As the trend line in medical school applications rises and falls, and as the makeup of future classes moves decisively toward more female and far more diverse applicants, the level of integration required between strategic planning and strategic communication becomes more crucial, and the potential rewards greater.
Most Schools of Medicine feel competitive pressure from two ends — with the entrenched elite top schools attracting game-changing private donations, and ambitious emergent schools aggressively pursuing prospective students.
Your claim to greatness can come on many fronts — research, global, intellectual capital, and clinical partnerships. These can provide a solid bedrock for a more assertive reach and push across the digital ecosystem. Only by claiming this will the School of Medicine secure the share of message, mind and market needed to distinguish its next hundred years.
Experience tells us that great beginnings matter for these reasons:
a clear purpose calms the winds of change
seeing (our future) becomes believing
strong messages invite loyalists
trust takes root
The number and variety of decisions, opportunities and challenges that come with assuming leadership of a major medical school require a steady hand. Below, we’ve put together 10 strategic considerations for your first 100 days to help you navigate from analysis to synthesis.
1. Strategic Planning
What mix of analytical insights, high-level metrics, broad directional focus and emotion-stirring goals (ambitions) will galvanize faculty, partners and prospects — and tap unrealized energies and potential within the School of Medicine?
2. Brand
How do we mature our understanding of and grow our aptitude with brand — visual and voice — so that internal teams can communicate with broad and fine brush strokes, and inspire the School of Medicine community to act more as one, bound by a newfound sense of shared purpose?
3. Reputation
How do we empower the School of Medicine teams — communications, development, alumni, recruiting, corporate/government relations — to transcend outdated silo thinking and embrace the integrated nature of reputation building in the age of digital channels and content?
4. Enrollment
How do we look beyond broad measures — school and program enrollment trends — and arrive at a more granular and precise assessment of our ability to achieve predictable and reliable enrollments for the School of Medicine? How do we attract and shape a robust class of motivated and diverse students? How do we respond to trends (gender, age, diversity) sure to impact future enrollments?
5. Research/Content/Publishing
How do we bring a “content is destiny” perspective to the School of Medicine, and turn all publishing — academic, research, alumni, general audience — into a reputation building, Google dominating cooperative enterprise that powers enrollment, reputation and fund raising? How do we learn to curate for ubiquity — rather than publishing in silos?
6. Institutional Collaboration
How do we position the School of Medicine within the larger University system? How do we tap into the potential for current undergraduates and graduate students to bring awareness to their networks, including many potential future medical students?
7. Program Development
How do we bring a greater understanding of Generation Z wants, needs, expectations to the School of Medicine academic, student support, global study, clinical and community engagement programs? What programs drive brand, revenue, reputation — and in what proportions? What opportunities exist for corporate partners and donors to coalesce around signature program (capital building) initiatives?
8. Medicine/Data/Technology
How do we better position the School of Medicine within a larger conversation about the integrated nature of medicine, data, and emerging technologies (machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, engineering)? How do we better communicate with prospective medical students who currently see their aptitudes, interests and career trajectory on the periphery of the life sciences?
9. Donor Relations
How do we build a culture of shared beliefs and purpose across the School of Medicine (advisory boards, key corporate partners, alumni leaders and emerging stakeholders)? How do we balance annual and long-term fund-raising priorities? Can we inspire others to create next generation alumni activities and constituent relations programs, and train the School of Medicine thought leaders and more visible/influential representatives?
10. Legacy
While it takes considerable confidence and charisma to succeed as the Dean of a medical school, ultimately the qualities of humility and curiosity become the defining features of the most effective leaders. How do I lead and communicate so that others join me in the greater ambition of building something larger and more lasting than ourselves? How do we come together so that attention shines not on ourselves, but on what we create, and contribute?
As a leading SEO Agency for manufacturing companies, we are frequently asked to share our best practices. This is part 2 of a series of posts to explain how SEO works for manufacturing companies.
SEO or “search engine optimization” is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility on Google, Bing and other international search engines.
Manufacturers that pursue and achieve top organic or natural Google and Bing rankings prosper and thrive. There is a good reason for this. Organic rankings are more trusted, more clicked and out-convert paid advertising leads three-fold.
Smart marketers at leading manufacturing companies begin their SEO journey by conducting a twelve-point SEO audit to assess the following:
1. Website Performance Metrics Audit They begin by testing site load speed, mobile/desktop performance, secure certificate and domain name analysis. They know that these are all Google and Bing ranking factors.
2. Website URL Structure Audit Leading manufacturing company marketers ensure that the URL structure is rational, descriptive and hierarchical. A good URL structure will accelerate attainment of stronger rankings and simplify analysis of website performance in Google analytics.
For international search rankings, they ensure country-specific domains or or language-specific sites are being leveraged.
3. Website Copy and Content Audit The successful manufacturing company marketers know that the website copy must persuade prospective buyers, reassure current customers and inform/influence Google and Bing bots. It must also be infused with appropriate keywords and keyword derivatives.
For international search rankings, they ensure that translated copy exists in country-specific languages.
4. Keyword Audit The premier manufacturing company marketers evaluate keywords on all website pages. They detect keyword stuffing, an illicit SEO technique in which keywords are loaded into a web page’s meta tags, visible content, or link anchor text in an attempt to gain an unfair ranking advantage. They are aware that at best, search engines disregard keyword stuffing and, at worst, penalize a website if it’s packed with too much, irrelevant or unrelated content.
5. User Experience Audit Chief manufacturing company marketers are aware that Google and Bing bots reward websites with superior user experience, information architecture and page architecture – for buyers and channel partners alike. They evaluate it carefully.
6. Conversion Architecture Audit The principal manufacturing company marketers are aware that if a website is a manufacturer’s #1 salesperson, it must be efficiently constructed to maximize lead and e-commerce order generation, signing up for newsletters and webinars, accessing thought-leadership content behind registration walls. And if the website is a manufacturer’s service extension, it must efficiently steer customers to after-sales service and knowledge base portals. It must also serve all channel partners with efficiency and grace.
7. SEO Coding Audit The manufacturing company marketers leaders know that websites are built with HTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which are instructions to browsers to determine characteristics of web page elements such as text size, position of elements on the page, etc. Furthermore, ADA WCAG 2.1 standards dictate accessibility compliance for various audiences. They know that websites must be constructed with best practices because Google and Bing both reward them and penalize websites that don’t.
8. Social Signals Audit The chief manufacturing company marketers know that presence of social sharing buttons and open-graph (OG) tags facilitates content sharing which is a Google, Bing and international ranking factor. They ensure that they are present.
9. Internal and External Links Audit
The smart manufacturing company marketers know that while it’s true that internal site-links and in-bound links are the backbone of Google’s ranking algorithm, outbound links also play an important role. They ensure only highest quality links exist and itemize poor quality links for subsequent link-pruning.
10. Locations Audit
Smart manufacturing companies serving certain geographies embed locations signals for those geographies into its website copy.
11. Indexing Audit
Successful manufacturing companies check for site indexing issues using tools like Google Search Console and verify that critical pages are all indexed.
12. Blog Audit
The effective manufacturing company marketers are aware that blogs are one of the most effective means of securing and lifting Google and Bing page one rankings. They audit its categories, tags and content to reveal areas of improvement.
Armed with the audit, marketers at manufacturing companies are ready to do the hard work of crafting a keyword strategy.
If you are a busy manufacturing company marketer seeking a smart manufacturing marketing agency which can offload your work and help you join the elite group of manufacturers growing their company’s share of mind, voice and market, please contact us.
As a leading manufacturing SEO agency, we are frequently asked to share our best practices. This is part 1 of a series of posts to explain how SEO works for manufacturers.
SEO or “search engine optimization” is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility on Google, Bing and other international search engines.
Manufacturers that pursue and achieve top organic or natural Google and Bing rankings prosper and thrive. There is a good reason for this. Organic rankings are more trusted, more clicked and out-convert paid advertising leads three-fold.
Creating an effective manufacturing SEO strategy requires research, planning, and ongoing refinement. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you develop a robust manufacturing SEO strategy:
First, shape your SEO strategy around your goals
For an industrial company, a solid keyword strategy has at least three elements:
The right mix of keywords focused around your revenue, reputation and thought leadership goals
The right situational analysis of your competitor keywords and their rankings. Know who’s sleeping, who’s awake, who’s ahead, who’s behind, and who’s the 800 pound gorilla.
The right time horizon to achieve local, regional, national and international rankings. Develop a plan that goes after the lowest hanging fruit first (local and regional rankings), then harder-to-achieve national rankings, and finally the hardest-to-achieve international and reputation rankings. Slow and steady wins the race.
The right keywords that span the entire decision funnel. Know that prospects use different clusters of keywords at each phase of the decision funnel. e.g. they’ll use reputation keywords during the awareness phase, category keywords during the consideration phase and branded keywords during the preference/purchase phase and thought-leadership keywords during the purchase decision phase.
Next, conduct keyword research
Industrial companies use third party keyword tools, comb paid advertising data, audit content archives, mine sales history data, and review market research data to develop a Keyword Guide.
When optimizing for highly-competitive terms, strategically clustering related phrases around the main keyword can cause a halo effect in the SERPs. Remember to incorporate keyword clusters. For example, for a pioneering logistics management company that wished to “own” the phrase “logistics” in addition to “logistics software”, we created several hives of keywords using a clustering strategy:
For their software division, claiming rankings for “logistics management software” keywords required the use of long-tail keyword strategy. We’ve discovered that buyers drill down from lower-converting, short, general keywords to longer, 3- or 4-word phrases that are more likely to convert a prospective buyer.
When preparing a keyword guide, ensure you include both long-tail keywords and high-traffic phrases.
Since searcher behavior has evolved from keyword era, to keyword cluster era, to natural language era and has now entered the epoch of voice search, ensure that keyword clusters, frequently asked questions, colloquialisms and “near me” keywords are all represented in your keyword selection.
Finalize the Keyword Guide into the following buckets:
Product Keywords
Brand Keywords
Geographic Keywords
Decisioning Keywords
Reputation Keywords
Map some of your keywords to unique pages of your website map.
Develop a website optimization plan
Develop a plan of action to update your meta-tags, site copy and site links to perfection. Ensure the content experience remains hierarchical, rational and persuasive.
Now create a content plan for countries of interest
Develop a plan for creating language-specific or country-specific microsites to target prospects from specific countries. Develop microsites for large countries (e.g. China), and build language-specific websites for country clusters (Latin America).
Plan on applying SEO best practices to the country-specific microsites for country-customized Google and Bing search engines – as well as country-specific search engines such as Baidu for China, Yandex for Russia, etc.
Lastly, create a plan for creating fresh inbound content
Because Google’s algorithm rewards fresh content, creating high-fidelity fresh content is another crucial leg of inbound/content marketers that helps manufacturers “get found” via search engines, word-of-mouth and the sharing of content. Inbound marketing involves the continuous creation of relevant and high quality content, such as PR2.0 assets, articles, social posts, blog posts, videos, infographics, white papers and thought leadership events, and igniting that content through promotion and conversation-starters to encourage peer-to-peer sharing.
Your content plan should carefully curate it and distribute it through channels you control (your “owned” media, such as your website and social networks) and the channels you don’t control (the social media of people/organizations in your network), where your content strategists should spark conversations. Carefully managing the content you own allows you to influence the content you “earn” and reputation you build. Search engine rankings and social connections (“likes,” “shares,” etc.) are among the most trusted endorsements online today. Managing your content and your interactions carefully allows you to maximize your success in SEO and the social world. Finally, advanced analytic approaches allow you to improve your understanding of the content and communications your prospects value.
Create an editorial calendar for fresh inbound content with the following buckets:
Education content for tactical buyers
Thought leadership content for strategic buyers
Story or cause-related content for building brand reputation
Newsjacking content to tie the brand with current issues
Map a cluster of keywords to the new content you create.
You are now ready to implement this SEO Strategy. Begin.
I hope you found this guide helpful. If you are an industrial marketer, contact us if you are seeking a smart manufacturing marketing agency which can help you join the elite group of manufacturers growing their company’s share of mind, voice and market.
This guide was written to help the manufacturers and industrial companies with modest marketing budgets to leverage SEO to out-smart and out-compete the deep pocketed Goliaths without outspending them. We call them small giants. To paraphrase Guy Kawasaki, if you have more money than brains, you should focus on paid advertising, but if you have more brains than money, you should focus on SEO marketing. As one of the leading manufacturing marketing agencies, we learned the strategies and tactics presented here from serving numerous manufacturers who were small giants in their respective categories. We thrive on seeing them prosper and we celebrate their success.
Table of Contents:
I. SEO Basics for Manufacturers
What is SEO?
What are SEO Ranking Factors?
What is Inbound Marketing?
Know That SEO/Inbound/Content is a Long Game
II. Eight Reasons Why Manufacturing and Industrial Marketers Are Deploying SEO
III. The 3 R’s of Manufacturing Prosperity
Revenue
Reputation
Rankings
IV. Ten Elements of an SEO Audit
V. Formulating a Keyword Strategy for Industrial Companies
Shape Your SEO Strategy
Conduct Keyword Research
Create Fresh Inbound Content Strategy
VI. SEO Implementation for Manufacturing Companies
Implement On-Page Factors
Make Your Website Responsive, Secure and Fast
Build Quality Inbound Links
Manage Social Signals
Optimize for Locations and Geographies
Create Fresh Content to Secure and Sustain Top Rankings for Important Keywords
VII. Monitoring of Keywords and SEO Performance for Manufacturers
VIII. Adapt to Changes in SEO Algorithms
I. SEO Basics for Manufacturers
What is SEO?
SEOor “search engine optimization” is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility on Google, Bing and other international search engines.
Manufacturers that pursue and achieve top organic or natural Google and Bing rankings prosper and thrive. There is a good reason for this. Organic rankings are more trusted, more clicked and out-convert paid advertising leads three-fold. The best prospective buyers prefer to “discover” the manufacturers of their choice through “accidental finds” on Google and Bing page one and via word-of-mouth on social media and influencers.
What are SEO Ranking Factors?
SEO is a set of techniques marketers employ to improve your website rankings on Google, Bing, and other international search engines. Five factors affect rankings:
URL factors: Use symbolic and phrase tokens, not numbers. Use international domains for country-specific content.
on-page factors: Use meta-data and infuse keywords into copy.
off-page factors: Secure inbound links from reputable websites to your website.
social factors: Foster conversations and content sharing on social media.
local factors: Embed location and country signals for your target regions.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Because rankings weaken over time and search engines reward fresh content, marketers must create a continuous stream of high quality, trusted and relevant content (such as articles, blog posts, videos, infographics, white papers, thought leadership articles, social posts, quizzes, games, etc.) and ignite it via promotion and conversation-starters to encourage peer-to-peer sharing. Thus the label SEO has evolved into SEO/Inbound/Content marketing.
Inbound marketing creates a hub of value and trust. As this foundation is established, the cost to build upon it naturally drops. This means a very strong ROI over time for an inbound marketing focused approach.
Metaphorically speaking, an inbound marketing strategy is simply the act of gathering combustible firewood and igniting it.
Know That SEO/Inbound/Content is a Long Game
It takes several months to achieve local and regional rankings, and a year or more to achieve national and international rankings. Manufacturing marketers who have the patience and determination to achieve Google rankings create an enduring, rising tide of rankings and are able to reduce their paid marketing spend as SEO rankings are achieved.
Paid advertising and SEO/Inbound/Content marketing are good alone, better together.
II. Eight Reasons Why Manufacturing and Industrial Marketers are Deploying SEO
In serving more than one hundred manufacturers in our thirty year history, we have helped our clients overcome the following eight business challenges with SEO.
Fortifying Brand Reputation
Branding allows manufacturers to charge a premium and for financial markets to value them higher. Smart manufacturers infuse the brand in every touch point and optimize each digital asset for Google rankings. They project thought-leadership and communicate their environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards and corporate social responsibility (CSR) credentials.
Attracting and Retaining Talent
All manufacturers are challenged by a national talent shortage to fill the new jobs they’re creating. Instead of relying on tired, old ways, smart manufacturing marketers are engaged in Recruitment 3.0 which demands a better digital strategy that grabs the attention of the most talented people out there. One that doesn’t commoditize businesses by constantly putting them side by side with everybody else looking to fill seemingly look-alike roles. One that articulates and celebrates the company’s values to match the needs of values-based Gen-Z and Millennials. One that SEO-optimizes each job in the careers and job listing pages so it can surface on Google page one.
Improving Capacity Utilization
Capacity utilization is one of the underpinnings of manufacturers that is maximized with predictable demand generation. SEO liberates new business better than any other marketing tactic.
Reducing Sales Cycle
Even though manufacturers know that their buyers make decisions based on their budgetary cycles, they invest in streamlining and trimming the buying cycle by educating tactical buyers and reassuring prospective buyers with thought leadership content.
Retaining, Growing and Cross-Selling to Existing Customers
Because it takes up to five times more resources to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, successful manufacturers project thought leadership and confirmation to buyers of past purchase decisions.
Securing New Customers
By dominating national and international search engines and social media, manufacturers secure:
new customers from global markets
new customers who are not aware of the company
new customers seeking second source suppliers
new customers disappointed by a bad experience with competitive suppliers
Growing Strategic Buyers. Embracing Tactical Buyers. Manufacturers attract and convert high-margin strategic buyers with thought leadership content; in tandem, they convert tactical and transitional buyers with educational content.
Opening New Markets without Increasing Headcount
Smart manufacturers open new markets by securing top search engine rankings, growing their international presence in global markets, and being discovered by strategic partners in new markets.
III. The 3 R’s of Manufacturing Prosperity: Revenue, Reputation and Rankings
The primary goal of manufacturing marketing is to grow rankings, reputation and revenue for manufacturers. Even though most manufacturers are investing between 2% to 5% of their revenue on marketing, the most aggressive manufacturers are investing close to 10% of their revenue on marketing. Of course not all of the marketing budget is allocated for SEO marketing, but between 30% to 50% goes towards this all-important tactic.
1. Revenue Amongst manufacturers, revenue can flow from three primary sources: direct sales; distributor, resellers and agent sales; and OEM’s. Revenue can also come from various market segments.
SEO marketers deploy a unique set of strategies to liberate sales from one or more of these channels and segments. While the existing products generate a lion share of revenue, new products are launched and routinely added into the product mix.
2. Reputation All great manufacturing marketers engage in branding to position their companies as suppliers of consequence. They curate, orchestrate and elevate their content strategy to deftly manage their corporate destiny with stories, case studies, videos and infographics on websites and social media channels. They maximize their content productivity and amplify their thought leadership with SEO Keyword Lexicons and best search engine optimization practices. They widen their content reach beyond their customers to new customers and influencers. They carefully manage their reputation within the communities they operate in.
3. Rankings Successful manufacturers understand that they must influence the twin third party and Google (plus Bing and more) rankings. They understand the factors that weigh into each ranking and proactively influence those factors with talented team members and agency partners.
IV. Ten Elements of an SEO Audit
To begin the SEO journey, smart manufacturers conduct an SEO audit to assess the following:
1. Website Performance Metrics Audit Begin by testing site load speed, mobile/desktop performance, secure certificate and domain name analysis. These are all Google and Bing ranking factors.
2. Website URL Structure Audit Ensure it is rational, descriptive and hierarchical. A good URL structure will accelerate attainment of stronger rankings and simplify analysis of website performance in Google analytics.
For international search rankings, ensure country-specific domains are being leveraged.
3. Website Copy and Content Audit The website copy must persuade prospective buyers, reassure current customers and inform/influence Google and Bing bots. It must also be infused with appropriate keywords and keyword derivatives.
For international search rankings, ensure translated copy exists in country-specific languages.
4. Keyword Audit Evaluate keywords on all website pages. Detect keyword stuffing, an illicit SEO technique in which keywords are loaded into a web page’s meta tags, visible content, or link anchor text in an attempt to gain an unfair ranking advantage. At best, search engines disregard them and, at worst, penalize a website if it’s packed with too much, irrelevant or unrelated content.
5. User Experience Audit Google and Bing bots reward websites with superior user experience, information architecture and page architecture – for buyers and channel partners alike. Evaluate it carefully.
6. Conversion Architecture Audit If a website is a manufacturer’s #1 salesperson, it must be efficiently constructed to maximize lead and e-commerce order generation, signing up for newsletters and webinars, accessing thought-leadership content behind registration walls. And if the website is a manufacturer’s service extension, it must efficiently steer customers to after-sales service and knowledge base portals. It must also serve all channel partners with efficiency and grace.
7. SEO Coding Audit Websites are built with HTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which are instructions to browsers to determine characteristics of web page elements such as text size, position of elements on the page, etc. Furthermore, ADA WCAG 2.1 standards dictate accessibility compliance for various audiences. Websites must be constructed with best practices because Google and Bing both reward them and penalize websites that don’t.
8. Social Signals Audit Presence of social sharing buttons and open-graph (OG) tags facilitate content sharing which is a Google, Bing and international ranking factor. Ensure they are present.
9. Internal and External Links Audit
While it’s true that internal site-links and in-bound links are the backbone of Google’s ranking algorithm, outbound links also play an important role. Ensure only highest quality links exist and itemize poor quality links for subsequent link-pruning.
10. Blog Audit
Blogs are one of the most effective means of securing and lifting Google and Bing page one rankings. An audit of its categories, tags and content audit will reveal areas of improvement.
Armed with the audit, the industrial marketer is ready to do the hard work of crafting a keyword strategy.
V. Formulating a Keyword Strategy for Industrial Companies
First, shape your SEO strategy around your goals
For an industrial company, a solid keyword strategy has at least three elements:
The right mix of keywords focused on revenue, reputation and thought leadership goals.
The right situational analysis of your competitor keywords and their rankings. Know who’s sleeping, who’s awake, who’s ahead, who’s behind, and who’s the 800 pound gorilla.
The right time horizon to achieve local, regional, national and international rankings. Develop a plan that goes after the lowest hanging fruit first (local and regional rankings), then harder-to-achieve national rankings, and finally the hardest-to-achieve international and reputation rankings. Slow and steady wins the race.
The right keywords that span the entire decision funnel. Know that prospects use different clusters of keywords at each phase of the decision funnel. e.g. they’ll use reputation keywords during the awareness phase, category keywords during the consideration phase and branded keywords during the preference/purchase phase and thought-leadership keywords during the purchase decision phase.
Next, conduct keyword research
Industrial companies use third party keyword tools, comb paid advertising data, audit content archives, mine sales history data, and review market research data to develop a Keyword Guide.
When optimizing for highly-competitive terms, strategically clustering related phrases around the main keyword can cause a halo effect in the SERPs. Remember to incorporate keyword clusters. For example, for a pioneering logistics management company that wished to “own” the phrase “logistics” in addition to “logistics software”, we created several hives of keywords using a clustering strategy:
For their software division, claiming rankings for “logistics management software” keywords required the use of long-tail keyword strategy. We’ve discovered that buyers drill down from lower-converting, short, general keywords to longer, 3- or 4-word phrases that are more likely to convert a prospective buyer.
When preparing a keyword guide, ensure you include both long-tail keywords and high-traffic phrases.
Since searcher behavior has evolved from keyword era, to keyword cluster era, to natural language era and has now entered the epoch of voice search, ensure that keyword clusters, frequently asked questions, colloquialisms and “near me” keywords are all represented in your keyword selection.
Finalize the Keyword Guide into the following buckets:
Product Keywords
Brand Keywords
Geographic Keywords
Decisioning Keywords
Reputation Keywords
Map some of your keywords to unique pages of your website map.
Now you need to develop a plan for international content and future content.
Then create content for countries of Interest
Build language-specific or country-specific microsites to target prospects from specific countries. Build microsites for large countries (e.g. China), and build language-specific websites for country clusters (Latin America).
Apply SEO best practices to the country-specific microsites for country-customized Google and Bing search engines – as well as country-specific search engines such as Baidu for Chinese, Yandex for Russia, etc.
Lastly, create a fresh inbound content strategy
Because Google’s algorithm rewards fresh content, creating high-fidelity fresh content is the third crucial leg of inbound/content marketers that helps manufacturers “get found” via search engines, word-of-mouth and the sharing of content. Inbound marketing involves the continuous creation of relevant and high quality content, such as PR2.0 assets, articles, social posts, blog posts, videos, infographics, white papers and thought leadership events, and igniting that content through promotion and conversation-starters to encourage peer-to-peer sharing.
Carefully curated content is distributed through channels you control (your “owned” media, such as your website and social networks) and the channels you don’t control (the social media of people/organizations in your network), where our content strategists spark conversations on your behalf. Carefully managing the content you own allows you to influence the content you “earn” and reputation you build. Search engine rankings and social connections (“likes,” “shares,” etc.) are among the most trusted endorsements online today. Managing your content and your interactions carefully allows you to maximize your success in SEO and the social world. Finally, advanced analytic approaches allow you to improve your understanding of the content and communications your prospects value.
Create an editorial calendar for fresh inbound content with the following buckets:
Education content for tactical buyers
Thought leadership content for strategic buyers
Story or cause-related content for building brand reputation
Newsjacking content to tie the brand with current issues
VI. SEO Implementation for Manufacturing Companies
1. Implement on-page and on-site factors
When it comes to SEO, there are certain elements that need to be in place for all websites. Are your 301 redirects in place? Is the robots.txt file authored to allow adequate crawling? Is your XML sitemap ready for search engine crawlers? This infographic depicts a handy checklist that will help get you through any SEO implementation.
2. Make Your Website Responsive, Secure and Fast
Google, Bing and international search engines reward responsive websites – ones that auto-adjust gracefully on smartphones, tablets or desktops. Google also ranks websites higher that load fast and are running in secure mode.
3. Build quality site links
Link Baiting is used to get many quality inbound links pointed to your site. Through great content or some humorous hooks, create a viral marketing effect using this technique.
4. Manage social signals
Google, Bing and international search engine bots eavesdrop on social conversations to rank their sites. Creating share-worthy content and enabling sharing so it gets passed around is a sure way to improve your search engine rankings.
5. Optimize for locations and geographies
The geo-targeting search strategy you decide to use will impact your overall SEO campaign. Embedding location signals into your website and content will help rank it in those geographies.
6. Create Fresh Content to Secure and Sustain Top Rankings for Important Keywords
Since Google, Bing and international search engines reward websites with fresh content, develop a content strategy to create buckets of new content (microsites, blogs, magazines, etc.) for various parts of the sales funnel. Inform all content with the Keyword Lexicon.
Create and publish unique content as follows:
Understand prospective buyers and buyer behavior
Interview subject matter experts (SME’s) and industry experts to create thought leadership content and white papers
Conduct original research with fresh insights to secure your position as an industry leader
Interview process team members to create educational and how-to content for various use cases
Interview loyal customers to create customer interviews and case studies
Create premium content tailored for specific customer segments
Fresh content may take several forms.
The more competitive a keyword, the more high-fidelity content (infographics, videos, quizzes, etc.) you’ll have to create to secure and sustain page 1 rankings.
VII. Monitoring of Keywords and SEO Performance for Manufacturers
To quantify the return-on-investment, manufacturers must connect the dots between SEO efforts and conversions. Activate Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Integrate marketing automation software like HubSpot or Pardot in your website, blog and content channels.
Some of the SEO metrics that manufacturers must continuously measure are:
Brand impressions
Traffic/Organic traffic including quality, sources, locations and devices
Keyword rankings
Branded vs. non-branded keywords
Page popularity
Leads, sales and customer service requests that originated from search engines
Measure keyword rankings and monitor competitors periodically. Respond to encroachment with counter-moves on an as-needed basis.
VIII. Adapt to Changes in SEO Algorithms
Industrial marketers must realize that getting on page 1 is not a one-and-done game. Since Google, Bing and international search engine algorithms change periodically, the strategies for securing page 1 positions must be adapted regularly.
For instance, to give you a sense of the big changes in Google’s algorithm and the ranking factors in the last decade, we have created a simplified chart below:
The search terms people type in the Google search box have changed dramatically too, and can be understood in four distinct epochs: the keyword era, keyword cluster era, natural language era and now the voice era. Voice activated searches now account for more than half of all searches. Manufacturing marketers must ensure that keyword clusters, frequently asked questions, colloquialisms and “near me” keywords are all represented in their keyword selection.
I hope you found this guide helpful. If you are an industrial marketer, contact us if you are seeking a smart manufacturing marketing agency which can help you join the elite group of manufacturers growing their company’s share of mind, voice and market.
In serving more than one hundred manufacturers in our thirty year history, our agency has developed a repertoire of best practices in manufacturing marketing. To commemorate the manufacturing month, we’re sharing them with you:
1. Invest in Branding: The best manufacturers distinguish themselves and liberate profits by building powerful brands, becoming thought leaders and aligning themselves with causes that matter to them. They play to win.
2. Celebrate Heroes: Manufacturers are increasingly challenged by a national talent shortage for the new jobs they’re creating. They are also losing an entire generation of baby boomer buyers who are being replaced by Gen-X, Millennials and Gen-Z. To offset these macro-trends, smart manufacturers are celebrating the talent of their workforce and their best customers alike.
3. Marketing, Sales and Customer Experience Alignment: Successful manufacturers ensure that not only their earned, owned and paid media align, but their marketing, sales and customers experience mutually enhance each other.
4. Produce High-Fidelity Content: Top manufacturers maximize their content productivity by creating a SEO Keyword Lexicon, infusing keywords into all new content they produce including blog posts, white papers, videos, infographics, webinars and social media. They turn their content into force multipliers which facilitates revenue growth without increasing headcount.
5. Recruit and Retain Talent: The best manufacturers SEO-optimize the career sections of their own websites and their social media to directly recruit talent instead of letting them lean on job sites.
6. Leverage Marketing Technology: High-performance manufacturers run an integrated marketing ecosystem with responsive websites, marketing automation, customer relationship management (CRM) systems and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
7. Fund Marketing to Strategic Buyers: In addition to marketing transactional buyers, leading manufacturers surround and engage higher-margin strategic buyers with Google and Bing page one rankings, AI-powered targeting and A/B testing. They invest close to 10% of their revenue in marketing to right-fit prospects. Their investment in digital marketing eclipses what they spend in traditional media.
We hope these best practices get your gears turning.
Contact us if you are seeking a smart manufacturing marketing agency which can help you join the elite group of manufacturers growing their company’s share of mind, voice and market.
There is an art and science to running a paid advertising campaign. With all online advertising platforms increasingly dependent on artificial intelligence and machine learning, gone are the days of manual adjustments and management.
As a digital marketing agency, we have adapted to the changes happening in the industry but the fundamentals of creating content that will resonate with our clients’ target audience remains the same.
Here are some best practices which we follow to run high performing, top converting paid media campaigns for all our clients:
Creating Impactful Paid Landing Pages
Each landing page that we create for a client is unique. Our purpose with each client’s landing page is to use distinct elements that showcase the individuality of the brand and highlight its best features. Along with using unique elements for each landing page, there are common features which consistently work well in attracting and engaging the right target audience. Here are some landing page elements which help us create unique and impactful landing pages for our clients:
Clear and Concise Argument Construction: The argument construction for each landing page depends on the client’s situation and target audience. A one size fits all approach does not work. Each landing page, based on the client’s situation will develop a different argument to make a case for the client. Highlighting the uniqueness about the client will set them apart from their competition and show their target audience that they’re the right fit for each other.
Strong Calls to Actions: Providing a clear intent as to what you want the prospect or buyer to do is an extremely important feature of each landing page. Many of the pages we create are lead generation landing pages, so we include a clear “Request Info” button to make it easy for the prospect or buyer to fill out the client-specific request information form. Each landing page provides call to action buttons at the top which persistently follow as you scroll down the page so they are never out of sight for the user.
Simple Forms: The form used on the landing page depends on where your target audience is in the marketing funnel. But, a rule of thumb is to use simple forms with as few fields as possible so that the prospect doesn’t hesitate to provide that information. On lead generation landing pages, a simple form asking for basic information like name and email helps get the essential information to begin communication with the prospect. Testing out where the placement of the form will work best is a good idea as each situation will be different.
Proofs & Success Stories: Showing success stories of how customers have benefited from a client’s product, service or offerings helps to convince others. This could include showing customer reviews or including their story on how they benefited from the product. This will allow potential customers to visualize the benefits that they can glean from the same product. This becomes a really important aspect of our landing pages to show a product’s real benefits to potential customers.
Landing Page A/B Testing: Testing headlines, copy, messaging, images, calls to action, form fields and placements can all help your landing page continuously reach your audience and allow you to learn from their behavior how best to communicate with them.
Creating High-Converting Digital Ad Creative
Keeping the client’s brand in mind, the target audience and the goal of the campaign helps us come up with a one-of-a-kind strategy for each client. There are several factors that we take into consideration as we develop ad creative for each client campaign.
Use authentic photography: As all paid marketing platforms have become more and more visual, using the right image is exceedingly important to creating the right ad. The use of high-quality images from the actual client helps us develop a more authentic look and feel.
Stand out from the competition with eye-catching design: With the increase in advertisers online, it becomes imperative to stand out from others. One thing that can help you distinguish yourself from the competition is to select images, copy and design elements which will make your ads memorable and your brand stand out from the crowd.
Write clear and concise copy: Today’s target audiences have limited bandwidth and attention spans. It’s best to quickly get your audience’s attention and provide your offer than to write long ads which will not show after a limited number of characters.
Highlight your uniqueness: What is one thing that is unique about you? Use your ad creative to bring attention to that factor. It will set you apart even further from your competition.
Add calls to actions: Depending on what type of campaign you’re running and where your prospect is in the funnel, calls to action will differ.
Run consistent messaging on all platforms: If you are using multiple platforms for your campaigns, you would want to keep using consistent messaging across all platforms. This way your consistent message will reach customers no matter which platform they use.
A/B test ad creatives: A/B testing different sets of ads, whether it is videos, images, copy and other creative elements in ads will help you understand which message resonates with your audiences better. As a result, you can tighten your messaging and talk directly to your prospective customers.
Paid Campaign Management & Optimization
Search, Social and Media Advertising paid platforms are all powered by algorithms that maximize their own profits with little regard for a marketer’s investments. To offset the algorithm’s greedy tendency, Elliance uses sensible campaign management techniques to tune, optimize and micro-manage various aspects of the campaigns.
Budget optimization: Managing a budget to get the most results out of your investment is an important part of running a successful paid campaign. Our day-to-day optimization tactics allow us to get the most out of the budget that we have to maximize performance for the client.
Bid management: With AI playing a big part in paid campaigns, providing the right bidding signals to the algorithm becomes crucial to run a successful campaign. Bidding signals include bid adjustments by devices, locations, time of day, day of the week, ad type, audiences and many more. Without judicious bid management, the algorithm will always steer towards maximizing profits for the platform at the expense of our clients.
Keyword management: Continuously updating your keyword list to filter out non-relevant searches through negative keywords will keep the campaign on target and your ads showing in front of the right searchers. This eliminates waste of our client’s precious marketing investments.
Audience optimization: Regularly monitoring your audience profiles and demographics to make sure you’re getting conversions from the right audience can help to keep the campaign showing to your right fit audience. Again, when it comes to maximizing return on investment for our clients, we leave no stone unturned. God is indeed in the details.
Managing Algorithmic Recommendations: The advertising platforms routinely recommend changes to the client campaigns. Instead of blindly accepting these recommendations (most of which lean towards maximization of their own profitability), we filter them through the lens of each client’s strategic objectives, accepting the ones that align and discarding the ones that don’t.
Elliance, an SEM and paid advertising agency, brings prosperity to clients through digital campaign management services to grow your brand’s share of mind, voice and market. View our work with various clients and consider partnering with us.
In serving more than one hundred manufacturers in our thirty year history, we have helped our clients overcome the following eight business challenges they were consistently facing.
Fortify Brand Reputation
In the sea of sameness, brands win. Branding allows manufacturers to charge a premium and for financial markets to value them higher.
Manufacturing marketing agencies create a unified commercial brand for their clients. They infuse the brand in every touch point including websites, social media channels, Wikipedia entry, email signatures, newsletters, tours, webinars, and all sales presentations, trade show booths. They celebrate star customers and employees because they, not the company, are the real heroes of a company’s story. They secure Google page 1 rankings for both tactical and strategic buyers, ensuring the information that appears on search engine results is persuasive and inviting. They position a manufacturer as a thought-leader in its space. They tell stories of product innovation. They help establish and deepen relationships with trade media.
Since Millennials and Gen-Zers care deeply about corporate values, they are gravitating towards manufacturers that embrace environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards and embody corporate social responsibility (CSR). Manufacturing marketers are using their client’s brand communications to respond to this new social consciousness.
Attract and Retain Talent
Manufacturers are challenged by a national talent shortage to fill the new jobs they’re creating. Instead of relying on tired, old ways, manufacturing marketers are engaged in Recruitment 3.0 which demands a better digital strategy. One that doesn’t commoditize businesses by constantly putting them side by side with everybody else looking to fill seemingly look-alike roles. One that articulates and celebrates the company’s values to match the needs of values-based Gen-Z and Millennials. One that SEO-optimizes each job in the careers and job listing pages so it can surface on Google page one. One that micro-targets with surround and engage campaigns, that influence talented people to seek the company out.
They orchestrate paid, owned and earned media tactics to create a reputation as the “The place to work” and help companies get the attention of the most talented people out there.
Improve Capacity Utilization
Marketing agencies contribute to improving capacity utilization by assisting with steady demand generation and demand forecasting. In tandem, the companies must engage in a number of operational strategies to manage their capacity including lean manufacturing, Just-in-Time inventory management, workforce training, product standardization, optimization of routing and scheduling, Kaizen and quality control.
Reduce Sales Cycle
Manufacturing marketing agencies begin by securing Google page one rankings so they can attract prospects who are ready to make a purchase. Next they target micro-segments of tactical and strategic buyers and leverage CRM, lead scoring and A/B testing tools to prioritize, nurture and convert the right-fit inquiries faster. Then they equip the manufacturer’s sales teams with smart presentations, persuasive sales collateral, success stories and thought-leadership white papers. They next accelerate proposal generation and objection handling with sales enablement tools. Finally, they help activate limited-time special offers, reward and loyalty programs, where appropriate.
Retain, Grow and Cross-Sell to Existing Customers
It’s well known that it takes up to five times more resources to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.
Manufacturing marketers assist in developing regular communication with customers with newsletters, product updates and industry insights. They keep the company’s customers engaged by crafting and running annual customer satisfaction surveys. They implement incentive and loyalty programs that reward customers. They identify opportunities to upsell and cross-sell complementary products and services and help develop bundle deals for purchasing additional items. They help secure Google page one rankings for key product lines to project leadership and provide confirmation to buyers of their past purchase decisions.
Secure New Customers
Manufacturing marketers accelerate their digital investments. They are aware that customer-driven companies are investing 3.4 times more in digital experiences that are mobile-first, personalized and integrated. They help diversify digital experiences with the inclusion of video marketing, high-fidelity microsites, thought leadership content, search engine optimization and social media marketing in recently emerged channels.
By dominating national and international search engines and social media, they help manufacturers secure:
new customers from global markets
new customers who are not aware of the company
new customers seeking second source suppliers
new customers disappointed by a bad experience with competitive suppliers.
Grow Strategic Buyers. Embrace Tactical Buyers. Smart manufacturing marketers realize that not all customers are born equal; they are helping companies focus their energies on attracting and converting high-margin strategic buyers. This doesn’t preclude them from valuing and targeting tactical and transactional buyers. Manufacturers need to serve both types of buyers.
Open New Markets without Increasing Headcount
Smart manufacturers are making digital investments to help companies open new markets by securing top search engine rankings, growing their presence on online sales channels and leveraging marketing technology. They are also assisting in the formation of strategic partnerships to open new markets. They arm their clients with well-thought-out market entry plans, so they can achieve sales gains without a significant increase in headcount.
Contact us if you are seeking a smart manufacturing marketing agency which can help you join the elite group of manufacturers growing their company’s share of mind, voice and market.
Reducing the frequency of a printed alumni magazine is a controversial idea. Generations of alumni will react to this change differently. However, as Yogi Berra said, “if you see a fork in the road, take it.”
Benefits and Costs of Print Alumni Magazine
Great alumni flagship magazines are beautiful, comfortable and great coffee table pieces. They have the potential to move your college’s perception/reputation needle with alumni and friends. They draw you into the great stories and iconic photographs that slow you down and take you back into the memory lane of your youthful idealism. Above all, they don’t get lost in the email clutter or sea of web distractions.
However, they are not cheap, they’re difficult to produce and have a limited reach. It’s not uncommon for them to consume budgets of over $100,000 for quarterly or bi-annual issues. Production requires teams of editorial and design staff. Despite best efforts, you can only tell so many stories that can only reach alumni and the limited number of friends of the college on your mailing list. This is where digital alumni magazines begin to out-perform print versions.
Benefits and Costs of Digital Alumni Magazines
Let me start by saying that a PDF, ISSUU or flipbook version of an alumni magazine is not a digital magazine. They are walled gardens that prevent the Google bot from crawling, indexing and ranking each story. For us, a digital magazine is an interactive hub where each individual story can be read, interacted with, optimized for Google rankings, promoted and shared. The beauty of digital magazines is eight-fold:
Small Staff, Big Impact: They look perennially fresh with weekly stories produced by a skeleton crew of a writer, a designer, a photographer and a videographer.
More Story Formats: The stories are told in short, intermediate and long format and in innumerable digital formats (video, interactive infographics, podcasts, etc.).
Create Once, Publish Everywhere: The stories are readily served up into related academic program web pages, giving web pages and institutional web pages.
Better Analytics: Story metrics (views, shares, clicks) are measured with precision and guide crafting your editorial calendar for maximizing future brand engagement.
Stronger Alumni Engagement: Alumni submit their own stories and profiles. They also offer suggestions for future story ideas.
Longer Story Shelf Life: Digital stories are easily findable with site search, surface in related/popular stories dynamically, circulate on social media and appear on search engines. This prolongs the shelf life of each story.
Wider Reach: They reach friends of the college (via email and social media), brand-unaware strangers (via Google page one rankings) and friends-of-friends (via social media shares).
More Sustainable and Climate Friendly: Digital magazines are more environmentally friendly than their print counterparts.
The cost of digital magazines is primarily in building the story engine and getting trained on how to use it. However, this one-time cost can be capitalized and amortized over several years.
Print + Digital Alumni Magazine: Good Alone, Better Together
Colleges and universities are increasingly moving towards a hybrid model, with a digital alumni magazine that is ever-green with fresh, weekly content and an annual “Year in Review” print issue that is published to influence the US News & Report rankings and appease the older alumni. The print stories routinely connect to additional photos, videos and interactives in the digital edition. This symbiotic relationship between the print and digital positively impacts college reputation, rankings and revenue simultaneously.
How to Transition from Print to Print + Digital Editions
To make the case for this transition, share your commitment to creating a more sustainable world, enhancing brand value that serves all, and embracing comprehensive digital technologies as a force multiplier to expand brand reach beyond alumni and friends to new prospects, new corporate partners, new foundation funders, new media contacts and new influencers who aren’t yet aware of the college brand.
When I left journalism and joined Elliance in the Fall of 2006, Facebook had recently celebrated its second birthday, Google had just paid $1.65 billion for YouTube, and some of America’s old-growth daily newspapers had begun to sway violently against the winds of economic change.
The new laws of digital communication had emerged, along with a breathtaking set of opportunities. But when I spoke to higher education communications leaders, I found that many still gauged success (personal and professional) by the number of returned phone calls and media placements they secured from local education beat writers or broadcast media.
Within weeks of crossing over to the digital side, I realized that colleges and universities possessed far more control over their reputation destinies than any of them seemed to grasp. My old-school eyes had opened wide to new tools of the trade:
I learned to combine the power of keywords and code to win page one Google results for a range of content.
I saw that stories could be curated with an eye toward building a critical mass of related keyword phrases and that these clusters could in turn become foundational to a school’s long-range enrollment, reputation, and fund-raising aspirations.
I understood that college presidents, faculty, researchers, and alumni could all become characters in a larger institutional story and content strategy.
Seventeen years later, very few higher education vice presidents for communication — or their peers in enrollment, marketing, and advancement — have fully seized this opportunity. Most remain in a promotion rather than a publishing mindset. And while they work tirelessly to produce content, few understand the steps to make it “productive.”
More specifically:
Most colleges and universities squander the potential impact and reach of their flagship publications, posting them as PDFs and embeddable flipbooks that put the valuable content beyond reach of Google’s indexing bots.
Most colleges and universities operate without an extensive keyword guide.
Most colleges and universities fail to connect communication efforts with broader strategic enrollment, reputation, and advancement goals.
Like Vladimir and Estragon from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, higher education leaders appear trapped by inertia, hopeful that sheer effort and faith will be enough.
The good news is that anyone can claim their destiny with a few simple steps:
Set aside any turf battles or territorial claims and convene your counterparts in enrollment, advancement, marketing/communications, and the president’s office and make a pact — to better understand how content productivity can change the institution’s destiny.
Ask each representative to make a list of five non-branded keyword phrases that would be of strategic value (non-branded meaning phrases that do not use any iteration of your name or derivatives of your name).
Begin an inventory of all existing/archived content, and it’s potential for digital productivity.
Just as the curtain eventually falls on Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon, some colleges have gone out of business over these past 17 years — unaware until the last day of their potential to change their fate.
With strained budgets, weakened endowments and the anticipated demographic cliff when college bound undergraduates will begin to shrink, colleges are eyeing international students from emerging economies. With over one million international students heading to the US in 2023, the race is on to attract the brightest and most financially well-off international students.
Our clients have started asking us to prepare a playbook for successfully recruiting and growing international student enrollment. In growing enrollment for international programs for the past 25 years for numerous colleges and universities, we have learned two things: First, students can’t buy your programs or buy-into your university unless they can find you; Second, you can’t bore students into enrolling in your university. To succeed, universities must invest in first impressions, and deploy a unique balance of the marketing air-game, boots-on-the-ground game and follow-up contact strategies.
Photo by Ed Macko
INVEST IN FIRST IMPRESSIONS
INSTITUTIONAL TOUCH POINTS
Your website and social media are the most important touch points for international prospects. You’ll be judged and evaluated by their quality. Romance prospective students and their families by making them informative and beautiful.
1. Spotlight enrolled international students, alumni and alumni chapters in the institutional website, viewbook, and social media. If international students can’t see others like themselves there, they simply won’t show up. They also rely heavily on word-of-mouth from friends. Craft brand messaging and content that is inclusive of people of different races and faiths.
2. Prominently feature institutional reputation points because international students are more brand conscious than US students.
3. Feature proof points of your commitment to international recruitment such as international students, alumni and faculty, the office of international students, interfaith chapels, host family programs, international ambassadors, etc.
4. Create customized sections for international admissions, financial aid and scholarships that address the unique needs of international students and their families. Provide the ability to contact international admissions through WhatsApp and Skype.
INTERNATIONAL TOUCH POINTS
Beyond your website and social media, you have to surround and engage the international prospects where they hang out.
1. Build language specific or country-specific microsites to target students from specific countries. Build microsites for large countries (e.g. China), and build language specific websites for country clusters (Latin America). Provide comprehensive information such as academics with featured programs, admissions, reputation hallmarks, financial aid (scholarships, international funds transfers, etc.), student experience, and full campus support for international students.
2. Apply SEO best practices to the country-specificmicrosites for country-customized Google, Bing, and Yahoo search engines – as well as country specific search engines such as Baidu for Chinese, Yandex for Russia, etc.
3. Create and manage accounts and pages on country-specific social media portals. Form an international student ambassador program, and hire your international students for work study to update information, monitor discussions and respond to prospective students’ questions.
UP THE MARKETING “AIR GAME”
1. HoldInternational Scholarship Contests. Contests ignite the competitive spirit amongst high performance students. Ambitious schools use them to attract fiercely competitive students.
2. UseMobile Multilingual Virtual Tours. Colleges can cost-effectively reach a wider, international audience. They are an effective and powerful way for recruiting international students who may not be able to visit the campus in person before making a college decision.
3. Use WhatsApp and Skype to Connect With Prospective Students. With close to 84% adoption rate of WhatsApp and over 4 billion people accustomed to Skype, they are a cost-effective alternative to more expensive international calls, video calls, and international travel.
4. International Inbound/SEO Marketing:Get Found on Google Page 1. There is no better way to reach international markets than a frequently updated blog. Mobilize SEO and your content marketing engine to dominate search engines. In sharp contrast to the US search engine results, the number of search results for academic keywords in other countries is very low – which shows the large opportunity for US colleges and universities in the international markets.
Start by creating an International Keyword Guide with keyword clusters, frequently asked questions, and natural language queries. Be sensitive to reputational keywords, international terminology and the keywords local prospects are typing. For instance, the phrase “information systems management” is a popular term overseas but less so in the US.
Develop smart foundational SEO and create ongoing high-fidelity, share-worthy, inclusive content to secure and sustain Google page one rankings. Create and showcase alumni stories, infographics, ROI stats, videos, quizzes/calculators, contests on your website and social media channels. Ensure that the information that appears on search engine results is persuasive and inviting.
Remember three things. First, research shows that organic Google rankings are more trusted, secure over 90% of click share, and generate close to two-thirds of inquiries. Organic inquiries tend to form long-term relationships with the universities and they tend to melt away at a reduced rate. Second, leads generated from Google organic rankings outperform paid advertising leads by three-folds. Third, the best prospects prefer to “discover” the college of their choice through “accidental finds” on Google page one and word-of-mouth on social media.
5. International Paid Advertising: Hunt like sharks. Don’t feed like whales.
Understand your prospects. As with any enrollment campaign, the first thing you need to focus on is a deep understanding of the prospects that you’re trying to attract. In this case: Where are they? What languages do they speak? What are they looking for in an institution of higher education? Which family members are involved in the college decision? All of your choices should be made with these considerations in mind.
Say it well.When building relationships with prospective students, you want to make sure you’re speaking their language. In this case: literally. Use professional language translators to ensure your keyword lists, ad copy and landing pages are properly translated. Use a human translator, not an online tool, to ensure that cultural subtleties are taken into account. Using an inappropriate term or an awkward translation is not going to win you hearts and minds.
Deploy advanced paid advertising techniques. Deploy new paid advertising methodologies based on what the right-fit students value, micro-segments, look-alikes, machine learning, big-data algorithms and affinity groups. Direct prospects to brand-infused, high-fidelity, story landing pages. Infuse brand, differentiators, ROI stats and facts into the creative. Go beyond the traditional admissions funnel and embrace inverted admissions funnel strategies and tactics.
Focus on the right geographies: Once you’ve identified the target student, you can determine just how targeted it’s possible to be from a geographic perspective. The targeting options within Google Ads vary from country to country, but in some cases you can target specific areas within a country or even a specific radius around a particular location. Narrow your focus appropriately.
6. Influence ranking and rating agencies. Although colleges have an ambivalent relationship with college rankings, prospective international students tend to gravitate towards the best ranked colleges they can afford to attend. Smart colleges routinely influence these ratings by creating committees that proactively influence ranking factors such as peer perception, student satisfaction, student placement rates, and salary data.
Each of these paid, earned and owned media strategies are good alone, but better together.
BOOTS ON THE “GROUND GAME”
1. Start an International Student Ambassador Program. Hire the ambassadors to create and oversee international social media properties for the college. Ask them to welcome new international students and their families. Connect them to local host families who welcome international students into their homes and families.
2. Hold international student webinar information sessions. The basic blocking and tackling of the ground game begins with webinars. Since like attracts like, bring appropriate international faculty, staff, students and alumni to these webinars. The meetings and interactions with faculty, students and alumni provide prospective international students with the information and experiences they need to determine if a college is the right-fit for their academic and personal goals. Prospects who attend these events tend to apply and enroll at a much higher rate than those who show up by other means.
3. Ask international faculty and program directors to visit countries of strategic interest. “To increase effectiveness, Involve alumni in the cities they are visiting” recommends Ed Barr, my first business client who now teaches communications at Carnegie Mellon. This not only increases cultural understanding but also builds relationships that become feeders.
4. Form international partnerships with schools in other countries. Nurture relationships with reliable college counselors, principals and program chairs. Wholesale student streams provide a solid foundation upon which a university can build retail one-on-one recruitment.
5. Create and run summer ESL and cultural immersion programs. In addition to generating new revenue, they will build your reputation for global engagement, and attract more international students and faculty.
6. Promote your college via state consortia like StudyNewYork, StudyTexas.edu, etc. These consortia, designed to foster economic development at the state level, routinely travel overseas to promote the member schools in educational fairs.
7. Create, cultivate and fortify corporate relationships for internships, coops and job placement. International students invest significant time and resources in their education abroad. By facilitating corporate placements, colleges help students realize a return on their investment by helping them gain practical experience, develop job-specific skills and secure quality job opportunities. Become known as a gateway to corporate America.
“FOLLOW-UP” CONTACT STRATEGIES
All your marketing investments will be wasted unless you build a solid follow-up system for inquiries and applications.
1. Follow-up with inquiries on a timely basis. Respond quickly. Keep it human. Recruit friends and colleagues to become secret shoppers for your university — and ask them about their experience.
2. Deploy a personalized contact strategy for every stage of the admissions funnel to maximize yield. Know what prospects and influencers need at every stage of the admissions funnel, and meet their needs. Pay as much attention to admission yield communications and follow-up processes as you do to lead-generation and lead-nurturing communications. Offset reduced contact with stealth applicants by stepping up the game at each touch point.
Ask faculty and program directors to personally follow up with high-value leads, not just accepted students. When faculty and program chairs follow up personally with quality prospects/applicants and probe them about their motivations, aspirations and ambitions, it becomes a force multiplier: it surprises them and builds brand affinity. Moreover, when the insights gathered from these conversations are fed back to marketing, the messaging becomes even more effective.
3. Deploy a unique contact strategy for applications to prevent melt. The application is the new lead. Treat admitted students with the same care as you treat leads. Deploy drip campaigns, accepted student days, early orientation, and welcome reception.
Remember two things. First, a broken inquiry and application follow-up process reflects poorly on the entire brand. Second, don’t let automation get in the way of personalized and timely follow-up because there are no short-cuts for old-fashioned, human-centered relationship building.
AVOID THESE 5 DEADLY SINS
A colony of international recruiting agents have emerged, willing to sell colleges the names of international prospects for a fee or revenue share. However, we at Elliance are of the belief that colleges need to take control of their own destiny not relegate their destiny to the international recruiting agents. Avoid them.
Don’t patronize or talk down to immigrants.
If you invite international students, create the support infrastructure for them.
International students are coming from more collective and less individualistic cultures. To not take into account the role of extended families in college decisions would be detrimental to your cause.
International students are extremely brand conscious. To not play up your brand credentials will hurt the college.
Immigrants have always been and will remain the innovation engine of America. For instance, 60% of high value tech companies were founded by first or second generation immigrants. In the most recent AI boom, 65% of top AI companies in the US were founded by immigrants. By attracting and educating international students, the college will not only enrich its culture, become more financially stable with full-pay students, but also increase the likelihood for creating long-term donors.
