Friday, February 26, 2010

Welcome To Stage 2!

In an earlier post, I discussed the stages of IMC, as defined by Donald Schultz. Here in the "new and improved" marketing department, we have spent most of the last year figuring out how to get our parts to work together (web, radio, tv, print, on-line, etc.). We've made really significant progress in this regard. Most of the time, we are talking to each other and figuring out how to effectively use all of the tools in our marketing and communications tool kit.

It looks like we have a major breakthrough with IER (Institutional Effectiveness and Research) as they have developed some reports in Argos which will allow us to easily run queries on the students in all of our programs. Without this information, we have been often guessing when it comes to understanding our student profiles. That is changing. Our marketing will be informed by data. We'll be able to understand the important segments within each market, and target everything we do accordingly. Welcome to Stage 2! We'll be doing a much more significant implementation of CRM in the next several weeks. We'll have the data we need so that our CRM launch will be supported by real intelligence. These are exciting times.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

It's All About Relationships

There is a good book I'm reading called "Socialnomics" by Erik Qualman. Here's a quote from the introduction: "...today, we are in the early stages of yet another far-reaching revolution. This revolution is being driven by people and enabled by social media."

We are starting to transform how we think about communications and marketing in the age of social media. Sometimes we can focus on the technology, and that would be, I think, a mistake. Ultimately, it is not about the technology, it is about people and relationships. What is happening today is that the barrriers to communication are rapidly being dismantled. In the old days, if you wanted to communicate with large numbers of people, your options were limited and expensive (direct mail, radio, tv, print ads, etc.). Today, anyone with access to the internet can set up a Facebook and YouTube page and communicate with the world (or, more importantly, some well-defined segment of the world). Now, it is not about how deep your pocketbooks are; it's all about the relevance and creativity of the message. In the old days, the gatekeepers controlled the conversation; today, not so much. Here at LCC, for example, students are using our Facebook page to talk with other students about issues and concerns here on campus. That presents, of course, some challenges. Not everything they say will be accurate or positive. Our choice is simple - be a part of the conversation, or not. We no longer decide if they will or will not have a conversation.

If we do this well, the payoff is huge - better communication and stronger relationships. Let's do it well.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Convergence and Marketing at LCC

It is always interesting to watch words come in and out of popular use in management theory. “Paradigm” and “synergy” are two examples which immediately come to mind. A word I have been hearing lately is “convergence”. According to Wikipedia (the authoritative source on all things trendy) “Convergence is the approach toward a definite value, a definite point, a common view or opinion, or toward a fixed or equilibrium state. In mathematics, it describes limiting behavior, particularly of an infinite sequence or series.” Branding is a lot about convergence – getting all the disparate parts of our communications, marketing, public relations, and student experience to converge around some very essential core brand values.
And, here in marketing, we are working to integrate all the tools in our marketing tool kit to converge in ways that make sense. One of the best examples of this is how we are starting to use video in our marketing and communications. A good video can reside in multiple locations – the LCC web site / program pages, our YouTube channel, and on LCCTV. All of these can help to build traffic to the other (though this may be an example of synergy, I like convergence better, and I’m sure not going to call this post “synergy and marketing at LCC”). Once we tie CRM into this equation, the potential for really effective marketing and communications is amazing.
I’m looking forward to seeing how far we can converge and synergize in the next six months. We are going to do some big time paradigm-shifting; should be fun.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Social Media and LCC


In the past eight months, LCC has made significant strides in how we are using social media sites - Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. We have gone from having no social media presence to having 1600 fans on our Facebook page, and a very active, very high quality YouTube page. But, we are still in the launch phase with respect to these tools. In addition to enhancing our LCC Facebook page, and growing the number of fans there, our next big step is to establish Facebook pages for many of our programs and initiatives. The marketing department needs to take a leadership role in assisting programs as they work to understand and leverage these new community-building tools. For social media to become a vital part of our communications plan, we need to think differently about marketing. It is not about pushing a message out. It is about building relationships and entering into conversations. Our students are way ahead of with respect to their comfort level with these tools. In addition to becoming a data-driven marketing department, over the next several months, one of our goals in marketing is to become truly proficient in the use of social media. Ultimately, it will lead to stronger relationships and more cost-effective communications for the college. Connecting social media and our CRM platform is going to be a lot of fun. I'll discuss CRM in an upcoming post. If you have recommendations regarding our social media plans, please let me know. The richer the conversation, the better the outcome.

Friday, February 5, 2010

We want your input!

This is an open thread to get input on anything we are doing in marketing - what you like, what you don't like, how we could do things better. Feel free to comment on our web site, billboards, print ads, movie theatre ad, online ads, radio station, tv station, and social media initiatives. We really appreciate your thoughts. Its okay to let us know if you don't like something we have done. It is particularly helpful if you can let us know why you don't like it.

Thank you!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

The Stages of IMC

Integrated Marketing Communications and Branding

This post is going to be a little bit more "technical" in that it summarizes the stages an organization goes through to develop a integrated marketing communications process and culture (and ultimately, build a strong brand). Don Schultz at Northwestern University is the primary author behind this. Here at LCC, we are in the first stage of IMC. We'll be moving into stage 2 in the next few months. Your thoughts and comments are always appreciated!

Lucian

There is a process through which brands are built and maintained over time. That process is normally referred to as Integrated Marketing Communications.

Integrated Marketing Communications is a strategic business process used to plan, develop, execute, and evaluate coordinated, measurable, persuasive brand communication programs over time with consumers, customers, prospects, and other targeted, relevant external and internal processes. (Shultz and Shultz, page 20).

An effective brand is the result of a well constructed and well executed integrated marketing communications process. It is virtually impossible to have one without the other.

It has been proposed that organizations committed to integrated marketing communications are at one of four stages of development.

Stage 1: Coordination of Tactical Communications Efforts
Finding 1: Integration requires a high degree of interpersonal and cross-functional communication within the organization, across business units, and with outside suppliers. Integration cannot be driven by formal policies and procedures alone.
Finding 2: Organizations are taking charge of the integration process themselves rather than looking to ad agencies and other suppliers.

Stage 2: Redefinition of the Scope of Marketing Communication.
Finding 3: Organizations gather extensive information about their customers, using primary and secondary market research sources as well as actual customer behavioral data, and use that information in the planning, development, and evaluation of communication activities.

Finding 4: Best practice organizations create a variety of feedback channels to gather information about customers; they then use this customer feedback and share it through the company.

Finding 5: One of the most difficult challenges of integration is aligning internal practices and processes with external communication programs.

Stage 3: Application of Information Technology

Finding 6: Leading best practice organizations maintain a greater number of data sources, and their marketing communication personnel have greater access to the data for planning marketing communication programs than do the sponsor organizations.

Finding 7: Best practice firms are more likely to use finance-based approaches to targeting and segmentation.

Stage 4: Financial and Strategic Integration

Finding 8: The role of the marketing communication department is perceived quite differently at partner companies than at sponsor organizations. Marcom departments at partner companies more often have bottom-line responsibilities and a more prominent role in strategic planning and new product introductions than do the same groups in sponsor firms.

Finding 9: Most organizations use a variety of tools to measure the effectiveness of marketing communication activities; however, relatively few incorporate financial measurement into the evaluation process.

Finding 10: While organizations may claim to be customer focused, relatively few have grappled with the strategic and organizational implications of such a focus.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Another step in a positive direction

This is an exciting time to work in communications and marketing. It seems like every day there are new tools and applications designed to facilitate better, faster communication. Over the past several months, college communications have moved forward on several fronts - YouTube, Facebook, Twitter are being actively used; we made our first set of "Robo calls" just a few weeks ago. We are using the electronic signs, radio and tv stations, and the college web site to promote all the good stuff happening here at the college.

I just attended a conference on interactive 3D technology. As you know, LCC has an i3D theatre and lab, both for students who need to learn to use this technology, and to assist faculty in developing i3D learning objects for their courses.

To understand the potential impact of this technology on education, think video games. Though I am not a big "gamer" (beyond an occasional cow race on Wii), we know that this is huge with many 10 - 30 year olds. I don't think it takes too much imagination to appreciate that the more we can make learning enjoyable, interactive, and engaging, the faster students will learn. Would you rather memorize a chart with the body parts of a frog, or build a frog as a virtual lesson? Though an interactive 3D game may not always be as effective as the real thing, it often can be the next best thing to being there. What if you could learn about D-Day as an Avatar marine landing at Normandy? The possibilities are limitless.

The bottom line is pretty straightforward - better, faster, deeper learning.