1 INTRODUCTION
University Consortium of Pori (UCPori) is a centre of 4300 students, 200 experts and four universities operating networked in a multi-science environment. UCPori offers education in art, economics, culture, technology and social sciences. The universities with branch departments in Pori are: Tampere University of Technology, University of Turku, School of Economics, University of Turku, University of Tampere, Aalto, University of Art and Design Helsinki. (UCPori 2010).
University Consortium of Pori is located on the West Coast of Finland, in Satakunta region, in the centre of Pori City, by the Kokemäenjoki River. UCPori is located in an old textile mill (originally Porin Puuvilla, Pori Cotton, Finlayson). The mill was built during 1898-1900 and it burned partly to grounds in the year 1981. The building was renovated for university purposes in 1999. (UCPori 2010).
Turku School of Pori has been offering education since 1997. The department has nearly 400 degree students and annually takes in about 100 new students. Bachelors and Master's degree in addition to the Pori unit can also be completed postgraduate studies. Year 2011 plan is to take in 200 master´s and 100 bachelor´s. (UCPori 2010).
Our principal is UCPori and contact person Maria Väkiparta, Relationship Manager. Our assignment is to improve UCPori brand image and get as many new students with the good grades to apply in for the year 2011 through the separate master´s programs.
2 BRAND BUILDING
Urde (2003) says that the concept of “success” is brand building. De Chernatony and McDonald (2001) defines successful brand “an identifiable product, service, person or place, augmented in such a way that the buyer or user perceives relevant unique added values which match their needs most closely”. Doyle (2001) tells that compa-ny needs an effective product, a distinctive identity and added values to become a successful brand. (Chapleo 2010, 171).
Bennett and Ali-Choudhury (2007, 4) says that features of university define brand’s ability to satisfy their customer’s needs, give trust what kind of education they offer and help potential customers to make decision, which university satisfy their needs. Bulotaite (2003) advice that even university´s name “evoke associations, emotions, images and faces” and so university has to build, manage and develop these feelings. Schubert (2007) advices universities have to follow market trends to be a successful. Bulotaite (2003) thinks that best way to evoke stronger feelings is to be a “unique communicative identity”. (Chapleo 2010, 173).
Whelan and Wohlfeil (2006, 317) says that universities must manage their brand more and do it like companies. Bulotaite (2003, 451) advices universities go branding, even though universities are quite complex organizations. Branding simplifies complexity and adds attraction and loyalty to the brand. (Chapleo 2010, 172—173).
Veloutsou (2004) advices universities provide information to students when they are choosing educational institutes. These are important selling points and gives univer-sity good change to communicate with potential customers. (Chapleo 2010, 173).
People are living in world filled with information. So organizations have to build a strong brand to pop up from the crowd. Organization has to help customer to make a decision, reduce risk and set desires. (Keller 2003, 2).
3 NEW TARGETING TO MASTER’S PROGRAMS
Market segment is group of customers that have same kind of wants and needs. Market segment has to be identified first and then organization can start target marketing. More you know about your target audience, more cost-effective your marketing is. (Byrnes 2009, 357, 359). Company can influence customers’ expectations and feelings by targeting the brand image. (Ahuja and Medury 2010, 96).
Our mission was to get many students with good grades to master’s programs. We think that the best place to find these motivated students are corporations. They have good ground of vocational expertise which gives excellent place to build knowledge. Master’s program gives extra kick to their career and work.
UCPori already has an e-magazine, UCPori News (
http://www.ucpori.fi/verkkolehti/) and an e-mail list of corporations and affiliates. In UCPori web site everyone can join this e-mail list and become a part of UCPori community. Students from different programs write stories to the UCPori News. They are gone through application process so they know feelings and associations that potential customer might feel when they decide to choose university. So this is a very good start to develop the brand.
Even though we know something about our target audience and we can presume a lot, it is good to make an inquiry and investigate what market segment is really talk-ing and wondering about UCPori and studying in master’s programs. Knowing makes marketing much cost-effective then presuming.
4 CORPORATIONS AS A TARGET AUDIENCE
4.1 E-mail list
It is cheap to build an e-mail list by asking your affiliates e-mail addresses. That way you can expand your network. You can also expand your network in Facebook or another social networking sites. (Byrnes 2009, 358).
The key factor of building marketing mix is information. E-mail is no good for you, if you don’t know what target audience wants to know and what their interests are. So you have analysis target market before you build marketing mix. For example you have to find out how many of these companies are geographically close to you. You have to find hot customers that are potential to your marketing. (Byrnes 2009, 357—358).
4.2 UCPori News
Corporate blogging is information, relationships and knowledge management. Blogs are new tools for marketing, brand building, brand promotion and customer relation-ship management. Corporate blog is good way to share information to the potential clients and customers and engage them in a conversation. It’s useful to put comment box in blog so potential customers can ask questions about the product or service. This builds trust and gives corporate tool to manage public appearance by posting responses. Dialogues with customers can be generated to information which impact to consumer segmentation and strategy formulation. (Ahuja and Medury 2010, 91, 93—94).
UCPori News e-magazine should be managed like a corporate blog. We think that only few brands are really active with this kind of conversation. Real-time activity is a key to stand out from the crowd. UCPori brings all the latest news, events and re-searches to their affiliate’s knowledge.
Andrés Silva A., Marketing professor at the Instituto DuocUc in Chile, says that brands have to offer their customers a place to read and listen with other customers and the brand. It is necessary to the position of the brand and business management. Customers want information more than ever and technology allows creation and sharing customer-relevant content. (Silva 2010).
4.3 Customer relationship management (CRM)
Company can build long-term relationships with chosen customers by customer rela-tionship management (CRM). “CRM is a comprehensive business and marketing strategy that integrates technology, process and all business activities around cus-tomer”. Company has to make sure that “the right information reaches the right cus-tomers at the right time”. The right information stimulates customers to make inter-action with the brand. The dialogue produces engagement with customer and the brand. (Ahuja and Medury 2010, 94—95).
Company can learn when they interact with the customers. Dialogue and feedback can show how to market better and it gives marketing intelligence to companies. Conversation tells who the customers really are and what they really want. Conversation gives good selling-points to company and company’s processes are needed to change to support building brand relationships. Benefits are social and informational to users. Dialogue also creates community around the brand. (Ahuja and Medury 2010, 94).
Dialogue between brand and customer creates brand image, builds brand awareness and strong brand relationship. Regularly dialogue with a brand makes it more personal, like a familiar friend who you can trust and be with in everyday life. Brand relationship has an effect to brand knowledge, satisfaction and engagement. (Ahuja and Medury 2010, 96).
Nowadays customers want to interact with the brand and companies needs engagement. We think that UCPori should use their UCPori News e-magazine as CRM tool, so that it is possible customers to interact, UCPori can learn from them and engage specifically business customers. It is a win-win situation.
5 CONSUMER-RELEVANT CONTENT
It’s important that you align your content with customer needs. Your content is like a new product’s features which gives benefits to customers. People buy something because they get value to themselves. You have to include these values which customer needs to your content. (Safko and Brake 2009, 690). It´s good for the company to know their audience and their needs, what their content really is, develop it and introduce to target audience. (Safko and Brake 2009, 93).
Content really is the king. When you create genuinely meaningful content to your potential clients, they get engaged and most likely change real customers. (Safko and Brake 2009, 141).
The good content also pick UCPori up to search result’s first page. Search engines love content freshness, keywords and links. These things are little, but so significant to the brand awareness.
Thanks to web 2.0, organizations have become more interactive. Now it’s easy to embed video clips, podcasts and blogs to company’s web sites. (Byrnes 2009, 90).
UCPori should use live video streaming in events like BranDay seminar, where experts are talking about things that interest the corporates. Its free marketing, it only takes little bit of time and effort. Video can be shared in UCPori News, UCPori Facebook page and so on. People can share it to another and talk about it. Also it is good to have Twitter hash tag for the event and tweets should be reflected to the board. That is interactive service for especially corporate affiliates and thus UCPori can stand out from the crowd.
6 MEASUREMENT
You have to measure your success, otherwise you can’t manage it. Measurement tells that have you succeeded or do you have to change something. First you have to put a measurement in order and then you can test different ideas, titles, subheadings, pictures, layouts, colors, bullets and so on. When you know what works and what doesn’t, keep on developing, because it is continuous process and it never ends. (Safko and Brake 2009, 141).
For example Google Analytics is a free web-analytics solution which gives infor-mation from visitors actions.
7 CONCLUSIONS
For conclusion we can set this roadmap to building success brand with content.
1. Find out corporate affiliates needs and wants.
2. Use UCPori News as a CRM tool.
3. Interact with customers, make long-term relationships and learn from them.
4. Create meaningful content. Remember that it is not what you create but what values customers get.
To build up engagement and long-term relationships with customers needs a lot of time and strategy. For experience maybe one year and then you can see little pit of results, but it’s worth it.
SOURCES
Ahuja Vandana and Medury Yajulu 2010. Corporate blogs as e-CRM tools – Build-ing consumer engagement through content management. Journal of Database Mar-keting & Customer Strategy Management; Jun2010, Vol. 17 Issue 2, p91-105.
Andrés Silva A. 2010. Social Media Marketing Magazine. The value of Web 2.0 content. http://www.smmmagazine.com/magazine/issue02/feature-academic.html
Byrnes William J. 2009. Management and the Art. Fourth edition.
Chapleo, C. 2010. "What defines “successful” university brands? The International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 23, (2), pp. 169-183.
Keller Kevin Lane 2003. Strategic Brand Management. Building, Measuring and Managing Brand Equity. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River. NJ: Prentice Hall.
Safko Lon and Brake David 2009. The Social Media Bible: tactics, tools and strate-gies for business success.
Porin yliopistokeskuksessa vietettiin BranDay -seminaaria 10.12.2010. Seminaariin olivat tulleet puhumaan professori Nicholas Adjouri aiheesta The Neccessity of Branding sekä tutkijatohtori, KTT Ulla Hakala aiheesta What’s Special About Branding Places? 
