Strategy and Marketing Planning

Strategy Planning
We regard strategic planning and marketing planning as critically interdependent. This is now being increasingly realised by educational institutions, as they look to plot their future position in an increasingly crowded education market. Our long standing experience in this area allows us to offer comparative insights into a variety of different educational institutions across Australasia.
Strategic planning simply means understanding where you are going (ambition), and what you are trying to do. The Knowledge Partnership works with senior managers to help them with key stages of strategy development - working on educational intent, enacting strategies, differentiating education initiatives and services, supporting strategies, defining the vision, or rebranding corporate identity.

Despite the typical requirement to produce strategic plans for "compliance", educational institutions also need to develop more purposeful, evidence-based plans that will position them in competitive and fast changing student and parent markets.

Plans need to be explicitly linked with culture, operation planning, resource allocation and structures. The key is a market informed systematic process that will generate authentic and meaningful outputs to interest holders.

How do we help education institutions world-wide in this area?

1. We guide institutions that need to move from the compliance model to the market or evidence based model of planning.
2. We facilitate the development of strategic and market-related objectives, performance indicators, mission, vision and the articulation of values, etc, and in supporting what we call a "relative SWOT analysis".
3. We advise on the sort of data that needs to be brought to bear on the planning process, and then used to monitor progress. We can also support the initial collection and analysis of such data.
4. We train staff so that you build internal capacity in strategy planning, execution and evaluation processes.
5. We support the internal communication and dissemination of the strategy to staff, volunteers, students, parents, alumni and others who will support its implementation.

If you have a strategy planning process that is based on an analysis of your markets, including competitors, that has engaged staff and other internal stakeholders and has been effectively communicated there is more chance of supporting the achievement of your ethos and objectives.

Marketing Planning
A marketing strategy is the critical document that creates the link between your strategic plan and your institutions success in reaching its markets. A core competence of The Knowledge Partnership is marketing strategy development, beyond mere traditional promotions, for all forms of educational institutions.

We can project manage your strategy development or work with you on parts of it. We also provide training and we have given many conference papers on the subject, led workshops, undertaken original research, and published extensively in this field.

Analyses of existing strategies
Within our core team and wider network we have leading professionals that can support your strategy work from a number of valuable perspectives.

• The Board/CEO/executive perspective - does it address the key issues and support vision?
  
• The experienced marketing/communications director - is it realistic?
  
• The market analyst - is it based on firm market analysis?
  
• The communications specialists to and disseminate it
  

Creating a new marketing strategy

A marketing strategy translates the aims and objectives in the corporate plan/strategy into a framework that summaries, as a minimum:

• The target markets
  
• The objectives for each market (share, growth, improved margins, caliber of students or staff, etc)
  
• The basis upon which you will compete (positioning) in each broadly market (fees, convenience, reputation, relevance, innovation, etc)
  
• The range of core and support services to be offered
  
• How growth and success is to be achieved - penetrating core/existing markets or developing new ones.
  
• Critical success factors or potential barriers
  

Such a strategy will have implications across your institution, typically well beyond any marketing or communications department but into finance (costing and pricing), premises (to support service delivery), HR (do you have the right staff and staff processes), IT (to support communications and e-delivery) and service delivery units - the parts that are so central to the student/parent experience and their evaluation of your institution.

Marketing Strategy is built on:

• Your mission, vision and values - what is the purpose of the institution and where does it want to be in X years time?
  
• Financial analysis - what services and markets make money and which consume it
  
• Analysis of what is offered
  
• Reputation and image assessment
  
• A relative SWOT analysis
  
• Competitor evaluation
  
• An appreciation of the regulatory and policy framework
  
• Market needs/demand analysis and forecasting
  
• Understanding "consumer behaviour" – e.g. how choice is made by parents/students
  
• Marketing evaluation (resources, competencies, integration etc)
  
• Feedback from current and recent users- students, parents, graduates etc