PHENIX CITY, Ala. — Classes have begun for the city’s new GED and job training courses at the Phenix City-Russell County Library through a partnership with Chattahoochee Valley Community College, though marketing efforts for the program have been practically non-existent.

We at the Muckraker foresaw the inevitability of the program’s marketing problem back in November of last year when the program was first announced: 

“The program’s success lies in raising awareness. People can only reap the benefits of these classes if they know about them. Like many city-sponsored programs, that awareness rests on marketing: a terrible pitfall of most municipalities,” we published in Nov. of last year.

The city has thought it best to advertise GED coursework through a single social media post made through the library’s Facebook page — as if that’s where people in need of a GED are going to see and connect with the advertised information. We’d call that a solid fail. 

Additionally, the single Facebook post consisted of a photograph of a corrugated lawn sign. Note the visible corrugations along the right-hand side of CVCC’s logo in the image below:

‍

‍

THE FIX

Here’s how Mayor Lowe & Co. can very easily fix this abominable marketing problem and actually help residents better themselves while increasing the city’s workforce:

1. Consider your audience and recognize that those without a GED probably aren’t going to see a random rogue Facebook post made only on the library’s page. What percentage of your target audience do you think follows the Phenix City-Russell County Library?
2. Realize that you are partnered with CVCC, which has a visual communications department. If you ask them nicely, we’re pretty sure they’d be willing to produce some graphics that visualize the target audience experiencing the benefits of the course’s value proposition.
3. Put your audience’s face on your messaging. Corner them into having no choice but to want to engage with what you have to say. Call them out by name. Have your messaging guide them to where they know they want to be by evoking their desire to become the hero of their own story.
4. Develop a distribution plan that repeatedly puts your messaging in front of your target audience. Put your ads where they already are instead of where you want them to be.
5. Measure your results and iterate.

Perhaps city officials should consider the wastefulness of not implementing an effective marketing plan for a program like this. After all, with the city’s drop-out rate of 13% for the city’s population of roughly 38,000 people, there are an estimated 5,000 Phenix City residents with less than a high school diploma. Having those residents gain a G.E.D. would statistically add a whopping $45 million in combined household income to Phenix City residents. 

Marketing is just telling people about dried grapes: it’s about raisin’ awareness.

We believe in you. You’re adults in charge of a literal city. Be the hero and go do it.

Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.

-30-

© 2023 Muscogee Muckraker. All rights reserved.

‍