Higher Education and Continuing Education marketing require a higher level of insight.

Have you heard the old marketing principle sell benefits and not features? Benefits are what the buyer gains in the end. Features are aspects of the thing being offered.

In education marketing, actually, both are important. But it's easy to confuse the two, to the point of losing sight of what we're really, truly selling.

• Undergraduate Admissions at a university promotes its brand new buildings and student facilities.
• An insurance-industry continuing ed provider features its seminar location at a San Deigo resort hotel
• A working-adults degree program mentions its long tradition of academic excellence.
• A technical college advertises its fast-track certification program.

All good things. But not a single genuine benefit among them.

• The new buildings and facilities are a competitive advantage.
• The beach hotel location is used as a deal-clincher.
• The academic tradition is part of brand-building.

• The fast-track program is the response to a common objection.

So what would be an education's true benefit? Something that doesn't accrue until the student has left: Being prepared to compete for enhanced career opportunity.

If you're not sure about what is most important to applicants, ask yourself: if people could choose between a great degree with no job, OR a great job with no degree, which do you think they would pick?

Life-long academics sometimes have a tendency to think students cough up tuition each semester out of a love of academia. Sure, there are a few. But even they have to get a job someday.

For Continuing Education attendees, it's also about staying on top of their category's latest developments and keeping their job--which can now be just as competitive as getting a job. If you're known as the "go-to person" with the latest answers at your workplace, wouldn't that give you some measure of job security? How about emotional security?

Many of the things that education marketers promote as ultimate benefits really have more to do with the short-term student experience. And to be sure, especially for undergraduates to whom we're selling purely competitively, skillful marketing communications should help the prospect "taste the experience" of life and learning on our unique campus.

But now more than ever, people are concerned about their ability to consistently learn a good living. It's the bottom of bottom lines. And with good reason. Picture the father of three staring at the bedroom ceiling, feeling he's being left behind in an industry that's quickly evolving. But the professional-education ad he sees the next day doesn't empathize with his predicament. Instead it boasts about it's school's "small class sizes" and "liberal arts tradition."

Perhaps we need to realize that our own marketing is no longer just about our institution. It's also about our prospective student after they're no longer our student.

• What additional training can we give that will make them more competitive in the job market--which other schools aren't offering?
• How can we lower the bar, by reducing their expenses, hassles and time commitment, so it's easier to for them to start, and quicker for them to finish?
• Can we run our Career Services department like private employment firm, or introduce grads to influential and well-connected alumni?

Let's start there. Let's be creative. In the end, our organizations, and our marketing, can more effectively attract the students we want by making the competitive advantages of our graduates our competitive advantage.


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