Should I Market my College?

Colleges and universities compete with each other to attract the best students to join them.  Student is making a choice among several options available to her, whether a college decides to participate in this competition or not. And that choice is dependent on the information available to the student, about perceptions that other influencers have about the college brand, and about the guidance student receives from these influencers.

Every student aspires to join the best college, yet their choice depends on what is available to them or what is known to them. Decision making happens in two months period of constant see-saw between what is student’s aspiration and what is available.

What is Available
Not every student can join PGDM program of IIM Ahmedabad. Not every course or every college is available to students, it depends on their academic track record, exam results and performance in the selection process. CAT (Common Admission Test) results are announced well before final admissions, however, that is followed by Group Discussions and Interviews which continue till June-July. Final admission (admits) information is available only in June and July or later.

JEE Main results (Joint Entrance Examination - for B.Tech courses) are announced in April and May. That's the peak of admission season. Until the time of results announcement, student and parents know little about what is available to them. In fact, even this is hard to know because each state has different counselling for different state level colleges (for example, Joint Admission Counselling JAC in Delhi), besides the national level counselling JOSAA.  And these counselling sessions are spread over 6 to 8 weeks with 6-7 rounds and with each round what is available and what is not available is changing.

A student can refer to previous years cut off data, ranking, college reviews, refer to friends and seek help from alumni etc. to make a decision regarding course and college. However, this process is challenging because of a very short period time window available for decision making.

Few Elements of Differentiation
The biggest reason for confusion among students is that there is little differentiation among colleges. Over the last few years, I have personally seen students struggling to chose one NIT over another NIT or a new age IIT or a private engineering college.   The challenge for new age colleges is to define their charter in unique manner and constantly innovate to differentiate themselves.

Aspirations and Affordability
Education is seen as path to better future. And investment in education continues to be very high. India is a growing economy with increase in payment capacity of students. At the same time, parental support continues to remain high when it comes to funding education. With improving affordability, students are also opting for more private colleges. In aggregate, student and alumni reviews across colleges suggest that private colleges tend to have better quality of infrastructure and among the top private colleges, there is better engagement with industry and also more opportunities for industrial training.

Awareness before Positive Brand Association

It is important for any college to ensure that student at least is aware about the college. That's the first challenge- making it to the consideration set. And awareness that is associated with positive attributes which helps the student make the right decision. If a college attracts good students (and maintains good faculty and course curriculum), industrial placements are likely to be better. With improving reputation, it starts attracting a higher calibre of students and faculty, and then it becomes a virtuous cycle. 

Celebrating new milestone of Naukri Job search App on Android- rating of 4.5

Congratulations to the entire Naukri Team, Naukri Jobseeker Android App crossed the average rating of 4.5. 

Customer Insight - Survey, Data and Interviews

Customer insight is the only sustainable basis for building a business. And in my humble view, there are three ways of gathering customer insight, 1. Conduct a survey, 2. Analyze behavioural data, 3. Conduct in depth customer interviews.

There is a lot of behavioral data on the internet.  From browsing history to clicks and transactions. However, behavioural data only says "what" is the customer doing and when. "Why" is missing !!

Customer interviews can give insight about all that a customer cares about. The only challenge is that it covers only one customer at a time. Often, you may not have a large pool of customers to do indepth interviews, a lot of time may elapse between successive interviews or different customer context may make it hard to correlate insights across them. That's where surveys come into play.

Surveys enable quantitative measure of customer's opinion. If you have access to a large pool of customers, surveys are low cost and quick. Without surveys extrapolation of 1/few customer's opinion as the fact, is fraught with risks.

And without depth interviews, survey insight is shallow.

And without correlation of behavioural data, surveys and depth interviews are just opinions, which may not show up in reality.

If you are wondering on how to move from "I feel" to "I Know", use the three methods of gathering customer insight. You will know when you can say "I Know".

Digital Marketing and Relevance

For any brand, digital marketing is now mainstream. Ignoring digital is like ignoring reality and for a marketer, almost a professional suicide. When brick and mortar businesses like hotels and restaurants have to rely on digital marketing for business, no one can really remain untouched.  Any digital marketing initiative must examine relevance of message to the recipient, one it is possible and two, your business will cease to exist without it.
There are learnings we can derive from already established digital businesses. Take ecommerce companies for example, mailers drive traffic for major offers and seasonal discounts.
1. Capturing sufficient information to personalize the message - Relevance has multiple connotations, every person has unique set of requirements and aspirations. Without capturing this information relevance cannot be achieved.
2. Current and correct information - Capturing detailed information that is correct and updated is also an important challenge. Customers provide their location and interest in products and categories through their browsing or purchase behavior. It is obviously unrealistic to expect every declaration of interest to match with displayed behavior. Hence a strong need to constantly update the customer attributes.
3. Classification - Another tool for matching that is used very often is classification. For example, an ecommerce shopper expresses interest in bed sheets, now does that mean we can send offers on Garments or home furnishings. While classification helps find commonality between both parties, classification errors add to the complexity.
4. Error tolerant matching engine -
A vertical specific matching engine can build on the domain expertise present in the organization. To make it more robust for errors in data capture and classifications, matching engine may use behavioral information or the domain expertise.
Improving relevance finally becomes a function of improving all of the above. Do share your thoughts. Wish you success in your digital venture.