Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Maybe your education program offers no benefits to the potential students and/or doesn't address their needs? Maybe you have competition for their training dollars who are addressing their needs better?

Best thing to do is to explore who your "customers" are and what their needs are. Understand your competition. Figure out what you can provide that meets the needs better than the competition. Find out how to get the word out to the "customers" that you can address their needs better than the competition and in a forum/media/language that will reach the "customers." In other words, back to marketing basics.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

You may be experiencing lack of support from the employERS, not employEES. Many companies have decided to not pay for this sort of professional advancement as loyalty in the corporate marketplace wanes. So, the employee is footing the bill and won't pay for it out of their pocket. Maybe.

Try a mailing for a crash course certification. It could be the mailer (message) or it could be the time commitment.

Is there also a 20% decline in membership renewals or has that picked up? I'm guessing that has declined also. Are your demographics changing? Meaning, are the only active members those who have been around a long time? You might need an influx of new blood...a very common problem in prof assoc's today.

Michael

Start with the fact that the enrollment is declining. That makes the case that something different has to be done. And a differentiation strategy heavily depends on what the needs are of your potential students. After all, you can differentiate by being the professional association that delivers courses to its members in quantum physics - a huge differentiator - but I don't think your enrollment will increase. Once you know what the needs are, you need to understand the competitive offerings in order to know what to differentiate from. Of course, this assumes that the reason for the decline is competition. If it's because the employer market place has no value for these types of courses, then differentiate all you want...you won't fix the problem! Your presentation to the board in that case would be the myriad of actions you can take to increase the value of this education to the workplace.

Bottom line:

• Find out for sure why the enrollment is declining


• Understand the needs of the potential students (and their employers)


• Determine who your competitions is and what they are offering and how it meets the needs of the potential students


• Put together a program plan that addresses the needs better than the competition


• Communicate to potential students and their employers the value the coursework provides them

At this point you will be able to set a course of action and all of your homework will help you address the board.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

Your conclusion relative to "promotion" is right on. You can promote a product as much as you want and if it doesn't meet the needs of the audience, you sell nothing. Now, as far as "marketing" is concerned, I'm going to get a little "symantical" on you! Promotions is just one part of marketing. Marketing also involves researching the customers, their needs, what affects them emotionally, what media they subscribe to..this is the up front stuff. In fact, if you look at the classical 4P's model of marketing, it's Product definition, Positioning the product correctly in the market, PP
ricing it correctly, and Promotion. So in short, what we have been discussing is work on the up front pieces and your other P's.

As far as your argument with colleagues, I'm not a credit expert. But, I believe your assumption that good times means more discretionary dollars for education is correct. As far as good times meaning companies don't train employees to manage credit risks....for all of the acountants I every worked with, times were never good enough to let concern for credit risk management slide. In fact, many of them clamped down on top 20 customers because the books showed a problem before examining the reasons (most times, it was an internal issue in my company causing the credit problem, not the customer's problem) and I had to take special measures to calm the customers down! I wish these accounting guys had some basic problem solving skills and some understanding that the customer is pretty important and before you shut him down, you might want to know all the facts! But, as I said, credit risk management isn't my field and I'm just speaking from isolated incidents.

Wayde