Learning to Say “No” Is the Secret to Dominating the Educational Market

An educational institution’s marketing success begins with limiting its focus and learning to say “No way José”

It’s tough to say “No.” But to be successful, a university must become very disciplined and adept at saying: absolutely not, most certainly not, of course not, under no circumstances, by no means, not at all, negative, never, not really; informal nope, uh-uh, nah, not on your life, no way, ixnay.

• “No” to certain markets
• “No” to some types of students
• “No” to certain service offerings
• “No” to some service levels
• “No” to certain growth opportunities
• “No” to expansion into some regions

The Six Focusing Strategies

Focus is an essential element in a university’s branding and integrated marketing communications program. An organization should not spread its resources too thinly across multiple areas of a market. They should rule out “opportunities” for growth in order to stay focused. Not every opportunity to add a member needs to be pursued. It’s a myth to believe that an organization can be all things to all people. It’s a falsehood to believe that people truly want one-stop shopping across a broad range of services. There are a number of focusing strategies for an organization to consider:

1. Focusing the markets served.
   Limit the number of markets the university serves. Typically, each additional market requires new expertise and people skills, information systems, management, investment dollars, internal processes, regulatory knowledge, distribution channels, and marketing communication approaches.
2. Focusing the service offerings.
   Limit the number and types of service offerings the university offers and become a specialist with a limited menu.
3. Focusing the benefits delivered.
   Offer students a limited range of benefits across a broad range of services. This becomes a winning focusing strategy when the benefits are mapped to a set of prospective students who place a high value on the derived benefits.
4. Focusing the geographies served.
   Limit the university’s geographic targeting to a region.
5. Focusing the channels of access.
   Limit the types of channels that a student may use to access the university, e.g. on-line verses a traditional residential campus.
6. Focusing the types of students served.
   The university should continually strive to identify under-served sets of prospective students and select segments where it can use existing capabilities to satisfy student needs.

Harnessing the Synergy of Your Focusing Strategies

The real power of the six focusing strategies comes from applying several of them in concert, selecting multiple market niches to pursue, and building the internal capabilities that would enable the university to cost-effectively serve multiple niches.

All six of the focusing strategies require a lot of thought and analysis to answer the big question: “Which strategies should the university pursue, and within each strategy, which niche opportunities should it select and which ones should it ignore.” The main goal should be to identify certain niches that the university can dominate.

Steeple provides fund raising and organizational development services to faith-based and community-based organizations of the nonprofit sector. Our efforts are dedicated to putting nonprofit managers and trustees in touch with the tools and resources they need to develop their organizations and to conduct successful capital campaigns. Our work with clients is for the long-term—to build internal capacity, to create brand equity, and to attract and retain funding. Since 2007, we’ve helped nonprofit organizations like yours raise more than $14 million.

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