Well according to respected Public Relations and Social Media professional David Scott (2011): “To succeed on the web under the new rules of marketing and PR, you need to consider your organizational goals and then focus on your buyers first” (p.138) Therefore, it is not just enough to create pages on various social media networks; you need to have a plan and think about who you want to engage first! With this in mind, I decided to learn more about the planning processes required to incorporate social media into a college’s marketing and communications plan. There is a wealth of information available and while I’d like to share all of it with you, one thing in particular stuck out to me: Buyer Personas
A buyer persona “is essentially a representative of a type of buyer that you have identified as having a specific interest in your organization,” and is “the single most important thing that you will do in creating your marketing and PR plan” (Scott, 2011, p.140). For colleges and universities buyers would generally be prospective students, their parents, alumni, local community members, your sports team’s fans. However, it is not enough to just define your target markets in these general terms because they seem generic and unreadable. Instead, you need to essentially create characters that represent each of your target buyers! The best way to explain this is to put it into practice, as I’ve done below with a fictional college.
Completely Awesome College (CAC) is residential campus of 4000 undergraduate students and 500 graduate students, located in a rural town upstate. Some of their most popular majors include Accounting, Education, Business Management, History and Public Affairs. While Completely Awesome has a vibrant campus life and some competitive sports teams, they also have a few programs that allow adults to gain their degree while working. Based on this, some buyer personas for Completely Awesome might be:
·
Sarah: a high school senior, living in a small town
within two hours from CAC. She would like to be a history teacher someday, and
hopes to attend a college where she can make close relationships with the
students and faculty. She’s shy and fears that she may get lost in a large
university.
·
Billy: a high school student who lives in the
same town as CAC. His family owns a local business and Billy would like to
continue that tradition by working there after college. While getting a good business
degree is important, Billy also wants a fun college experience.
·
Anne: a 35 year-old mother of 3 who works 2 part
time jobs, one as a receptionist at a local insurance company and as a bank
teller. She has a high school diploma and was always good at math. Anne would
like to receive an Accounting degree, with the goal of obtaining a full-time
job in a reliable industry.
·
John: is the director of the local chapter of
the Boys and Girls club. He enjoys going to CAC’s girls soccer games and boys
basketball games. John would like to develop a college internship program with
CAC
While the concept of buyer personas sounds good in theory (as in the case of Completely Awesome), there must be evidence to support this theory in order to get your college on-board with the process. I’ve listed links to a few college social media pages that I feel demonstrate buyer personas. Do you feel these are good examples?
http://pinterest.com/ciachef/culinary-arts-students/
https://twitter.com/ohiostate
http://www.facebook.com/EmersonCollege
http://feeds.feedburner.com/FullSailUniversityBlog
I love the example of your fictional college because it underscores the need to clearly identify personas. I think your statement that “Many colleges (and other organizations) are jumping on the social media network bandwagon just so they can have a presence in these areas. But does this work?” sums up the underlying issue perfectly. We have a situation where I work right now where some of our senior leadership is asking for a social media presence at trade shows. That’s it. No description, no explanation, nothing. So, it is now up to our marketing department to figure out just what this means. Then it’s up to me to build whatever it is they come up with. So, this question directly affects me. These blogs are a great resource to try to figure that out. That said, given your example, how does an organization prevent a logistical nightmare trying to manage all the different personas and prevent confusion among the buyer. I have visited plenty of websites where there are a million links and I often bail because I simply don’t want to fight through all the clutter. Is there a method to the madness once you have defined the persona?
ReplyDeleteHi George- Good question! While I provided a good example of "buyer personas", my organization's website is similar to the confusing ones you've mentioned. Our website is so big and cluttered, making it impossible to find good content; visitors get lost.
DeleteThe solution was actually to create an entirely new website. Our web marketing team has been working for the past year creating the new site; it launches next week. It is very simple with clear information for visitors. But it is clear they considered buyer personas because there are visible pages for: international students, adult students, veteran students, high school students. Each of these pages caters to that target market.
However, our social media sites are overwhelming. For example, our facebook page has alumni followers, restauranteurs, prospective students, food enthusiasts, fans, etc. It's a jumbled mess of conversations, and I do not believe buyer persona's were considered. I wonder though if my organization will consider reorganizing their social media sites soon? Maybe making smaller Facebook pages that target specific buyers rather than the whole world?
So, to follow up on your last paragraph, you mention reorganizing the sites or making smaller pages. Would that be good enough or do you think a more massive overhaul is in order, and if so, what other solutions would make sense?
DeleteHi Kate. I think one of the best reasons to use a buyer persona approach, especially in regards to social media, is the fact that "buyers will recognize themselves" in the content. Just as you had described, this approach will put a face, or faces, on a company and give it a relatable story.
ReplyDeleteWith so many different types of buyers and so many different types of social media platforms, it is important to research buyers and their preferences. What information do buyers want? How do they want to receive this information? What information do the buyers need, even though they might not know it yet?
Even if you have all of the information, if it is not organized properly your chances of attracting a buyers interest decreases. If the info is not readily available on your website or Facebook page, etc., buyers may just look elsewhere.
It is extremely interesting to learn that you build characters to represent each target or buyers persona. I love the name of your fictional college by the way! When you spoke of an institution’s sport fans being a buyer persona I was shocked, I have never even considered sports fans. After you mentioned it though it makes a lot of sense!
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed your sharing of buyer personas; I especially liked the Pinterest link to culinary students. Through that site it seems very evident that potential applicants to the Culinary Institute could find a fellow student to relate to. This could essentially help them build belief in themselves and feel more encouragement within themselves to pursue a culinary degree at CIA. Twitter seems like a tricky media channel to use for buyer personas. Through the Ohio State Twitter page it doesn’t seem it is as tailored to individuals at the Pinterest. If you would can you explain to me how the Ohio State demonstrates buyer persona? I am interested to hear your perspective as I loved your scenario with Completely Awesome College.
Great post Kate and I loved how you developed a fictional company to really dive into the ins and outs of buyer personas.
Krystal
Hi Krystal- Good question. When I decided to write this post, I thought it would be curious to look at other colleges to see which had the best social media sites. Several blogs and official reports have ranked them. Some of the top on the list are Ivy League schools. But to be honest, I didn't want to include them because, well I feel that the Ivy's buyer persona's are pretty clear- elite prospective students, their parents, prep school counselors, alumni and fans. So I tried to show other schools. Here is the list if you are interested: http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2011/06/26/20-colleges-that-are-killing-it-with-social-media/
DeleteAfter reviewing Ohio State's twitter I'd say their buyer persona's would be prospective and current students (tweets about daily campus life), sports fans (updates on athletics), higher education professionals (lots of tweets about guest speakers and lectures)and alumni (several tweets referring to ohio state history).
I would like to refer back to the words of Scott (2011), “devote your attention to buyers and away from products” p. 138). When he relates this ‘rule’ to Starbucks and describes their success deriving from being focused on essentially selling an experience rather than $3 coffee my impression is that companies must be centered more on selling/giving an experience to their clientele (Scott, 2011). This is what I see happening in your post examples as well as the article you shared (thank you by the way). These colleges are giving off an experience to their public that makes them desirable. Especially with the growing ‘love’ of social media college’s publics are increasingly fascinated by their acceptance and participation of social media. I had to share, as I am sure you will appreciate this, certain educational institutions (University of Georgia in particular) have an admissions app. Potential students can log on and see whether their application has been accepted. Just another example of colleges being more focused on their ‘buyers’ rather than their ‘product’… Meeting their publics where they are and giving them a desirable experience.
DeleteDid I make sense, I hope so! Curious to hear what you think about this.
References
Scott, D. M. (2011). You Are What You Publish: Building Your Marketing and PR Plan. In D. M. Scott, The New Rules of Marketing & PR (p. 137). Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Hi Kate - I forgot to provide this link to the article I was speaking about:
Deletehttp://nation.time.com/2012/11/16/when-colleges-woo-students-through-social-media-less-viewbooks-more-facebook/
Hi Krystal- Interestingly, the college I work for has an app too for students! We have rolling admissions, meaning we are always reviewing applications. Once a decision is made, students can see it from their app. So we actually have to make decisions quickly so our customers continue to feel excited and engaged with us. So it seems we are on target with what the Luckerson article presents.
DeleteBut from an internal prospective, I must say I am frustrated with the lack of resources that are being put forth into our social media. When I say lack of resources, I mean our pages are managed by 1-2 people, and it is not their main job. But based upon what we are learning in this course (Scott, Qualman, additional papers) I feel that managing an organizations social media pages is a full-time job for a few employees. Social media requires consistent engagement, which can lead to a huge ROI: loyal customers. And in addition to this, there is published research showing that colleges and universities can really benefit from strong social media sites! Therefore, I draw the conclusion that colleges and universities that are looking to to boost their enrollment desires among prospective students should really put their effots into their social media sites.
I agree Kate. Social media needs to be appropriate appreciated therefore handled by organizations. All too often a limited amount of time is given to supervise and interact with these social networks and all too often a public feels left out. I think as well that social media is revealing a deeper insight into companies making it increasingly important to position a TEAM to handle it - so the message is consistent. As much as us consumers are increasingly enjoying the interaction at our finger tips we needed answers/responses fast and limited supervision of social media leads to disaster. Great point!
DeleteHi Kate,
ReplyDeleteI loved reading your post. What a great idea to create an example case to back up your point. I think that creating personalities for target demographics is very important to truly understanding your key messaging, strategy and overall approach. Just from the college and university websites that I have seen, they are usually fairly generic that they show mostly undergraduate attractions including admissions, inquiries and sports. It wasn't until I started searching for a Master's program that I realized that many colleges do not gear their imagery or discussions for this demographic.
Utilizing social media to reach the different targets seems like a great way to associate the brand (of the college) with the individual. What do you think about schools having separate social media sites geared towards different degrees? Whether each school under a college name has their own Facebook account or if the graduate programs have their own website altogether. Do you think that this would be more beneficial to a greater penetration of the market or do you think there will be a loss in translation?
Hi Amanda- I agree with your interpretation of many college's social media sites: they are generic. Granted, many universities are truly trying to draw in the undergraduate population. But you know, I'd like to do some research to see how many students enroll at graduate school at the same place that they did their undergrad. Because if there is a high percentage of students that do this, than it makes sense that college's and universities would focus on attracting undergraduates because it could lead to a long-term customer.
DeleteRegarding your idea that colleges and universities should have different pages for different majors/programs, I agree 100%. It allows the different publics to really connect with an area of the school that they are truly interested in rather than being lumped in with the rest of the population. However I think the challenges that many colleges face in this instance are that they may not have enough social media savvy employees in each major/program to manage them. Or, they do not have enough faith in their employees that the sites would be managed well.
Kate, your last comment goes to something I posted on twitter about law enforcement agencies starting social media sites. Once of issues was hiring the right people for the job. Which is hard for law enforcement agencies to do given budget limitations. That said, is the best option to do with the resources that are available and just give it a shot? Or, can it backfire by not having the right people for the job?
DeleteHi Kate - very good post and examples. You make a good point (in your reply to George) which kind of answers Amanda's question above about thoughts on colleges having Facebook pages and websites that are dedicated to programs. People who are searching for information want it as quickly as possible, in an easy to read and organized manner.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was searching for a Masters program in communication online there were many options. However, I only seriously considered the schools that had readily available information (in abundance) that I could easily access by saving the page to a favorite on my desktop or google and find immediately. That said and jumping back to Amanda's question, I think the social media pages and websites dedicated towards degrees not only provide easily accessible information to prospective students but also to current students and various other publics.
Very well planned blog, theme, and outline that I will use as an example for future posts. Thanks.
Hi Nia- I'm glad you are enjoying my blog! And I'm curious- you said you looked at many schools websites and social media pages in your search for a Masters program? What made Marist's stand out to you? What did they do well that made you feel that it would be a good fit for you? And has it met your original expectations? Do you feel that maybe they had a buyer persona that fit you? As you can see, higher education recruitment and marketing is my career passion so I love hearing from students about how they made their decision!
DeleteWell for one thing, the information on Marist's website about the program and school was easy to find. This is a unique program and to me the information and way it was marketed just fit my program search criteria. I knew that after 6 years I was ready to begin my masters but unsure of what school I wanted to attend, communication program I wanted to complete, etc. I think Marist developed an M.A. program that will be mirrored by other schools in the near future.
ReplyDelete