Whether you are a lentil farmer, an app
developer or a lentil app developer, evolution is the key to keeping up with
the ever changing technologies of our time.
If it is societal changes, new
platforms to communicate with the world or just a new Starbucks in town we live
in an unstable world that is ever growing.
I spoke with Amanda Morgan who has
been the Director of Alive!, the incoming student orientation at Washington
State University, since 2013 and working for the program for ten years. She
touched on the importance of changing to stay in line with the needs and
demands of your target audience.
In the case of Alive! Amanda Morgan talked
about the significance of finding out what your audience wants and transforming
your organization to fit these desires. “Alive! uses student and parent
evaluations at the end of the program … they were pretty robust,” Morgan told
me referring to the general positivity of the results in her years as Director.
This
can be defined as a retroactive marketing plan in that it relies on results of
events that have already occurred.
“Students want a shorter program so
we cut back half a day from the freshmen program and condense the information,”
the Alive! Director discussed.
I
am fascinated by the successful revolutionaries like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and
Martin Luther King Jr., who bucked the trend by being ahead of the change curve.
In other words, proactive marketers. These visionaries were able to rock the
world with their ideas, not because they yielded to how the world was changing
at the time — we know their names because they correctly forecasted how the
world would change in the future.
How
does this relate to the Alive! program at Washington State University? What
about the power of first impressions? Why is being ahead of the change curve
the most crucial thing you can do to be successful?
More
importantly in what ways does shortening the length of an orientation program
that welcomes incoming students to our university improve their experience? It
seems that this action would have the reverse effect and not give students as
much time to ease into the college environment.
While
Alive! meant well when they reduced the length of their program this move did not
do anything to make the experience better for incoming students and parents.
What
Alive! needs to focus on is the preferences of high school students and all
individuals who are considering going to Washington State University but still
making up their mind. By adjusting their program to cater to the desires of
students who had just gone through the program, Alive! is using retroactive
marketing practices. They should be more proactive by marketing themselves to
students who are still considering what university to attend with Pullman being
amongst the options.
Alive!
can accomplish this by being more active on Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and
other social media applications dominated by millennials. Alive! should also
strive to include the opinions of high school kids and all prospective Washington
State Cougars when designing their orientation. Alive! representatives should
make traverse varying high schools around the country selling students on all
that Washington State University has to offer.
My
main plea to Alive! is don’t market yourself to the audience you already have;
target the individuals who are still trying to pick a college by
differentiating yourself from the pack.
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