This week we learned about chapters 5, 6, 8, and 12 from Brand Media Strategy. We continued to work on developing our Central Communications Platform for our College of Business campaign. We have been primarily focusing on research and will begin to actually develop a solid plan in the coming week.
Chapter 5, "Insight Over Analysis", talks about a change in the way that data is used in marketing. In the past, mass media strategies were effective because of the small amount of media channels. The majority of the population could be reached by TV, radio, and print ads. However, the global market has changed significantly and there are now many channels with which consumers view their media. For this reason, marketers have to be more specific with the markets they want to reach, so that they can determine specific insight on their target market and deliver their message efficiently to the consumers most likely to buy their product. Media communications today use brand understanding, culture, category, and media to develop their brand media strategy and then use this strategy across multiple channels. Consumer insights are important for both media planners and account planners. Account planners use the insight to help creative teams decide what to say, while communications planners determine how and where to say the message. This strategy is helpful for our campaign because we will be unlikely to be able to reach all of the CoB's target markets (potential students, parents, current students, employers, guidance counselors, alumnus). Instead, we will have to pick a few that will be the most likely to help us reach the goals put forth by the client (increased enrollment, increased retention). However, as stated by class guest Katie Farrell, our message should still be applicable across all markets and be able to be used throughout all channels, even though we will make decisions about where to actually execute the message. We have decided to focus on prospective students and parents, since they will have the highest effects on enrollment and freshman, current students who will affect the retention rate. We will be using Simmons and Prizm to gain more insight into these groups. We are also utilizing the College Research data provided in Kodiak to gain a more specific knowledge of how many high school seniors will be entering the market as well as information on the CoB retention among other data points. In addition, we have more specific data on how many students will attend private schools, 4 year schools, etc which helps narrow down the market even more. The brand media strategy insight development process will help us collect the necessary insights. An example of an insight that we have already obtained is that the majority of students attend a college that is within an hour and a half of their home. This helps us determine that we will want to focus on students within that radius of WNEU to get the best results. Our team also decided to gain insight by asking current students to list the first three words that come to mind when they think of the CoB.
The next chapter we looked at was Chapter 6, "1+1=3". This chapter was focused on word of mouth and consumer conversations. This is very important to the success of a brand because consumers are more likely to trust a friend, family member, or colleague than the company selling a product. In addition, advocating for a brand actually creates loyalty in the consumer. This chapter looks at using advertising to advance word of mouth and visa versa. Word of mouth or "word of mouse" has become even more important because of the internet and social media. This allows consumer comments and conversations to reach a larger audience and exponentially increases the impact on the brand. This is an important chapter for our campaign because the campaign has little to no budget capacity. Word of mouth is a potentially free way to get a message out. Even if we do use money to create some advertisements we will have to make sure that they encourage consumer conversations and are the most effective possible to persuade the client to spend the money. Brand Media Strategy suggests listening to generate brand conversation by setting up google alerts. I think this is a great idea and we will definitely do it. I also think that we should monitor social media. We can use tagboard to help with this as well as just searching hashtags on the various social media channels. Brand Media Strategy also suggests engaging your true fans. This relates to discussions about passive and active loyalists in a brand. We will want to pinpoint the active loyalists and use them to get a conversation started with our target markets. This may include current students, alumnus, or even employers who love to hire WNE students. The case studies in this chapter show how out of the box thinking and strategic planning can help a message go viral, so this will be something we will have to think about moving forward.
We also read chapter 8 this week, "Unlocking Moments of Receptivity." Receptivity training is "identifying the moments of places consumers will be more receptive to the messaging." In the case of the CoB, we may want to determine when high school students first begin looking for colleges to increase awareness. In addition, the client mentioned that they "get students" when they actually come to campus, meaning that increased tours would be beneficial to enrollment. For this reason, we would want to determine when students begin taking tours so we can send them an ad or information about our tours at a time that they will be most likely to actually want to take a tour. We will also have to determine where students are most likely to collect their information (ex. mailers, internet, etc.). Receptivity is about understanding how the message is received, which relates to engagement and how the consumer interacts with the message. The book listed four main factors that influence engagement; (1) the brand offer or brand itself, (2) the appeal and impact of the message itself, (3) the mind-set of the consumer, and (4) the context of the message: how and when it is delivered. These are all things that we will have to take into consideration during out campaign. However, we will look at this in the execution stage of the campaign. The book then went into detail about different receptivity tactics. Contextual planning will be helpful for our campaign because it is when the consumer is in the right mind set to purchase a product ("moment of aperture"). It will make the most sense for us to advertise to high schoolers who are looking to attend higher education. Situational Advertising deals with correct timing, like I talked about earlier with the tours. The book mentioned some interesting statistics on the best time to advertise online. It stated "early evening was the best time of day for all age groups and that younger audiences paid more attention as the day progressed." This will be relevant to any social media messages we put out. We will also want to start determining passion points within our target market. I do not think that branding inside content would make sense for higher education and would be much more expensive than would be worth it. Finally, tapping into consumers' relationship with media and determining how consumers consume media will help us determine the best ways to reach our audience.
The final chapter from Brand Media Strategy we went over this week was chapter 12 "Measurements and Metrics." This is mainly about determine metrics with which to analyze campaigns, prove accountability, and in many cases to prove the usefulness of marketing. In the case of our campaign, we will not only have to convince the client to spend money, if we decide to use any tactics that require a budget, but we will have to convince them that our team is the best option. We have to prove that we are the team that will deliver the best results. There are some metrics that have already been determine, such as amount of inquiries, applications, acceptances, students enrolled, and retention. However, we must determine marketing objectives that deal with specific metrics that we believe we can deliver on. For example, their has been an average annual growth rate of 12% in inquiries among the College of Business. A marketing objective may be to increase inquiries by 14% in the next year, which shows growth. The increase in inquiries should lead to increases down the rest of the funnel. The chapter also talks about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which should quantify the communications goals, in addition to determining how effective the brand media strategy is. The following chart is very helpful because it pinpoints which KPIs are most effective at the different stages of the consumer pathway. In this campaign, we are focusing on the first 4 steps of the consumer pathway, so we will need to decide, which KPIs make the most sense for our campaign. The book suggests to only focus on a few KPIs. I think the ones that make the most sense are Brand Awareness, Brand Attribute Levels, Quote Requests, and Purchase Volume/ Value.
The College of Business will be able to track the success of the plan in various ways. They will continue to track inquiries, applications, acceptances, enrollment, and retention. In addition, they can utilize analytics tools built into Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. In addition, they have a CRM system that tracks email click rate, open rate, length of time on website, etc., which may prove helpful depending on the tactics used in our campaign.
Beyond the book, we watched various videos and read a few articles. The PCM Article talked about different kinds of products/ services and whether they were high/low risk as well as if it was a functional tool or an expressive toy. This determines whether a central or peripheral route of persuasion should be used to advertise the product. For example, a yellow product (low risk/ expressive toy) will use a peripheral route of persuasion and focuses more on how the ad makes you feel than the product. On the other hand, a white product (high risk/ functional tool) uses a central route of persuasion which focuses on the product and offers a lot of information. We talked about where college would fall in this chart. It has high involvement (informational), but also has hedonic and transformational components, meaning it would most likely fall somewhere in the middle of the two routes of persuasion. This means we will have to show qualifications, but also make an emotional connection to potential consumers to have the most success.
A final thing that I wanted to mention in this reflection was talked about in the out of class session in relation to the consumer decision journey. I created my own version of the journey based on our discussion, in terms of WNEU to show how the journey will apply to our campaign.
This shows us the important touch points that we must influence in order to obtain the goals of the client. For example, we will need to make an emotional connection with the students to keep them coming back after semester 1 and 2 and therefore increase retention. For each of these touchpoint we also have specific data given to us by the CoB, which will give us even more insight.
Chapter 5, "Insight Over Analysis", talks about a change in the way that data is used in marketing. In the past, mass media strategies were effective because of the small amount of media channels. The majority of the population could be reached by TV, radio, and print ads. However, the global market has changed significantly and there are now many channels with which consumers view their media. For this reason, marketers have to be more specific with the markets they want to reach, so that they can determine specific insight on their target market and deliver their message efficiently to the consumers most likely to buy their product. Media communications today use brand understanding, culture, category, and media to develop their brand media strategy and then use this strategy across multiple channels. Consumer insights are important for both media planners and account planners. Account planners use the insight to help creative teams decide what to say, while communications planners determine how and where to say the message. This strategy is helpful for our campaign because we will be unlikely to be able to reach all of the CoB's target markets (potential students, parents, current students, employers, guidance counselors, alumnus). Instead, we will have to pick a few that will be the most likely to help us reach the goals put forth by the client (increased enrollment, increased retention). However, as stated by class guest Katie Farrell, our message should still be applicable across all markets and be able to be used throughout all channels, even though we will make decisions about where to actually execute the message. We have decided to focus on prospective students and parents, since they will have the highest effects on enrollment and freshman, current students who will affect the retention rate. We will be using Simmons and Prizm to gain more insight into these groups. We are also utilizing the College Research data provided in Kodiak to gain a more specific knowledge of how many high school seniors will be entering the market as well as information on the CoB retention among other data points. In addition, we have more specific data on how many students will attend private schools, 4 year schools, etc which helps narrow down the market even more. The brand media strategy insight development process will help us collect the necessary insights. An example of an insight that we have already obtained is that the majority of students attend a college that is within an hour and a half of their home. This helps us determine that we will want to focus on students within that radius of WNEU to get the best results. Our team also decided to gain insight by asking current students to list the first three words that come to mind when they think of the CoB.
The next chapter we looked at was Chapter 6, "1+1=3". This chapter was focused on word of mouth and consumer conversations. This is very important to the success of a brand because consumers are more likely to trust a friend, family member, or colleague than the company selling a product. In addition, advocating for a brand actually creates loyalty in the consumer. This chapter looks at using advertising to advance word of mouth and visa versa. Word of mouth or "word of mouse" has become even more important because of the internet and social media. This allows consumer comments and conversations to reach a larger audience and exponentially increases the impact on the brand. This is an important chapter for our campaign because the campaign has little to no budget capacity. Word of mouth is a potentially free way to get a message out. Even if we do use money to create some advertisements we will have to make sure that they encourage consumer conversations and are the most effective possible to persuade the client to spend the money. Brand Media Strategy suggests listening to generate brand conversation by setting up google alerts. I think this is a great idea and we will definitely do it. I also think that we should monitor social media. We can use tagboard to help with this as well as just searching hashtags on the various social media channels. Brand Media Strategy also suggests engaging your true fans. This relates to discussions about passive and active loyalists in a brand. We will want to pinpoint the active loyalists and use them to get a conversation started with our target markets. This may include current students, alumnus, or even employers who love to hire WNE students. The case studies in this chapter show how out of the box thinking and strategic planning can help a message go viral, so this will be something we will have to think about moving forward.
We also read chapter 8 this week, "Unlocking Moments of Receptivity." Receptivity training is "identifying the moments of places consumers will be more receptive to the messaging." In the case of the CoB, we may want to determine when high school students first begin looking for colleges to increase awareness. In addition, the client mentioned that they "get students" when they actually come to campus, meaning that increased tours would be beneficial to enrollment. For this reason, we would want to determine when students begin taking tours so we can send them an ad or information about our tours at a time that they will be most likely to actually want to take a tour. We will also have to determine where students are most likely to collect their information (ex. mailers, internet, etc.). Receptivity is about understanding how the message is received, which relates to engagement and how the consumer interacts with the message. The book listed four main factors that influence engagement; (1) the brand offer or brand itself, (2) the appeal and impact of the message itself, (3) the mind-set of the consumer, and (4) the context of the message: how and when it is delivered. These are all things that we will have to take into consideration during out campaign. However, we will look at this in the execution stage of the campaign. The book then went into detail about different receptivity tactics. Contextual planning will be helpful for our campaign because it is when the consumer is in the right mind set to purchase a product ("moment of aperture"). It will make the most sense for us to advertise to high schoolers who are looking to attend higher education. Situational Advertising deals with correct timing, like I talked about earlier with the tours. The book mentioned some interesting statistics on the best time to advertise online. It stated "early evening was the best time of day for all age groups and that younger audiences paid more attention as the day progressed." This will be relevant to any social media messages we put out. We will also want to start determining passion points within our target market. I do not think that branding inside content would make sense for higher education and would be much more expensive than would be worth it. Finally, tapping into consumers' relationship with media and determining how consumers consume media will help us determine the best ways to reach our audience.
The final chapter from Brand Media Strategy we went over this week was chapter 12 "Measurements and Metrics." This is mainly about determine metrics with which to analyze campaigns, prove accountability, and in many cases to prove the usefulness of marketing. In the case of our campaign, we will not only have to convince the client to spend money, if we decide to use any tactics that require a budget, but we will have to convince them that our team is the best option. We have to prove that we are the team that will deliver the best results. There are some metrics that have already been determine, such as amount of inquiries, applications, acceptances, students enrolled, and retention. However, we must determine marketing objectives that deal with specific metrics that we believe we can deliver on. For example, their has been an average annual growth rate of 12% in inquiries among the College of Business. A marketing objective may be to increase inquiries by 14% in the next year, which shows growth. The increase in inquiries should lead to increases down the rest of the funnel. The chapter also talks about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which should quantify the communications goals, in addition to determining how effective the brand media strategy is. The following chart is very helpful because it pinpoints which KPIs are most effective at the different stages of the consumer pathway. In this campaign, we are focusing on the first 4 steps of the consumer pathway, so we will need to decide, which KPIs make the most sense for our campaign. The book suggests to only focus on a few KPIs. I think the ones that make the most sense are Brand Awareness, Brand Attribute Levels, Quote Requests, and Purchase Volume/ Value.
Beyond the book, we watched various videos and read a few articles. The PCM Article talked about different kinds of products/ services and whether they were high/low risk as well as if it was a functional tool or an expressive toy. This determines whether a central or peripheral route of persuasion should be used to advertise the product. For example, a yellow product (low risk/ expressive toy) will use a peripheral route of persuasion and focuses more on how the ad makes you feel than the product. On the other hand, a white product (high risk/ functional tool) uses a central route of persuasion which focuses on the product and offers a lot of information. We talked about where college would fall in this chart. It has high involvement (informational), but also has hedonic and transformational components, meaning it would most likely fall somewhere in the middle of the two routes of persuasion. This means we will have to show qualifications, but also make an emotional connection to potential consumers to have the most success.
A final thing that I wanted to mention in this reflection was talked about in the out of class session in relation to the consumer decision journey. I created my own version of the journey based on our discussion, in terms of WNEU to show how the journey will apply to our campaign.
This shows us the important touch points that we must influence in order to obtain the goals of the client. For example, we will need to make an emotional connection with the students to keep them coming back after semester 1 and 2 and therefore increase retention. For each of these touchpoint we also have specific data given to us by the CoB, which will give us even more insight.
Excellent reflection. You are clearly on top of the material and learning a lot. Nice connections to the project.
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