One of the greatest claims I hear made when enrollment numbers are down is that it is due to lack of marketing, or lack of good marketing, depending on the school.  While I absolutely agree that good marketing is a critical first step (you don’t get to work at a marketing firm without this fundamental belief), it is not the only step.  How many of us have ever purchased anything (let alone something as costly as education) because we simply loved the marketing?  My point exactly.

Marketing and recruitment, recruitment and marketing – I like to describe it as a hand-holding relationship, not wed to one another but certainly engaged and working together as a team.  What causes me great concern is that all too often I see institutions spending significant dollars on their front-end marketing but then never taking the time to walk one step down the line and take a look at the recruitment process.  In fact, many schools have put out great marketing and then allowed the recruitment end of things to absolutely cause them to fall flat when it comes to enrollment.

In a recent bit of research, Stamats contacted EIGHT institutions (via the web) and asked to have information sent to us about a program.  Only TWO of those institutions contacted EVER sent any information – electronically or by mail, that told the prospective student about the program they were interested in.  TWO!  Those are bad stats folks – and I know right now what you are saying (because I have heard it dozens of times):  “We always respond”.  And maybe you do, once.  But do you have a communication flow in place that makes sense?  Do you have a clear process that anyone could walk into your office and pick up and use in the event you stopped showing up for work one day?  What are the three most important things that EVERY recruiter you have talks to EVERY prospect about?  Are those three most important things based on research or based on the hunch that your individual recruiters have about what might be important to the person they are talking with?

For the majority of you reading this, my guess is, if you are honest with yourselves, you don’t really know the answers to those questions.  The good news is that you are normal – the bad news is that your competition will eat you alive if you do not do something about it.  Time to get honest with ourselves about our recruiting efforts – time to take a look at what could be better!

Those of you who have read my articles know I am a big believer in integration. During a recent project, however, a client said something that really set me thinking. “It seems to me,” she said, “that there is easy integration and hard integration.”

She went on, “It is relatively easy to integrate all the messages in the admissions office. The people there generally understand the need for good messaging and they all report to one VP. But what about integrating the messages between admissions, advancement, and student affairs? They have different temperaments, different motivations, different reporting structures, different budgets. That’s hard integration,” she said.

And then she went on. “But even that kind of integration is easy compared to integrating around a certain set of behaviors like, for example, the decision to be truly student-centric or to commit, as an institution, to adult learners. That’s hard integration.”

And then she dropped the bomb, “We like easy integration because it’s a no-brainer. At one level everyone gets it. But when you think about it, easy integration really doesn’t have that much impact. The change is hardly ever lasting. Hard integration, on the other hand, has the power to change an institution.”

Wow. The more I thought about her observation, the more convinced I was that she was dead-bang on.

Easy integration fixates on graphic identity and PMS colors.

Hard integration is less concerned with how messages look and much more concerned with what messages mean.

Easy integration focuses on integrating messages in both traditional and non-traditional channels.

Hard integration, on the other hand, is concerned not only with channels, but with what audiences are thinking, saying, and doing in response to our messages.

Easy integration recognizes the importance of what organizations say.

Hard integration recognizes the importance of what organizations do.

Hard integration is not for everyone.

It demands a worthy vision or it’s just not worth the hassle.

It requires a leader and senior team who are publicly and consistently committed to integration.

It demands courage.

But if you make that commitment as an individual and an organziation, you are unstoppable.

Photo by Dom Walton

Does your institution have a content rich, easily sharable news section of your site? If yes, feel free to stop reading. But, if you’re still only posting press releases in regular press release fashion, I can guarantee you’re missing out on valuable traffic.

Your news is your blog. You don’t even need to call it a blog―just treat it like one. The idea is that there is a section of the site that is the go to for all timely updates about your institution. Because, while it’s great that the college of engineering updated their own site with a very important piece of news, the reality is people need an easy way to stay up to speed. Few aimlessly navigate to multiple colleges and departments to see “what’s new.”

A blog-like news section can enhance searchability, sharability (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, etc), and interaction (via comments). If you’re new to the idea, categories and tagging provide a way for visitors to navigate articles by topic of interest. Even better, each category and tag can have its own separate feed. So now, if the college of engineering still wants a “what’s new” section of the site, they can use a feed that pulls from the main campus news resource properly tagged “engineering.” This approach increases the chance that the piece of news gets seen regardless of where it primarily lives on the site.

This is not a new concept (FAR from it) but still, only a handful of institutions are taking steps to wrangle this content.

So, after sharing a few good examples of program/majors pages, here’s a look at a few campus news hubs done well.

1. Florida International University (news.fiu.edu)

2. Harvard Gazette (news.harvard.edu/gazette)

3. Texas Tech Today (today.ttu.edu)

4. Illinois State Magazine
(blogs.ilstu.edu/illinois-state-magazine)

5. University of Georgia’s Outreach Magazine (outreachmagazine.uga.edu)

As you can see, some of the examples are alumni magazines. That’s the funny thing about putting content online—anyone can see it. We have to rethink how we treat our different audiences. Articles put in an alumni magazine may also be of interest to parents, donors, students and more. If you offer both the news and the alumni magazine in an online-ready format, content will absolutely cross over so make sure you think through the intended purpose for each and how they will work together. Also, if you haven’t read it, Michael Fienen recently took a closer look at the implications of flipbooks—indexing, accessibility, experience, and more—and Eric Stoller weighed in too. From what I’ve seen, they get an “ooh and ahh” out of a first time viewer but zooming in and around the page makes content difficult to read online.]

Karen Cochrane, Director of News and Communications at Florida International University, offered some insight into balancing the print version of the magazine with the news section of the site.

“We always wait until an issue has been published before we create posts of the articles on FIU News so as not to ‘scoop’ the magazine. FIU Magazine has an online site that archives the issues (issuu.com/fiumagazine), but creating separate posts of the articles on our news site allows us to maximize the online audience for these stories.”

She also mentioned they occasionally tweak new briefs written for the magazine so they can be shared online without waiting for the print magazine to be published. “News articles created specifically for FIU News are almost always shorter than FIU Magazine feature articles that wind up on the news site. We do a lot of promoting of upcoming events on our news site and post-coverage of the bigger student events since we know we have a lot of students who visit the site,” said Cochrane.

Sounds like they truly consider the users and the medium, offering the best type of content for the space.

If you’re not convinced yet consider this. You can create as many pages as you want on your site talking about innovation, research, diversity, etc., but news articles allow you to demonstrate and live your brand through real examples of things that are happening at the institution. It’s these news stories and articles that people will see that help shape what people remember about you. It’s your job to make sure these articles can be read and shared easily to help build the brand.

Another bonus to using a blogging platform for your news is the ability to tap into search engine rankings by offering quality content. You can encourage faculty members to write articles. Give them the spotlight and independence to write about topics related to his or her field. Consider creating a category for these types of posts like “Professor Perspectives” and make sure to tag it with relevant terms and phrases including the name of their field (i.e. psychology).

Do you have student bloggers? Tie them into the news site by creating a category for their posts. This gives you the option to feature articles they write if the topic is relevant or even if you need more content for a slower week.

Keep in mind, getting a news site set up is relatively easy. Generating and organizing the articles is the challenging part. You may have a handful of authors that write frequently or several that write occasionally. The key is to plan who will post and how often. An editorial calendar can help the planning process.

Has your institution thought about taking on a new approach to news or your alumni magazine? What content strategy advice can you share?

When building a strong case to support doing something new or different, humans working in an organization usually default to building a laundry list of associated benefits. For example, “We should do a capital campaign so we can build a new Student Center.” Or, “We should revamp our core curriculum so our students will graduate with a skills set that will make them more immediately employable.”

 In my April 21 Stamats webinar titled, “Thinking Inside-Out; Successful Marketing Always Starts with an Amazing Internal Launch,” I’ll present a number of compelling benefits your campus community will enjoy as a result of engaging broad internal buy-in for marketing projects, then launching them with a big internal bang.

 But I’ll also discuss the hard-learned lessons some schools have suffered when they’ve rolled out major changes or promotional efforts to the world without first giving internal stakeholders a sense of ownership and a formal preview before sharing it with the world beyond the campus.

 In a nutshell, skipping the internal engagement and launch step of just about any major institutional initiative can put the project at extraordinary risk. This hazard has been heightened in recent years by the mind-boggling persuasive power of social media, which one of my favorite and astute clients has dubbed “The Idiot Pulpit.” In the blogosphere, criticism gains traction with exponential speed. So announcing any major institutional change to the world today WILL open the door for spirited (and very public) online dialogue.

A few of the other hazards to carefully consider when deciding whether or not to broaden ownership or do an internal roll-out:

• You’ll likely perpetuate—even nourish—existing rifts that may exist between and among students, faculty and administration;
• You’ll devalue the personal investment and commitment of your most important  asset—your employees;
• You’ll deflate the sense of “community” that you’re likely touting as a great strength;
• And you may end up adding significant cost to whatever change or program you’re rolling out as you manage disaster control.

It’s very likely that your institutional stakeholders—employees, students, their parents, and alumni—are not nearly reaching their potential for being engaged, equipped and inspired cogs in your school’s marketing machinery. Recognizing and understanding the importance of orchestrating internal engagement and executing substantial internal launches will go a long way toward expanding your marketing program’s impact without throwing hundreds of thousands of additional dollars at it.

 To learn how to engage your campus and launch with verve, sign up for the webinar.

I am an absolutely huge fan of utilizing analytics data to make sound business decisions.  I honestly can’t imagine trying to make very many decisions based on pure gut instinct (maybe I have trust issues with myself?).  With that said, it is important to realize that what most people refer to as sound data for business decisions is potentially a lie (or, at the very least, a stretching of the truth).  So, the question you are probably asking yourself is: “How can pure data fail to express the truth?

Let me give you an example:

Here is a chart that shows approximately accurate data (not quite to scale) regarding the levels of consumption of ice cream versus the number of certain types of accidents.

If we look at what this data is basically indicating, we can see that ice cream is OBVIOUSLY EVIL.  Now…if we look at a very similar chart, we can see something else:

The obvious point here is that correlation does not equal causation.   While this is a much exaggerated example, this type of scenario is actually much more common than you might realize (in fact, something similar is probably happening as you read this…)!

Here is a real-world example:

Let’s suppose that you notice that a certain page on your site has an exceedingly high bounce and page exit rate compared to the rest of your site. An easy assumption is that there is something wrong with this page. However, this assumption is quite possibly incorrect.

So what are the problems with this assumption?

1. It is far too common for people to view only their click stream data (click stream data is just the data you get from a tool like Google Analytics that shows what users did on your site).  The problem is that we have to guess what the cause of the problem actually is at this point in time.
2. In the scenario described above, there was no reference of the audience that the page was intended to target .  This highlights another EXTREMELY common problem with web data.  We are looking at data in the aggregate rather than based on segments of our audience.  In this example, there may not be anything wrong with the page, itself. Instead, we may be sending the wrong types of people there.
3. Even if the right audience is hitting the page, we don’t know what it is that is causing people to leave.  All we know at that point is the what.  We are left to guess at the why.

Huge tip:

Other than setting goals and assigning values to them on your site, the second most important thing that you should be doing on your site is segmenting your audience data properly (using Advanced Segments if you are utilizing Google Analytics).

Your turn

I’m very curious to find out if you have run into an issue where you were forced to make an assumption and later found out that it was erroneous (or maybe you are making assumptions now and aren’t sure if they are mistaken).  Let’s start that conversation now!  Don’t be shy…we have all made this mistake before (whether we know it or not)!

What’s next?

In my next post, I’m planning on discussing how to use advanced segments and how to utilize other forms of data outside of Google Analytics to go beyond the standard “what” and get more into the “why” of user actions.  If you have any thoughts which you would like to include or have a digital marketing question that you want answered, please let me know!

Let’s face it: most of us have Apple envy. They make cool products and have a really cool boss, right? And it must be such a cool place to work because from our P.O.V. they’re doing everything right. At least that’s what Apple wants us to believe. Those of us who work in higher ed—both on staff at agencies and institutions—dream of working in a more creative, forward-thinking environment than the one we currently inhabit. For many of us, Apple is a creative Valhalla.

A recent FastCompany piece on the company, however, revealed some striking differences between perception and reality. Apple still comes off as a great company—they’re too big for anybody to diss for too long. Yet, their strategy is remarkably common sense—more down-to-earth than artsy. The FastCompany piece offers many interesting lessons for college and university creative and marketing staffs, among them:

1. Apple ignores what’s going on in the tech industry. One of the effects of their vaunted secrecy is that it keeps industry buzz out as well as the rest of us. Instead, the company develops products by paying strict attention to its audience, high-end consumers. Wouldn’t it be more productive for institutions to develop their marketing strategies and executions by listening to their audiences instead of aping the competitor up the street?
2. Apple does not take an inclusive, every-employee’s-idea-is-valid approach to product development, unlike Google, their biggest rival. Instead, its engineers build products dictated by a small group of senior managers—and more often than not by Mr. Cool himself. Although we all talk “consensus,” we all know that often the best things get done by top-down leadership.
3. Although Apple has a reputation as a “closed” shop—meaning they avoid open Internet Standards solutions—they’re actually “open” and “closed.” They take a stance based on whether it leads to a good product or business solution, not because it’s a neat philosophy. How often do we develop communications plans based on the latest trend instead of whether or not it actually speaks to our audiences?
4. Apple turns down many more ideas than it approves for production. The company has the discipline to say no to more features and rigorously adheres to the “less is more” dictum. The result: easy-to-use interfaces and gadgets with gloriously simple—and beautiful—shells. How many moving parts does your marketing or recruiting plan really need?
5. Apple is always worried about the user experience, especially when it comes to serving their customers. They do not send callers to offshore centers, have built stores based on the hotel concierge idea (better known as the Genius Bar), and even fix non-Apple software. The actual experience your prospective students have with your brand—on a campus visit, for example—better back up what you say about your brand.
6. Apple believes marketing is everything. The company is famous for its state-of-the-art product launches—it bought up all the bus stop ad space near the convention center in San Francisco where Steve Jobs announced the iPad earlier this year, but waited to change the posters until he was speaking. People walking out were surrounded by new iPad ads. The best ideas are always the simplest, most strategic, and truly surprising.

The biggest takeaway for me is the idea that marketing is everything. It still is, no matter what the pundits say, and probably more so in a challenging economy.

What’s your favorite Apple story?

Photo by kevinthoule

We all know the scenario. Enrollment projections are fine all through the summer on the traditional side of the house and then within the first two weeks of fall classes starting—WHAM! Crisis!! The numbers weren’t what we thought they would be, or the discount rate was so high that even though we are bursting at the seams with students we don’t have enough revenue.  And then, the ask (or demand —depending on where you work). What can our adult student program do to bring in approximately XXX number of students more than we had originally planned for? And oh, by the way, did we mention no additional resources to do that?

If it weren’t true it would almost be laughable, but I know several of you reading this are on the edge of your seats right now waiting on this request —and it WILL come, it almost always does. So what do we do when we have no time, no money, and no additional human resources to bring in more students in a big hurry? Because I know this will happen to many of you this year I will give you my best three recommendations on this topic.

#1  Evaluate your communication process. It is not uncommon for an evaluation of what you are currently doing to highlight places where you can cultivate more students. Perhaps as you review your structured approach of cultivating students you will find areas of duplication, or just complete silence from the institution. These are holes that need to be addressed. If you have never outlined a comprehensive communication process map, now would be the time.

#2  Training. I know there is an expense attached but truly, when is the last time you spent money on training your staff? Customized recruitment training for adult and graduate students is an absolute must for all well-run admissions teams. Regardless if you have a group of cultured pros or a team of fairly new recruiters; having everyone singing off the same sheet of music is critical to the process.

#3  Secret shop your institution. Frightening to think about but really, even if the news is bad, you are better off knowing. What is the level of customer service that a prospective student gets at your shop? How does that compare with their interaction with your competitor down the street? What impression do they leave you with (whether by phone, on e-mail, or in person)?

But my best advice, stop trusting your gut! I can’t tell you the number of institutions who tell me how good they are, what a tip-top ship they are running, and that they don’t need to  review what they are doing. My response to that type of thinking is actually something my father has shared with me since I was young. You need to know my father is a very pragmatic man, a guy who has lived his whole life in about a 20-square-mile area—he is also remarkably good at just speaking the truth. So from the words of my dad—nobody is as good as they think they are. A hard truth, but a truth nonetheless. I struggle to believe there is a person, a program, an institution in the country who can’t be better than they currently are. And when you are called upon to do more, those who are willing to take an honest look inside have the best odds of delivering.

Photo by ToniVC

I recently read Gilbreath’s The Next Evolution in Marketing. He makes the case, much like Godin and others, that today’s audiences are tired of intrusive, self-serving advertising. He believes that the only way to connect with your customers involves creating marketing with meaning.

The idea of marketing with meaning is not new. What is new, however, is that most marketing had meaning for the people creating it, but generally much less meaning for people receiving it.

Lurking beneath the surface is a concept is called “centricity.” Too often, marketing is institutional-centric (what we want to say) and not so much customer-centric (what the customer wants to hear).

Marketing that is not audience-centric he explains, is in large measure why most marketing fails.

Creating marketing with meaning that demands a customer centeredness is counterintuitive. As a guide, Gilbreath offers us a Maslow-like pyramid (see below). At the very least, your marketing must offer solutions. Once you have gained proficiency at the solutions level, you must then seek to create marketing that allows your audiences to connect not only with you, but with others. Finally, your marketing must help people achieve some improvement goal or objective.

I think most of us are capable of creating marketing that offers solutions (10 ways to help you get into college).

Marketing that offers connection (join a social network of like-minded prospects) is also relatively easy.

The challenge, I suspect, will be marketing that helps prospective students, donors, and others achieve a level of improvement. Interestingly, this is a promise that most colleges make…and keep. So imbedded within this top level of marketing is another conundrum: how do we differentiate our product from the product offered by our competitors?

Gilbreath notes that this level of marketing might require us to give away some of the products, services, and experiences that we once tried to sell. This is what MIT does. A significant portion of MIT’s courses are available online at no charge. Making these materials available clearly helps students and others improve themselves, their families, and perhaps the world.

Gilbreath has raised the bar and I suspect that schools that become comfortable with, and proficient in, developing marketing with meaning will garner a significant and enduring edge over their more faint-hearted competitors.

A friend of mine used to train helicopter pilots during the first Gulf War. He used a term, “target fixation,” in which pilots would focus so completely on the target that they were completely oblivious to other obstacles or hazards.

I think many colleges are suffering from higher education’s version of target fixation with an enlarged devotion to evaluating and enhancing their academic core. Unfortunately, even as they focus on their academic cores, they are letting other issues slide. They seem to believe that a strong core offers enough protection in today’s turbulent times.

Based on my experience, it will not.

Before I go on, let me be perfectly clear: the academic core is of paramount importance. Strong colleges all have strong cores.

But strong colleges have more than strong cores. They have strong brands, strong recruiting, strong fundraising, strong retention, strong financial controls, and strong leadership.

It will always be important to focus attention on your core, but it must never become your sole fixation.

Photo by Jack Vance

Tamar Lewin’s NYT article, “Facing Cuts in Federal Aid, For-Profit Colleges Are in a Fight,” offers a glimpse into a scary future for all of higher education, not just the for-profit sector.

She writes, “The regulations, known as the ‘gainful employment’ rules, are an effort to rein in the high debt loads students take on when they enroll in for-profit colleges that offer certificates or degrees in fields like nursing or culinary arts. Students at for-profit colleges are much more likely than others to default on their loans.

“Under the regulations, a draft of which came out in February, for-profit colleges would not be eligible to receive federal student aid if their graduates’ debt load was too high to be repaid, over 10 years, with 8 percent of their starting salary.”

Though this legislation is aimed at for-profits, one can easily imagine the federal government turning its sights on the non-profit sector next. While it is true that students who attend for-profits typically have twice as much debt as students attending non-profits, the debt rate for many students at these schools is alarming and climbing.

A copy of Lewin’s article may be found here.

Photo by tsuihin – TimoStudios