Marketing
The public relations staff in the office of Seminary Relations leads in interpreting and promoting the mission and program of Luther Seminary with the seminary’s constituents. All members of the seminary’s faculty, staff, and student body, though, play important roles in marketing Luther Seminary to its customers. Faculty and administrative leaders play the most direct, face-to-face role through their preaching, teaching, and public leadership within the church. Other members of the administrative staff convey important messages through their hospitality to campus visitors and representation of the seminary in their visits with others. Students, while on campus, during internship, and after graduation, are ambassadors for Luther Seminary within the congregations and communities they serve.
Goal 14.1
In consultation and cooperation with appropriate departments, develop overall institutional marketing strategies that support key messages directed toward targeted, influential audiences.
Strategies
- Recruit and involve a high-level cadre of marketing professionals to serve as advisers to our marketing and communications efforts.
- Inventory market research that has already been done about Luther Seminary (through Lilly research projects, the work of Church Innovations, the Lippman Hearne process, through the contextualization project, and through individual faculty/staff research) to pull together a comprehensive picture of Luther Seminary’s position in the marketplace.
- Conduct any additional market research necessary to complete the picture (e.g., answering the question: how do our customers make decisions relative to Luther Seminary?)
- Develop key marketing messages, target audiences for those messages and strategies to communicate them.
- Identify the resources (staff time, money, freelancers, and volunteers) that will be necessary to communicate these messages and implement the plans described in Goal 14.2.
Goal 14.2
Develop strategic communications and marketing plans for the following areas: fundraising, admissions and enrollment (especially for the M.A. and M.Div. areas), lifelong learning, and the graduate program.
Strategies
- Identify key audiences for each program. Rank audiences in order of priority.
- Nuance key messages of the institution for each program.
- Identify key faculty, staff, alumni/ae, and/or volunteers who should be marketed in a high-profile way to enhance the program.
- Identify and develop a high-quality series of publications (print, electronic, multi-media) to support the program.
- Identify how and to whom these publications will be made available.
- Redesign seminary Website to increase marketing value for the program, with special attention toward making the site interactive and valuable to the user. Disburse responsibility for maintaining sections of the Web to appropriate faculty/staff. Support faculty and staff in Website maintenance by providing templates and style sheets so that high standards are maintained.
