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[this is an example of the documentation produced for a new OU course]

7132 MA (Marketing) Relaunch Campaign Issues

MARKETING (RELAUNCH) CAMPAIGN ISSUES FOR THE SECOND COHORT

OF MASTERS IN MARKETING STUDENTS (2001K)

As can be seen, from the results detailed in the appendix, the marketing campaign for the first cohort of students entering this programme was clearly a failure. Accordingly, the issues we need to confront when we relaunch the programme, next year, for the second cohort are:

OVERALL OBJECTIVE FOR THE SECOND COHORT CAMPAIGN

Above all, we should now clearly set out to recruit the maximum number of students, commensurate with achieving the correct entry standards. The first campaign had a confusing, and contradictory, set of objectives and targets (with the key one eventually possibly being that of holding back numbers to below 30 students!).

CREATIVE ELEMENTS

The central factor, which was not fully recognized in the first campaign, is that this is a new to the world product. Accordingly, as per traditional marketing theory, before creating awareness (seemingly the only focus of that first campaign), we need to open up the consumer's (and especially their opinion leader's) mind to the concepts involved. The usual starting point is PR; of which almost none was deployed, but which must be more aggressive (and much better resourced) in the relaunch.

As part of this, and moving on to create the interest and understanding necessary to build towards purchase, the material needs to clearly explain what the direct benefits to the student are - in terms, say, of their career prospects. With this group of students, who are new to the OU, we also need to clearly establish the legitimacy of the OU distance-learning approach. In this way we should overcome the first hurdle of increasing the number of enquiries.

Accordingly, we will need a much more discursive approach. Clever graphics may raise awareness, but will not achieve the other goals.

Whatever we do, however, it should clearly be seen as professional (and adventurous) in marketing terms - where the members of the target audience are marketing students, who are unlikely to expect to learn much from an institution which cannot even get its own marketing right!

MEDIA SCHEDULES

The first limitation in the first campaign proved to be effective coverage of the target audience, compounded by the fact that the agreed additions to the schedule (to replace the lost mailing numbers) were not undertaken. Coverage (and OTS) is the second key to increasing enquirer numbers.

1)      DIRECT MAIL - Thus, it was originally assumed that the prime promotional vehicle would be direct mail to the (30,000 strong) CIM list; though this was quickly abandoned when we learned that the actual available (limited by the data protection act) was just 4,000 - though this number presumably will increase to 5,000 this year, and we should be able to negotiate use of other CIM lists (as well as those of other institutions and trade journals). We do not know what mailer was used, except that it was not based on a promotional flyer as had been agreed. With the second attempt, however, we must still use the best possible direct marketing techniques; including email where possible.

2)      INSTITUTIONAL JOURNALS - In the absence of much of the direct mail element, and the resulting need to switch to advertising, the CIM journal, Marketing Business, must still be the starting point, but with the much bigger (4 page? Colour+B&W) editorialised ads needed to better explain the new offering - giving much more detail to an audience which is largely ignorant of our methods - supported by B&W half pages (to build up to the necessary 5 OTS awareness). If other institutions are eventually added, we should use their journals similarly.

3)      TRADE PRESS - To extend the market, we need to hit the widest possible marketing audience, and the trade press (Marketing, Marketing Week, PR Week etc) offers the obvious vehicle; matching the limited content available, in the display ads we can afford, by well the well-constructed web-page links these individuals are now used to exploiting.

4)      NATIONAL PRESS - Hopefully we could also ride on the back of some of the OU's national press ads (again linked to the web-site), since the e-commerce messages will boost the OU image as much as that of the OUBS.

PUBLIC RELATIONS

As mentioned above, this should be the leading edge of the campaign; with a budget (for the OU's PR group) commensurate with this, and at least as large as the £20,000 planned for the original launch (but not used). The availability of B851 as the new launch course, and its powerful 'e-commerce' story, should make this much more topical - and, with some help, controversial! This will also help the OU's image as a leading-edge institution. Most important, it should also be used to justify the legitimacy of the offering; where most students will be used to face-to-face study.

PROMOTION

1)      VALUE CHAIN COMMISSIONS - Most of the students will be coming from the 300 or so institutions which teach the CIM Diploma. Only 50 of these institutions offer an MA, so there is a significant opportunity for us to approach the rest and offer two benefits to them. The first is that of being able to offer their own prospective students an attractive package - not just a CIM PgDip, but a clearly defined route to an MA. The second is the monetary benefit of a commission to all students they recruit for us - equivalent to the corporate discount. This may, though, require the assignment of a dedicated sales-person; but will have the spin-off of exploring how such institutions might also be involved in our other programmes.

2)      PACKAGE OFFER - If price is seen to be an important factor, we might possibly consider offering B851 as a low price taster; perhaps for as little as half-price (£700), with a money off voucher for taking the overall programme (taking advantage of B851's low variable cost of £400?). We could also offer a 'competition' with some free places on the overall programme, to attract interest. Or we could offer selected students a four for the price of three deal (in effect offering the very low cost B851 for free if the overall programme was taken).

SUPPORT

Perhaps the most worrying figure from the first campaign was the final conversion rate - when, by then, we should have already been talking to students. Anecdotally, the failure was exemplified by the fact that the students who managed to contact us personally did so because they had difficulty in finding details of the programme; and, even when we became involved, they were still - for example - sent the undergraduate prospectus! Clearly, if we are again not to waste our efforts, we must provide excellent support and follow-through; where, again, these students will judge the quality of our teaching by that of our actions!

1)      MAILINGS/FLYER - We must design the mailing campaigns, both the stand-alone and the follow-on to press media generated enquiries, as a complete package; backed up by excellent telemarketing support (both inbound and outbound). Above all, this must be well-informed - where we previously found ourselves fielding a number of quite basic questions.

2)      REVISED PROSPECTUS - Whilst this is a document designed for OU administrative purposes, there is no reason why it should not also be used to promote the programme; and the errors must be removed.

3)      EFFECTIVE WEB-SITE - This must, above all, be the main area for improvement. These days, especially with this audience, the first thing prospective students look for is a web-site - indeed they often find such offerings by web searches rather than by media exposure - and they then judge the offering by what they find there. A half page memo, telling them to phone in, is not the best advertisement for our skills - especially where we are promoting the idea that we are at the leading edge of e-commerce! This must, therefore, be a properly constructed site; with a significant number of well-constructed pages which describe both our techniques (including short tasters of the courses) and the benefits (including testimonials, from MBA students in the first instance).

4)      EFFECTIVE CALL CENTRE - We must fully brief the personnel involved, and provide reference material, if we are to use this effectively for inbound telemarketing - again these students will judge us by these responses (where the questions may be fielded by marketing academics at our competitors). We should also conduct well-planned outbound follow-ups on enquiries. Finally, we should also use these personnel to screen (outbound) the PgDip providers for the sales person to contact.

5)      REGIONAL LAUNCHES - We originally planned to have a number of regional evening meetings to launch the programme. We should reinstate these, along with earlier meetings with the PgDip providers.

ADDITIONAL MARKETS

One key lesson, which may be derived from the limited results we have obtained, is that there may be at least as much (and probably significantly more) business to be derived from the wider markets; which, with the new media schedules, we will now be covering. It seems a waste if we ignore these; as long as we can be sure that they meet our entry standards - and hence a disproportionate amount do not fail - since our output standards will, as always, be ensure by the OU systems. The main add-on markets may be:

1)      CIM DIPLOMATES - We have been looking at this possibility for several months, since we became aware that the content of the previous CIM Diploma Programme was very close to that of the current PgDip. The only major difference was the rather less rigorous entry requirements; and hence we may be able to accept at least some CIM Diplomates who do meet our standards. The Masters Board is about to explore this issue - using the contacts made as part of the previous research - to see if we can accept some of the these Diplomates (and under what conditions). If this extension is agreed, it may double or treble the potential - without extra promotional resources being needed.

2)   NEW DIPLOMA - Our hope that we may be able to use the new (CDNext based) B800 replacement as the starting point for a Marketing version now looks to be available only in the long-term; since the B800 replacement will now be developed (to be launched in 2003?) directly from B800 - where the Certificate material is not deemed rigorous enough and the Diploma focuses on  integration. The best MA entry route now seems, therefore, to be to take the new Certificate unchanged as the starting point for OUBS entrants; followed by a more heavily tailored version (compared with the MBA tailored version) as the bridge to the MA. This would also allow entry, at Diploma level, for those completing the programmes offered by other institutions and professional bodies - which are not rated sufficient to go direct into the second stage of the MA.

PRODUCT CHAMPIONS

Because of the careful design of the MA programme, there should be no problem with resourcing any of these promotional campaigns; even the numbers in the first cohort will come close to covering the course production costs and the direct (agreed) promotional activities, though not the much higher figures for unapproved activities.

It does, though, leave a problem in terms of management focus in general; and of marketing staff commitment in particular. Key OUBS personnel understandably have higher priorities to focus on. One answer, therefore, is to put the 'product champion' responsibility squarely on the course team. This approach has succeeded in the past, with examples running from the Women into Management programme through to the Not-For-Profit sector programmes. Where the skills are available, as they are in the case of the Marketing Masters, this might even productively extend into a co-ordinating role with some of the outside agencies (such as PR, direct marketing and advertising).

Appendix - MA (Marketing) Student Numbers

The targets for student numbers have varied considerably over the past year. The original forecasts were possibly optimistic, and were only intended as a guide to longer-term potential. There was little which could be known about the crucial conversion rates and the first cohort results were intended (as a pilot) to at least answer this question; though, in the event, even this objective has not been achieved; since the research figures (based on a sample size achieved that was not statistically significant) were at best equivocal. The subsequent targets were complicated by the wish by regional management to hold the numbers down to below 30 - so that the launch did not distract scarce regional resources away from the Certificate launch and - in particular - from the regional re-organisation; and this may have coloured the tactics deployed by the marketing group. Even so, if we compare the actuals against the earliest forecasts, the results are shown below:

                                                                                    Actual             Budget

Likely MM students (booked and considering)       14%

            Likely future MM students                            13%

                        Total   MM                                           27%                25%

            Not PgDip Qualified  [a]                                   28%               

            MBA/OU students                                                 9%

            Already chosen to study elsewhere                       4%

            Dubious about distance learning                          17%

            Cost problems                                                       14%

                        Total Non MM                                          44%                   0%

The main shortfalls seem to occur at two levels, which map onto the actual marketing activities (or lack of them). Thus, the numbers on the lists provided by CIM were only 15% of expected, and the agreed compensatory activities (not least wider advertising) were not implemented, so the 20% enquiry rate may be understandable. On the other hand, the subsequent failure to convert more than 4% of these enquiries to firm business does pose questions about the support services; where the anecdotal evidence, not least of enquirers having significant difficulty obtaining information and even then receiving incorrect data (perhaps resulting in the 17% being dubious about distance learning), backs up the suggestions that major problems do exist.

The one bit of good news, however, is that we might be able to double the numbers by including wider audience - especially by extending to cover previous CIM Diplomates.

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