Know Your Client Roles

One of the most challenging parts of being the "outsider" comes when trying to move a project forward within the political realities of a client's organization. Whenever multiple departments are involved in a project, you will have competing priorities and conflicting agendas coloring every decision along the way.

So, what's a poor marketing schmuck to do? One tactic we use regularly is to find out early on who all of the key player in a project will be and get a broad sense of their roles. And when I say broad, I mean really, really broad -- as in, there are only three major roles that are relevant to the success of a project and a single person/department can potentially occupy more than one of those roles.

The roles are: helper, resource, judge. That's it. A helper is someone whose job it is to make sure the project gets finished. A resource is someone who controls some asset that the project needs in order to get finished. A judge is someone who has veto power over a particular part of the project or multiple parts/the whole thing.

Once you know who the players are and what role they'll play, you can begin to make note of the 'limits' of their power. For example, say your helper (usually your client within the institution) is in the Admissions Department. He or she has power over large swaths of what happens in admissions, but may have no power over anything that happens in IT.

Alternatively, say you need photos taken for a project and rather than budget $8K for a photoshoot you accept the offer of, "Hey! So-and-so in marketing can do the photos!" Now So-and-so is a resource.

Once you have an overview of the role everyone will play and you know how far their influence extends, you'll be able to plan for different project phases appropriately -- and include/drop features based not only on their value to the project, but also on the extent that their ultimate adoption or deployment represents a threat to the project's completion.

Colleges and "the Downturn"

The Chronicle reports today that Moody's sees tough times ahead for Colleges and Universities. (If you're a subscriber, here's the story. If not, Boston.com has a couple of examples of the kinds of issues facing the college market here...)

Of course, Moody's has been wringing it's collective hands over the Higher Ed market since mid 2007, so who knows how seriously to take their dire predictions. That said, what does the admissions/enrollment/marketing crew at a College do when budgets are cut and there is an immediate need for revenue. Here are some thoughts:

1. Cancel some meetings and get people on the phone. For most small schools, a breakthrough year consists of 10 to 12 more students. You can get these students by spending less time talking about getting them and more time actually building relationships with them... so, it's time to divvy up your best admitted students (or applicants -- since this is only the beginning of January) and start calling them.

2. Bet on your winners. Most colleges and universities have a strong reputation for a few key fields. This means that the faculty who are *not* in those programs spend a lot of time griping about how unfair it is that such-and-such programs undeserved reputation for excellence overshadows their own nascent outstandingness... blah blah blah.

   Ignore all of this. When times are tough, sell what you're known for and promote the heck out of the programs that people know the most about. You can build up your little known program in The Social Ecology of Eastern Europe when you're a little more flush with cash again.

3. Get cool faculty involved. Faculty are a pain in the rear. I know this because I was one. But every school has a few dynamic personalities in the classroom -- and you need to enlist their aid with some special 'classes' for visiting students. Rather than have kids 'sit in' on a class that's already in session, ask your rock star faculty to do a class just for visiting kids and their parents. Make it high participation and interaction.

Do these three things and you should see a positive impact on tuition revenue this fall. You might not single-handedly pull your institution out of a financial morass, but you will be closer to making your numbers and cash-flow positive.

The *real* danger of marketing on Facebook, or Twitter, or anywhere for that matter.

 A recent post at Inside Higher Ed got me to thinking about... well... social media and the world of Higher Education. The authors run down a series of risks associated with marketing on Facebook and combine that with a nice "horror story" about an inept attempt by some college-oriented youth marketing group to trick kids... Check it out for yourself if you want the background.

Anyhow, I think that it might be time to take the 'debate' about the value of social media, web sites, and maybe marketing in general and clarify what the genuine, no-foolin', real risks of any new marketing activity might be with special attention to things like Twitter, Facebook, and whatever other web place has caught your fancy. Here they are...

1. You're boring and/or irrelevant. This is the primary risk associated with any and every marketing endeavor. It is the main reason that many, many firms rely simply on sales and never deploy much marketing at all. Marketing is about a story or a narrative that will place you in the consciousness of the buyer. Period. That's all it is. If you don't have enough interesting stuff to say, then there's no story there worth hearing. (Forget the concern about whether or not your story is true -- we can talk about that later.) So, if you want to succeed in marketing (especially on the web), then don't be boring, irrelevant, or both.

2. You're lazy. This is a real problem that we all struggle with. Sure, we go to meetings and talk about working -- a lot -- but a lot of the time, we simply tell ourselves that we are 'overstretched' and have no more bandwidth. That's cool. I understand and embrace my inner sloth. But in the world of marketing -- especially in the current era of relationship heavy marketing with lots of feedback -- you can't afford to be lazy about your projects. Nor can you afford to think that someone has a 'magic bullet' out there. Basically, marketing is hard work. Not because it requires brilliance, but because it requires discipline. If you're going to be on Facebook or Twitter or whatever, then you need to be active on a daily basis. So, take on only those marketing projects that you can commit to (or have sufficient minions to do your bidding).

3. You're insecure. Let's face it -- all this talk about how marketing is so different these days and how much power the consumer has is basically nonsense. The consumer always had the power. What's new is that it's easier for you to hear what consumers think about you/harder to hide than in the past. And frankly, lots and lots of places (certainly colleges and universities) are inherently conservative institutions in that they really don't like to change what they do and they don't like hearing about how people think they should change. The status quo is a super powerful force (so powerful that we still refer to the original concept in Latin -- think about it). And next to sheer laziness, nothing preserves the status quo like fear of being found out. When you market, you're inviting people to find you out -- and insecure companies don't want the feedback.

Don't get me wrong. Using social media can take a lot of effort and requires some new ways of thinking. But the real dangers are the same ones that have always been there. They're just a little easier to see.