EDUCATIONAL MARKETING NEEDS MORE PROFESSIONALISM

“The best marketing is done by satisfied customers” says Marketing Guru Philip Kotler. Hence the challenge before any producer is to understand customer needs, market dynamics and its futuristic, and the psyche of the consumer behaviour.  Therefore, every product has its own style of reaching out to the customer and  the marketing strategies vary from one product to the other, one geography to another, one customer cohort to another. The marketing professionals, therefore, need to understand playing the game both strategically and professionally with a deep understanding of the product and its genesis.  Instead of ‘selling’ the products, they should focus on “creating a need” for the product.

Educational marketing, in the last couple of decades, has not really lived up to the professional requirements required for this field. It is not selling a biscuit or a pen. It is basically an engagement with the knowledge industry and hence demands an in-depth understanding of its heritage, current positioning and its future course. Over decades, one of the prime products that has been central to the system is textbooks for schools, colleges and universities, apart from other auxiliary requirements including extended learning materials, library resources and of late, technology enabled products.

The engagement of the edu-marketing professionals with the system managers has not been professional over the years and leaves much to be desired. In most cases, the discussions narrow down to the features of the materials like books – with regard to its design, details, fonts, colours and certain useful inputs to the end users. In other words, the discussions boil down to the body of the product rather than to its soul or spirit. Oftentimes, the argument ends up in establishing a relationship with mid-managers of systems and the business aspects including pricing and discounts for the product. Unfortunately, the evaluation of the content in terms of its pedagogical validity, its ability to provoke the much-needed curiosity and emotional stimuli for learning, its triggers which help the learner to move beyond learning the words and the concept are never considered. In some cases, the majority voting of a group of teachers decides the fate and hence the marketing group are keener in reaching out to them and convincing them in one way or the other. Well, while in marketing everything is fair to win the war, it is important for edu-marketing professionals to understand the basics of some educational interventions that are latent and inherent in the conceptual design of the books and resources.

1.     Understanding the basics of National Policy of Education and its focus in different levels like K-12, universities, open learning systems, vocational educational systems

2.     Understanding the role play of major organizations dealing with education, their significant functions,

3.     Understanding the difference between curriculum framework, curriculum, curricular objectives, syllabus and the content

4.     Understanding the principles that go into the design of the content, its volume, its depth and its engagement value

5.     The interventional pedagogy and its variety, context and impact on the learning and the learner

6.     Basics of how learning takes place in the brain and how the products that are marketed stand up to this requirement.

7.     Current advocacies in learning management – like multiple intelligence, emotional intelligence, differentiated learners and their learning styles – to justify how their products meet these features

8.     Role of illustrations, designs, graphs and triggers that facilitate effective learning

9.     The design features of the products to gravitate the curiosity of the learners and the facilitations for navigating the same over a period.

10. The integration of technology to personalize learning and provide a buffet of experiences to promote experiential learning

Discourses with customers

Marketing strategies in education require a high level of sophistication and his the winning bet is the intellectual discourse between the representative of the company and the client. Discourses need to be provocative, provoking thinking and advocacy for the products have to be established on sound logistics and pedagogical designs.

The marketing representatives should go through the design of their products in detail and learn the intricacies of the approach in the products, be it in print or in electronic mode. Given the kind of competition that haunts the markets, the managers of knowledge products and services should have a broad understanding of the challenges that the clients face. Though they may not be able to offer any solution, the exposure to such challenges itself would give them an opportunity to feel empathetic with their clients, which in turn would help them to strategize their actions.

The edu-marketers are required to operate at different types of service providers in educational institutions – the management, the Head of the organization, the faculty and the administration. Therefore, their relationship management techniques have to be perfect and show maturity in levels and types of communication. .

As professionals promoting knowledge products and services, it is imperative that edu-marketing agencies, should enlarge their scope of identifying, training and mentoring their representatives so that they can sustain their longevity in an electrified competition in the industry.

A paradigm shift in this direction will redefine their future markets; if it is done sooner, the better.