University Business - September 2008 - (Page 48)

MARKETING maximize what he calls its “diﬀerentiation quotient.” He says, “Our goal is to identify messages, and message delivery methods, that are not only authentic, relevant, and ‘on-message’ for our target audience, but diﬀerent in as many ways as possible from the messages used by our major competitors. This level of diﬀerentiation cannot be achieved without competitive intelligence that improves our ability to better convey messages about us, to help us develop messages that more eﬀectively speak against them.” How do you determine your top ﬁve competitors for undergraduate students? According to Bialik, Dominican determined its competitor set by ﬁrst identifying the schools with which it shares admitted students and then computing how often Dominican enrolls those students (its “win-loss” ratio). “A 50-50 win-loss ratio represents a truly competitive situation. If we always win or rarely win against an institution, we are not really competing. We are focusing our attention on the institutions where we win 30 percent to 70 percent of the time,” he says. Pauls explains that North Dakota State uses both data and anecdotes. Nonmatriculant studies ask students what schools they considered and where they actually enrolled. By participating in the National Student Clearinghouse, the university’s leaders receive a list of schools its potential students actually attended. “We enrich these data with anecdotes that are collected through more informal ways,” Pauls says. What kind of competitive intelligence do you routinely gather? Carroll routinely looks at the following data sets for Furman: • Tuition, room, and board • Enrollment • Student quality • Yield rates • Tuition discount rates • Unfunded discount rate • Endowment per student • Alumni giving At Dominican, meanwhile, whether the school is ﬁrst, second, or third choice against key competitors is examined. According to Bialik, the institution’s leaders also seek information on new or discontinued programs. “We routinely visit [those schools’] websites; look at their advertising and promotional materials; talk to or sometimes survey their staﬀ, faculty, and students; and ‘secret shop’ their communications ﬂow.” Pauls adds another dimension: “We ‘We’ve tweaked and reprioritized things as we’ve matured, but who we are is who we are.’ —Greg Carroll, Furman University (S.C.) routinely try to determine what our competitors may be saying or demonstrating more eﬀectively than we are. This helps us identify opportunities we should highlight diﬀerently and/or competencies we should or need to develop further.” How do you diﬀerentiate your institution from its competitors? Says Carroll, “We believe strongly in the concept of ‘know yourself.’ You have to portray who you are as it corresponds to your institutional vision and mission and your strategic plan. Furman’s brand really hasn’t tracked far from where we were a decade ago. What diﬀerentiated us then, still for the most part, diﬀerentiates us now. We’ve tweaked and reprioritized things as we’ve matured, but who we are is who we are. ‘Engaged learning’ is our brand. Within that, we’ve added some new features, redeﬁned some of the tenets, but I don’t see a lot of ‘they’re doing that so we need to be doing that too’ from our end. We do a great job of staying focused.” Pugel says, “Research is the most eﬀec- tive tool for deﬁning ‘distinctive.’ We look carefully at both nonmatriculant and admitted student data. Outside of research, it is all speculative.” Blanton notes that the University of Kentucky is mandated by the state to become a top 20 public research institution by 2020. “As part of our top 20 business plan, our president, Lee T. Todd Jr., charged us to develop an eﬀective brand strategy for the university,” he says. “Our campaign— dubbed ‘See Blue’—attempts to communicate more directly and in a more resonant fashion with targeted students, counselors, and teachers about some of the brand attributes that make UK special. At the same time, we are trying to leverage oﬀ of the long-term athletics success of our institution and transfer that to the academic aspirations, ambitions, and successes of UK. We are thinking of our institution more as a brand—and all that entails—and about its position and perception in a very competitive marketplace.” Diﬀerentiating Dominican, notes Bialik, is primarily about knowing which students are most likely to be successful and then targeting messages well enough, and early enough, to reach them. Bialik says, “Our greatest diﬀerentiators are our students, our faculty, and our campus, and we engage all three in our recruitment process. When we present ourselves honestly and accurately we are more likely to enroll students who will persist and graduate from our school. We work hard to understand why students select us, which ones persist and graduate, and which ones transfer out. To truly diﬀerentiate, we must also know our competition well enough to be able to accurately represent it to a prospective student or parent, even to the point of recommending the competitor school if we believe it is a better match.” Clearly, it’s important to identify your competitor set. Part two of this column will explore more options for diﬀerentiation. 48 | September 2008 universitybusiness.com http://universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - September 2008

University Business - September 2008
Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
Behind the News
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
Human Resources
A Virtual Visit Welcome
Development Directors Speak Out
NACUBO in the Windy City
Facilities Focus
Money Matters
Financial Aid
Endowment Management
Marketing
What's New
End Note

University Business - September 2008