For Kate: Marketing the Writing Center [long]

["Josephine K. Tarvers" <TARVERSJ@winthrop.edu>]

Kate,

Yours is a good question because at the heart of it is the traditional Writing 
Center ambivalence about marketing. In our hearts I think all of us have a 
"Field of Dreams" conviction that if we offer it they will come. And, as you 
have discovered, that isn't always the case. I think, too, that we reject 
"marketing" as a concept that's inimical to our humanist ways of thinking. In 
fact, it's very much in the mainstream of creative activity, and is well worth 
exploring. 

Obviously, if your supervisor is concerned by low numbers, you need to show him 
that you're getting even busier recruiting clients. So first, to short-term 
solutions besides those already offered:

*Attend the new FACULTY orientation on campus and explain your services to the 
new faculty. Mention that you can help new faculty members with THEIR writing 
too. Enlightened self-interest goes a long way. We give out two handouts, "The 
Writing Center's Partnership with Faculty" that explains what we do and DON'T do 
for our clients, and "Could You Use a Hand?" that lists all our available 
handouts and asks if we can custom-design handouts for the professors' classes.  
(We now mail these to all faculty each fall.)

*Who runs first-year student orientation? Call that person and ask if you can 
stuff a writing center flyer in every student packet. (Hint: here's a good place 
to put that coupon for free popcorn or whatever...).

*Who coordinates the programming with the dormitory resident assistants? They 
all have to do a certain amount of programming each semester. Can you offer a 
program that you (or better, your tutors) can take to dorm meetings?

*Do you have an office for effective teaching (or some similar name)? Call the 
coordinator this summer and offer to do a program for faculty on "improving your 
students' writing". (Call this summer so that you get on the schedule early.)

These and the other excellent suggestions already offered are good solutions in 
the short term, and they show your supervisors that the Center is working to 
help students across campus. Now, let's think long term. You have to do some 
marketing, and that means doing some assessment and research. As St. Augustine 
once remarked, not the least part of finding the answer is asking the right 
questions, and I have four areas of questioning for you to think about.

1. Why aren't students coming to the Center? To find out, you have to ask 
_them_. Find a marketing class that does team projects and ask the instructor if 
you can "hire" some of her/his teams next fall to do research for you. (This 
also can be done with business communication classes, btw.) Have the team survey 
different populations of students to find out what they know about the Center, 
what would make them come to the Center, where they hear about new services on 
campus, what kinds of help they would like, etc. (This is called "building what 
they will come to.") An advantage of using one of these classes is that the 
students can write the questions and analyze the results for you. Otherwise, you 
may want to talk to your Campus' Office of Assessment to see what help you can 
get. (Ours has been a godsend.)

2. Why aren't professors referring students to your services? Again, you can 
survey--but professors are notorious for not returning forms. You might do 
better to interview professors in key departments, perhaps the professors who 
teach courses you know require a fair bit of writing. Find out what kinds of 
problems their students have with writing, what their perceptions are of the 
center, what kinds of help (and when) would be most useful to their students. 
Ask, "If you could give your students one or two handouts addressing common 
problems for their writing, what would those be?" [Then develop those handouts 
and call the professor to tell them they're ready; ask her/him to send students 
in to pick up copies.] Ask your supervisor who the influential professors are on 
campus (get his buy-in) and talk to those folks.

3. What are your center's strengths and weaknesses? What do you do best? Have 
the resources to do best? And what aren't you up to doing (yet)? Self-assessment 
is an important part of marketing--you need to know what you have to sell.

4. What do the students who use the center now think of you? What are their 
perceptions? Are they giving you good word-of-mouth advertising? If not, why 
not?

These four directions of information give you the raw marketing research that 
can help you build a marketing plan. (There may even be money in your provost's 
office for doing this survey--it's usually called program assessment.) Once you 
know what your customers want, what they think of you, and where they get their 
information, you can DESIGN a marketing strategy that targets these audiences 
and needs. (Most Centers need more than one strategy to meet a variety of 
populations.) This gives you an orchestrated program; it's not just "let me try 
another flyer" or "this week I'll give out pencils". Moreover, you can go to 
your supervisors and say, "We're going to do X to achieve Y results; but we need 
Z in resources to do it. And we've talked to professors Bigwig and Gotpower and 
they really want us to provide these things." Then you can request the support 
you need ($, space, staff, stuff) to implement your program. Central 
administrators are more likely to support a coordinated program (especially if 
you are coordinating with other units like the library, WAC, student services, 
residence life, Office for Teaching, etc.), so if you can build those elements 
into your marketing strategy you may increase your chances for success.

It doesn't happen overnight. We've increased attendance by over 50% using these 
strategies, but it's taken a good three years to get the components in place 
(we're still working on faculty surveys and on an ambitious survey of users who 
come in 3 or more times in a semester). The key is to realize that marketing is 
a strategic, creative, and complex activity that can't be done overnight, but 
_has_ to be done to keep a center alive and viable. 

I know this is a long post--this is a hobby horses of mine as you can tell--but 
I know from experience that such efforts can produce excellent rewards. Please 
feel free to e-mail me off list if you have more questions.

All best,

Jo
-----------------
Jo Koster Tarvers
Department of English and Writing Center
Winthrop University
Rock Hill, SC 29733 USA
(803-323-4557 voice) (803-323-4837 fax)
tarversj@winthrop.edu
"This writing business, pencils and what-not. Overrated if you ask me."--Eeyore