Marketing Research

 






Marketing

Creating a Shared Vision

Marketing Team

Members of the Marketing Team include the Director of Public Relations and Marketing (Chair), Assistant Director of Marketing, Director of Admissions, Dean of Graduate Studies and Extended Education, and Director of Institutional Research. The Marketing Team is expected to interact with various campus colleagues to secure the information it needs to plan and conduct effective promotional campaigns to generate inquiries and move those inquiries to enrollment.

To that end, the three principal tasks of the Team are to:

  1. Create and implement the annual marketing plan in support of the enrollment management plan and to attract specific categories of students
  2. Conduct market research with regard to academic programs and institutional image development
  3. Collaborate with academic and administrative units to promote specific programs and services

In addition, the Marketing Team works with deans and other academic leaders to develop, execute, assess, and refine marketing strategies and to determine when prevailing demographic or market conditions are unlikely to make reasonable promotional investments effective in attracting students to specific programs. At the same time, the Team identifies where resources are needed to support the enrollment base and to help new and redesigned programs to gain market attention.

Marketing Research

Key to successful marketing is understanding the needs and perspectives of the constituencies the University hopes to attract to its programs and services, particularly students. As a result, the Marketing Team is overseeing a two–year project to assess its regional and Mid–Atlantic marketplace and determine how various stakeholders – potential and current students, parents, and business leaders – view the University and select a college. The initial results suggest that WCU is well understood among all of its constituents as an excellent value.