The story from my local online paper and my explanation of why this Math Professor’s Marketing doesn’t add up.
Professor Fields might be a math expert but he clearly has a lot to learn about marketing.
As far as I can tell from the article, he sent some pretty postcards out to schools with a vague message and a web address on the back.
Then he expected people to run to the web page and take advantage of his offer.
When that didn’t work his answer was to blame the students for being lazy.
Now since he doesn’t have any way of knowing if the students even knew about his offer it seems a bit unfair to accuse them of anything.
Especially when there are much more likely reasons his well meaning post cards failed.
A science and math guy should know that you need to look at all the
variables before reaching a conclusion. Especially one as silly as blaming your customer because they didn’t react the way you wanted to your marketing campaign.
The article doesn’t show a copy of the full postcard but here are what seem to be the three biggest problems with the marketing strategies employed by these postcards…
1)The pretty pictures on the front may have a clear purpose to the professor but without context don’t mean anything.
2) There is nothing written on the back that clearly explains why the postcard exists or what exactly it’s offering.
3) Were the emails targeted to the correct people or just dropped off with the vague hope the right people would somehow get them?
Instead of fancy pictures, physical postcards, vague text and no clear offer the plan for next year should probably include…
1) The words “Free College Tuition & Free Laptop” appearing in big bold letters.
2) Text on both sides making the purpose of the card clear.
3) An email component - since most teachers have way too much paper already in their lives to keep track of a single postcard.
4) Contacting the local news before the cards go out as part of the actual marketing plan. “Students Too Lazy For Free College” might make a great headline after the fact but “Free College For New Haven Students” when students can take advantage of it will actually get people involved in the program.
The lessons to be learned here are that bad marketing can keep you from even giving away free money and before you blame your customers take a good hard look at what you’re offering (here it’s something amazing) and how you’re offering it (in this case rather poorly).