Branding in Higher education
6.4 Tools and Techniques of Higher Education Branding
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124 Measurement: How will be the effectiveness of brand promotional efforts is measured? Success of the education branding depends on the degree to which above mentioned practical aspects (5M's and tactical moves) were strictly adhered. Even with careful planning and execution, all the efforts in making the brand promise may go in vein if stakeholder's experience with the institution is not in line with the brand message, so the golden mantra for education branding is "promise less and deliver more".
6.4.2 Enabling the brand Promise:
Enabling the brand promise is all about the internal marketing programme which is targeted to internal customers (faculty, administrative staff, support staff etc) to enable them to fulfill what was promised to external customers/constituents. The internal marketing starts with attracting and selecting the best and most suitable resources for the organization. Institutions need to attract qualified and talented faculty so that they offer quality services to the students. They should also have the right attitude and mindset to work in a service organization, more so for recruiting faculty, as lot of emotional labour is involved. The next step is to motivate them through effective job design and reward system. There should be cooperation and coordination among employees to ensure satisfaction and better productivity. This can be achieved by encouraging teamwork in the organization. Employees also need to be empowered to play a more important role in organizational decision making as this enhances their self esteem and they feel valued by the company. The next important step is proper education and training i.e. letting the employee understand the role he has to play in the organization, the importance of his role. The process of imparting training and education must be continuous to update the knowledge, skills and attitude of employees with respect to changing business needs. Employee empowerment is another prerequisite; colleges and universities should give their faculty and staff enough freedom to take important decisions as and when required.
This not only helps them render better service to constituents, but also enhances their own self esteem thus creating a multiplier effect in terms of productivity.
125 6.4.3 Delivering the brand Promise.
To deliver the brand promise effectively, there must be an analogy between what an institution claims to be and what its stakeholders actually experience in all the service encounters (moments of truth) with any individual or unit associated with the institution in order to effectively shape how stakeholders view an institution. Once the brand promise is broadly understood, the brand promise can be effectively delivered by first defining it clearly that must be based on the institution's personality that should be congruent with what the institution espouses to be and also in line with institutional behaviour and once the definition of brand promise is clearly understood, an institution must also live the brand promise i.e. the faculty, staff and administrators must acts as "institutional trust agent". In delivering the brand promise, especially in services, moments of truth i.e. service encounter plays an important role. There are many moments of truth in a day whether it is occurred in the classroom, administrative office, and examination, in canteen, through a campus event, online, in person, or on the phone. Each experience either makes or breaks institutional trust.
The next challenging task is to implement and execute what was promised to the stakeholder that means the brand promise must be executed and personified through services, business transactions, human interactions, teaching learning process, information delivery and learning experiences (Jim Black, 2008). To be effective, brand promise must be embedded in a culture and must become a part of institutional DNA. It also requires a consistent focus on identifying and eradicating promise gaps by meticulously using all important inputs i.e. people, processes, pedagogy and technology and other supportive resources. To achieve consistency, institute must clearly define the desired stakeholder experience and also ensure that the employee experience is in line with desired experience of the stakeholder. When an educational institution effectively communicate the brand promise to its stakeholders, it helps in correcting the negative impressions of the stakeholders of the institution that might have formed in information vacuum-usually based on anecdotes, media coverage, and the negative experiences of the few. Thus it can be proposed that, effective delivery of brand promise requires managing stakeholders' experiences and expectations
126 carefully, promotion of promise delivery successes, as well as planned and intentional efforts to build institutional loyalty over time. So, we can conclude that brand is not build through creative logos or other symbolic features rather it is built through the experience people have with the institution. This shows that building a brand is a joint process that is not managed only by marketing and advertising experts. It also suggest that branding in higher education is very much a strategic process in which fundamental questions such as; who are we, what are our values, what do we want to become etc are needs to carefully addressed.