Marketing

Steps:

  1. Department will decide if they will use a 3rd party vendor for their marketing initiatives.
  2. A marketing strategy will be created considering the target audience.
  3. The marketing team will make a decision on what marketing channels will they use.
  4. The Marketing team will develop and execute a marketing plan with the approval of the department.

Questions to Consider:

Marketing Strategy

  • Who will provide marketing for the program? (content, creation, delivery, website creation)
  • Will your marketing efforts focus at the following levels? (program, department, college)
  • Will you partner with 3rd party marketers to target prospective students?
  • Determine appropriate positioning for Purdue institutions and develop brand messages and attributes to identify the institutions with these positions.
  • Position: (a) Purdue institutions vis-à-vis other providers in the market (goal: capture fair share of the market); (b) Purdue institutions vis-à-vis each other (goal: avoid brand confusion).
  • What is your go-to-market strategy?
  • Coordinate end-to-end marketing activities (e.g., strategy, planning, execution, performance analysis).
  • Generate insights from spend, inquiry volume/mix/quality, and channel performance analytics to further improve marketing effectiveness.
  • Optimize vendor performance through data analytics and regular performance reviews.

Marketing Channels

  • Do you intend to employ the following marketing channels? (lead generation vendor, search engine marketing/optimization, email, direct mail, digital media, social media, out of home (EX: bllboard, radio, etc.))
  • Consider using alumni base as a marketing channel – both to tap into their further and continued education needs and to seek their help with student recruitment.

Content Development

  • What is the message you would like students to have about your program?
  • Consider advertising how your program is different from the competition.
  • Keep Purdue’s brand policies in mind.
  • Who will develop marketing content?
  • Develop content-rich landing pages to drive traffic to Purdue institutions’ websites with mobile capabilities.
  • Ensure that PO-supported programs and courses are appropriately represented on the PO website and other campus venues.

Marketing Targets

  • Who is the target audience? Who will you market to? Will you market directly to students, corporations, government, other organizations?
  • Consider the following targets:
    • Alumni
    • Location of current/future workplaces (industry (for-profit), industry (not-for-profit), government/education, self-employed)
    • Job titles of people who complete this program
    • Professional organizations associated with the program/profession (EX: American Institute of Certified Public Accountants)

Who is Involved:

3rd Party Vendor (Initiator)
Purdue Online (Initiator)
Faculty (Collaborator)

Process Map:

Process Map

Download the process map

Forms & Resources: