Marketing Strategies to Keep Institutions in Lockstep with their Customers (Part 1)

Marketing has seen a tremendous transformation in the last few decades. We have come a long way from the days of grassroots marketing, limited to the street block a local shop was on, to building national and international brands to now influencing the entire customer lifecycle and experience. On this journey, we have become smarter and better.

Higher education is no different than any other in this regard.

If you ask education marketers today about the scope of their involvement, you will notice it encapsulates aspects of creating and delivering value, staying in continuous communication through multiple channels and guiding the rest of the organization about the changing needs of the customer.

The breadth of involvement is a rather tall order, but enter the world of technology and analytics and the job becomes less daunting. You have a student who jumps across channels; you have a solution called a correlation model, a lift model or an attribution model. You have a certificate or a degree-seeking student who becomes an alumnus and then may come back to you for furthering his or her education; you have a solution called a nurturing or drip campaign. You have a student who shares his or her experience; you have a solution called social analytics, and you know who’s saying what, who’s listening (or not) and how many generations each conversation carries.

This phenomenon is not just limited to higher education; it applies to any organization that interacts with its customers. Organizational functions can be grouped into two categories: “sensory” and “motor” functions.

1. “Sensory” functional units

These units pick up activities or trends displayed by the customer. For higher education institutions, a few examples of such units are recruitment and marketing, enrollment and advising. For non-educational businesses, some examples are sales, customer service and marketing.

2. “Motor” functional units

These are primarily responsible for implementing the signals the sensory units pick up. Some examples are information technology, finance, accounting, operations, product development, manufacturing and so on.

Each sensory function has its own set of tasks, as well as a set of inputs to the motor functions it depends on for implementation. Similarly, each motor function has its own set of responsibilities for operating efficiently, and also a set of responsibilities to relay information back to the sensory functions — this is called the feedback loop. Unless a functional unit recognizes both sets of responsibilities, it’s difficult to truly walk lockstep with the customer.

This is the first of a two-part series by Ramendra Singh exploring strategies higher education institutions can put into place to keep pace with their students-customers. In the second part, Singh expands on the specific features of sensory and motor marketing functions. To read the final installment, please click here.