EDUCATIONAL MARKETING

By Edgar Zapata

Educational Marketing is a new application of marketing theory in Schools, Colleges and Universities. In countries like the United States or England, this application is widely accepted, but in Colombia it is only now being introduced. There are several problems in applying educational marketing theory in Colombia.

Several schools, colleges and universities in Colombia still in 2007 do not accept applying Marketing in their institutions, because they think that marketing is only useful for industries, and that education is not a business. Other schools, colleges and universities think that they do not need to apply marketing in their programs, because they currently have enough people who are interested in their programs.

Finally, a lot of educational institutions only apply advertising, instead of integral marketing, because they think that marketing is only to make advertising. And they do not know that marketing research is very important in order to know how to do a market segmentation, how to fix a price, to facilitate the program, and develop a product.

The solution for those problems is: If universities consider the benefits that they can obtain, by applying the marketing in their institutions, they will be accept to apply the marketing in the short term.

The benefits of applying the marketing in the educational institutions are: Using marketing, universities can improve the quality of their programs. If a university think about different Segments, can create different programs. Using marketing universities or college can retain their students. Using marketing the universities could increment their number of students.