, spend about $400,000 annually on marketing, and that comes out to about. 500 to $1,500 per student. And if you're a community college out there listening to this, you're not unique.

[00:03:43] That's not, that's not a abstract number for community colleges either. I'm seeing most community colleges spend about 500 to $750. Per student on marketing and the ones that aren't, are usually rural and are small or maybe are ones that are super, super, super urban and just their location drives marketing and maybe they don't spend that much overall.

[00:04:08] So that said, what we dove into in this workshop that I wanna cover today are the three Ts of marketing. And I'm sure marketing has taught a million different ways, but this is the easiest way when I am asked to come up with a new campaign, a new tactic, a new tagline. This is what guides us here at GradComm.

[00:04:31] The first thing that we want to figure out, especially if we're marketing for programs, is the target audience. So that's your first tee is your target. Obviously, different programs need to target different people. The student who is interested in a mechatronics program is going to be different than the student who is interested in a phlebotomy program, and you are going to be marketing to two different populations.

[00:05:03] If you are doing brand general marketing for your college, maybe you're gonna have a general audience. It's the entire community. But usually you should be targeting specific people with specific messages. So target audiences can be teenagers. Those are high school students who are, are looking to explore their future veterans.

[00:05:26] Those who served in are building their next chapter. Men looking to start advance or change their careers or women pursuing educational opportunities to advance, start or change their careers. Parents. Entry level workers, career changers, mid-career professionals, first generation college students, current healthcare workers, online learners, video game players, rural learners, small business owners, lifelong learners, students with disabilities.

[00:05:56] I mean, we can go on and on and on and on. Maybe your target audience are people who love to work with their hands. We did some marketing for a mechatronics program and when we interviewed the faculty on what type of student is interested in coming to your to your program. We found out that it's a lot of veterans and it's a lot of mechanics, and it's people who want to do work where they're working with their hands.

[00:06:18] That's a target audience, okay? It's not everybody in the Silicon Valley. We wanna find people who have been in the military, who have worked in some sort of mechanic job, and people who are moved and are interested in working in careers where they can work with their hands. Okay? So target audience ask, who's interested in this program?

[00:06:37] Who do we wanna market to? Who is our target audience? That's our first team. We know your team is stretched thin. AI was supposed to help, but because it doesn't know your college, it's actually wasting your time not saving it. That's why we created Amy, powered by GradComm's deep expertise and custom trained on your college's brand.

[00:06:58] Amy helps your team think deeper, create faster. And stay on brands so you can stay focused on what matters most helping students succeed. Stop wasting time with AI that doesn't get you. Come. Meet Amy at GradComm. Dot com slash amy. Our second tee is around messaging, and that's transformation. So you have to remember that you are not the hero of the student's story.

[00:07:28] The student is their own hero. Your college is the guide, and if you want to dive more into how to do messaging around this concept, I really recommend you read Donald Miller's Building a Story Brand. It's a fantastic book and they actually offer workshops and trainings a on the StoryBrand methodology, but I really love their idea around.

[00:07:52] Your institution, your product is not the hero of the story. The consumer or the student is the hero, and you are the guide. So your role is to get them through their journey. Your role is to help them transform themselves. So you have to ask yourself. What is the student up against, right? You have to define the transformation.

[00:08:13] Who was a student now? Who were they before they found your college? What are they looking for? What problem do they have that you are going to guide them through to the end to solve the problem? So. You know, in, in the mechatronics example, maybe it's somebody who's not satisfied with their career, who wants to make more money.

[00:08:32] They love working with their hands, but they're not making enough money right now, and they really want to do something local in the Silicon Valley that's gonna give them an opportunity for a really transformative career. Okay? So that's their problem. Now, how are you gonna help them solve that problem, and who will they become after?

[00:08:49] Who are they gonna be when they're done working their way through the program? So that's the message, that's the transformation. So your message isn't $46 a unit, great, greatest faculty, close to home, affordable. No. Those are expectations they already expect you to have. All of that. They wanna know what are you gonna do for them?

[00:09:09] How are you gonna transform them? So that's the second tee. Target audience and transformation. The third T is one that everybody wants to jump to first because it's the fun one and that is, I bet you can guess are you gonna guess? And that's your, that is your targeting options. So that's your tactic. So we had your target, we had your transformation, and now we're gonna have your tactics.

[00:09:35] So tactics. What are we gonna do? Are we gonna do billboards? Are we gonna do buses? Are we gonna do Facebook? Nobody's on Facebook. Switch to Instagram or Instagram's for my mom. Now, switch to TikTok. That's your tactic. I, I can't tell you how often people wanna jump to tactic because that's fun. That's easy.

[00:09:53] That's the easy part of this, because once you know who your target is, and once you know how you're gonna transform them, then you can find where they're hanging out and what they're doing and how you're gonna spend your money reaching them. So if you. Stuck on this part of the marketing journey. We have so many resources here at GradComm.

[00:10:11] We just finished up a whole series of blogs on different target audiences and, and what tactics are best to target them. So jump onto our blog page: gradcomm.com. And you can dive deep into that. So every different target audience has different tactics to best reach them and different tactics perform differently.

[00:10:32] That's a lot of times why you might need an expert to help with your media buying 'cause there's thousands of options out there. So that was my kind of one hour workshop in a nutshell. Of course the workshop was a lot more fun 'cause it was interactive and I had examples from Western Governors, from National University, and from some other colleges that are really doing this well.

[00:10:53] So my three T's of marketing, target transformation and tactic. If you wanna learn more, please reach out to me at cheryl@gradcomm.com. I absolutely love giving workshops. I make them fun. I love keynote speaking. If you are looking for someone to help your organization dive deep into marketing strategies or just wanna have a conversation, please don't hesitate to reach out.

[00:11:18] And until next time.