Universities today have a massive marketing problem. They need to know where and how to reach their potential students.
University presidents and their marketing specialists want more knowledge, information, and data to craft the perfect marketing strategy. Colleges market in various places to reach prospective students and use various platforms and tactics to catch and hold their audience’s attention. From social media posts for the digitally savvy playing on their phone while waiting for coffee, to targeted print media for the reader studying in the library, even to billboards viewed during rush hour traffic, reaching the targeted audience is critical.
Using a variety of platforms means reaching a larger and more diverse number of prospective students. It also means an immense amount of data to process. A fiscally responsible college needs to determine which outreaches have the greatest impact so that they can direct money into them and adjust strategies for the ones that aren’t hitting their goals. The challenge is that data specifics, both in what is gathered and how much of it, vary from platform to platform, and only some of the data is needed for each marketing strategy.
To fully understand the data and prevent fragmented information, it is imperative to gather and consolidate it.
Consolidating all the data will allow marketing specialists to pick and choose which information they use when creating their strategies. To really thrive, a marketing strategy needs real-time reporting to create focused marketing strategies for today and a plan for the future.
Data consolidation will help achieve real-time reporting and support the university's focus on critical KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in its marketing.
Real-time feedback is mandatory in today's faced-paced, rapidly changing world. Universities and colleges need to be able to make quick changes and adjustments to stay relevant and up-to-date in their enrollment strategies. Consolidated data can be quickly reviewed for agile decision-making.
Focused marketing is creating relevant marketing messages and placing them in the right place at the right time. To do that effectively, analyzing the data will show how and when to do that. And with a centralized data point, our messages will remain intact.
The student body of each college is a diverse community. Like a good research paper, successful universities and colleges use multiple sources to reach potential students.
Establishing a strategic marketing plan remains crucial for a thriving college. Compiling the data creates the opportunity for predictive analysis, extracting information from existing data sets to calculate upcoming prospects and then examining that data to determine the decisions to achieve the institution's goals. Fragmented data prevents a trustworthy predictive model.
People often say they want "more data," but really, what they want is "more certainty."
The data that a university needs to manage is fragmented into several different platforms creating a silo effect. To create focused marketing messages, strategies for the future, and utilize real-time reporting, universities need data gathered and organized in one place.
Imagine getting a packet of 100 seeds, including flowers, fruit, and vegetables. Then you scatter them in your field, randomly planting the seeds at various depths of the soil, some will grow, but most won’t. If, instead, you separate the like seeds and then experiment with different depths for each seed group and record that information in a centralized location, you still won’t get every seed to grow. Still, because you know the growing conditions of the ones that do develop, you can mimic those conditions and grow more in the future.
That level of organization takes time and resources. So, although more data means a more complete picture of how the community receives advertisements, it also creates its own set of obstacles. To bring more understanding and certainty you need to be able to view and understand the information you have.
Gathering, merging, and storing the varied data in a single place will make your marketing team's decisions more straightforward and more accurate. Still, it can be very time-consuming and can bog down your workforce. Don't worry; there is an easy fix for that, automation. Experts like Full Stack Data Solutions can quickly and efficiently create algorithms to automate your data consolidation freeing up your company's time and money.
Contact us to find out how Full Stack Data Solutions can help you solve your data consolidation needs.
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