Graduate Communications serves as a conduit between community colleges and their students, helping our clients communicate the stellar programs and resources that help students thrive. With dozens of clients ranging from colleges in our own backyard to institutions across the country, we’ve had the pleasure of being deeply entrenched in the issues and perspectives of higher education. All this experience has kept us busy – and grateful! – but left us little time to examine our own internal data to identify the trends and insights that make us a choice partner for community colleges. Taking a page out of our clients’ playbooks, we enlisted the help of talented and highly knowledgeable students from California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) to help us gather, analyze, and utilize our client feedback to enhance our services.
This project was right up the alley of CSUSM’s College of Business Administration, which offers students a unique, work-based learning opportunity through its Senior Experience Program. The program sets up students with regional and national businesses to act as consultants on real-world projects. And thus, the partnership was born. Graduate Communications teamed up with CSUSM students Joseph Devora, Alma Gutierrez, William Guzman, and Alene Macias (advised by CSUSM marketing faculty member, Dr. Don Sciglimpaglia, PhD).
Graduate Communications tasked students with creating a survey to issue to our clients, analyze the results, present a report of their findings, and create a testimonial video for social media. To start the project, the students began with research, which included looking at marketing trends and higher education trends including government funding, enrollment numbers, demand for online services, and unemployment rates.
Once the introductory research was completed, the students issued a 13-question questionnaire that spanned client identifiers, satisfaction, feedback, and more. Students created and deployed the survey, which was sent to our 48 clients. The students were diligent–emailing and calling clients to encourage them to participate.
Some key findings include:
- Clients “strongly agree” that Graduate Communications helped them achieve their marketing goals.
- The majority of clients rated Graduate Communications higher than previous agencies/competitors.
- Clients want a deeper understanding of the breadth of services that Graduate Communications provides.
“Working with the sponsors, Cheryl and Chris, made my personal experience with the project even better,” said CSUSM student Alene Macias. “I learned that one has to be consistent – meaning the team and I had to constantly reach out to the clients to improve the survey’s answer rate. This was one of the main challenges that the team encountered.”
Following the analysis and insights portion of the collaboration, students used testimonials gathered in the survey to create a promotional social media video for Graduate Communications. The team of media-savvy students created a 1:30 video that utilized still images and b-roll, alongside written testimonials, to showcase client feedback.
Graduate Communications was thrilled to work directly with CSUSM students and thank them for their hard work to help us reach new conclusions in our client services. We also want to thank the clients who took the time to respond and provide feedback in our surveys!
Surveys are a key element to ensuring your college is meeting the mark for your audiences. Do you need to issue a survey to drive your strategic decisions? Contact Graduate Communications today to understand your stakeholder perspectives.
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