I really liked this course. YOu can always learn something new. I had the opportunity to see how things we are actually doing can be turn into news. There were also many strategies that dont require a big investment. Thanks!

Definitely a very important part in the Marketing Plan is evaluation. You will never find out if you are being effective. At our institution we always ask prospects who call or walk ins, how they heard about us. With that info I prepare a report that has help us to maximize our advertising budget. We also give a survey to all our students on the last day of their courses. That gives us feedback about what we are doing right or wrong and is a very important tool for retention. At the time you are developing your marketing plan, is important to establish your goals and how you are going to measure your achievements.

At the university where I used to work they took advantage of their location since a very important avenue ran through the middle of the Campus. We had a pedrestrian bridge for students to cross the streets, we wrapped it up with a giant Banner with real size sudents and from the distance it seemed like students were on the bridge looking down to the street. It was an attention grabber. The last thing we did was to decorate the entire wall of one of the buildings facing the avenue with very atractive design of student life, with 3D cuts. It looks amazing! Too bad we dont have the same freedom ay our Campus now. We dont even have a sign on the building and prospect students get lost all the time. One thing I've been doing is using temporary signs.It's not the same thing but we make an effort.

We have participated locally in several Health Fairs and on occasion sent speakers for different events. We have a very small school with a very intense program. It is hard to generate enthusiasm from the faculty, staff, and students as they are stretched pretty thin already. Also, our demographics extends from 21 year old students to 55 years old and AA degree to PhD. I guess the problem I'm experiencing is how to maximumize our limited resources with an incredibly diverse, national market.

Our market area is in Miami, Fl. The target population is young adult to older adults. One of our radio stations only offers 2 minute spots during the times we feel are better suited for our population. We are not sure that this is a wise purchase because of the length. Since there may be experience out there with purchasing this size spot. Is this effective or should we stick to the smaller 30 and 60 second spots rather than the 120 second spots they want us to purchase?

This was my favorite part of the module. The chart with ideas for generating news is an excellent tool. It provided me with many new ideas. Actually there where a couple things we were already doing it and I never tought of their news value. When in a highly competitive market is importat to make "noise" everytime you can, but of course with newsworthy material.Thanks for the ideas!

Since we have very good facilities, we have been actively contacting Chambers, Councils, Business Organizations, government agencies. We meet with their leaders at our Campus, give them a tour and offer our facilities for their events, free of charge. We have held hurricane orientations, we have schedule job fairs, business seminars and many other events that drive people traffic to our Campus. At the same time we are achieving goodwill from these organizations.

Our institution just opened a Campus in a totally new market for us, so our public relations efforts are very intense. We have become members of a couple of Chambers, Business Councils and Organizations. We attend their networking events but Ive also become part of their commeettees, particularly those related with education and workforce.

We have recently begun a publicity campaign on the internet and we are already seeing results. We are finding the more our name is out there on the internet, the more visits there are to the actual website. Public releases on the internet, combined with effective search engine optimization (SEO), seems to be the answer to increasing lead flow in today's market.

We are constantly evaluating our success with various media campaigns. We track where all of the leads come from and review each on a weekly basis. That way if a certain campaign is not working we can make changes quickly. Of course this is only as accurate as the information the prospect give us. We now have the ability to also track all of the traffic to our websites and run extensive reports on location demographics and effectiveness. This is really interesting to watch on a regular basis.

We currently have a very active high school program that generates hundereds of leads and thousand of mailing list names. This has taken us some time to build up and our conversion rates are not as strong as they should be yet. That said, we are out and in front of hundreds of high school students every week giving them useful information and letting them know who we are. We have recently started a corporate campaign. We have devoted one person to the role of business liason. We are hoping to start building this as a source of leads similar to our high school program. Like I said, it takes time to build these programs and it is easy in our results driven industry to loose track of the long term perspective when such programs are not immediately "successful". You need to watch how you define success. Drew

Most of our traditional advertising is done through our central office and in someways is beyond our control. Therefore, we like to put our energies into things we have direct control over such as our website, promotional events/material, advisory boards, etc. We have a couple fo people on staff who are very creative and have the technical ability to create great promotional assetts. For example, we conduct bimonthly Gaming tournaments for which we create fliers that are distributed in our high school presentations and in the local community. These fliers have gotten noticed and our attendance at these events has gone up every time we run one. We had 40 prospective students at our last event. Even if they don't come to school here, it is 40 more young people spreading word of mouth about our school. Of interest, our most creative force also runs our advisory boards and updates our website. She makes a huge contribution to the school. I think I will let her know how much I appreciate her again today. I will not give her name because she is not on the market! Drew

We have only two methods of evaluation in place at this time: marketing and student evaluation. Both provide feedback as to how our current efforts are being received. I feel we are doing the best we can by our auxiliary products at this time. It is our goal to expand in the near future and the information regarding special education was very helpful. I do want to implement workplace programs in the future and would be interested in more information. Overall I greatly enjoyed this class course ! ! !

We have tried radio ads but we did not see results and decided to cancel due to the high costs. Our best results continue to be word of mouth, mailings and our website. Each year our website becomes a higher yeilding source of leads as more and more people turn to the information highway. I do want to include specialized mailings (ie: admissions, financial) in the future. Our advisory board proves to be of great value. We review our current curriculum, syllabus, educational resources, etc and try to improve based on each person's experience with our students. I would like to create an alumni board and thus create a network among our graduates in the community. This would allow them to build a support system and give us insight as to how they are doing post-graduation.

Our number source of advertising comes in the form of mailing campaigns. My administrative assistant is responsible at the beginning of each month to complete a mail out to prospective students, employment agencies, local high schools, etc. Our website has yielded great results and we are able to contract with a local designer making the costs quite low. After completing this last module, I am excited to see how effective press releases may work for us. We always have a great story to tell and I have never thought of using a press release to share these stories with our community!

Twice a year we offer tutoring courses to the community. These courses are the same programs we offer in our career programs just at a fraction of the time and costs. They serve to refresh those who have completed the program and need information on new techniques, rules, regulations, etc. It also allows prospective students to enroll in a "crash course" before committing to the entire program of study. We have seen great results in both publicity and student enrollments.

We have struggled with getting the word out about our school. Part of the problem is that there is alot of competition in our market but we are also small and do not have the advertising dollars and efficiencies of some of the larger schools in the area. That said, we have alot to offer being a great school with regional accreditation and high demand programs including Nursing. Traditional advertising is not going to take us over the edge. Recently (in the last year or so) we have started placing a greater emphasis on "guerilla marketing" and have had some success doing things that are more PR driven than advertising. Examples include our newsletter, hiring someone in the position of corporate liasson, setting up kiosks in the mall, attending education and job fairs, sending students to company health fairs, etc. I think we are getting to the point where we have experienced some successes but our efforts have not been directed enough. It's hard to go 15 rounds if most of your punches aren't landing. If you throw enough you are bound to hit sometimes but you get tired.

We have been sending press releases to local newspapers regarding every student who enrolls, graduates, or earns honors/high honors. We have also increased the use of email marketing. We send alumni and future students electronic newsletters. Also, any special events, such as tours and open house are announced through press release and radio advertisements in some cases.

We have really made a concerted effort in the last year to make use of public realtions as a key aspect of our marketing strategy. Below are some of the highlights: 1. We conducted a "Family Fun Fair" to raise money for a charitable cause. We set up waterslides, bounce houses, "funny Boxing", kids games, food vendors, etc. We invited the public through announcements on radio stations and through emails to all old leads. Our students took part in the event as guests and our honor society ran many of the events. In addition we had a raffle and got thousands of dollars worth of raffle items to raise money for the charity (they actually conducted the raffle so we did not have to deal with the legalities). This got some good PR and got hundreds of people out to see our campus. 2. We do monthly newsletters which we send electronially to all of our employers and our alumni. 3. Our massage program is open to the public during certain classes. We promote this bringing dozens of people a month into campus. We also give out coupons for free massages when the opportunity arrises.

We have many ways of getting the word out to the community. We do send newsletters, periodic press releases, and news articles to industry related papers. At this point I do most of the public relations, but I am not formally in charge. It is in addition to my current duties. I think it would be great to come up with a calendar of when certain things should be sent or published so that our efforts could be more consistent and organized. I will probably try to do that in the next week or so, present it, and see what happens.