Branding and Marketing

Branding and Marketing: Intimate and Engaging Brand Strategies

Creating a memorable brand strategy that users build loyalty with begins with identifying a brand’s most compelling attributes and expressing them creatively through marketing communications and an online user experience. This expression combines the organization’s position with a visual brand and the positive behavioral attributes to which the brand aspires. The best brands have mastered the art of aligning user expectations to organizational performance, allowing for differentiation among competition and relevant perception by users. For web environments, brands rarely have the luxury of exclusivity. They must work within a distributed brand architecture, a hierarchy by which brands, products, services, and subsidiaries are managed within an organization. Brand architecture also includes the development of nomenclature systems and taxonomies to delineate the respective functions of Master Brands, Endorser Brands, and Constellation Brands, all of which may be performing simultaneously within a multi-branded environment. Our brand strategy services include:

• Organizational and Online brand identities
• Brand architecture to support multi-brand ambitions
• Standards and guidelines to ensure consistent brand performance

Competitive Positioning

Competitive positioning is the art of determining the best way to compete in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace. It is almost always a subtractive process that involves focus and prioritization. It’s about carving out a unique spot in the competitive landscape and creating a strategy that distinguishes an organization from its competition. We advise businesses and other organizations on strategies for articulating points of differentiation and tactics designed to create value for their markets. In particular, we are skilled at developing unique and innovative means of using the tools of digital media to secure and defend a positioning platform. Our competitive positioning services include:

• Market profiling
• Student segmentation
• Competitive analysis
• Market Positioning strategy
• Value proposition and business case development

Engage Your Most Important Marketing Tool

Gilfus Education Group strategic branding and marketing consultants specialize in education and training marketing, positioning, branding, communications, Web development, e-communications, and social media. Our team of experts offer strategies for competitive and market assessments, marketing campaigns, messaging, and e-recruitment. To stay ahead in today’s constantly changing web-based world, educational marketers turn to the Gilfus Education Group to gain a competitive edge in today’s dynamic education and training markets. With our help, getting noticed and being seen by your audience (students and learners) can become a reality, today. Our experienced marketing consultants can help your organization reach prospective students and learners. We offer expertise in all aspects of campus marketing, research, and communications, including:</>

• Student and Learner recruitment and communications strategies
• Positioning and Competitive Analysis
• Organizational branding and message development
• Market Research (prospective and current students/parents/employees)

Based on grounded research our expert team of consultants then tap into our technical expertise, enrollment experience, and extensive resources to deploy the following services aligned to your strategy:

Website Design and Development

A strategically designed Web site is your most seen gateway for successful sales and recruiting. It is your first impression to the outside world and the single most seen personification of your organization. It validates your organization, attracts new clients, prospective students, faculty and should characterize the overall culture of your organization. In today’s dynamic eLearning world its the one items that enrolling students use to identify if they want to attend an institutions for their education or continued training. pushing them toward enrollment.

Competitive Web Assessments

A solid website is the backbone of any modern electronic communications plan. But how do you know your solid your site is? Who will tell you the truth? We can give you an honest assessment of the current state of your website. This evaluation will provide you with written documentation of the strengths and weaknesses of your site, a comparison of it with those of your top five competitors, an analysis of its design, architecture and usability, and provide specific recommendations for making your website as effective as possible.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Bump your search results to the top of leading search engines. Get noticed and be seen in today’s competitive web environment has never been more difficult, or more necessary. Education competitiveness on the web is becoming pervasive and the ability to effectively differentiate and represent your organization on the internet is critical to your success. Our team members can assist by providing SEO services to boost your site’s local and global search ening rankings by making the content relevant to the most frequently used search terms. Our SEO Assessment provides specific recommendations as to how you can make your site more search engine friendly and achieve higher rankings. Our consultants will teach you the importance of keywords, link popularity, and page content, as well as how to use these practices to make your sites rise to the top of your audience’s list.

Social Media Strategies and Web 2.0

Have you successfully integrated social media technologies into your current marketing efforts? Are you trying to increase recruiting and enrollment or simply trying to reach your target audience more effectively? Spend some time with our team and we’ll help you to enable exciting new capabilities for your organization. The advent of social media offers valuable new touch points for prospective students and the extension of your online strategy through social networking can build a new low-resistance pathway to engage these students in a convenient, no-commitment way. the Gilfus Education Group can show you how to do this. We offer three day-long workshops that enable you to develop and implement successful strategies for social networking.

Usability Assessments

Do you know how target audiences actually use your Web site? Prospective students, prospective faculty and staff, parents, donors, alumni, and community leaders use your site to find information and accomplish particular tasks. Usability testing puts you in their shoes to understand what is or isn’t working. This includes assessing how easy it is to navigate, the initial perception of your institution that the site creates, whether or not visitors can complete required tasks, and how all of these things work together to provide convenient access to reliable information.