Marketing SMS quiz service to secondary school students

¶ … John Clarke, Chief Marketing Officer

FROM: Jane Williams, Marketing Assistant

SMS-BASED STUDENT QUIZ SERVICE

Our marketing strategy is directed at the key decision-makers, i.e. The school administrators who select the textbooks to be used for the semester. This report contains a proposal outlining a unique marketing program to reach out to the consumer, i.e. The students. The Prep-on-the-Go program in an SMS subscription quiz package that will provide reinforcement material to school students in the form of a series of questions related to a subject. The improvement in student performance will enhance the credibility of textbooks published by the company.

Radiant Publishers has been publishing and marketing textbooks to school administrations for more than a decade. The main purpose of the books is to improve the academic performance of the student. However, the effectiveness of the textbook depends on the teacher and not only the student. There is a need for marketing directly o the student in a way that directly helps them improve their use of the textbook and their academic performance. The prep-on-the-Go SMS subscription service aims to attain this goal.

CURRENT PRACTICE OF THE FIRM

The current marketing practices of Radiant Publishers are directed at the school administrators that consist of principals, headmasters, academic coordinators and head teachers. The primary mode of marketing is through personal selling where company representatives visit school administrators with sample textbooks and make presentations before them. The company also conducts teacher training sessions to facilitate teachers with using the textbook to maximize the achievement of teaching objectives in the class. Volume discounts are also offered to schools on purchases in bulk quantities. Regular school visits are made by the sales team who collect feedback from the school administrators about the content and organization of the textbooks. These comments are passed on to the editorial team who provide explanations and make the necessary changes for subsequent editions.

However, the marketing strategy is not directed towards the end consumer of our product, i.e. The student. The success of a textbook is measured not by the ease with which a teacher can read out from it in class, but by the academic achievements of the students. Students are mostly worried about reading the textbook for key ideas and concepts so that they may score well on their tests and exams. They also need sufficient reinforcement and feedback on their learning to achieve their academic goals. The current generation of school students is more vocal about their needs and has the resources to access multiple channels of information. These channels can be used by Radiant Publishers to engage directly with the end consumer.

BENEFITS OF THE PROPOSAL

The proposed subscription service will bring a number benefits to the company in the form of engagement with the students beyond the classroom and study time, penetration into the digital media, and the opportunity to expand the service by providing complementary and spin-off services. The proposed program will also generate additional revenues for the company

Deeper Engagement with the Students

According to learning methodology, reinforcement is a crucial part of the learning process as it helps to cement the concepts in the mind through practice and practical application. Textbooks usually do not provide reinforcement as the responsibility is transferred to the teacher. However, we will be able to expand into the reinforcement stage of the learning process for the students by providing reinforcement material in the form of quiz questions through the SMS package Prep-on-the-Go. The main benefit of this service would be that we would be able to engage with the student at any time of the day, whether they are on the bus or waiting or their restaurant order. In this way, students will be able to use their idle time to reinforce what they have learnt.

Media Development

As publishers of school textbooks, the primary media through which we provide service to consumers is printed paper. Higher education publishers can offer online exercises to their consumers but school publishers lack this ability due to less Internet usage among children. However, mobile phones are popular among our market segment and we can use this medium to move into the digital media instead of depending exclusively on printed textbooks. This will enable us to deal with the challenge of competing with online educational content driven websites.

CHALLENGES OF THE PROPOSAL

The Prep-on-the-Go SMS subscription package will have to address a number of challenges to become applicable and practicable. These include logistical challenges and the development of a large bank of questions organized by age, subject, and topic and difficulty level. Software piracy and cost will also be some of the challenges faced.

Logistical Challenges to the Prep-on-the-Go Program

The most significant challenge will be in developing the service delivery mechanism. We will need to develop liaison with a mobile service company for administering the program and maintaining a record of the customer accounts. This will add to the cost of the program and will have to be managed efficiently since we cannot charge a high subscription fee from our consumers because they are school students with a limited disposable income. They will be paying for the service out of their pocket money, so the cost control has to be extremely effective and tight. Another major logistical issue will be the development of questions for the data bank. We will have to appoint a separate editorial team for developing multiple choice questions on all major subjects and for varying difficulty levels. The questions will have to be brief because of limited reading space on mobile phone screens. Because of the high frequency of usage expected of this service, the question bank will have to be updated every week so that students continue to find the service relevant and current.

PROJECT RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS

The Prep-on-the-Go program will require developing a service delivery program with a mobile services company. Friedrich et al. (2009, p. 54) describe this as the creation of a mobile portal through collaboration with a mobile services company offering the business to provide services to customers through a dedicated portal. We will have to select a company that most comprehensively covers our targeted market segment consisting of school going children. Cost will also be considered in the selection of the mobile service operator.

We will also have to liaise with the IT department in order to develop a way of managing the accounts of our subscribers and determining their question sets. The IT department will have to liaise with the editorial team to develop the database and maintain the questions by subject, age and difficulty. It will be important for the questions in each set to be graded by order of increasing complexity so that students receive the easiest question first and are then given progressively more challenging questions. Initially, we may be able to use our existing editorial staff for preparing the questions. The relevant subject editors may be given responsibility for preparing the multiple choice questions from the existing textbooks published by us. Care would be taken to avoid conflicting with royalty issues with the authors. Over time, as the demand for the service increases, there will be a need to employ additional editors to prepare the questions and then the entire responsibility may be assigned to them.

The project will have to be marketed in a different way because we are not going to market it to the school administration as is our traditional sales and marketing approach for textbooks. The marketing campaign will be targeted at the students and will emphasize the potential of the service to help them improve their grades while not spending a huge part of their pocket money on it.

STRENGTHS OF THE PROPOSAL

The success of the Prep-on-the-Go subscription service will depend on a number of strengths of the program. These include the educational support aspect, the fun and engagement aspect and the low cost of the service. All of these major strengths are in line with the value demanded by the consumer.

Educational Support

Most of the students are average performers at school. Their support is derived from their school instruction and through group study sessions with their classmates. Very few can afford to pay for tuitions or extra coaching after school hours. This gap will be filled by the Prep-on-the-Go service which will regularly provide reinforcement material to the students in line with what topics they have completed in class. In this way, students will be able to engage in reinforcement throughout the semester instead of just close to the exams. They will be able to select material according to their readiness level. Students will find as a result that they are able to understand the material in a better way in a number of settings, outside the school, in the playground, on the school bus, even while hanging around with their friends.

Fun and Engagement

Prep-on-the-Go service will be fun and enjoyable for the students. It will be positioned as a quiz rather than a test. The students will be motivated by receiving points for correct answers. The students can also use this service as a competitive game with their friends by comparing their points and the number of correct answers they can give in a day. Moreover, students will be able to use this service at their convenience when they have the time. For instance, while they are waiting for the school bus or if they have nobody to play with. Smutkupt, Krairit, & Esichaikul (2010, p. 128) cite the ubiquity of mobile marketing as a fundamental strength.

Low Cost

Our target market consists of school going children who generally do not have a source of income. They do receive allowances or pocket money. Some students also do odd jobs but these are restricted to the summer vacation. They spend their allowances on food, clothes, toys and magazines. Therefore, they cannot afford to pay for an expensive subscription service. Also, their parents may not trust them with expensive mobile phones that can support a fancy interface and graphics. Hence, our service will be based on a simple interface that will be text-based. This will also enable us to keep costs low and make the service affordable. The low cost advantage of mobile marketing has also been identified by Mirbagheri & Hejazinia (2010, p. 176).

WEAKNESSES OF THE PROPOSAL

In addition to the strengths of the project, the Prep-on-the-go service will have some weaknesses that need to be addressed. Firstly, the service will have to be sufficiently interactive without being boring. Students are likely to feel intimidated if they are unable to answer the questions correctly. This would result in negative word of mouth publicity and a low rate of diffusion for the service. Secondly, the service may be misused by some students as a means of cheating during the exams. However, this would be very rare as the questions would be generated randomly by a computer and students would not be able to save the questions on their mobile phones. This would help to minimize the chance of misuse of the service to a great extent.

Another weakness of the service would be the cost structure. Despite being a low cost service, some students may be unwilling to pay for the service when they have freely downloadable material from the Internet. However, the great advantage of the Prep-on-the-Go service would be its mobility because students would not need to be present near a computer to access the service. School students usually do not carry around portable computers or smartphones.

SUMMARY

The Prep-on-the-Go SMS subscription service for school children will help the company to develop a new marketing channel by marketing directly to the target consumer. Although children do not directly influence the purchasing decision of textbooks which is taken by the school administration, the service will help them to make the best use of their textbooks which will increase their utility to the learning process. Therefore, schools may be encouraged to increase their purchases of our textbooks. The low cost, quality of questions and interactivity will help to attract the students to this unique service. The service will be managed by our marketing, IT and editorial departments along with an alliance with a mobile services company.