Today I (along with the rest of the communications and web teams) have a meeting with the VP of Development at Dartmouth to discuss marketing and how to infuse it into the organization. In My Blogging Manifesto last week, I said that one of the reasons I blog is to prepare for meetings. I didn't let you in on it at the time, but the Clarifying Definitions of Buzzwords blog from last week was just that. It was my way of wrapping my head around some definitions in preparation for a brainstorming meeting I was having with my boss, to prepare for the VP meeting today.
Ok, so my boss and I have this meeting. Both of us are whiteboarders. I don't know how I would survive in my day-to-day job without a whiteboard. For some reason, drawing something out on a whiteboard just clarifies everything and makes you think of nuances that you hadn't considered before.
So we started with writing out the "Cs" and "Ps" of marketing (for those of you who have never studied marketing in an academic setting, marketing academics love nothing more that alliteration when they describe what they do):
This covers a lot more aspects of marketing that I previously did in my blog. When you say "marketing" to people in our industry, the typically think of something that resembles public relations, or building and maintaining relationships with your stakeholders. This is the fun stuff - the tools you use to actually COMMUNICATE with your audience. It might be designing a print piece or a website, starting a social network or writing a blog. But REAL marketing goes so far beyond that. It involves pricing, product placement, marketing research, ROI, predictive modeling, etc. This is true whether you are doing print or online marketing.
So we're sitting there staring at this on the board and it hits me - marketing is just like writing a paper. When you write a paper, you follow three basic steps:
1) Introduction: Say what you're going to say
2) Body: Say it
3) Conclusion: Say what you just said.
Marketing is basically the same thing:
We concluded that we're really good at step 2 (telling our story), but aren't as good at steps 1 and 3 (planning and evaluation). I suspect this is the same at a lot of schools. I can tell you that I see very few blogs from so-called marketers on anything other than the second step and very few presentations at conferences on anything other than the fun stuff. That's one of the reasons I'm so psyched about presenting at the Stamats Integrated marketing conference on ROI in November (On a sidenote, my thoughts are with all my friends at Stamats. I've worked with them for the past four years and have been out to their office in Cedar Rapids several times. They are all really good, really smart people and I wish them nothing but the best as they recover from the flood).
My boss and I also concluded that because we are not great at all three steps, we aren't fully meeting the needs of our constituency:
Key Takeaways:
1) Marketing involves storytelling, but really goes far beyond that.
2) You can't avoid the stuff that may not be as fun to do - it's not all about flash and getting yourself into conferences. It's about doing your job.
3) Ultimately, you will better meet the needs of your audience more by doing all three steps.
Postscript: I later twittered this dumbed down version of marketing and we collectively realized that not only were we describing marketing, but had also pretty much solved all of life's problems:
Ok, so my boss and I have this meeting. Both of us are whiteboarders. I don't know how I would survive in my day-to-day job without a whiteboard. For some reason, drawing something out on a whiteboard just clarifies everything and makes you think of nuances that you hadn't considered before.
So we started with writing out the "Cs" and "Ps" of marketing (for those of you who have never studied marketing in an academic setting, marketing academics love nothing more that alliteration when they describe what they do):
This covers a lot more aspects of marketing that I previously did in my blog. When you say "marketing" to people in our industry, the typically think of something that resembles public relations, or building and maintaining relationships with your stakeholders. This is the fun stuff - the tools you use to actually COMMUNICATE with your audience. It might be designing a print piece or a website, starting a social network or writing a blog. But REAL marketing goes so far beyond that. It involves pricing, product placement, marketing research, ROI, predictive modeling, etc. This is true whether you are doing print or online marketing.
So we're sitting there staring at this on the board and it hits me - marketing is just like writing a paper. When you write a paper, you follow three basic steps:
1) Introduction: Say what you're going to say
2) Body: Say it
3) Conclusion: Say what you just said.
Marketing is basically the same thing:
We concluded that we're really good at step 2 (telling our story), but aren't as good at steps 1 and 3 (planning and evaluation). I suspect this is the same at a lot of schools. I can tell you that I see very few blogs from so-called marketers on anything other than the second step and very few presentations at conferences on anything other than the fun stuff. That's one of the reasons I'm so psyched about presenting at the Stamats Integrated marketing conference on ROI in November (On a sidenote, my thoughts are with all my friends at Stamats. I've worked with them for the past four years and have been out to their office in Cedar Rapids several times. They are all really good, really smart people and I wish them nothing but the best as they recover from the flood).
My boss and I also concluded that because we are not great at all three steps, we aren't fully meeting the needs of our constituency:
A little background: One of the things I really appreciated about coming to work for the development office at Dartmouth is that they took the time to define who they are and what they stand for a few years back. This resulted in three core values:Being good at all three points will allow us to be MUCH better at creating a donor focus on our marketing. Planning, research and evaluation will allow us to take a much more strategic approach with our communications, which will ultimately make us better at what we do (which also kicks into the "results orientation" value).
1) Donor Focus
2) Results orientation
3) Teamwork
Key Takeaways:
1) Marketing involves storytelling, but really goes far beyond that.
2) You can't avoid the stuff that may not be as fun to do - it's not all about flash and getting yourself into conferences. It's about doing your job.
3) Ultimately, you will better meet the needs of your audience more by doing all three steps.
Postscript: I later twittered this dumbed down version of marketing and we collectively realized that not only were we describing marketing, but had also pretty much solved all of life's problems:
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