Better Education Marketing with the "Hammer" of Custom-Publishing

Price Is Not the Reason Educators Buy

Several years ago, District Administration magazine, the school market-focused publication I work for, conducted a brand preference study. We wanted to know why school administrators prefer a specific brand of copiers. I thought that the cost of the copier would be the #1 factor, but I was wrong. I was glad to learn that the manufacturer’s reputation was ranked #1, followed by customer service in second place. Price ranked #3. In other words, the company’s brand is very important in driving purchasing decisions in schools.

Importantly, building brand equity is similar to the concept of building home equity. The more money you invest in your home over the years, the higher the line of credit you can leverage against the accumulative asset of your home. Likewise, the quickest way to establish brand equity is to spend more of your education marketing dollars on brand building. But how do you go about building brand quickly? How do you create a strong reputation in the education market with its long purchasing cycles and multiple buyer influences (i.e., superintendents, school board presidents, business managers, technology directors, etc.)?

Control Your Marketing Message by Controlling the Medium

The most expedient route to brand equity in the education market is to control the entire message in a high-impact delivery method. Susan Polis Schutz, CEO of Blue Mountain Arts, a company that publishes a famous line of greeting cards, once said, "It is not the choice of words, but the meaning of words that matter." Let me go one step further. The meanings of words count only in their final context, like those tricky SAT vocabulary questions you may remember sweating over.

Custom Publishing: The Hammer in the Education Marketing Tool Box

Imagine that every educational marketer owns a tool box full of marketing tools. Not every tool is useful for every job. Some tools are more useful than others, like the hammer is to a builder. The marketer’s hammer in building brand equity is custom publishing.

Custom publishing is the perfect blend of advertising and editorial. Think of it as advertising that really gets read.  Advertising can generate sales leads and help position your company, but it is limited by space constraints. Public relations help your company get noticed but fall short because you cannot control the editorial message. You can't predict if or when your press release will be published. You don’t know how much information the editor might leave out due to space restrictions or style formats.

Custom publishing, on the other hand, packages your message in high-impact forms like inserts, outserts, posters, custom printed magazine supplements, and individual advertorial case studies. Educators read these case studies because they are looking for ways to solve problems in real-world scenarios. Custom publishing helps them embrace your company's values and brand in a credible, third-party context. At the end of the day, you can control the entire message and get maximum return on investment for your marketing dollars.

Examples of Custom Publishing in School Marketing Plans

Here are some practical examples. Panasonic recently produced exclusive eight-page inserts, which run in six issues of District Administration and University Business magazines. The insert, "Panasonic provides solutions for the most important job in the world... yours. Panasonic introduces ideas for Education," showcases Panasonic as a one-stop source for networked solutions connecting diverse areas such as presentation, school security, document management, and communications.

Timberland, manufacturer of boots and shoes, recently ran “Making It Better,” a 16-page insert, in one of my favorite news magazines. This piece was a love-fest in communicating the values of living your life while improving the environment. They don't give a sales pitch about their boots until you read the very last page of the insert; even then, they only talk about Timberland’s corporate philosophy that then translates into their footwear.

Another example is PBS TeacherLine. PBS decided to have us design an insert for an issue of District Administration magazine--a poster to promote their online professional development courses for teachers. They decided not to take the shotgun approach of advertising in a teacher magazine but chose, instead, an administrator-focused publication that would meet two marketing objectives: 1) get district-level approval of formal school purchase orders and 2) obtain top-down selling for administrator buy-in. The idea was to get the school administrators to hang the posters in central district offices, libraries, and faculty lounges where teachers congregate.

District Administration has also produced custom magazines for IBM, Pioneer, Sony, and Texas Instruments. Our longest running custom published magazine is Education in Hand for Palm, a showcase for mobile computing in education since 1999. Recently, we produced a custom piece for ARAMARK to promote the concept of outsourcing to district administrators and the school board and to boost ARAMARK’s brand image.

Custom Publishing Hits the Nail on the Head: A High Return on Investment

According to a 2004 poll of the Association of National Advertisers conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton, 66 percent of marketing executives say true return on investment analytics is marketing's greatest need. But when I ask most company marketing executives about their advertising goals, I most often still hear, “awareness,” instead of solid measurement. Custom publishing, like a hammer, delivers a direct hit. The result? High return on investment and metrics driven by a targeted circulation, customized reader service response, web exposure and fulfillment, collateral materials for salespeople, and brand connections to themes.

Music to Your Customer's Ears and to Your School Sales Bottom Line!

Custom publishing provides the context to play your message. And when educators have played your message long enough, it begins to occupy some portion of their brains. Then your company image, logo, and slogan become second nature. Your product is now in a preferred position!