Marketing Communications Challenges for 2009: Dealing with New Issues or Struggling with Old Ones?

The original description of the session, written in May, described the content as follows:

What are your major challenges as you prepare to enter 2009? The wide availability and use of technology has created more complicated issues for institutions to face each year. How do you maintain control of your message as FaceBook and YouTube attract growing audiences? How do you manage your institution’s public presence in the face of criticism from an alumni-run blog? Or maybe the major issues are still setting priorities and funding, just as they were in 1990. mStoner wanted to know what issues most concerned colleagues, clients, and friends, so it and its partners Slover-Linett Strategies asked top communication, marketing, and new media professionals from colleges and universities around the country to share their top three challenges for 2009. Hear what they said—and talk with some of these thought leaders, who will join us to share our findings and discuss how to meet the challenges in the year ahead.

By September, of course, the economy was big news and attention of campus leaders turned to the economic downturn. We wondered what effect grim economic news would have on the results of our survey—and on the marketing communications stategies and tactics of campus marketers.

Panel Discussion
During the panel discussion on Monday, Cheryl Slover-Linett, president of Slover Linett Strategies, our research partner, reported on the top marketing challenges identified by a survey that we deployed. Results came from analysis of the responses of 234 people who had filled out the survey by 13 December. Most were from the Midwest. And the results may surprise you, as they did us.

The first step in the process was to ask 125 thought leaders-CASE commission members and trustees, PRSA leaders, and others-to identify their primary marketing communciations challenges for next year. (More on this survey here.) These initial respondents identified nine challenges that concerned them.

We then deployed the second survey, asking respondents to rank the top three issues that were of concern to them and share tactics and strategies they were using to deal with the challenges for their institutions.

And the results, coming as they do during a distressed economy, are interesting. Dare we say that some things never change and that institutions are still challenged by fundamental questions about how to market themselves effectively?

Respondents to the second survey identified their nine top marketing/communications challenges as follows:

• • Branding and messaging

• • Rethinking and expanding communication outreach approaches and formats

• • Incorporating new media and/or technology strategies

• • Economic downturn in general

• • Appealing to a wider range of prospective students

• • Budget cuts or insufficient funding

• • Decentralization within the university and/or marketing department

• • Internal organizational struggles and staff turnover

• The cost of higher education

There was a lively discussion focused around the top three issues, with specific comments about efforts at various institutions to develop a more consistent branding and messaging platform, to measure results, and to deploy new technologies more effectively.

We’re doing more analysis on this survey and are writing a white paper that will appear early next year. You can take the survey yourself here; there are fields in the survey where you can let us know if you’re interested in receiving a copy of the white paper.

Download a copy of the conference handout here; it contains preliminary findings and strategies and tactics identified by survey respondents for dealing with their challenges.

I’d like to thank the panelists who contributed so much to this session: Cheryl Slover-Linett, president of Slover Linett Strategies; Kyle James, formerly the webmaster at Wofford College and founder/blogger at .EduGuru, who’s off to Boston to join HubSpot; Debra Lukehart, assistant vice president, communication and marketing, Augustana College; and Nancy Prater, project manager/usability analyst in IT at Ball State University, who was the university’s web coordinator until two months ago. And we missed Carlee Drummer, who was ill and couldn’t participate in the panel.