Lochness –
Marketing issues are typically discussed with respect to the 4 P's --
product, price, promotion and positioning.
Is the product correct? Judging from the many questions that Google
Answers researchers see here regarding all types of computing issues,
you certainly haven't saturated the market! Continually surveying of
your students you if the courses are providing what people most need
to know. It's easy for a teacher to be sensitive to the least-capable
in the class and fail to meet the needs of the majority. In a case
like this, your students comments may be the most-valuable information
you can find about what else they'll need to know.
Is the price correct? Classic supply-demand curves have taught most
of us that the lower the price, the higher the volume. While
generally true, you may be under-pricing your courses – and hurting
yourself by having potential students think "what can a $20 web page
design class be worth?" Conduct a quick survey of what else is being
offered in the community by computer retailers; adult education
programs; non-profit groups; and neighboring community colleges.
In addition, if you're unable to saturate your potential market with
messages about the courses, you're cutting price at the expense of
promotion. At first glance the classes seem to be priced extremely
low: consider surveys to find out whether students see any difference
between a $19, $39 or $59 class (if you have the freedom to price
classes and use the revenues). It would be particularly important to
know if non-students perceive a sub-$20 computer class to be "likely
low quality."
Is promotion adequate? Do you know who the likely participants are?
Can you reach them with at least one message or impression each
semester or quarter?
This is really the core of your question – how can the college reach
more people cost effectively (or at least with $980)? There are lots
of low-cost techniques that you can use to get the message out: press
releases to local newspapers; interviews with local radio-TV stations;
course catalogs; posters; direct marketing phone calls to local
businesses; your own website. A little brainstorming among your staff
will turn up dozens of other ideas.
Whatever you choose, you'll want a strategy for WHO you're trying to
reach. If you find a way to reach 100,000 people regularly on a $980
budget, there will be very high demand for your services!
This is where promotion and positioning come together. It's not too
different from this railroad volunteer manager seeking to decide whom
they should try to attract:
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=86106
In most businesses, the prime people to reach are those who've already
been customers. They're familiar with what's being taught – and
they're the most likely to recommend classes to others. Generally
gaining a new customer costs about 10 times what getting it costs to
get a return customer.
You can't reach everyone in a community your size on a $1,000 budget,
so it may take a little brainstorming to focus on who it's
most-important to reach. In the process it's important to get as
close as possible to the person who will take action – i.e., not Andy
Grove (the chairman of Intel), but the computer support manager at the
local Intel facility. And remember that while that computer support
manager might not be the customer themself, they're a key influencer
within their company.
And the possible markets for you may vary, even being vastly different
for the web page design and the spreadsheet classes. Some
possibilities: advanced high school students; retirees; small
businesses; corporate computer support staff; government employees;
K-12 teachers; etc. An optimal marketing strategy would make sure
that the target market gets a renewed message before each
registration. As an example, Compaq's goal in public relations and
advertising at once time made it the goal to be ensure that all IT
staff in the Fortune 1000 were aware of new products within 30 days of
product launch (and they tested it with follow-up surveys).
Google search strategy:
marketing + product + price + position + promotion
Good luck with the effort -- and please let us know if there's
anything that we can clarify before rating this answer.
Omnivorous-GA |
