Marketing Study

 the city is going to be conducting a marketing study later this year. It would certainly be cost effective and a show of confidence in SIUC, if the city would engage the Marketing Research class at SIUC to conduct the research. That class has done research for both Quatro's and Carbondale Main Street. since we have such a resource, it would make sense to make use of it.

Community Survey

 If you want to complete the community survey and aid Zo Agency with its research developing comprehensive marketing plan, here you go.  I think we have done this a couple of times before.  Not sure why the town does not reach out to a perfectly good Univeristy and have them do the reserach instead of hiring an agency though.

Outside Advisors

 I have noticed both the city and Univeristy tend to hire outside advisors when making decisions like this.  the city also hired an outside firm to design the new city logo and, under Rita Cheng, the university hired an outside marketing firm to advise in the rebranding and marketing of SIUC. Only thing that came out of that initiative was some banners along the streets on campus.

Always bemused me that neither the city nor the administration  make  more use of the people and departments on campus. SIUC has some very qualified desingers and resarchers and an entired department of amrketing that the administrations could take advantage of but nope, got to an outside firm instead.

If You Want to Reach Students

  Every semester for my Principles of Marketing class, I have my students survey over 1000 Southeast Missouri State Students regarding their social media use, so If you want to reach a college student, these are probably the best platforms to use. Unfortunately, unless you make your messages compelling, they are likely going to swipe right or ignore them. After all, just because you put the message out does not mean anyone will read it. So here they are in order, along with some comments as to why:

1. Snapchat--used to keep in contact with one another. For a lot of students has replaced texting. Very easy to ignore advertisements though

2. Instagram--People like looking at pictures. Much more so than text only

3.  TikTok--not even on the radar last year. Now a very popular way to spend time. Has replaced YouTube for a lot of students

4.  Facebook-Viewed as used by parents and grandparents. Students don't use it as much for them selves and a number only keep accounts active because their parents and grandparents do.

5. Twitter--not visual. Lots of text and can be hard to follow.. Viewed as primarily used for news. Easy to lose the context of messages.

Discord was also referenced but was not referenced enough to reach the top 5. Linked In is also used but primarily for job searching so if you are trying to reach college students, Snapchat or Instagram are probably your best bets.

Spring Attendance at SIUC

Caught Chancellor Cheng's Morning Conversation this morning and spring attendance figures caught my attention.  It appears spring attendance has declined another 1.9%, though final figures have not released yet. Hopefully the university's marketing plan will start to bear fruit soon, thought it's going to take more than banners and billboards to change the direction of attendance.

George Maroney Was Right...

...at least about downtown Carbondale becoming an entertainment district. Took a walk through downtown last week and saw  at least three new businesses ( Evelyn's Restaurant, Kelly's Irish Boxy House, and the unnamed rumored micorbrewery), the new location of Cristado's and one expansion (Mary Lou's) going int.  All food related. Almost all the store fronts that have opened in the area in the past year, with the exceptions of Sew A Lot and Esther's Clothing, have been entrainment/food oriented ( various tattoo parlors and spas, Practice Pad, Crossfit Gym, La Unica Bakery).

Most of these serve as entertainment for their customers. they come in, eat, get a tattoo, work out, then leave.  They don't promote shopping by their customers, nor do their customers have a reason to move from one location to the other. The places where customers can buy "things" are quite limited, most of what you buy in downtown Carbondale are services. Generally, once the customer purchases the service, they leave downtown or, in the case of the bars, move onto another one.

Even in the case of purchasing things, there is no inducement to convince customers to remain downtown to shop as most of the stores, the bike shops excepted, are dissimilar from one another. A customer at Priority Sports is not likely to move on to Sound Core to shop nor will a purchaser at Old Town Liquors move on to Univeristees.  There are no clusters of similar stores, or "strings' as they are called, save for the group of bike shops, spas, bars and restaurants, ergo no reason for customers to engage in the traditional shopping behavior of moving from store to store,looking for the perfect, or at least satisfactory, product.  People come downtown for entertainment and find it in the form of bar and restaurants (and the Varsity).  The question is, does Carbondale accept that it does not have a viable shopping district for a downtown but does have a lively entertainment district or does it put in the extensive (and expensive) work needed to change this.

Morning Coversation with Rita Cheng

Conversation between Jennifer Fuller and Chancellor Cheng on WSIU this morning.  Questions about the new logo and why the university spent $1.5 million hiring a marketing firm out of Chicago when the university has an entire marketing department in the college of business at its disposal.  Cheng's answer was rather vague as to the reasoning but I think the point she wanted to make was that they wanted outside eyes to examine the university's image and develop the new logo and promotional materials.

Facebook Fans

Found this interesting. The three most popular people or items to 'friend' on Facebook are

Barack Obama
Coca-Cola
Nutella

20% Discount

Trying to get more students from southern Illinois, SIUC will be giving students from this area a 2o% discount on tuition. In marketing, we say that price is the easiest thing to compete on. If I want to compete with you on it, all I have to do is cut my price to be equal or near yours and, assuming I have a superior product, people will buy my product over your's.

Unfortunately, students are not perceiving SIUC as offering a superior product or they would be flocking here, as they did up until the early 1990s. When you start competing on price, which, despite the tone of the press release, is what SIUC has been doing with its recent moves, you get studetns focused on price first and quality of education second. That's not a good basis on which to revitalize the university. You improve the quality of the product and students will come back to the university.