In-Depth Interviews & Analysis - Financial Services

A Financial Institute Education Network contacted HeimannHills Marketing Group to assist in reasserting its leadership role in professional education through its classes and programs. At the time, the Institute had only 18% share of the market, with the remainder served by other educational providers. The Institute set an initial goal of gaining a minimum 30% share of the market for educational services within the next five years. The Financial Institute’s first step toward achieving this goal was to engage HeimannHills Marketing Group to conduct market research that would establish a solid foundation on which to build the marketing strategy for its Education Network.

 As a first step, we assisted the Financial Institute in developing the following objectives for the market research: determine the degree to which current educational offerings were meeting/not meeting expectations; identify unmet needs; and, develop compelling ways to position the Education Network’s educational offerings in the marketplace. We developed and implemented a market research program, including a series of qualitative, in-depth interviews among commercial and residential appraisers.

The HeimannHills Group’s research findings determined that the quality of the continuing education offered by many non Institute providers was low. In collaboration with key executives of the Institute, we developed a marketing program to communicate the practical value of the Institute’s education offerings. The research also highlighted the need for professional contact, idea sharing and social camaraderie. We recommended the Institute address this by integrating break-out sessions, group projects and other relationship-building techniques with the conventional lecture format. In addition, the Institute augmented its online continuing education initiative with an investigation of interactive videoconferencing and its potential for bringing virtual peer interaction to remote areas.