For years LeTourneau University had been operating their marketing for their Graduate and Professional Student Programs based on assumptions. This had created a scenario that treated each of their four campuses as identical, despite the different geographic and cultural influences in each area — East Texas, Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin and Houston.

To establish an overall sense of the psychographics of the potential student population, we needed to discover seemingly disparate pieces of information from several groups. With each area we conducted two focus groups — one for undergraduate students, and one for graduate students. This created six focus groups in each area for a total of 24 groups.

Current students:
• What drew them to LeTourneau’s program for adults?
• What other universities had they considered?
• What tipped the scale to LeTourneau?

People who had requested information:
• Why didn’t they enroll at LeTourneau?
• What would have prompted them to enroll?
• What other universities did they consider?

Adults interested in getting a degree with no knowledge of LeTourneau:
• What is the basis for their decision making?
• Where are they obtaining information?
• What will be the final tipping point that causes them to apply and enroll?

There are several important factors that were discovered in the research that impacted our marketing communications:

• Current and potential students need to feel that LeTourneau is highly respected.
• Communications with current students could use some improvement so that they more fully understand the changes, length of courses, etc.
• Opening doors, expanding potential and personal satisfaction were all heavily discussed as emotional reasons for going back to school.
• Family was the primary concern though in many cases not voiced until the moderator probed for it that drove people to want to achieve more.
• Reaching goals is only part of the emotional draw; a more crucial component is discovering how much might be possible, and having more to offer both to a job and to the world.

The insights we gained led to powerful communications that were emotionally focused on the proper targets. In addition, we gained understanding of when and where to interrupt each audience in the different media markets.