SimpsonScarborough offers a series of five webinars designed to empower higher ed marketers to build and strengthen brand and marketing initiatives. You can sign up to attend just one webinar or all five in the series. Full descriptions of each webinar are below. Registration will open in early February, and each webinar is scheduled from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
March 12: Key Steps to Building an Enduring Brand Strategy
A college or university’s brand is an asset. Like any other asset, it needs to be managed carefully in order to help an institution achieve its strategic goals. Who are we? What do we stand for? How can we communicate our differentiators in a clear and compelling way? These are the types of questions that often lead an institution to embark on an institution-wide branding effort. But what should such an effort look like? What steps are necessary? Who should lead it? Who should be involved? What outcomes can you expect?
In this session, we kick off our webinar series with an overview of a branding initiative. We’ll talk you through such an effort from soup-to-nuts, providing you with a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to developing a brand strategy that will endure over time and form the foundation of your integrated marketing program.
May 7: Harnessing the Power of Research and Data to Build a Brand
Comprehensive market research is required to develop a brand strategy that will endure over time and unify your institution’s marketing effort. There is no substitute for high-quality market data that describes your institution’s existing brand and charts a course for a future positioning that will support long-term marketing, enrollment, fundraising and image-related goals. What type of research is required? What audiences should be targeted? What are the pros and cons associated with qualitative and quantitative research? How should a study be structured to ensure the resulting data are clear in determining an effective marketing strategy?
In this webinar, these and other questions will be addressed to provide a detailed understanding of the research required to support a branding initiative. We’ll discuss ways to use the research process to engage internal audiences in the branding initiative and how to turn the findings into a powerful brand development tool.
July 9: Principles of a Strong Positioning Strategy
A seminal point in any branding process is developing the positioning strategy. What does a good positioning statement look like? How do you negotiate what it includes and excludes? What role should research play in the process? What format is appropriate for a college or university? How does it relate to your campus mission, vision or strategic plan? Is it possible to develop a strategy that works for all the units of your campus? How can you appropriately address your brand architecture?
In this third webinar of the series, we will address these and other issues related to developing the actual positioning strategy. We will clarify the relationship between the research, brand positioning and creative strategy that will ultimately be developed to bring the positioning to light.
September 10: Creatively Expressing Your Brand Strategy
You’ve done your research, developed a positioning strategy and brought your campus along for the ride. But bringing it to life and expressing it creatively is where the rubber meets the road in a branding initiative. How does an institution effectively move from brand strategy to creative concept and expression? What are the key elements that need to be addressed? How—and should—you touch your school’s logo or logo guidelines? Where does a good idea come from? What does it take to build a case and support for a big idea?
These are among the critical questions in the creative development process. They are answered in the fourth webinar of our series, which will explore the key elements of developing a powerful, moving creative strategy that is authentic to your brand.
November 12: Effectively Measuring Marketing ROI
Now more than ever, higher education marketers need to be able to measure and track brand strength over time and report on marketing effectiveness. What should be measured? What metrics accurately capture the outcomes of the marketing effort? How do you account for the impact on recruiting and fundraising?
These are important and tricky questions that need to be answered in order to help you create a systematic process for measuring marketing outcomes. In this session, we will discuss metrics that should be used to measure your brand strength over time. We will also describe metrics that should be used to monitor the marketing effort in order to support future decision-making and help leadership understand marketing’s impact.
