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Posted in: Social Media, Twitter, Twitter Best Practices
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Are you still debating whether blogging is beneficial or not? Here are four reasons why blogging matters for inbound marketing strategy.
According to a recent Gallup report, 71 percent of B2B customers aren’t engaged. Meaning, they are readily willing to take their business elsewhere should an opportunity arise. Content marketing, a tactic that is widely used to boost engagement and aid many B2B challenges that underpin this problem — customer centricity, relationship building, strategic positioning, etc. — has hardly worked for B2B marketers, particularly those in midsize and small companies. In fact, according to a recent study by MarketingProfs, only 6 percent of B2B marketers rated their use of content marketing as very effective. Why? The answer lies in a number of factors that hold to be true across B2B companies. B2B marketers lack content production capacity Traditionally, B2B marketers have focused on analytics, sales and quantitative side of marketing to support their customer acquisition strategies, hence not needing superior writing talent. Forced to adapt to the rise of digital marketing, many scrambled to assume the role of content experts, with … Continue reading
Posted in: seo agency for manufacturing
Does anyone feel that the current crop of social media apps and tools resembles the produce section at your local supermarket? There are so many social media channels to choose from and just like fruit and vegetables, you need to choose the right ones for a delicious dish. Core social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are the standard bearers and like the lettuce in a good salad. Some social media tools such as Instagram and Pinterest share the same premise but function with a different flavor and heat like all of those colorful peppers in a green grocer’s case. Have you ever noticed those weird shaped alien looking fruits and vegetables like Buddha’s Hand or Romanesco? They look really cool but you just can’t find a good use for them yet… sort of like the social media tool Chirp. Then there are various types of hybrid fruits like the the pluot (plum and apricot) and tangelo (tangerine and pomelo) … Continue reading
Posted in: Inbound Marketing, Social Media
Over the past four years, my personal life as a parent of two college-bound children and my professional life where I spend time in the higher education space have been on one long, yet fascinating, head-on collision. It’s been an eye-opening look at enrollment marketing from two divergent vantage points. In the battle for the affections of my offspring and my all-too-meager tuition savings (if you don’t mind, we can explore that confession another day), colleges have wasted a lot of resources on my kids. It’s not that the colorful, photography rich brochures, invitations, emails and phone calls (kudos to those friendly, yet determined recruiters) weren’t appreciated. I analyzed them like an archaeologist on a dig. It’s simply that they missed their mark. Look, I think Thing One and Thing Two are great catches, too, but the simple truth is that these colleges weren’t “right fit” opportunities for them at the right time. And some never will be. Midway through … Continue reading
Inbound marketing, as defined on the Elliance Higher Education Inbound Marketing Flashcards website, is the continuous creation of relevant and high quality content, which helps to build strong, authentic connections with existing networks and helps to extend those networks through social sharing and conversations. In this definition lies the key to why inbound marketing is crucial for a higher education institution. Content creation for the sake of content will do nothing for brand or reputation building, SEO rankings or increasing social sharing. It’s more than just satisfying search engine bots — it’s also creating stories for people — that people want to read. Content has to be created with a goal in mind. For example, an inbound marketing campaign for a college can be crafted around telling stories – student stories, alumni stories, faculty stories – all of which tell a higher brand story. Student stories will inspire prospective students, allow them to visualize what their life will be … Continue reading
So what is an information session? Information sessions are provided by most higher education institutions to provide prospective students and their families the opportunity to see the campus, learn about the university and develop a personal connection. They also provide program specific details and the opportunity to meet faculty, students and counselors. The target audiences are undergraduate, transfer and international students, graduate and adult students. Information sessions are a very important part of a higher education strategy. Situation: Put yourself in a prospective student’s shoes. You come across an info session web page that peaked your interest only to find that when you clicked around there wasn’t enough information and detail. When you have a site that lists a bunch of dates and a few broad sentences, it just won’t do. You conclude that there just wasn’t enough time and effort invested in it, so why should you buy in and take the next step? Evaluate your website. Are details … Continue reading
Visitors to a website can come multiple times using any combination of direct, online search, ads, emails, etc. as sources before they convert. In previous versions of Google Analytics reports only the last touch point for a conversion was reported on. With the introduction of multi-channel funnel (MCF) reports, prior touch points which led to a conversion can also be reported on now. As I talked about in my previous post, Google Analytics (GA) campaign tags can be used to get information which otherwise is lost due to web protocols. Reports under the Acquisition tab in GA provides information on sources of website visits such as direct, search, referral, social, newsletter, banner ads, etc. as shown in the screenshot below: In one of my previous posts, I showed how to identify and tag various marketing touch-points, which otherwise show up as direct visits. As a follow-up to that, our next step is to measure the effectiveness and contribution of these … Continue reading
With much excitement, we are launching the first inbound marketing web resource for higher education marketers and enrollment marketing teams. It’s free and comprehensive. As the old era of traditional college search comes to an end, inbound marketing heralds the new era of authentic, high-quality, content marketing that deepens brand trust, secures SEO rankings, and fosters social sharing with the spirit of attracting more of right-fit prospects. Colleges are not only recruiting students to meet their enrollment goals, they are also recruiting future brand ambassadors and life-long donors. The Inbound Marketing For Colleges Flashcards website includes five sections: audiences, strategies, tactics, tools and ROI, so those working in higher education marketing can understand how inbound marketing works. Inbound marketing is magical because it’ll impact the shape of the admissions funnel and student life cycle in four different ways: Because prospective students will discover the college using Google search, it’ll bring seekers and right-fit prospective students to your website. These prospective … Continue reading
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