PROMOTION AND STRATEGIC AIM FOR AWARENESS CAMPAIGN OF NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION PROGRAMMES

Abstract

Awareness creation for a novel higher education service is very vital as to inform about the packaged programmes to students, its availability and benefits. The paper examined the concept of promotion strategies for awareness campaigns of National Open University of Nigeria education programmes. The purpose was to highlight the role of promotion on their programmes so as to provide the framework for its adoption. The study revealed that National Open University of Nigeria is inherently creating awareness by using some advocacy methods like wearing of T-shirts occasionally, using NOUN carved shopping-bags as a gift, sales-campaigns, etc. The promotion channels available for National Open University of Nigeria to explore as discussed are: advertisement, personal selling, sales promotion, direct marketing, public relation and publicity among others. The study determined the significance of using integrated promotion strategy as a crucial element for effective awareness creation for NOUN programmes. Benefits of implementing a result-oriented promotion strategy include: more Nigerians will be educated, contribution to national economy will increase growth of internally generated revenue, achievement of education for all in future, etc. Challenges affecting promoting NOUN programmes are: inconsistent organizational culture, marketing myopia, inadequate resources, and more. Suggestions to the challenges are: promotion strategies, creation of marketing desk/unit, provision for separate budget for diversification of promotion programmes and establishing of workable information-gathering system among others.