Positioning of Small College

Question: Write a paper analyzing your organizations positioning. What is different about this organization as compared with others? Does your organization need to focus more on creating awareness, imparting knowledge, or changing behavior? Answer: Introduction The positioning strategy of Small College will be analyzed. It is a leading liberal arts college in Massachusetts. The college is renowned and it has been able to make connections between the students and the faculty via its approach of teaching. But the college is currently facing some challenges. According to the Board of Trustees the company has to expand in order to remain competitive. Apart from these issues, the college had to raise the tuition fees in order to conduct the alumni affairs of the college. But they receive miniscule amount from the alumni members as they are not in professions generating great wealth (Hyman and Jacobs, 2010). Thus in order to manage the rise in the operating expenses, it has to increase the tuition fees. But Small College has to think of other strategies of raising money as they cannot pressurize the students excessively. A communication plan has been prepared devising effective strategies for fund raising (The operational plan : How to create a y earlong fundraising plan, 2015). Communication Plan for Small College The mini campaign of named New Small College has the vision of raising $100 million. The growth of the college has faced severe criticism from the alumni in the past. But in the competitive scenario it is important for the organization to increase its strength instead of over burdening the existing students. Twitter has been a platform to increase communication with the alumni members. The communication plan will be effective if the college is able to create awareness among wide group of people including the faculty, staff and alumni. The media used by the college are as follows Website The Website of Small College can serve as a major tool for interacting with the existing alumni members and donors and creating new donors. Apart from interacting via twitter, the website of the college will form an effective tool (Foot and Schneider, 2015). The college must demonstrate in their website that they have made the investments wisely. The content of the website must be appealing and clearly depict the areas in which the funds will be used. The look of the website has to be appealing in order to increase its functionality. The website activities will be regularly monitored. There will be a separate testimonial page in the website where the alumni members will express their ideas for the future alumni meet (Peters, 2015). Email marketing Email outreach program will be effective means for communicating regularly with the donors and the prospects. The program will comprise of monthly e-newsletters with the donor and non donor versions (Best Practices for E-Mail Marketing, 2012). It will comprise of occasional action or the event alerts. The college will implement strategies for building the email list. The college will create creative ways of building new prospects through incentives such a chance to win a gift certificate of a local pet store for those people subscribing to the e-newsletter(The definitive guide to engaging email marketing, 2015). Increasing the site traffic Campaigns will be developed to drive traffic to the Website of Small College. The search engine of the website has to be improved. The college will run campaigns on the site and elsewhere and develop partnership with the corporate. This will increase the sponsorship and college will not burden the students by a fees hike. The college has to increase the visibility to the offline corporate partners websites via banners, links and special campaigns. The fundraising campaigns will be promoted on the media sites. The college will create graphics that will be posted on the national, local media and regional sites (Forbes, 2014). Tracking, benchmarking and reporting The email messaging program will be tracked by tracking the number of recipients that has been converted into new donors. The number of gifts and the renewals that has been received from the existing donors will be monitored (DEGREES FOR WHAT JOBS? Raising Expectations for Universities and Colleges in a Global Economy, 2015). The site traffic will be evaluated on a regular basis. The visibility of the website has to be increased (Strategic Communication Plan Division of Governmental Relations and University Communications, 2013). Conclusion Social media will serve as an effective platform to communicate with the donors and the alumni members. Apart from twitter, the website can be used as an effective platform to communicate with the alumni members. Direct communication with the alumni members and the donors will be possible via email marketing. The e-news letter will contain a brief idea of the various activities by the college. The donors can express their interests and views in the emails. This will make the interaction with the alumni members more engaging. Instead of raising the fees of the college and burdening the students various ways can be applied by Small College to raise fund. This will increase the awareness among the alumni members and generate new funds. The college will arrange solicitations and special appeals for the existing donors and the prospects. References Best Practices for E-Mail Marketing. (2012). 1st ed. [ebook] pp.1-12. Available at: https://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/best-pratce-email-market-wp-1560488.pdf [Accessed 24 Feb. 2015]. DEGREES FOR WHAT JOBS? Raising Expectations for Universities and Colleges in a Global Economy. (2015). 1st ed. [ebook] pp.2-10. Available at: https://www.nga.org/files/live/sites/NGA/files/pdf/1103DEGREESJOBS.PDF [Accessed 24 Feb. 2015]. Foot, K. and Schneider, S. (2015).Web Campaigning. 1st ed. [ebook] Available at: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/web-campaigning [Accessed 24 Feb. 2015]. Forbes, (2014).39 Actionable Ideas For Driving Traffic To Your Website. [online] Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/05/13/39-actionable-ideas-for-driving-traffic-to-your-website/ [Accessed 24 Feb. 2015]. Hyman, J. and Jacobs, L. (2010).10 Reasons to Go to a Small College - US News. [online] US News World Report. Available at: https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/professors-guide/2010/07/28/10-reasons-to-go-to-a-small-college [Accessed 24 Feb. 2015]. Peters, J. (2015).Tips for Virtual Fundraising Success | npENGAGE. [online] Npengage.com. Available at: https://npengage.com/nonprofit-fundraising/6-tips-from-valencia-college-foundation-for-virtual-fundraising-success/ [Accessed 24 Feb. 2015]. Strategic Communication Plan Division of Governmental Relations and University Communications. (2013). 1st ed. [ebook] pp.1-13. Available at: https://president.uc.edu/thirdcentury/docs/StratCommPlanFinalOct2013.pdf [Accessed 24 Feb. 2015]. The definitive guide to engaging email marketing. (2015). 1st ed. [ebook] pp.1-12. Available at: https://www.marketo.com/_assets/uploads/The-Definitive-Guide-to-Engaging-Email-Marketing.pdf [Accessed 24 Feb. 2015]. The operational plan : How to create a yearlong fundraising plan. (2015). 1st ed. [ebook] Available at: https://www.nonprofitalliance.org/system/res/135/original/tool_06.12.pdf [Accessed 24 Feb. 2015].