I am a huge fan of online education. I believe the combination of a rising cost of college, increased need by workers to retrain themselves to adapt to global competition, and the low-cost/scale efficiency of the Internet will dramatically boost this business model. A leader in online education that I’ve had my eye on for a while is the University of Phoenix. This school has revenues of $2.7 billion, has a very strong 23% operating margin, and grew enrollment by 11% last year.
Naturally, I was excited to see Adrants post about U of P’s latest online advertising campaign. Banner ads like the one above say: “19 years old. Works part time. Blogs daily. Goes to school online. If she can do it, so can you.” Adrants’ Angela Natividad praised the campaign’s apparent targeting of bloggers. She loves the insight that bloggers like her work their butts off to create content each day.
I can see where you could argue that this ad has everything going for it. Daily bloggers are a target audience that is active online and motivated by self-improvement (check). The ad media buy is online, where these people spend much of their time (check). And the ad uses a good insight and simple idea to communicate the benefit (check). The perfect ad, right? Wrong.
The University of Phoenix has missed an incredible opportunity to bring meaningful marketing to this focused target. The online education category is a perfect target for Marketing with Meaning. After all, education itself is a pretty meaningful service. And a niche focus on bloggers could really help the school come up with very specific ideas that are relevant and helpful to this group. Here are just a couple of ideas off the top of my head, all of which offer a much deeper personal experience than a static banner ad with cute copy:
- Let people “audit” one session of any of the classes taught at the University of Phoenix.
- Set up a discussion board where prospective students can ask questions of current students and alumni.
- Share a listing of University of Phoenix student blogs so that we could see how they manage their time and how they enjoy the experience.
- Create a special online class that addresses barriers that people may have and/or gives them a taste of how great the University of Phoenix can be, for example, classes on “How to Fit Online Education Into Your Schedule.”
- Grab attention in the blogosphere and buddy up with bloggers by offering a course that helps them perfect their craft – say, “Journalism for Bloggers.”
I find it interesting to read that the University of Phoenix is in the middle of a search for a new advertising agency. If this is the kind of work they are getting, I can see why. The school is spending more than $200 million per year in media, with the bulk of it going to online efforts. That’s ample resources for doing something dramatically meaningful. Heck, U of P might even find that more meaningful marketing allows it to reduce the cost of new student acquisition.
So it’s blatant plug time: If anyone at the University of Phoenix is reading this, give us a call and we’d love to hop on a plane and share more thoughts! Alternatively, if you’ve got some meaningful marketing to share I would love to feature it here.
I totally love the “targeting bloggers” angle, but it seems strange to me that they’d choose the angle of “if a 19-year-old can do it, so can you”– your average UoP student is older, has a family and responsibilities– unless they’re trying to target traditional college students. I would think that this ad could turn off their core student base. Even just a switch to the “mommy blogger” demographic (as an example) could be much more powerful. Link that ad to a forum, hosted on UoP’s site where prospective and current students who are also parents can talk about how they balance personal, work and family life with a degree and you have some meaning.
I agree with you. Whether or not it meant to court the blogger vote, actual blogger outreach wouldn’t hurt. (The dividends yielded would probably improve the school’s brand equity far more than a feeble but pervasive series of banner ads.)
I also liked Julie’s suggestion of making the banner work harder with a community where people can talk about how they juggle a hectic workload. I’m looking forward to seeing whether suggestions like these are taken into account by University of Phoenix’s new agency.
It’s interesting how so many marketers shy away from directly courting bloggers. I think it’s a combination of fear of the unknown, discomfort on real 1-to-1 marketing, and a belief that the numbers are so small that it’s not worth the effort. All of this rationale is valid to some extent, but misses some of the potential upsides like a burst of word-of-mouth, inbound links (to drive Search results), and the endorsement factor.
I think the idea of marketing being truly interactive–true one-on-one interfacing with a brand– is a little scary for a lot of marketers. We look at people as demographics and not as individuals– but one blogger can make or break a brand, because one blog is generally read by a lot of other bloggers, who in turn… you get the idea.
Of course, as a blogger myself, I’m a bit biased, but it’s amazed me how many people come to my blog for an opinion and really trust it– and that’s true for many, many bloggers– which leads to many, many opportunities.
I liked this article a lot, but I’d really just like to comment on the overall aim of this site… I think it’s great that you’re disseminating a customer-centric marketing philosophy. For many years, I’ve seen marketing that looks more like it’s aimed at fooling consumers or making them jealous of the Joneses. Obviously speaking to a person’s real needs is a better approach, and I think it also allows for more creativity in the means to reaching that end than traditional marketing does.