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Stamats QuickTakes

Insights into Research, Strategic Planning, and Integrated Marketing for Colleges and Universities by Dr. Robert A. Sevier, Senior Vice President at Stamats (quicktakes@stamats.com)

Vol. 7, no. 5: The Times They Are A Changin'

In this issue.

STAMATS WEBINAR - TeensTALK™!

Stamats will be hosting a 90-minute Audio/Web conference on April 22, 2004 @ 1:30pm CST. TeensTALK™: A Review of College-Bound Teen Trends, Attitudes, Lifestyles, and Knowledge, presented by Steve Kappler, will review our latest TeensTALK™ results (completed March 2004) exploring the fascinating world of today's college-bound teens.

To register for this $249 program, please visit https://www.krm.com/stamats.

ON STRATEGY: THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN'

George Keller, noted strategist, gave one of the keynotes at the November 2003 AMA Higher Education Conference in Miami. Though some months have passed, his words, as always, are still relevant. His topic, six trends that will influence the way we market higher education. Here is the gist of what he said:

  1. Birth rates in the United States are decreasing. Population increase is at 1.89 percent today. Only world populations that continue to experience positive population growth are Middle Eastern and African countries. Still having three to 10 children and population growing in spite of the epidemic of AIDS (in Africa).

    Implications for higher education: Increased competition because of decreasing size and make-up of the potential U.S. market. More international interest in U.S. education.

  2. Becoming a geriatric society. We spend nine times more on services for the elderly than we do for children. As the population continues to age, government will spend more tax dollars on social security, Medicare, and other services aimed at the elderly.

    The elderly is more wealthy and active than ever before. People over 65 have an annual income that is 27 percent greater than that of earners under age 65. A dean at MIT coined the term, WOOPYS, well-off older people, to describe the new elderly. Life expectancy continues to increase and an average American can expect to live to be 76 years old. This is 30 percent greater than life expectancy prior to WWII.

    Implications for higher education: More grandparents are paying for college for grandchildren. They are looking for learning opportunities, are traveling (elder hostels), starting book clubs, volunteering, and engaging in community activities like never before. They are becoming a more important part of university life. Hope College, UNC-Asheville, Iowa State, and other institutions are reaching this elder market in creative ways. Housing developments close to the institution, volunteer opportunities to assist with student remediation, encouraging participation in cultural events, and other programs for the elderly are beginning to appear across the country.

  3. Immigration is coming from cultures that are very different from the immigrants that arrived in the past. Some 85 percent of immigrants now come from Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa. This new group of immigrants is changing the incoming population of students who require attention to special needs. The country is becoming more diverse.

    Implications for higher education: "Lumping" groups together in order to create support for marketing efforts is dangerous. Latinos are not necessarily a homogeneous group. It is likely that Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Cubans, Guatemalans, and others lumped into the Latino group, have different patterns. Colleges and universities need to become better at discerning these patterns and developing programs to better reach groups of immigrants. The industry needs to become better at explaining our ways, for example, the practice of annual giving is foreign to many cultures who feel that they have paid for an education. They ask, why is the institution still asking for money? You need to be better at explaining how financial aid works…and other services that are unfamiliar to the newest immigrants. There are millions of first generation residents that need special instruction and guidance if institutions are to attract them.

  4. American family is changing. The traditional family with two parents is becoming rarer. Divorce rate continues to rise and 32 percent of children born in the United States are born out of wedlock. The formative influence of the family is no longer there for many children across the country. As a result, there is a new youth culture with music, drugs, dancing, suicide, child abuse, eating disorders, obesity, and other related ills.

    Implications for higher education: This has increased costs and has caused confusion among institutions regarding tuition discounting; problems related to effects of the lack of social learning in the home; remedial education has tripled; more students work part and full time; more counseling on campus required; and retention programs designed to keep at risk groups in school.

  5. The U.S. population is becoming increasingly inter-racial, inter-ethnic, and inter-religious. One-third of all U.S. born Hispanics and Asians are marrying outside of their own background. One third of Jews have gentile spouses today. We are characterized as a Creole society. It is becoming increasingly difficult to manage diversity and affirmative action programs. For example, Tiger Woods is Asian, Black, White, and American Indian.

    Implications for higher education: As society continues to become more mixed, it will become increasingly difficult and probably less useful to identify people by traditional definitions.

  6. Demographic changes are creating new socioeconomic class structure. Becoming a nation of two classes, those households earning more than $150,000 a year and those people living in poverty. The middle class is eroding and there has been an explosion of upper-middle class households, primarily from dual income earners.

    As a result, the products the middle class purchased are also disappearing…Reader's Digest, Holiday Inn, and Howard Johnson's. Wal-Mart is the largest retailer; the two fastest growing newspapers are the National Enquirer and the Wall Street Journal.

Thanks to Deb Snyder for helping me assemble these comments.

WELCOME TO STAMATS!

Lynn Donham
Senior Client Consultant

Stamats is pleased to welcome Lynn Donham to our growing staff of consultants.

Lynn, who joins us from Stein Communications, has extensive experience in developing successful publications, interactive media, and alumni campaigns. Lynn holds a B.A. in Journalism from University of Georgia and has taken graduate courses at Emory University and Georgia State University. Her work has achieved several awards including CASE Gold, Silver, and Bronze; Phoenix Award-Public Relations Society of America; and the American Graphic Design Award. She also has served as a Board member for the American Institute of Graphic Arts-Atlanta , University of Georgia Alumni Magazine, and the International Association of Business Communicators, Atlanta Chapter.

If you would like to contact Lynn directly, she can be reached at lynn.donham@stamats.com or 404-373-9832.

THE TRUTH BEHIND RESEARCH
By Barbara O'Malley, Principal Consultant

Recently I sat in a meeting in which a vice president said, "I've never learned anything from marketing research that I didn't already know." I've heard this opined before on other campuses and remember thinking this is either arrogance speaking…or it could be true. Either this person just thinks he knows everything…or research really didn't reveal anything new.

After thinking about this for several days, I came to this. Without research, it's guesswork. It's like throwing a dart at a dartboard and hoping you hit the bulls-eye. You never really know if what you've done worked, because you have no baselines and no data to back it up.

The point of conducting research is to establish baselines on which goals can be developed, plans can be built, action plans implemented, and results measured. It's the correct way to go about marketing and the process is documented in countless beginner-to-advanced marketing books. It's just how you do it—if you take pride in doing it right. It's just how you do it—if you are accountable for the dollars you spend and the marketing activities you conduct.

This is a challenge to us all to make sure that those on our campuses understand why we conduct research. Here's how research supports the marketing planning process:

Integrated Marketing Planning Steps

  1. Lay the foundation - understand the current situation
  2. Conduct a situational analysis
  3. Identify the target audiences
  4. Settle vivid descriptors
  5. Refine target geography
  6. Develop marketing goals based on mission, vision, and research findings
  7. Draft marketing action plans
  8. Assemble and de-bug the plan
  9. Execute and evaluate

Marketing planning is a circular process with planning and implementation taking about one year. After one year, evaluate and see if you are meeting your goals and make adjustments to your marketing action plans if necessary. This takes you back to #1, Lay the foundation.

With that said about why to conduct research; it's also important to confront how to do it more effectively. I find it hard to believe that someone could learn nothing—not one new thing, from any research report, regardless the topic—unless keen, insightful questions were not asked.

This is a challenge to us all to make sure that our surveys are full of enlightened, insightful, well-written questions that really will offer some new key learnings.

Five Tips for Writing Effective Survey Questions

  1. Be brief. After about ten minutes, participants' interest wanes. Resist the temptation and professional peer pressure to add more questions and lengthen the survey. More is not always better. It just takes longer to complete the survey and you risk losing the participants' interest and keen answers.
  2. Stick to "need-to-know" questions and not "neat-to-know" questions. Why are you conducting the survey? If the question will not specifically help you achieve your research objectives, delete it.
  3. Begin with broader questions at the beginning of the survey, and then narrow the focus. This allows participants to ease into the topic, collect their thoughts, and provide more focused answers to the more specific questions.
  4. Use conversational language. You'll want the questions to be easy to understand, so make sure you use language that your respondents will understand. Be direct so that they can answer easily.
  5. Ask only one question at a time. This helps to maintain clarity and provides you with more usable research findings.

To determine how research can help you, contact me at barbara.omalley@stamats.com to discuss this article further.

ARTICLE ON DECISION-MAKING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

I am writing an article on helping colleges and universities do a better, more timely, job of making decisions.

Rather than a "why it is so tough to make decisions" approach, I am interested in strategies and tactics that seasoned administrators have developed to help them achieve the best possible decision in the shortest possible time.

If you have developed such a strategy, and don't mind sharing it, please drop me an e-mail (bob.sevier@stamats.com). Any insights by April 30 are especially welcome.

Thanks. Bob

INTERACTIVE MEDIA CONFERENCE

Summer Institute: Web Communications & Strategies Conference - A Medley of Web Issues … From Marketing/IT Collaboration to Campus Security. Join Scott Hall, Interactive Media Director of Stamats as the keynote presenter. He'll be presenting, How Marketing and IT Can Work Together.

July 12-14, 2004 at Salisbury University in Salisbury, MD www.salisbury.edu/webconf/.

NEW CLIENTS

JOB OPENINGS

Job listings available online at Higher Education Careers.

If you have a short position description (100 words or less) you would like posted, please forward it on to brandy.huseman@stamats.com. There is no charge for this service.

COPYRIGHT, DISTRIBUTION, AND PERMISSION

Stamats QuickTakes is published by Stamats and is distributed to our clients and colleagues in higher education at no charge. Contents (c) 2004 by Stamats. Please forward copies of Stamats QuickTakes in its entirety to colleagues. Visit QuickTakes for past issues.

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