Agricultural Communications Services
Marketing Strategies
April 2013 1
Marketing Strategy
Developing a general Marketing Strategy
Here are some marketing basics to use in promoting department/unit level marketing:
In one sentence…
 Explain the purpose of the strategy
 Explain how you will achieve this purpose. (Competitive advantage and benefits)
 Describe your target audience or market
 Outline the marketing tools you will use. Create a marketing calendar.
 Describe your niche-your positioning
 Identify exactly what you plan to offer
 Do a SWOT analysis. Determine Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and
Threats related to your marketing strategy
Consider (also use the worksheet provided on the next page):
 Product: What you are offering to the target audience (product or service)
Message: Help your target audience identify, understand and remember your
position.
o Three to five words max.
o List why your audience will choose your program rather than someone
else.
o List three to five reasons in order of importance.
o Narrow to a single word.
 Potential value: How does your product compare to others?
 Place: What channels your product will go through to reach your target audience
(channels like Facebook, Twitter, online articles, courses, web page).
 Promotion: How can you raise awareness with your audience? (Dynamic web
content, blogs, social media)
 Positioning: Where you will place this product in the minds of the target
audience.
o Is the target audience in a particular area?
o Present a simplified message and make it consistent with what the
audience already believes by focusing on the perceptions of the
customer.
o Ask yourself, “How can I be the first to claim a unique position in the
mind of my audience?”
 What’s your target audience?
o Your county community, legislation, public schools, volunteers
o Traditional freshman, community college transfer students, nontraditional students, graduate students, diverse student body
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Agricultural Communications Services
Marketing Strategies
April 2013
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Expanded audience to include influencers of potential students including,
parents, teachers, guidance counselors, alumni, employers
Social Media Marketing
Developing a Social Media Strategy
10 Steps to a Successful Social Media Marketing Strategy:
1. Establish a clear, focused vision
2. Get commitment from your boss and co-workers
3. Create personas of your audience
4. Create and establish measurable goals
5. Choose type of social media tools to achieve the goals
6. Create a marketing calendar for planning methods to achieve the goals
7. Plan and create content targeted to the type of social media tool
8. Publish on social networks where your targeted audiences visit
9. Measure and monitor results
10. Modify your marketing as needed. Keep things fresh.
Social Media-Follow the Rules of Listen, Learn Respond
 Two-way communication and actively engage with readers. Facilitating
conversations to promote people to talk positively to each other about us.
 Provide content that people want to share about us.
 Figure out what to measure. How many people clicked a link in a blog post? How
many times was a message re-tweeted? How many followers does the person
who re-tweeted have?
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WORKSHEET
How to Identify Your Web Audience and Create Goals
User Name (Possible User Profiles):
 What type of audiences do you want to attract? Think about ages, locations of
users, students, alumni, stakeholders, faculty/staff/community, universities,
colleges.
 What would a typical user profile be?
What are 5 reasons this user comes to your site?
Agricultural Communications Services
Marketing Strategies
April 2013 3
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To read about what we do in the college/extension
Directions in research and why this program is important to them
College news and special interest feature stories
Career opportunities, job prospects
What are 3 ‘hard’ goals you have for the audiences (in general, not just on the site)?
A specific measurable action
 More information to more user profiles hits
 Analytics showing more people know about the program
 Every month feature story
 Press coverage/Story in the news
Three ‘soft’ goals?
More general, and may not be specifically measurable
 Learn about all major programs available
 View the scope of Research, Extension and Academics
 Engage the audience to give to the college/program
 Volunteer
For each of these goals, what website resources are necessary?
 Google analytics
 Social media links
 Survey capabilities
 Gallery
What new resources will your site need to create for these goals?
What specific resources on your site are most useful to this user?
 Other department and programs links
 Student “real life” commentaries
 Stories about the program in the UKNews
 Social media re-tweets about the program
 Using the facebook account to tell stories and talk to interested users F2F
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Agricultural Communications Services
Marketing Strategies
April 2013
Define Your Content Types
What different kinds of content will your site need?
 Static pages (description of programs, information pages)
 Feature stories about the program and from students in the program
o News feeds about your program from other sources (show breath of
resources)
o Student/Faculty profiles
o YouTube videos on the program
o Social Media Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest
Define your content channels
Besides website pages, how will you distribute your online content?
- facebook page
- twitter account
-printed publications
-electronic e-mail
Plan Your Content Maintenance
How frequently will the different content types need to be updated or reviewed?
Use tweetdeck or other social media tool to schedule advertising of events
 Schedule time each day, week to find out what your users are talking about, retweeting anything.
 Follow other programs that do what you do and see how they use their
resources. What do they talk about? Do they mention your program?
 Update profile and slideshow banners on your facebook account.
Always point your audience back to the college pages for more information. Remember
that the college site is the parent site for the audience to search for important global
information.