What I Told the Higher Ed Conference People

November 7, 2008 · Comments

student

I just gave the morning keynote at the Stamats Higher Education Marketing conference in St Petersburg, Florida, and I decided to go totally away from slides, and just speak from passion. To do that, I kept a single sheet of paper with some notes so that I didn’t forget what I wanted to say. (I did the same thing in my making money isn’t evil presentation – remember, that one had lots of cursing.) I wanted to capture some of what I said as part of my presentation: Turning ROI into Return On Influence. I’m sure I’m missing a lot of what I said, but here are the main points.

I led with a quote.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.- Ralph Waldo Emerson US essayist & poet (1803 – 1882)

I went on to tell everyone in the room (marketers) that they are salespeople. They might not think they are (more than 50% raised their hand when I asked them about it). I say this because marketing is about moving a behavior forward from one state to another, and especially in 2009, it’s even more important that marketers feel and believe just how tied they are to the sales cycle, and for that matter, to the PR and customer service cycle.

I mentioned that marketers have to think like media makers, like CEOs, like salespeople. they have to OWN the process, the experience, the business of moving people from a to b. (Yes, this is a mix of Seth Godin and Tom Peters stuff.)

I talked about the five steps of media as an influence tool, but I think I forgot to tell them all five in detail. Here’s the five phases of it, at least.

  1. Awareness. – People become aware that you’re out there.
  2. Attention. – People actually open their eyes to what you’re saying.
  3. Influence. – People start thinking about what you’re saying and map it to themselves.
  4. Reputation. – You become known for having good information/ideas/whatever.
  5. Authority. – People consider you the top voice on the matter.

Where do YOU want to be on that continuum. I know.

Beyond that, it’s all a blur. If someone recorded it, I’m sure it won’t sound nearly as good as it felt coming out.

Mostly I shared that folks must atomize their marketing. Break media into bites and throw it all over the place. Don’t focus on a newspaper. Focus on getting two way conversations started everywhere. Get things out to the places where people are. That kind of thing.

What would YOU have told them?

Photo credit, FoundPhotosLJ

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  • Sounds like you did well and took a well calculated risk by stepping outside the box for your talk with just a few notes and speaking from the heart.

    This always wins, hands down, when the speaker does this because then it's not canned nor is the speaker using the slides as a cruch.

    I did the same thing you did during a recent speaking engagement for Frito-Lay in Dallas a few weeks ago. I allowed the spirit to move through me without notes. Like you experienced, the entire speech was a blur to me. I don't remember what I said and YES it was recorded. I'm expecting to get a copy of it shortly per my contract with them.
  • So inspired but what you did I led an impromptu talk this morning at the chamber networking breakfast when they asked me to talk about small biz/home biz marketing.

    I like the way you organized the 5 phases. There are so many people who think they are NOT salespeople and see sales as a negative - when in reality we are ALL salespeople and the biggest sale we make in any given day is to ourselves. Do we like ourselves and what we do or not?
  • Chris,

    Just getting caught up on your posts, and this one blew me away. That's not to say that others don't, but man this one is brilliant. Been following your lead since I immersed myself in social media, attending bootcamp, Gillette, trying to figure out what's really shifted here in terms of how marketers need to think differently. The pendulum is forever swinging in marketing, we're always on the verge of something new to learn. But this shift is one of quantum sorts. What you've said to this group applies to any market, in my mind.

    What you have done here is created a whole new buying cycle. I was thinking that the buying cycle hasn't changed, but in fact it has. And it's all around influence. The fact is people buy from people, those companies who represent common values, the people they have come to know and trust, and feel confident in developing a partnership with. How else do you get access to that information except through people themselves?

    You can't read about it on a web site. A corporate profile may print "in type" the values, mission of an organization. But what matters more is the overall experience for a buyer/customer and how that matches up to their values, passion, and whatever other weights they use. It is truly Return on Influence - another brilliant thought that will create reams of blogsphere.

    Thanks for being a true pioneer in this "New Marketing" era. You are carving out new paths in both thinking and in how to crush it execution-wise.
  • Training, listening and teaching have all undergone a revolution, but the old chestnuts remain. "Learning is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire." Yeats.
    I believe that social media will influence the formation of the next big brands and their customer bases that's why I write about it.
    www.wisequeen.com
  • Couldn't agree more with the thoughts expressed above but I have a relatively pedestrian question. In moving from awareness to authority can it be done by skipping stages? I have my opinions but would love to hear what others think. Is it a linear route or can one skip over a stage or two along the way. Does one have to move from awareness to attention on route to influence?
  • As an alumni of two universities, I'd tell them:
    1. Listening is so much more important than you think (to take off from Barb C's wise post above.) Listening is not "a student calls me on the phone and is scripted to ask me a few questions before asking me for money." I was called last week by my undergrad university for the umpteenth time and I turned them down for the umpteenth time.

    2. Take all the money you spend on your alumni magazine that I don't have time to read (which means you'll have to stop publishing it) and put it toward me. Make me a marketer - send me a sweatshirt, or a hat. I'll wear it!

    3. Treat every incoming freshman (or sophomore, or junior, or senior) as a potential marketer, and a future alumni. Make me feel part of the tribe when I first walk through the doors. My undergrad university didn't do this. It took me years (as a commuter student) to feel any kind of pride in my association with the place. And that pride was short lived.

    4. If you're one of the nation's foremost communications schools, http://newhouse.syr.edu/alumnus/, don't put up a wall online. Do something - anything - with social media, and let me find it easily. Do you even know I have a blog? I feel more connected to Obama's "Change" site than I do to the school where I earned my master's degree.

    Hopefully, these ideas aren't sounding too negative... one thing this post, and the comments after it, made me remember is the absolutely awesome year I spent getting my master's degree at Syracuse, and that I really should write a check and send it to the school. Which I'll do right after I click on "submit."
  • Rahm Emanual will serve Obama well; the new President can maintain his equanimity as Rahm wields his sharp elbows.
    My point? Not everybody can hold the same position.

    In an age of 24/7 marketing, what can we possibly understand about education?
    IIRC it was in Phaedrus that Plato portrays Socrates using his method to bring a slave boy to an understanding of basic geometry. No lecture ... no pointed instructions ... edu.care (if I recall my etymology).

    I encouraged my kidz to explore their interests ... to learn by doing ... to learn from failure. 4 of 5 are professionals (#2 is MD!!) and all are pursuing fields they find rewarding.

    To be brutally frank, "Return On Influence" means always being mercenary ... always playing ulterior motives ... always manoevering for gain.
    The harm? It comes to seem normal.
    Ramifications? Civility becomes cost benefit analysis ... not justice. Perhaps generosity. Most likely pity.

    There's a world of difference between education and training.
  • Susan — That's fantastic. I think you are absolutely right. Great post.
  • Susan
    People still relate to the world in a linear, mechanistic way. I think it is our modern version of "the world is flat". So one thing I would add would be to introduce the notion of a complex adaptive system as a paradigm for thinking about marketing in the social media world. If they are to embrace the practices of social media they have to change their context for engaging or they will try to use social media to work in the same old ways.

    For example, when people think chaos they think “this is bad, something is wrong here”. One of my favorite quotes is “Perhaps order is simply a brief moment seized from disorder”. by Meg Wheatley. We all need to develop a more potent relationship with the notion of chaos. For as long as we think chaos = out of control we will fail to consider and explore new possibilities for how we market (or work together for that matter).
  • Fritz McDonald
    Chris: I can't thank you enough for injecting a tremendous shot of energy, life and wisdom into our conference. You said many great things, but what I appreciate most is your generosity. By giving us so much--constant tweets, bLogging, and live interaction with the people here--you demonstrate an aspect of social media we don't talk about enough...how much people do for each other in the social web and how that shapes both our virtual and physical life.
  • I enjoy reading all your articles if you check my site you will see you are on my list of recipients for the Kreativ Blogger Award.

    This is only meant to thank you for the great effort you put in to help all of us.

    Niels Henriksen
  • I would have tweeted a response to your question but I'm on the west coast and by now it's too late. Then you wrote a blog post asking the question as a post-mortem.

    As you know, when trying to advocate social media, you have to try and connect it to something they already trust. I might have pointed them to "Twitter for Librarians:" http://twurl.nl/qzunr6. Who doesn't trust librarians? Especially at a college/university where their library might be a point of pride and bragging rights. (My alma mater, Penn, has the largest collection on India in the East Coast -- they're very proud.)

    "Twitter for Librarians" makes a point that could have been directly adopted to the Stamats Higher Education Marketing conference. The Stamats website says: "Stamats focuses on helping colleges and universities make the right promises and keep them" and "Twitter for Librarians" mentions (a fact you're aware of): "Have Q and A sessions. Thinking of making some changes to your library website or changing policies?" Replace "library website" with anything university and you've got it. Stamats could help universities find the "right promises" on Twitter before they make them.

    And no, I'm not affiliated with "Twitter for Librarians" or librarians in general. Although my aunt is one.
  • Chris,

    I loved the points you made. I wish I could have attended this conference.

    The quote you chose-"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."- Ralph Waldo Emerson US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882-Is exactly what I'm trying to do in my role my for my employer.

    Going from Phase 1 to Phase 5 is not easy. I get a lot of "well, it's never been done that way before" or "We're doing this because we've always done it this way."

    At least from what I've seen in the Higher Ed world, it's harder to change. I definitely know where I'd like us to be on that continuum. The difficulty is getting everyone on board the media train that can help lead us there.
  • Kelsey
    Barb makes a great point about listening and understanding the culture and social mores of the audience. I was (am) at the conference and Chris did speak briefly about the importance of making sure listening is part of the strategy.

    My favorite comment during the presentation: "What is the ROI of wearing pants?" That's what I would like to give as my short answer for the question, "What is the ROI of our customer relationship management software?"
  • Chris,

    I work in this world, more these days on the community relations & general strategic communications side of things but it's all context for our marketing efforts as well.

    The catch in marketing higher ed is that we have zero influence over product, price, placement, and people, so some of the traditional ways of affecting the bottom-line sales are off limits. (I don't get to rename degree programs to make them more memorable and meaningful, for example.)

    To me this makes the influence and audience reach elements more critical because those are things we CAN affect, so I'm glad they had you there.

    You missed telling them the great stuff you've written before about LISTENING first. "Throwing it all over the place" can make them look pretty clueless if they don't have a sense of the cultures they're walking into. That's one thing I'd add.

    Another thing is the reminder that they have to staff this daily to move along the continuum. It's not like placing ads where you do the creative & write a check; it's a lot more work to create and foster relationships.

    Wish I could have been there! When will you be at a conference in Washington state? I'm at a public institution and our travel budgets are frozen but I'd pay out of my own pocket to get somewhere & hear you talk.

    @BarbChamberlain
  • Universities would do well to learn a few new tricks:
    1. How to use social media for developing inbound leads.
    2. How to capture and use student profile data to communicate with students as individuals.
    3. How to engage with students in a manner that is relevant to each student.
    4. How to track and engage students while they are on campus.
    5. How to use student records to engage with students as they become alumni.

    I work with a lot of schools and see very few doing it well.
  • Interesting - your last comment about "...atomize their marketing" almost sounds chaotic. Is the context that the old ways of broadcast-only (one-way) are dead, and the only effective way forward are two-way mediums? I just wonder how we will process all of the raw feedback. Maybe that is what will separate the winners?
  • We're starting to see it happen over here in the UK, higher education institutions are starting to take social media very seriously. After all, that's where a lot of their prospective students are and if they don't take it seriously then someone else will.

    The tricky thing I find is trying to get parts of the institution to open up and look outwards - universities do loads of interesting and exciting things, these are the things to get out there as content and scatter all over the social web.
  • hi chris,

    I started a blog on business aspect of higher education and tutoring segment last month. The blog is at tutoringtrends.com. objective is to start conversations with small ed-businesses and brainstorm ideas.

    regards,
    Kapil
  • The sense of throwing it all over the place is just starting to click with me...To this point I've been following your lead with outposting. The point is to play in as many pools of thought transaction as possible. It's why FriendFeed can be so valuable, recording that journey into the many corners of the web cloud.

    I think it's important to realize that each and every transaction, the commerce of it, needs to be treated as having potential value...Our personal branding is the sum of all our actions in this space...
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