Strategic Benchmarking & Evaluation
Marketing and communications, defined narrowly as a set of professional activities, or as a discrete function or department, plays a valuable role in supporting the organisation to achieve its goals.
However, marketing by itself rarely drives sustained success in education markets. This is why we recommend that we evaluate and benchmark clients on an organisation-wide basis, assessing the extent to which the institution displays an integrated and consistent approach.
We recommend a two phase approach:
- Performance Benchmarking (an evaluation of market performance)
- Organisational Benchmarking (an evaluation of organisational processes/market orientation)
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Performance Benchmarking
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
There might be a perception that marketing/market performance should be better, but change is usually expensive so the first phase of a review is to analyse how well the organisation is actually performing and diagnose the reasons.
First we need to agree on the measures of success. In student markets this might be about the volume of recruits or applications, conversion, the quality or profile of the students or the balance of international enrolments across target markets.
Second we need to map the trends in performance against those KPIs.
Third we need to explain any variance between predicted and actual outturn. There are some obvious variables to take account of, many of which are not controlled by marketing:
- The portfolio of courses on offer (and alignment to growth)
- The scope of the subjects on offer (academic footprint)
- The admissions requirements (relative to peers)
- Brand credentials and reputation (relative to the competitors)
- Fees (and discounts or scholarships)
- Location (nature and appeal)
- New entrants (private or overseas providers opening local campuses)
- Demographics (a decline or increase in your core segment populations)
There are a number of trade-offs to consider too – volume V quality is an obvious one; universities that have the best admissions quality typically have smaller entry cohorts.
Given all these factors we can make a judgement as to whether your institution is above or below a predicted benchmark performance.
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Organisational Benchmarking and Evaluation
We employ the Marketing Excellence in Education Framework as a basis for our reviews – the most widely used marketing evaluation and benchmarking methodology in the education sector.
David Roberts who leads our education marketing practice was the consultant for the HEFCE funded project that created the original framework in 2002. We have worked with colleagues in the sector to produce a revised framework fit for the post Browne era.
The new version includes best practice statements against which your university or college can be evaluated. Each statement or indicator has an associated specification and rationale.
DOWNLOAD the schematic market excellence in education model showing the comprehensive scope of our reviews.
DOWNLOAD an extract from the market excellence in education framework showing example benchmark statements.
The new tool can be used for self appraisal, university wide self-assessment and as a framework for consultant led review:
- Review – an independent evaluation of your university incorporating the Campus and Professional components. Typically this includes a review of documentation (policies, strategies, evaluation and research reports, etc) and 30+ face-to-face interviews with key staff including the Vice Chancellor’s senior team, the student president, deans, marketers and heads of service functions.
- Campus – online self assessment survey designed to engage a stratified sample of professionals, academics and senior staff across the university – ideal for identifying where there is accord across the campus regarding future priorities..
- Professional – designed for expert marketing director level self-appraisal (spreadsheet driven tool or online); ideal for evaluating progress towards marketing excellence following a review.
Organisational Benchmarking and Evaluation – 3 methods to suite your needs and budgets
MaXimizE Professional is a spreadsheet or online tool that can be accessed by marketing directors to evaluate your own institution. It guides you through the Marketing Excellence framework and allows you to rate the institution against each best practice indicator.
With a model specification for each indicator driving the summative ratings, MaXimizE Professional supports an objective approach. You can record your own ideas and comments at each stage as a basis for action planning. You can weight each section to reflect what you feel the key success factors for your university are. The Knowledge Partnership delivers a digital summary report with key action priorities.
MaXimizE Campus is an online self-assessment survey designed to engage a stratified sample of staff comprising professionals, academics, marketers and senior managers from across your institution.
Successful marketing in a university requires engagement, support and commitment from all quarters. It therefore makes sense to involve those who will be responsible for making a strategy work in a review and to consult widely before you decide where to invest your time, effort and resources.
We provide full guidance on sampling, incentives and on internal communications to achieve the highest possible response rates (typically over 75%).
Self assessment provides an inclusive process, encouraging feedback from a large sample of staff.
MaXimizE Review is an independent evaluation of your university incorporating the Campus and Professional components.
A full review includes:
- Initial feedback from the marketing director using the Professional tool
- A desk top evaluation of your policies, plans and marketing materials
- A Campus online self-assessment
- Personal interviews with a structured sample of key senior managers
- Workshops and group discussions with staff working in marketing and admissions roles
- Interim and final presentations to senior executive team
Deliverables include an interim self assessment report and an executive summary report with strategic recommendations for the board and operational recommendations for individual managers.
Allow for 3 months of elapsed time from commission to final report and presentation.