Mgsm Certificate Programs the Marshall

MGSM Certificate Programs The Marshall Goldsmith School of Management (MGSM) competes with a wide variety of colleges and universities, the most predominant being throughout Southern California. What is immediately apparent from the competitive analysis of the MGSM Certificate Program relative to competing schools is that competitors offer in-class, online and hybrid formats for specific courses in their certificate programs. This expands their total available market to working adults whose schedules may not allow for the flexibility of attending in-class sessions.

MGSM's market position is that of a leading school of management. Pepperdine University, University of California, Irvine (UCI) and USC are included in this analysis as each has extensive certificate programs. USC offers Graduate Certificates that include a subset of their Marshall Graduate School of Business catalog while UCI has positioned their Certificate Program as providing pragmatic, marketable skills to students. Each of these competing universities as a result takes a different approach to their marketing programs, including their use of the Internet for e-marketing and promotion.

Their differences in strategy, positioning and target market definition are compared in this analysis. All of them however share the common attribute of relying on microsites and in many cases URLs that are easily marketed to make their certificate programs accessible and memorable. The use of microsites as a means to define a unique service identity has proven to be more effective in terms of marketing ROI than enterprise-wide sites over time (El-Ansary, 2006). This finding also emerges from the analysis.

Analyzing Competitive Positioning of Certificate Programs Each of the universities included in this competitive analysis of certificate programs have unique strengths based on the faculty they have been able to successfully recruit and retain, research contributions to industry and thought leadership in specific subject areas. In addition to these unquantifiable factors there is the highly structured and audited process of accreditation each of the universities in this analysis have attained, further differentiating their market position and unique value proposition from hundreds of other colleges and universities regionally and nationally.

The quantifying and validation of one universities' value relative to another and their differentiation in the market is achieved through accreditation (Cornuel, 2007). As students will only attend colleges or universities they trust will provide a valuable education, accreditation has emerged as a means to quickly differentiate one college or university from another. Each of the certificate programs in this analysis include specific disclaimers regarding accreditation to the certificate level, further adding credibility and trust to their programs.

Each of these certificate programs also strives in their marketing to show how the innately abstract and theoretical business topics including marketing for example can be turned into a practical skill set (Crittenden, Wilson, 2005). The greatest variation in the certificate programs however is in how they position the pragmatism vs. prestige of their course outlines and content. This continuum of pragmatism to prestige can be seen when the UCI Certificate Programs are compared to the USC Marshall School of Business.

UCI's Certificate Programs are oriented to primarily deliver hands-on, sellable skills for the students, making them more marketable in the labor force. The Marshall School of Business certificate programs are tightly integrated to their graduate degree programs, overlapping graduate-level courses. The concentration in these certificate programs is more on understanding the connection between the theoretical to the practical. Pepperdine is in the middle of the pragmatism to prestige continuum, attempting to provide pragmatic advice yet also having the leading through leaders on their faculty teach the courses.

The pragmatism to prestige continuum however across all certificate programs is predicated on the position of the university as a trusted advisor from an educational leadership standpoint. The Pepperdine University Graziadio School of Management strategy is to offer five sessions as part of their Certificate Series, with the strategy being of providing solid theoretical foundations for pragmatic knowledge. The positioning is that of offering timely, relevant strategic insight that is usable from a planning, strategic and tactical standpoint.

The Friday afternoon and Saturday scheduling of the program resembles other universities' approach to their Presidential/Key Executive (PKE) MBA Programs, which Pepperdine offers as well. The target market is senior executives and senior management professionals who have the responsibility of strategic planning for their firms on a periodic basis, and are involved in tactical decision-making daily. Pepperdine is also differentiated from the other certificate programs included in this analysis by their extensive use of social networking technologies to create a multichannel communication strategy to potential students.

The ability to tailor online or e-marketing strategies to align with how potential customers want to learn about a company is what makes social networking effective as a marketing platform (Bernoff, Li, 2008) Pepperdine's Certificate Programs are the only to provide potential students with access to their program's unique content and value through LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts. Pepperdine also has created podcasts that are listed on Apple's iTunes library as well.

Using social media marketing from a multichannel standpoint gives potential customers the opportunity to learn and stay current on a service or product at their own pace, using social networking applications of their preference (Raab, 2009). Pepperdine's potential to communicate with customers in a form they most prefer is a major competitive advantage from an online or e-marketing standpoint. UCI Extension offers Certificate Programs in eight different academic areas, and has a minimal level of overlap of their individual courses to their undergraduate and graduate-level programs.

This certificate program is the most pragmatic of those included in the analysis, and also the most advanced in terms of offering in-class, online and hybrid course formats. The primary purpose UCI is relying on this mix of formats is to attract as many potential students as possible through scheduling flexibility. In their marketing literature, UCI also mentions 5 that the hybrid class format has led to greater levels of teaching effectiveness.

This is supported from empirical studies of teaching effectiveness that evaluated in-class only, online only, and hybrid class formats for their relative levels of long-term learning over time (Tsai, Hwang, Tseng, Hwang, 2008). The study concluded that hybrid courses allow for greater levels of autonomy for students as they have the time to go through materials at their own pace.

This study also showed that when autonomy of the learning experience, mastery of the materials, and the purpose of learning are all combined, there is significant long-term learning achieved (Tsai, Hwang, Tseng, Hwang, 2008). UCI Extension is using autonomy, mastery and purpose as the foundations of their hybrid class structure to attract serious students as well, based on the research cited.

In terms of market positioning, UCI Extension concentrates on recruiting CEOs, senior management and thought leaders from the Southern California region to teach its classes further underscoring the pragmatism of its program. Positioning is further enhanced by not requiring any transcripts or GRE or GMAT test scores as UCI attempts to reach potential students who have not attended graduate school.

UCI Extension defines entrance criteria only as English language proficiency and defines its target markets for each Certificate Program using business roles and titles found in companies, not on previous academic achievement. Taken together, all of these factors contribute to a wider potential target market and significantly lessens the anxiety potential students have about attending their programs. The USC Marshall School of Business Certificate Programs includes three certificates, all of them overlapping their courses with the graduate programs offered by the university.

The three certificates are the Graduate Certificates in Digital Supply Chain Management, Graduate Certificate in Financial Analysis and Valuation, and Graduate Certificate in Technology Commercialization. In terms of the pragmatism to prestige continuum, USC has structured and packaged these certificate programs to offer the prestige of their university. This is also done to support their branding and premium market position, as evidenced by the tuition for each of these certificate programs. USC's strategy is to concentrate on the price/quality relationship that their pricing strategy and certificate program structure conveys.

The target markets of the USC Graduate Certificates are significantly different than those from Pepperdine. As the descriptions in the course catalog state, the certificates are meant to extend the learning experiences of graduate students primarily, with the secondary focus being on attracting outstanding students in the areas of financial analysis and supply chain management. USC approaches the Certificate Programs from a services strategy standpoint, with the focus on being the trusted advisor in the three graduate certificate areas of concentration.

USC has attained thought leadership in financial analysis and operations research, which has led to the development of certificate programs in financial analysis and supply chain management. The Graduate Certificate in Technology Commercialization's target audience are graduate students who have the career goal of joining a new venture or start-up. USC recently added a Graduate Certificate in Research that is only open to PhD candidates further illustrating their positioning of using Certificate programs to further differentiate their graduate degree marketing strategy.

As a result of their approach to defining certificates as extensions to graduate level programs, USC odes not use a multichannel-based approach to marketing these programs. They are instead marketed as extensions to existing graduate courses of study. Defining an e-Marketing Plan for MGSM From the competitive analysis, MGSM has significant competition regionally and nationally in the area of certificates. There are several lessons learned from this competitive analysis however which can make MGSM's Certificate program more competitive.

First, MGSM needs to realize that there is a continuum of pragmatism vs. prestige that certificate programs align to, as is seen in the competitive analysis completed. The use of accreditation is the foundational element of all successful educational marketing programs (Cornuel, 2007) and MGSM needs to use this as the foundation of their e-marketing planning efforts. Accreditation is a measure of credibility in academic markets (Cornuel, 2007). MGSM needs to define accreditation levels for each of its certificate programs to attain the highest level of credibility possible.

Second, MGSM needs to develop a specific, defensible niche of thought leadership and become the trusted advisor in this area (Radin, Calkins, Predmore, 2007). Third, MGSM needs to define a more flexible class structure to attract more students. The use of in-class, online and hybrid course structures will also differentiate MGSM from the standpoint of being able to align certificate programs to the individual use of students. This is a teaching technique called scaffolding (Najjar, 2008) that MGSM could also use to show their commitment to students' long-term learning.

Fourth, MGSM needs to recruit thought leaders from the community and follow the model of UCI Extension in terms of pragmatism. Following the four recommendations of communicating accreditation for each certificate program, developing thought leadership in a specific niche, adopting in-class, online and hybrid class formats and having local thought leaders whose pragmatism is very valuable in the classroom, MGSM can then launch an exceptionally effective e-marketing plan.

Core Components of the MGSM e-Marketing Plan Strategy Adopting the design principles and precepts of Web 2.0 technologies (O'Reilly, 2006) into an e-Marketing plan will provide MGSM with the ability to create greater levels of interactive communication and collaboration with prospective students. The rapid growth of social networking applications and their effects of creating trusted relationships and enhancing the credibility of brands (Bernoff, Li, 2008) is a dynamic MGSM needs to fully take advantage of in their e-marketing plans if they are to be successful.

The overarching goal of the e-marketing plan then is to create as many successful collaborative and supportive relationships to students so that MGSM attains the role of trusted advisor for business education (Radin, Calkins, Predmore, 2007). The concept of having conversations with customers is one Bernoff & Li (2008) speak often of in their research as being very effective as a marketing strategy.

MGSM's e-marketing plan needs to concentrate on how to build conversations with customers to create testimonials that can be used online and in print, and also to understand how the program's certificates and programs can be more aligned to their needs. By concentrating on creating a conversation with customers, organizations have been successful in creating word-of-mouth and recommendations by customers (Cheung, Lee, Rabjohn, 2008).

Blogs and Voice of the Student Programs MGSM today has a blog yet it is not well managed from the standpoint of comments not being replied to for in some cases weeks. It also does not have the depth of content that other competing universities have. Blogs can serve multiple purposes in an e-marketing strategy, with the first being that of an information portal to prospective students. MGSM could do a significantly better job of using their existing blog to do this.

The ancillary benefit of this is that word-of-mouth can be created over time when students see relevant and interesting posts on blogs (Gruen, Talai Osmonbekov, & Andrew J. Czaplewski. (2006). The second major benefit of an active blogging strategy is to create higher organic search results for MGSM certificates in search engines including Bing, Google, Yahoo and others. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very important as this technique will put MGSM into the first several entries in any search engine results in the certificate areas being offered.

Blogs are a must-have to drive word-of-mouth and SEO in search engines as well. Asking students for their feedback on programs can also be exceptionally effective and also serves as a catalyst for word-of-mouth as well. Event Marketing The use of events throughout the markets that MGSM offers courses in is also critically important to any e-marketing plan as well.

These could include free information sessions, seminars on how to get to your career goals and free seminars on marketing and Web 2.0 as it relates to businesses would also serve the purpose of strengthening the MGSM certificates from a branding and credibility standpoint. Event branding will give MGSM to make concrete the abstract concepts and discussions made in marketing programs, and it will also serve to show the pragmatic approach to certificates as well.

Microsites for each Certificate UCI Extension and USSC excel in this aspect of e-marketing their certificates, and MGSM needs to do the same with regard to creating highly focused and targeted microsites. The use of the microsite as the foundation for e-marketing has replaced the monolithic, all-things-to-all-people website of the past (El-Ansary, 2006).

For MGSM the microsite needs to contain lead generation applications and landing pages that give prospective students the opportunity to opt-in and have additional information sent to them, subscribe to newsletters and also have an RSS feed so information can be send via this technology to their readers. MGSM in fact can differentiate itself by offering RSS feeds across all Certificate Programs by offering this approach to updating the status of each program automatically.

The use of RSS feeds is considered one of the best approaches to keeping connected with prospects and customers as it costs nothing and is now pervasive due to Google offering an RSS Reader for free (Raab, 2009). A microsite for each certificate with RSS feeds enabled would be a major competitive advantage for MGSM. Social Networking Multichannel Management Only Pepperdine had a multichannel approach to managing social networking, with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accessible directly from the Certificate websites.

The use of social networking from a multichannel standpoint is highly effective as an e-marketing strategy in that it concentrates the messages that marketers have to the specific channels that prospects prefer to use in learning more about the companies of interest (Zhang, Daugherty, 2009). MGSM therefore needs to create a LinkedIn account and group and keep them updates continually and the same holds true for Facebook, Twitter and their blogs. MGSM needs to continually stay at it however and not waiver from keeping these social networking channels current with content.

Too often companies will create a social networking multichannel strategy and not keep them updated enough, as is the case with the MGSM blog today. With the secondary goal of driving greater SEO results in search engines, its is clear that continually updating each social networking channel is critically important to staying higher up in organic search results. Market Positioning and Segmentation Strategy For MGSM, the market position needs to concentrate on the pragmatic value of their certificate programs anchored in theoretical concepts.

The stressing of accreditation, thought leadership in a specific niche, flexibility in class formats (on-class, online and hybrid) and recruiting real-world leaders from the business community to teach will together create credibility and trust.