Marketing: Quick Fixes, Tactics and Planning

At a workshop last week, I spoke at length about the importance of developing your strategic plan before you venture into developing a marketing plan. The topic was marketing career services to students, but many of the concepts apply to employers recruiting students as well. It is far too easy to venture into implementation without sufficient planning. But doing so really says, “I’m in this for the short haul. I’m looking for a quick fix, not a permanent solution.”

Given all the pressure on people to work harder with fewer resources – and often carry the load from a recently vacated position as well – it is understandable that some may leap at the first opportunity to launch a Facebook page, create a LinkedIn Group, or spend money on a new video production. But the best way to reduce your workload in the long run is to do thorough planning first.

Consider this quote from one of the most respected marketing experts, Philip Kotler: “If the marketer does a good job of identifying consumer needs, developing appropriate products, and pricing, distributing, and promoting them effectively, these good wills sell very easily.”

Hopefully, it’s not too hard to see how this translates to marketing either career education or career opportunities to students. Whether you’re an employer trying to hire or a career services professional trying to engage students, if you do your marketing well, the rest will “sell very easily”.

Notice, however, that he has put the process in sequential order. “Promoting” is the last thing you do before you actually engage the students. And yet we are drawn so quickly to promotions. Ask anyone what strategies they are using to attract students these days and you’ll hear all about contests, YouTube videos, email or text campaigns and so on. But these are not really strategies; at best they are tactics. And they can only even be considered tactics if they come from a well-considered plan. Otherwise, they are just quick fixes.

If you are in it for the long haul, then you’ll go back to the beginning of the Kotler quote and start first with “identifying consumer needs”. In other words, develop a truly deep understanding of what the students you are trying to attract really want. Chances are that this information is not readily available. For a recruiter, attracting “students” as a whole means receiving thousands of unwanted applications. Understanding the needs of your target students requires quite a bit more research.

And next comes “developing appropriate products”. For the career services office these are the specific services that are relevant to meet the needs of each target group you are trying to engage. For employers, this is about developing a unique employment value proposition that speaks directly to your ideal candidate. But of course that requires a lot more than developing the right tagline; it means actually being the right fit for your target candidate. (And if you’re not, then you are either picking the wrong target or you need to become a different kind of employer.)

For career services, “pricing” is an issue: what does “free” say about your services? How can you address this? What do you do to prove that you offer value even if your service is so underpriced? For employers, “price” is about much more than salary and benefits. From a marketing point of view, it is really about the whole package of the employment experience – the workplace, the colleagues, the opportunities to grow, and so on. How attractive are you making that “price”?

And finally comes “distribution”. But remember, we’re not at “promotion” yet, so this isn’t about distributing your marketing message, this is about distributing your service or opportunity. For career services this about determining the right mix of delivery through one-on-one advising, workshops, major events, online, and so on. Clearly this is a major piece of work and planning how you will optimize your resources must occur before promotion can begin. I suppose employers could interpret “distribution” a number of ways: work location (does it appeal to your target candidate?); work-life balance and flexible hours; career mobility; or perhaps something else altogether.

Translating these product marketing concepts to the challenge of attracting students to career development or career opportunities should demonstrate one thing above all: if you want to make it easy to engage the right students with as little selling as possible (and who doesn’t?), then there is a lot of research, planning, and work to be done first. Otherwise, every “tactic” will be at best a quick fix – if that.