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Intelligence
Your Higher Ed Brand and the Cost of Inaction

Intelligence

Your Higher Ed Brand and the Cost of Inaction

Mar 28, 2016By mStoner Staff

Does inaction have a cost?

When an education institution considers a major brand initiative, people naturally think about costs. Often, there is intense focus on the project’s price tag and whether it’s the right time to make such an investment.

Absent from these conversations: the costs associated with not making the investment — or the costs of making the wrong investment.

Time = Cost

Partly, this is because many institutions think about cost solely in terms of their discretionary operating budgets and don’t calculate the time and effort of their employees. Any discussion about cost that doesn’t consider employees’ time is decidedly incomplete. Research from the Delta Cost Project indicates “colleges and universities devote an average of 60 to 70 percent of their total spending … to employee compensation.”

Think about your own institution. How many individuals have communication responsibilities? (Be sure to include all your web content editors, every individual sending mass emails, your admissions team, your alumni engagement and fundraising efforts, advertising for athletic and artistic events, and others) After a few moments of brainstorming, your list likely contains dozens or hundreds of people. Even at small institutions, individual employee communication activities cumulatively add up to thousands of hours each year.

During a conversation about the costs and benefits of a brand project, it’s important to weigh the time decentralized employees spend communicating with your important audiences. Do they understand your larger marketing goals? Do their communications enhance your brand? Are they representing your institution in a cohesive way? Or is your decentralized messaging a discordant cacophony?

Remember, all communication activities start with your brand.

Before you update a website, tweet about your campus, or write for a viewbook, you have to understand who you are. If the people communicating about your institution aren’t clear about your brand, you’re potentially misusing, misdirecting, or wasting those thousands of communication hours every year.

A brand strategy defines what you stand for in the minds of the people you wish to reach, influence, and move to action. Your marketing plan identifies the tactical, day-to-day activities you’ll undertake to shape people’s perceptions about your brand and drive them to take action. Together, a higher ed brand strategy and marketing plan serve as a roadmap for all of your institution’s communication activities. They provide a framework so individuals distributed across the entire organization can speak with one voice and work toward a common set of goals.

Spending employee time on uncoordinated, inconsistent, or ineffective communication activities is not a good use of any institution’s resources. You shouldn’t ignore these costs as you contemplate initiatives to shape and streamline institutional communication.