Clutter... the worst enemy of brand building?
One of the most popular AdAge articles so far this month (as measured by how many people have sent it by email to their friends) is a report on the impact of huge numbers of ad messages bombarding people every day... and how ad agencies are essentially ignoring the declining impact of their advertising and producing more ads to bombard people more frequently in both traditional and new places.
The article, "Caught in the Clutter Crossfire: Your Brand," is at http://adage.com/article?article_id=115873
The ad industry, from the creative to the media placement side, is in a tight spot these days. After all, profit is in no small part driven by frequency and duration of ad campaigns. But the companies who pay for these campaigns are getting more and more interested in measuring the "engagement" they produce. The old bit about knowing that only 50% of marketing efforts are effective but not know which 50 percent has less and less meaning these days.
What does this mean for colleges and universities working to recruit students?
The need for very careful targeting of usually scarce dollars is even more important now than ever before. The main tenet of direct marketing is alive and well: the better you can profile your audiences (defined as those most likely to enroll, not who you wish might enroll in a perfect world), the more successful your marketing efforts are likely to be.
This holds true for traditional students, for adults students, for any type of student you want to earn your degree.
That same direct marekting practice will help you build your brand where you most need to build it. Very few colleges and universities truly have the resources to launch and maintain a comprehensive brand building campaign to enlighten the general public about the mission and merits of the institution. For most schools, that means paying primary attention to audiences that are already key elements of your strength before diverting brand building efforts in new directions.
- Are you really sure that there is no more room to grow enrollment by building a stronger brand identity where you are already known?
- Are you really sure that your present conversion percent from inquiry to enrolled student can't get any better than it is now?
The "Crossfire Clutter" concept means that your marketing efforts are more likely to bring new benefits when they are directed at people who already know who you are and are open to learning more. Those folk are less likely to simply ignore you when something flits past their ears or eyeballs that they haven't ever heard of before.
Consider signing up at AdAge for regular email newsletter to follow along with the dilemma of the marketing industry. it just might help you guide your own internal marketing discussions in a more effective direction. You can do that at http://adage.com/register.php