Instagram
[fts_instagram instagram_id=256737344 super_gallery=yes image_size=100px icon_size=50px space_between_photos=1px hide_date_likes_comments=yes center_container=yes image_stack_animation=yes type=user]
Twitter
[fts_twitter twitter_name=elliance]
With the holiday season in full swing and 2014 right around the corner, many of our clients and prospective clients are thinking about enrollment for the coming fall. Although your incoming students for 2014 may (and should!) be a top priority, I’m going to suggest that you look a little bit further. It’s not too soon to start thinking about your incoming students for 2015. I’m sure you already know that paid marketing techniques can be activated quickly and to great effect. But the combination of inbound and paid marketing is even more powerful. Inbound techniques help build strong relationships and support organic search engine rankings. And our information shows that four times as many visitors click when search results appear in both organic and paid results. But that magical combination of paid and inbound marketing takes time. Unlike paid marketing, inbound is a process that must be created and nurtured over time, slowly helping you build credibility, trust, and … Continue reading
Posted in: higher education inbound marketing agency, Inbound Marketing
Leave a comment
As the director of business development, it’s often my job to talk about the work that we do at Elliance, helping potential clients to understand how we might approach their challenges. To make sure I can truly represent the expertise of my team, I’m always trying to learn from them. And because they are (in my opinion) brilliant at what they do, there’s a lot to learn. Here are some of the things they’ve taught me in the past two years… Storytelling works. Stories move mountains, change minds, inspire action, build bonds. And it’s not just important in a homepage feature. It’s just as important in a tweet, in an advertisement, even a single image. Every touch point with your audience is an opportunity to tell your story. Brands already exist. I often hear from prospects interested in creating a new brand. In fact, the best brands can’t be created. They’re already part of the soul of an institution or … Continue reading
I’ve been speaking to lots of prospective clients these days about branding in higher education. I like these early conversations. Listening to people talk about their individual challenges and opportunities is one of my favorite parts of the job. Working in higher education isn’t easy, but in my experience, the people who make a commitment to a college or a university feel very deeply about its well-being and its future. That passion is infectious. Passion is consistent, but I’m also reminded every week that no two institutions are the same, and they have unique administrative structures, unique politics, and unique opportunities. In the end, it comes down to this: how can I somehow define and articulate the soul of my institution? That’s a nutshell way of describing an incredibly tough job. My colleagues here at Elliance do an wonderful job of getting to the heart of the matter, but I can share some advice about the earliest stages. If you’re … Continue reading
In conversations with prospective clients about higher education marketing, I often hear this: “We know it makes sense, but.” And you can probably guess what comes after the “but.” But our faculty doesn’t support it. But our budget is split into a million pieces. But my team reports to two different VPs who disagree. But I have to make everyone happy. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to make everyone happy and still achieve the results that are going to, well, make everyone happy. The truth is that, as much as we all prefer collaborative decision making, there are certain times when we counsel our clients to give up on democracy and create a benign autocracy. Sometimes as communicators, it falls to you to make the tough decision. Which program will receive the bulk of the marketing budget? Where will your efforts do the most good for the institution as a whole, even if it means that not every department is equally … Continue reading
Many of our friends and clients and prospective clients are heading into a delicate season right now. For many it’s the end of the fiscal year, meaning that whatever budget remains for marketing or communications must be very carefully managed. At the same time, clients in higher education have just three months before a new academic year begins and some are still struggling to put together the cohort of right fit students for the fall. Now more than ever, it begs the the age old question: how to do more, with less? Of course, we can’t tell you what will work for you. Every problem is different, and each requires careful thought and a unique solution. But here can make some recommendations about how to approach the challenge. Start by defining the desired outcome. Rather than thinking to yourself, “I need a better Facebook presence,” or “I need a better website,” think “I need an additional 35 students.” Keep an … Continue reading
Over the past few months, I’ve heard from a growing number of prospective clients interested in inbound marketing in higher education. They may not call it inbound marketing — maybe they’re asking for help with blog posts or website content — but inbound marketing is what it comes down to. And to me, inbound marketing comes down to one thing: building trust. Traditional marketing sends a message. It’s a one way enterprise: an advertisement, a billboard, or a brochure. Inbound marketing builds a relationship. Social posts, for example, do more than just deliver a message. They invite a response. They begin a conversation. A conversation leads to a relationship. And a relationship (online, just like in real life) must be built on trust. In terms of higher education, prospective students are looking to form an impression of an institution. Is this a college where he or she might feel at home? Is this a student body where he or she … Continue reading
As the director of new business development, I do a little bit of problem solving and a little bit of matchmaking. It’s my job to do everything I can to help contacts clearly articulate their challenges and then to determine if and how Elliance can help solve those problems. The best part of my day is introducing a prospective client to the colleagues who I know will be able to help. If you’re considering a project with Elliance, I’d encourage you to think about a few things first. First, we’ll probably talk about who you are, and what your company or institution stands for. I’m also interested in finding out how you came to Elliance, who we might be working with within your organization, and what you’re looking for in a partner. A great collaboration is a meeting of the minds. Let’s talk about whether there may be one between us. Next, what do you need? Chances are, you’re thinking … Continue reading
Over the past 25 years, I’ve been a prospective college student, a student, a young alum, a not-so-young alum, a donor, the daughter-in-law of a university faculty member, and the wife of a college staff member. My professional life has also revolved primarily around higher education, including enrollment marketing, for the past seven years or so. I think it’s safe to say that I’m fairly immersed in higher education. Every single day I spend at least some of my time thinking about how colleges and universities can get their messages out to the world. I’ve become accustomed to thinking about higher ed communications from a professional point of view. I think about key audiences, tactics, user experience, and the admissions funnel. My time as a prospective student was a long time ago (longer than I’d like to admit!), and I’ve been doing this job for many more years than I spent browsing college catalogs. I bet the same is true … Continue reading
For those of us working with and for colleges and universities , the increasing focus on online education has been an undeniable force in the past year or two. This article, published today in the New York Times, discusses an agreement between San Jose State University and Udacity, which is intended to offer remedial and introductory courses to perhaps hundreds of thousands of students in California, better preparing them for the next steps in their lives. At Elliance, we’re hearing from communicators every week who are interested in learning how to promote online programs, connect with prospective students, and strengthen the reach and health of their institutions in entirely new ways. For a firm like Elliance, the issues of communication and recruitment are intriguing. The “if you build it, they will come” philosophy has proven unsuccessful for most. Instead, a proactive initiative that combines new and traditional means of promotion helps hit the mark more closely for our clients. Email … Continue reading
With a very small project, there’s every likelihood that you can gather a couple of brief proposals, make a quick decision, hit the ground running, and finish up by the end of the month. Voila! You have a new landing page for your website. Or a new set of images for your slideshow. Or the text of the speech your president needs to give. Let’s call the small project a speedboat. Major projects — a complex website, a custom app, a branding initiative or a major identity program, for example — are more like container ships. It takes time to put together buy-in for a larger budget, there are lots of complex pieces that need to gathered and brought on board, it takes a bigger crew to run the ship, and changes are likely to be burdensome. As a result, this ship is very slow to get started. Letting go of the shipping metaphor for the moment (because I actually … Continue reading