Competitive Positioning

In this issue

• ON STRATEGY: COMPETITIVE POSITIONING
• BASIC MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS PLAN
• A LOOK AT CHANNELS

UPCOMING ONLINE SEMINAR—DOUBLE FEATURE: TOP 10 MARKETING MISTAKES COLLEGES MAKE & MESSAGES THAT MATTER

Please make plans to join us for our next online seminar. It is a double feature: Top 10 Marketing Mistakes Colleges Make & Messages That Matter. It will be held October 20, 2005 from 1:30-3:30 PM CDT.

Please go here for more details.

MAKE PLANS TO ATTEND THE 10TH ANNUAL GENERATING SUCCESSFUL INTERACTIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES

Join us for our 10th Annual Generating Successful Interactive Marketing Strategies Conference where you will increase your knowledge and learn how some of your peers have been successful. You will get to hear presenters from JibJab, Chat University, WebSideStory, Target X, and more.

Please go here for more details.

STAMATS 5TH ANNUAL PRESIDENTS' INSTITUTE ON STRATEGY AND INTEGRATED MARKETING

Designed specifically for presidents, the Stamats 5th Annual Presidents' Institute on Strategy and Integrated Marketing will feature a number of the nation's best thinkers and practitioners. We have taken the "best" sessions from previous conferences, added sessions suggested by recent attendees, and created an unparalleled blend of theory and practice.

Plus you will hear two great keynote speakers: Ronald Ehrenberg, author of Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much and William Massy, author of Planning Models for Colleges and Universities.

Please go here for more details.

ON STRATEGY: COMPETITIVE POSITIONING

Generally, students don't say, "I'm going to go to Youngstown State or I'm not going to go to college." Rather, they say, "I'm going to go to Ohio State or Wright State or Columbus State or," well, you get the idea.

The fact is, students are very quick to compare and consider one college with another, and institutions that fail to recognize this do so at their own peril.

Competitive positioning involves a clear understanding of two concepts: positioning and differentiation. Let's look at positioning in two ways. First, when someone mentions your college name, what is the first adjective they use to describe you? If they say "liberal arts" or "good school" or "friendly," those are the positions you hold in their minds. Or, suppose you say the word "quality" and then ask students to name two or three institutions that they feel hold this position. This is another way to identify your position.

Ideally, you want students to identify and value you with a position you value. As is often the case, however, students do not identify you with any position. Or even worse, they identify you with a position you do not want to hold.

Differentiation involves distinguishing yourself from your competition in ways that are achievable and that students find meaningful. An important reminder here: If you do not differentiate some aspect of your product, then students will differentiate you on price.

The merging of positioning and differentiation is competitive positioning. This involves developing and communicating powerful and meaningful differences between your offerings and those of your competition.

Competitive positioning is a multi-step, sequential process. First, you must identify your competition. It is best to focus on the institutions with which you really compete for the students you need most. Generally, these will be institutions that are more similar to you than dissimilar. Learn everything you can about these institutions. In particular, focus on their image, curriculum, price, place, and promotional strategies.

Second, you need to determine the position you and your competition have in the minds and hearts of prospective students. This involves quantitative, defendable research. In other words, you must identify your target audiences, define the target geography, and begin asking questions.

Third, identify the position you wish to hold. This involves analyzing two discrete sets of data. First, the positions valued by the students in your marketplace. And second, the positions occupied by your competition. Again, this entails systematic research.

As you seek to identify your position, remember:

• Effective positioning must come from the marketplace
• Directly confronting an entrenched competitor's position will almost always fail
• It is very difficult for an institution to hold more than one position at a time
• It is also very difficult for individuals to assign two or more institutions to the same position
• Your chosen position must be realistic and valued by your target audiences
• The position you choose must be significant to the marketplace

And finally, develop a marketing communications plan that will move you to the positions you wish to hold in the minds and hearts of prospective students.

BASIC MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS PLAN

Often we are asked to list the components in an integrated marketing communications plan. To help, consider the plan outlined below. Of course, this outline must be customized to reflect your institution and mission and your competitive environment.

As a reminder, we are defining integrated marketing communications (IMC) as a comprehensive, coordinated, institution-wide effort to communicate mission-critical values and messages in ways that target audiences notice, understand, and respond to. IMC stresses data-driven segmentation, message integration, and evaluation.

With this in mind, here is an outline that might prove helpful:

• Mission statement
• Vision statement
• Planning assumptions
• Situation analysis (prioritized)
  • SWOT or OT
• Positioning statement/brand promise/unique selling proposition
• Prioritized target audiences
  • Matched by benefit segments
• Target geographies
• Prioritized marketing communications goals
  • Brand marketing
  • Direct marketing
  • Internal communication
• Communication action plans (see channel options below)
  • Year one
  • Year two and three to be developed prior to budgets for those years
• Budgets (year one, two, and three)
• Timelines/GANTT charts
• Evaluation mechanism and timeline

A LOOK AT CHANNELS

Effective integrated marketing communications plans keep in mind a very important mandate: one message, multiple channels. As you consider your channel options, remember to include:

• Direct mail (p-mail and e-mail; IM)
• Interactive media including the Web, CD-ROM, DVD
• Advertising (traditional and nontraditional)
• Constituent relations
  • Public
  • High school
  • Donor
  • Government
  • Church
• Media relations
• Special events
• Promotion, sponsorships
• Co-branding
• Publications
• Engaged employees

Keep in mind, of course, that some channels do a better job generating response while others are more adept at helping establish the brand.

STAMATS TUITION PRICING ELASTICITY STUDY

How much can you raise tuition without negatively impacting enrollment? That's the question on the minds of many college presidents, chief admissions officers, and CFOs.

Fortunately, Stamats has the tool to help you answer that important question. It's called a Tuition Pricing Elasticity Study and involves evaluating the series of factors that students (and parents) consider when deciding which college to attend.

Of course, price is a big one. But how big? The Stamats Tuition Pricing Elasticity Study can help you determine:

• The impact different tuition increases/levels will have on enrollment
• The college-choice characteristics and attributes that students and parents value most
• The importance of your brand in the college choice process

For more information on how Stamats can help you fine-tune your tuition, please contact Steve Kappler, Executive Director, Consulting at 800/553-8878 ext. 5126 or steve.kappler@stamats.com.

STAMATS ONLINE SEMINARS

Thursday, October 20, 2005 from 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m. CDT

Double Feature:

Top 10 Marketing Mistakes Colleges Make & Messages That Matter
Presented by Dr. Robert A. Sevier

This online seminar is a double feature, two presentations for the price of one. The first session, The Top 10 Marketing Mistakes Colleges Make, will run from 1:30-2:30 PM Central and the second session, Messages That Matter, will run from 2:30-3:30 PM Central. You get both sessions for the single price of $249 per site!

Top 10 Marketing Mistakes Colleges Make
What are the 10 biggest mistakes made in marketing and recruiting? How do you know if your institution is guilty? How can you avoid making the same mistakes in the future? What are the most overlooked keys to success in recruiting and marketing efforts? This session will address these important questions and more. The top 10 will draw on some actual experiences and examples shared by colleagues at conferences over the last several years. The names, of course, will be changed to protect the innocent.

Messages That Matter: Strategies to Help Get the Word Out
Getting the message across to a busy audience in an overcommunicated society is one of the biggest challenges that colleges and universities face. This highly visual and fast-moving session reviews a handful of critical messaging tools that will help you communicate messages that are relevant, remembered, and repeated.

For more information about the online conference, please contact Brandy Huseman at (800) 553-8878 or brandy.huseman@stamats.com. You can also check out the Stamats Web site at www.stamats.com.

Register today at www.krm.com/stamats.

Cost: $249

10th Annual Generating Successful Interactive Marketing Strategies Conference - October 11-14, 2005

From blogs to podcasting, today's prospective students and their families are embracing the latest technology in their college search. If you don't stay on top of the trends, your competitors will.

How can you maximize your recruitment efforts through interactive marketing strategies? The folks at Stamats and our nationally recognized guest speakers want to show you how.

I hope you can join us to learn how you can put interactive direct marketing strategies to work for your institution.

Keynote speaker is Greg Spiridellis, co-creator of JibJab Media, Inc.

Where:
Holiday Inn Fisherman's Wharf
1300 Columbus Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94133
p. 415/771-9000

Cost:
$449 - Wednesday, October 12 through Friday, October 14 - general conference
(an additional $149 for each optional preconference session - Tuesday, October 11)

Register today at www.stamats.com/events/seminars!

Stamats 5th Annual Presidents' Institute on Strategy and Integrated Marketing - November 1-3, 2005

Designed specifically for presidents*, the Stamats 5th Annual Presidents' Institute on Strategy and Integrated Marketing will feature a number of the nation's "best" sessions from previous conferences, added sessions suggested by recent attendees, and created an unparalleled blend of theory and practice.

Topics include:

• The President's Role in Developing an Integrated Marketing Plan
• Understanding Teens: Presentation of Stamats 2005 TeensTALK™ Study
• Redefining the President's Role in Advancement
• Building a Brand That Matters
• Internal Branding: Winning the Support of Faculty and Staff
• A Resourceful Way to Pull an Integrated Marketing Plan Together
• Understanding and Utilizing Tuition Pricing Elasticity
• Presidential Image-Building: Does It Occur by Plan or by Chance?
• The Critical Connection Among Strategic Planning, Brand, and Higher Education
• Optional preconference: Integration and Building the Senior Team: Working Together Toward the Vision
• Optional preconference: 10 Things a President Needs to Know about Developing a Web Strategy
• Optional preconference: Role of Facilities in Marketing

In addition we have two special keynote speakers:

• Ronald Ehrenberg, author of Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much
• William Massy, author of Planning Models for Colleges and Universities

Ronald G. Ehrenberg is the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics at Cornell University, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI). The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies (USA) Inc. and the TIAA-CREF Institute fund CHERI. From July 1995 to June 1998, he served as Cornell's Vice President for Academic Programs, Planning and Budgeting. He received his BA in mathematics from Harpur College (SUNY Binghamton) and his PhD in economics from Northwestern University.

Ehrenberg is author or coauthor of over 120 articles and of 20 books, including Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much [Harvard University Press, 2000 (paperback edition, 2002]), Governing Academia (Cornell University Press, 2004), Science and the University (University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming) and What's Happening to Public Higher Education (ACE/Praeger, forthcoming). He currently chairs the National Research Council's Board on Higher Education and the Workforce and recently chaired the AAUP Committees on Retirement and on the Economic Status of the Profession and served on the NACUBO Endowment Study Advisory Committee. He also is past president and fellow of the Society of Labor Economists, a National Associate of the National Academies, a member of the National Academy of Education and a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.

Ehrenberg has served as a consultant to faculty and administrative groups and trustees at numerous colleges and universities about issues relating to tuition and financial aid policies, academic programs, faculty compensation policies, faculty retirement policies and other budgetary and planning issues.

Dr. Massy is president of The Jackson Hole Higher Education Group, Inc., and an emeritus professor at Stanford University. He earned tenure as Professor of Business Administration, then moved to Stanford's central administration as Vice Provost for Research and later Vice President for Business and Finance. In 1987 he became a professor of higher education and founded the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research where he worked on education quality, resource allocation, finance, and mathematical modeling of universities. His book with David Hopkins, Planning Models for Colleges and Universities, received the Operations Research Society of America's Frederick W. Lanchester Prize for 1981, and in 1995 he received the Society for College and University Planning's annual career award for outstanding contributions to college and university planning. In 1996 he published Resource Allocation in Higher Education, which introduced the idea of "value responsibility budgeting." His most recent book, Honoring the Trust: Quality and Cost Containment in Higher Education, published in February 2003, presents an action plan for boosting quality without increases in spending. Dr. Massy holds a Ph.D. in economics and MS in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a BS from Yale University.

Where:
Omni Shoreham Hotel
2500 Calvert Street NW
Washington, DC
p. 202/234-0700
($179/night group-discounted rate until 10/1/05; you must ask for the Stamats room block to receive the special rate!)

Cost:
$599 for general conference plus an additional $149 for each preconference session

To register, call 800/553-8878 and ask for Brandy at ext. 2213 or online at www.stamats.com/events/seminars

*This conference is intended specifically for presidents of colleges and universities. Senior staff members are welcome to attend only if attending along with their president. Thank you for respecting this decision.