“Publicity is absolutely critical. A good PR story is infinitely more effective than a front page ad.”
Every new venture requires a lot of effort in the initial days and weeks. A dedicated team has to be set up, a road map has to be prepared and then days of hard work goes is put into the venture to make it perfect.
When the product or the venture is all set and ready to be launched then publicity and marketing plays a pivotal role in the success of the product.
"If a product is not marketed well, all the effort put into it goes in vain."
Similar is the case with alumni mentorship programs. Once the program's foundation is laid down, it is very important to chalk out a marketing strategy for the alumni mentorship program and plan out for post launch publicity too.
Through this article we shall cover the intricacies of marketing alumni mentorship programs in order to get maximum traction right from the start!
Be clear with your aims When an alumni association is planning to market it's alumni mentorship program, knowing the major aims of the marketing campaign is very important. Once the aims are decided, the campaign can be planned out and executed well. The foremost aim of an alumni mentorship program is to find relevant mentors and then reaching out to all those in need who require a guiding light in their career. Once the sign ups start coming in, the mentorship program has to be run in a hassle free way and each good part of the program should be highlighted so as to increase the alumni engagement in the network and also boost the image of the institute and the association on the whole. In a way similar to the above, the association must chalk out all the aims that it has in mind and then work towards the publicity plan for the program.
Be clear with your target audience The same marketing strategy may or may not work for each set of target audience. Different audience requires a different marketing strategy and has different ways of reaching them. In alumni mentorship programs, the mentors, mentees, the alumni network and the overall general public are the target audiences. The same marketing campaign wouldn't appeal to the mentors and mentees and hence, the association must work on demarcating their audience and then accordingly build their marketing strategy.
Make the alumni aware of each little detail of your alumni mentorship program All the stakeholders in an alumni mentorship program must know the entire procedure of how the program will work. The procedure can be explained to the alumni network as a part of the marketing strategy through some good posters, videos and more. The alumni would be able to see how hassle free it is to get a mentor and get some excellent guidance and this could surely increase the sign ups for the program and the response it gets. Also, knowing the entire procedure brings in more transparency and makes the alumni relate more to the program. Thus, the pre-launch marketing strategy must include product demo type of content among other types of content.
Highlight the best parts of your alumni mentorship program A product sells well not only when it is the best, but also when it's most striking features are highlighted and the audience is made aware of them. If the product is good and nobody knows about why it's good then no one will be interested in it. Thus, when the alumni association is laying down foundation of the mentorship program, they should do things around some key important factors. Factors like, using some unique and amazing technology in mapping mentors to mentees or having the best in industry mentors or having the maximum engagement and so on could be kept in mind while building the program and then the marketing strategy can be such that it highlights these factors a lot. Doing this makes more and more people want to sign up for the program and give it a try! These things appeal to the alumni!
On the basis of your target audience decide the channels wherein you will promote your alumni mentorship program. There are multiple platforms to market a product. The type of platform that should be used for marketing a particular product totally depends on the product and the target audience. For alumni mentorship programs, if the association first wishes to reach the alumni, they should analyze the platforms where the alumni actively engage. It could be some LinkedIn communities or some Facebook groups or pages or an external alumni management software. Once the channels are finalized, the content can be optimized as per the platform and a strategy can be built for each different platform or a same marketing strategy with minor modifications as per every platform can be followed too. But for any of this, identifying the channels and platforms to market the program is of utmost importance.
Build interactive graphics and run a campaign to showcase the best features of your alumni mentorship program When the association decides to publicize it's outstanding features then using interactive content and graphics for the same is very important. The association can use some posters, some engaging polls, articles and more around mentorship. Directly asking for sign ups might not always work. It should begin with making the audience aware of the benefits of mentorship programs and then telling the audience how their own mentorship program will work and can benefit is necessary. When the audience interacts and a buzz is created, a lot of alumni would talk about it and would want to sign up for it when the launch happens. Interacting with the target audience with nice engaging content is supposed to be big part of any product's marketing strategy!
Highlight star mentors & hold some sessions around your alumni mentorship program The alumni association can hold some sessions both before and after launch around mentorship. The association can start off by explaining how their alumni mentorship program will work, how it can impact young alumni and benefit all stake holders. To make these sessions even better, the association can bring a few distinguished persons from the alumni network who are going to be mentors and they can hold a webinar in order to show the young alumni the quality mentorship that they would be getting. This is a good way to publicize the program and create a buzz around it.
Provide a clear call to action through your marketing campaign and keep the sign up process very simple When building a marketing strategy for your alumni mentorship program, the content posted could either be for creating a buzz around mentorship and telling everyone that the association is launching a mentorship program or the content could be promoting sign ups and registrations for the program. In the latter one's there should be clear call to action attached to the content. For example, there could be a "become a mentor" button on the advertisements for mentors or a "sign up" button for mentees to join the program. Such marketing campaigns cause lead generation too alongside publicity and hence are very important.
Keep the alumni network updated regularly even after the program launch. When the alumni network feels bonded to the program, they will increase the publicity of the program themselves. The alumni association must keep the entire network updated about every little development around the program both before and after the launch. The more they know, the more they have to talk about it!
Publicize success stories from the alumni mentorship program Telling the audience and the entire alumni network about the outcomes of the mentorship program is very important, it will motivate more young alumni and mentors to join the program. This will boost the signups and registrations for the program and the buzz around it too. It will get the association a lot of appreciation and the zeal to bring forward an amazing alumni mentorship program will increase!
Keeping the above pointers in mind, every alumni association can prepare an awesome plan for marketing their alumni mentorship programs. The program can be run in several segments or could be an continued life long service that the association provides.
Either way, a good alumni mentorship program definitely deserves all the good marketing strategies!
Very cool, thank you for such an extensive report, it was interesting to learn how you apply all these methods. In general, it is very important to know how to engage students and create a quality foundation for your programme. When I started creating software, I started with the simplest thing. And then I also added click here, which became the starting point in my working life. Because it was when I started to scale my software development skills that I started to get new students for myself. So your article was very instructive for me, because it's this engagement that the learning process is based on.