In serving more than one hundred manufacturers in our thirty year history, we have helped our clients overcome the following seven business challenges they are 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 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). Young buyers are attracted to brands which live in accordance with their core values. 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 for 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 become known 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, JIT 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.
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 inclusion of video marketing, high-fidelity microsites, thought leadership content, search engine optimization and social media marketing in recently emerged channels like TikTok and Snapchat.
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 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 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 marketers 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.
In anticipation of the looming 2025 demographic cliff when college bound undergraduate students will begin to shrink, colleges and universities have started investing in launching and growing graduate programs to diversify their revenue.
Our clients have started asking us to prepare a playbook for successfully recruiting and growing graduate student enrollment. In growing enrollment for graduate programs for the past 25 years for over 50 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 achieve success with recruiting graduate students, universities must start with the right portfolio of programs, assess the environment, and deploy a balance of the marketing air-game, boots-on-the-ground game and follow-up contact strategies.
WIN BEFORE YOU WIN
Start by creating distinctive, in-demand graduate programs in areas where your college can claim indisputable competitive advantage. Fight the temptation to start new me-too programs. No one has realized prosperity with commodity offerings. Not only are distinctive programs easier to rank on Google page one, students are willing to travel across the country and across the world to enroll in them.
ASSESS THE SITUATION
Appraise the university’s situation by immersing yourself in the college, the market and competitive data:
Trend admissions funnel data
Perform SWOT
Benchmark competitors
Define right-fit students
Assess potential demand
Know your brand
Understand what the market values (brand, ROI, alumni proofs, faculty thought leadership, etc.)
MARKETING “AIR GAME”
1. Website: The Ultimate Conversion Machine. The website is the #1 lead and application generation tool for graduate programs.
Inform your website strategy with insights from market research. Let website strategy guide the development of information architecture, content, design and development.
Make it search-engine-friendly. Inform it with a keyword guide. Bake best practices in search engine optimization (SEO) into all aspects of it.
Make it beautiful. Romance prospects. Merchandise hope.
If your design template and CMS constraints don’t let you elevate the website user experience, be prepared to create a new microsite for all or mission-critical graduate programs.
Carefully track prospect journey and conversion performance.
2. Paid Advertising: Hunt like sharks. Don’t feed like whales. Deploy new paid advertising methodologies based on what the right-fit students value, micro-segments, look-alikes, A/B testing, machine learning, big-data algorithms and affinity groups. Direct prospects to brand-infused, high-fidelity, story landing pages. Infuse brand, ROI, differentiators, ROI stats and facts into the creative. Go beyond the traditional admissions funnel and embrace inverted admissions funnels strategies and tactics. Carefully track prospect journey and campaign performance.
3. Inbound/SEO Marketing:Get Found on Google Page 1. Mobilize SEO and your content marketing engine to dominate search engines. Start by creating a Keyword Guide with keyword clusters, frequently asked questions, and natural language queries. 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. Monitor your search engine rankings and traffic to identify which pieces of content are performing well and adjust your emphasis accordingly.
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.
4. Conduct email marketing campaigns: Email marketing is most effective with house lists, undergraduate alumni lists, and as joint marketing campaign with related niche organizations. Carefully track prospect journey and campaign performance.
5. Influence ranking and rating agencies. Although colleges have an ambivalent relationship with college rankings, prospective 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 affect 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. Webinars and Campus Visits. The basic blocking and tackling of the ground game begins with webinars and campus visits. The meetings and interactions with faculty, students and alumni provide prospective 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.
2. Attend industry conferences and events. Attend conferences and events where prospective students and influencers congregate. Since like attracts like, attend inclusion-focused conferences and bring appropriate diverse faculty, staff and alumni to them.
3. Use your grad certificates and CE programs graduates as feeders. They perpetuate relationships and create future referral streams for graduate programs.
4. Send email and text reminders to incomplete applications. Sometimes it just takes a reminder to move prospects over the fence.
5. Create partnerships with undergraduate program feeders – regionally, nationally and globally. Nurture relationships with reliable undergraduate program chair allies in your own university and other colleges. Wholesale student streams provide a solid foundation upon which a university can build retail one-on-one recruitment.
6. Recruit international students. 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. Attract students from overseas with international scholarship contests, international SEO and paid advertising, country-specific social media, international websites, international information sessions, WhatsApp, prominently featuring your international faculty and more.
7. Care and feeding of partnerships with regional and national employers. They generate a steady stream of referrals for your programs. Conduct joint marketing events, give joint presentations and publish co-branded stories.
Furthermore, by facilitating corporate projects, capstones and speakers, universities help students realize a return on their investment by helping them gain practical experience, develop job-specific skills, secure quality job opportunities and expand their networks. Become known as a gateway to corporate America, nonprofits and government agencies.
“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 programs — 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.
4. Leverage an appropriate CRM system. Many good systems exist in the market: Slate, Salesforce, Element451, HubSpot, Ellucian Recruit, and Full Fabric Foundation. Use the one that your organization can afford and support.
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.
Successfully recruiting graduate students creates a win-win-win situation for universities, individuals and society: universities grow revenue from diverse sources and keep their faculty engaged and creating new knowledge; individuals gain skills and knowledge to deepen their expertise and earn more; they go on to tackle societal challenges and improve quality of life through innovation.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website and creating fresh content to improve your website rankings on Google, Bing and other search engines.
Search engine algorithms today use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to understand and interpret user queries and serve up search results. Google has introduced some famous algorithm updates like RankBrain, Bert and MUM which use AI principles to improve search functionality. With the introduction of ChatGPT, AI has gone mainstream and now everyone is talking about it. However, in the world of Search algorithms & SEO, AI has been playing a part for a much longer time.
Here are some of the ways these AI principles are being used to serve up results that users are looking for:
1. Natural language processing (NLP)
AI-powered NLP enables search engines to understand the context, intent, and semantics of search queries and website content. The Google Hummingbird update that launched in August 2013 represented a fundamental change in how Google understood and processed search queries. It aimed to provide users with more relevant results by focusing on semantic understanding, context, and user intent using natural language processing technology. Additionally, the update paved the way for future advancements in search, including voice search, and the inclusion of structured data for rich snippets.
From an SEO standpoint, a natural response to this update was to change strategy to focus on multiple keyword variations rather than one focus keyword. As search algorithms started to recognize and understand semantics and meanings of words, they were able to serve up better results for a variety of phrases. For example, they serve up similar results for “top SEO agencies” and “best SEO agencies”.
2. Machine learning:
In 2016, Google announced that it would become a machine learning first company. Google’s RankBrain is the machine learning algorithm which helps sort search results by identifying patterns in queries, and also helping the search engine identify possible new ranking signals. Based on user history, RankBrain will serve up different results until it sees better user interaction and engagement. Some of the things that we encounter when we search are based on RankBrain. This includes personalization of search results, local results, and auto complete, all of which use RankBrain and machine learning to give you the best experience possible when searching on Google.
Localization of search results happened as part of RankBrain which resulted local results being served up. For example, searching for the word “restaurants” results in a list of restaurants around Pittsburgh, where Google automatically detects my location and serves those results up.
For the same keyword, autocomplete provides many more options for searching based on my search results history:
To gain success with local SEO, marketers began to incorporate local terms in their strategy.
3. Generative AI:
With new breakthroughs happening in AI, Google is now taking this to the next level and incorporating Generative AI in search. Again focusing on the user, their focus is on providing more context around a search so that the user has to do less and the algorithm can serve up a more comprehensive result. Currently in its experimental stages, this promises to be the new frontier in the world of search and AI.
Being aware of how AI is impacting SEO is important to understand and adapt your SEO strategies accordingly. This will help to stay ahead of the curve so you can continue to have success and build top rankings on search engines.
About Elliance
Elliance, a Pittsburgh-based SEO marketing agency, has helped more than 100 colleges and universities grow reputation and demand with page 1 Google rankings, with website optimizations, content generation and social media updates.
Welcome to your new adventure. You may have been invited into this crucial governance role as a steadying force, a change agent or a contributor of your expertise. No matter your role, get ready to play it by focusing on the 3 W’s of stewardship: Wisdom, Wealth and Work.
Begin your journey by immersing yourself in the college. Review its mission, history, strategic plan, master plan, status of accreditations, SWOT analysis, competitive benchmarks, key operating plans, financial statements, budget, university magazines and organizational culture. Meet all the cabinet members and know their key priorities. Meet all other trustees and know the committees they serve.
The 3 W’s of stewardship – wisdom, wealth and work – underpin the twelve things you’ll need to know to steer the college to health and prosperity:
1. Know Revenue Sources and Financials: What is our revenue breakdown? Are we a tuition-dependent college? Are we research funded? What is the extent of our corporate and foundation funding? What percentage of our revenue is supported by our athletics?
What is the health of our financials? How much debt are we carrying? What are our largest categories of expenses? How fast are they growing?
2. Know Enrollment Numbers: What stories do our enrollment data and trends tell? Which population is the bedrock of our student body: undergraduate, graduate, adult, online, international, or doctorate? What headwinds and tailwinds are we experiencing in enrollment?
3. Know Student Success Metrics: What is our data on crucial student success and outcomes measures? “A happy student who completes the program is often the best recruiter for a school” adds Scott Gallagher, former Vice President at William Woods University.
“What is our first-year persistence rate and is it increasing or declining – for both regular and neediest students?” asks Michael Larkin of Holy Cross College of Notre Dame who has served in leadership positions at numerous reputable Catholic institutions.
What investments are we making to achieve these outcomes?
4. Know External Relationships: What is the state of our corporate, governmental, accreditation and community relations? What is the state of our alumni relations across generations of alumni?
5. Know College Stature: Are we a college of consequence? If so, how? Do we have influential peer and corporate advisory boards? Who sits on our advisory boards? What kinds of corporations, non-profits and civic organizations are knocking down our doors to recruit our graduates? What’s the measure of our thought leadership? Do we dominate Google page one in areas of our competitive strength?
6. Know Academic Excellence: What are our signature academic programs? What other programs could join the ranks of our signature programs in the near future? Which academic programs are thriving and which are struggling? Do we dominate Google page one for our signature programs?
How many areas of expertise and fields are we top 5 in?
7. Know The College Brand and Marketing: Do I know our institutional brand and sub-brands? What are their promises, values, positions, brand lines, and ideals?
What percentage of revenue is the college investing in marketing? How does that compare with cross-app peers? Most non-profit colleges and universities are investing between 2% and 5% of their total revenue on marketing, when they ought to be investing at least 10%. In comparison, most for-profit colleges are investing almost 20% of their total revenue on marketing.
8. Know Endowment and Your Role in Fundraising: What is the size of the college war chest that is helping attract and retain the most talented students and faculty, improve student experience and modernize our facilities?
What is our alumni giving rate, trended over the last decade? Have we cultivated a culture of giving amongst our alumni? Are our capital campaigns goals primarily realized by a few major donors or a combination of major, minor and a broader community of alumni donors?
A favorite question of Jim Langley of Langley Innovations is: What is our rate of donor attrition and how does it compare to similar institutions?
“In the next capital campaign, am I ready to play the role of a strategist, visionary, a donor and an ambassador who brings others to the donor fold?” adds Kathy Groves who is a senior leader at William Woods University.
9. Know Technology Infrastructure: Do I know our institutional technology strategy? What percentage of our budget is the college investing in technology infrastructure? In our digital age, any college investing less than 10% of its budget on technology infrastructure is in danger of getting left behind.
10. Know Athletics: Do I know our institutional athletics strategy? Are we a NAIA, Division I, II or III athletics institution? What percentage of our undergraduates are athletes? How do the athletes perform academically? What impact are athletes having on the school spirit and a culture of achievement amongst the rest of the students?
11. Know Societal Trends: What key higher education, demographic, societal trends and micro-trends are affecting us? What opportunities are they creating? Remember the future is already here and it’s sitting on the periphery – and the periphery of today is the red hot center of tomorrow.
12. Know The Type of Board and Your Role: Am I joining an operating board, a philanthropic board, an activist board, a diverse board, or a collaborative board? What is the highest good I can bring to the institution? What expertise will I bring to the board and its committees?
Becoming a college trustee might be the pinnacle of your career. It will require you to be selflessly devoted to the wellbeing and success of the institution. You’ll have to master the sacred arts of deep listening and asking a few good questions. You will be expected to advocate for the college, share your wisdom by telling stories, recruit donors, build new bridges and a whole lot more.
If these steps are outlined in the onboarding process offered by the college, you are in good hands.
By Abu Noaman. Abu is the CEO of Elliance, a human-centered higher education strategy, branding and marketing agency that has been helping colleges and universities grow enrollment, endowment and reputation for the past 30 years. His upbringing in the Korakorums (with the highest concentration of 25K+ peaks in the world) instilled a worldview for doing few extraordinary things well rather than lots of mediocre things. He loves search engine algorithms as much as Jung, problem solving as much as art, and the visible as much as the invisible.
You can connect with Abu on LinkedIn or contact him here.
The goal of marketing is to win the hearts, minds and trust of people. If you win them over, you might win their business too. It has taken a lifetime of experiences to learn these timeless laws of marketing. Being the youngest of 11 kids, losing my Dad at 6, being raised primarily by women and becoming a bridge builder shaped my worldview towards human-centered marketing. I hope you find them beneficial.
1. The Law of Humanity
Great brands always remember that prospects, customers, users, ambassadors and loyalists are real people, with real needs, wants, motivations and ambitions. They never forget that they are in the business of making the lives of their customers easier and helping them realize their ambitions.
Be empathetic. Treat customers like human beings. Humanize your brand.
2.The Law of Findability
If they can’t find you, they can’t buy you. If a prospect can’t find you on Google page 1, your product or service won’t be included in their consideration set. This applies to college offerings, company products and non-profit services alike.
Unapologetically and systematically secure Google page one rankings.
3.The Law of Ideals
There is a deep yearning in people to belong to a tribe of like-minded people. Along with the wish to “buy” a product/service, they have a subliminal desire to “buy into” the ideals that a brand embodies and personifies.
Know and declare your ideals and live by them. Intentionally attach an idea/ideal to your product or service. Send signals that your profit-motive is powered by a deeper purpose. Think like Patagonia which stands for “environmental conservation” or Saint Johns college which stands for learning from the “great books”.
4. The Law of Familiarity
In the world of marketing, familiarity and ubiquity convey trust and success.
Surround and engage prospects in their favorite hangouts and at every turn.
5. The Law of Hope
Great brands are merchants of hope. They solve customers’ problems.
Merchandise hope. Merchandise solutions to customers’ challenges and problems.
6. The Law of Romance
You can’t bore people into buying from you.
Romance people. Create high-fidelity experiences. It shows you care for people and you respect them. It shows your commitment to help them in their hero’s journey. It honors the risk they are taking in choosing you and believing in you.
7. The Law of Distinctiveness
In marketing, the beginning of greatness is to be different, and the beginning of failure is to be the same.
Differentiate from your competitors. Create memorable and distinctive experiences.
8. The Law of Heroes
The customer, not the company, is the real hero of a brand’s story. You are merely enabling your heroes to realize their destinies. Telling the stories of your customer heroes will attract other like-minded prospects. This will create a community of happy customers, brand ambassadors, influencers, referral streams and reliable feeders for new customers. This will also effectively transform your decision funnel into an inverted funnel where like attract likes.
Celebrate customer heroes. Tell smart, authentic, honest, surprising, compelling and delightful customer stories. Let them attract new like-minded customers.
9. The Law of Proofs
Buyers are both intelligent and skeptical. Persuade them by providing proofs in the form of stories, stats and third-party validations.
Go long on proofs and short on claims
10. The Law of Destiny
You become the story you choose to tell. It’s how organizations make meaning from the arc of their history, and operate with a sense of destiny to create purpose that propels them into the future. This story is what customers buy into. A brand rarely exceeds the size of its ambition and the story it chooses to tell about itself.
Tell a better brand story.
11. The Law of Branding
In the sea of sameness, brands win. Brands are trusted more by people, command a premium and are valued higher by the financial markets.
Know your brand’s core promise, values, ideals, distinctions and what you stand for. Speak with one brand voice to all audiences, and strike different notes for each customer segment.
12. The Law of Strategic Thinking
You don’t deploy strategy for strategy’s sake. You play to win.
Lean on timeless principles of strategy. Focus. Lead with strengths. Expand bright spots. Open new channels. Play where others aren’t playing. Zig when others are zagging. Up the game. Deploy “Both And” thinking. Smarter wins.
13. The Law of Investment
Money makes money. Without proper investments, it’s tough to launch new products and new brands on a human scale.
Invest in marketing. Invest in marketing only in those channels where your customers and influencers are hanging out.
14. The Law of Measurement
You can only manage what you can measure.
Measure what matters. Create a shared marketing dashboard of key performance indicators including the ultimate metric i.e. the net promoter score.
The human-centered laws not only put the focus on the most important aspect of marketing, but they also result in enduring relationships, loyalty and long-term profitability.
Paid Advertising plays a crucial role in generating high-quality leads for master’s degree programs. With its ability to reach audiences with specific educational and professional backgrounds and offer precise tracking and optimization, paid advertising campaigns provide colleges and universities with a powerful tool to attract right-fit students. By leveraging the advantages inherent in paid media and incorporating techniques such as retargeting and A/B testing, institutions can optimize campaign performance and engage with graduate prospects throughout their decision-making journey, ultimately driving a steady stream of high-value prospects and applicants.
Targeted Audience Reach
A primary advantage of paid media is the ability to effectively reach specific high-affinity audiences online. Through platforms like Google Ads, LinkedIn, and display networks, schools can manage their audience targeting based on demographics, interests, and associations. By combining specific characteristics such as location, job title, interests, industry, inferred age, education, work experience, behavior, and affinities, campaigns can home in on individuals who are most likely to pursue a specific graduate degree path.
Conversion Tracking and Funnel Optimization
Paid media channels offer robust conversion tracking capabilities, allowing institutions to accurately measure the effectiveness of their lead generation efforts. By integrating conversion tracking pixels and tags, marketers can monitor the entire student journey, from first click to final conversion, whether it’s a form submission, application, or enrollment.
By analyzing conversion data throughout the process, institutions gain valuable insights into the performance of different audience selects, campaigns, ads, and landing pages. They can identify bottlenecks in the conversion funnel, such as high drop-off rates in specific geographies or high enrollment rates by industry and take proactive measures to optimize these areas. Through continuously refining the conversion funnel, schools can maximize their lead generation efforts, improve conversion rates, and optimize financial return. Often, analysis of attributes associated with applicants or enrollments can uncover insights that can be turned into a competitive edge.
Such was the case with an institute in the northeast that noticed an uptick of medical doctors becoming leads for their executive MBA program. This early insight found the beginning of a trend in MD’s shifting direction in their careers to focus on the business side of medicine. Within days, new campaigns were launched with this target in mind. Creative solutions including targeting by employer, affinity groups – even time of day and day of week – reached medical doctors in the right digital channels and at the right times with tailored messaging. Within a month, success metrics were replicated, and this segment became an important, evergreen addition to each class cohort.
Elevate Visibility, Awareness, and Competitive Positioning
Along with traditional lead generation, paid advertising offers a valuable solution to boost visibility and brand awareness to key influencers and audiences besides prospective students. Display advertising and sponsored content ads allow universities to highlight their programs, differentiators, and ethos to build value and enhance their reputation. Sophisticated institutions use paid media to reach potential partners, employers, recruiters, CHROs and CTOs, and talent and hiring managers to support opportunities for graduate and organizational networking, placements, and partnerships.
This increased exposure helps build credibility and familiarity, positioning the institution as a preferred choice in the minds of the broader community. As this messaging is reinforced over time, recognition grows, and the likelihood of generating deeper engagement and elevating broader perceptions also increases.
A/B Testing to Validate Performance Levers
Paid campaigns also enable easy execution of beneficial A/B testing to refine messaging, sort out under- and over-performing segments, and optimize performance over time. By experimenting with different ad formats, landing page elements, and calls-to-action, universities can gather valuable data on what resonates best with each target audience. By iterating and fine-tuning their campaigns based on these insights, institutions can keep their messaging fresh and relevant, improving conversion rates and driving quality leads. Additionally, insights gained can often be successfully applied to other marketing initiatives including web sites, web pages, emails, events, collateral, and non-digital media, saving time and money.
Retargeting and Nurturing Prospects
Paid campaign strategies offer the opportunity to engage with prospects throughout their decision-making journey. Through techniques like retargeting, universities can reach out to individuals who have shown initial interest in their programs but have not yet taken the desired action. By serving tailored ads to these prospects across multiple digital channels, programs can remain top-of-mind and qualified individuals can be gently guided towards the application stage. Furthermore, personalized email and SMS nurturing campaigns can be implemented to provide valuable content such as invitations to graduate prospect events, critical deadline reminders, strategies to secure employer funding, and to share the ethos of the institution. This process is effective in building trust and increasing the likelihood of converting prospects into applications and enrolled students.
While most universities and educational institutions include paid advertising in their strategic marketing mix, many underutilize these channels. Missed opportunities, driven by an oversimplified focus on converting clicks to leads, can be costly and result in a college or university being less competitive in the long run. Rest assured, your most assertive competitors are using some or all options available, so it’s critical to have your graduate programs front and center and competing in the digital landscape.
Because marketing budgets are under constant scrutiny, it’s crucial for stakeholders to understand the vital role of paid media in generating an effective pipeline for graduate degree leads, influencing key audiences, and moving your school and its advanced degree programs from a “possibility” to a “first choice” educational option.
If you are seeking a paid marketing agency for your higher education institution, view our work with many higher ed clients and consider partnering with us.
About Elliance
Elliance, a Pittsburgh-based enrollment marketing agency, has helped grow enrollment, endowment, and reputation for more than 100 colleges and universities including 20 professional schools, 12 faith-based universities, and 20 liberal arts colleges.
As one of the top higher education branding agencies, here is what have learned. Brands are not created. They already exist, and it’s just a matter of us discovering, defining and articulating them. As brand people, we execute a well-planned discovery that liberates your institutional voice. We create a bright new vocabulary that establishes an emotional connection with prospects and other stakeholders. For us, branding is a way to express, with clarity, verve and imagination why the institution matters.
But getting there requires us to bring the right mindsets, review the right information and interview the right people. Here is our recipe:
7 mindsets we bring to brand discovery
Two branding agencies tasked to develop a college brand will arrive at different brands. The difference between a successful, enduring brand and one that’s not is the mindsets that agencies bring to the process. Here are ours:
1. Beginner’s Mindset
Bringing the “beginner’s mind” is the essential skill for approaching a higher education brand exercise. We are quite comfortable in not knowing.
2. Investigative Mind
Applying a reporting and investigative mindset is the single most valuable skill and habit that we bring to brand discoveries. It’s our job to listen – without preconceptions – to what’s said and as much to what’s not being said. We gently challenge conventional wisdom. We ask better questions. We seek proof of our claims. We identify and collect important details — how biology students pin notes to a favorite professor’s door, or how a philosophy major became a nurse with a moral conscience at a major healthcare institution, or how an accounting major with a music minor created uncharted new futures in opera management.
3. Analysis and Synthesis Mindset
We don’t confuse analysis with synthesis and forward action. While data and analysis brings us to the edge of the chasm, its imagination and synthesis that carries us across.
4. Origin Story Mindset
Brand origin stories matter. The ancestors are gone, but their spirits and mythologies still live in the four walls of the institution. We understand our clients better when we understand their origin stories and the forces that gave birth to their institutions.
5. Curriculum Design Mindset
Many schools have invested in overhauling their curriculum and refining their core curriculum. Armed with a better understanding of the core, we can connect the dots more clearly between the student’s investment and eventual outcomes.
6. Brand as a Puzzle Mindset
A brand is akin to a picture puzzle. It is the sum of all voices, experiences and trends – be they virtual, experiential or architectural. For us, the art of branding is to weave all these together into an integrative, aspirational whole.
7. Urgent Mindset
As UCLA’s legendary Coach John Wooden famously said, “Be quick, don’t hurry.” We move with a sense of thoughtful, yet reflective urgency.
Understand macro and micro-trends
The prospect and buyer behavior is shaped by a broader set of societal forces and trends including:
1. Social and cultural trends
Such as women leading men in education, the browning of America, the rise of first generation college students.
2. Technological trends
Such as the rise of artificial intelligence.
3. Environmental trends
Such as climate change and the existential crisis students and their families are feeling.
4. Economic trends
Such as the skyrocketing cost of education, recession, inflation, the unemployment rate, income inequality and globalization.
5. Health and wellness trends
Such as changes in attitudes, practices and innovations in areas of the health and wellness sector, including alternative medicine, personalized medicine, mental health and fitness.
6. Urbanization and infrastructure trends
Such as in-sourcing, infrastructure investments, alternate means of transportation, housing and more.
These trends must be taken into consideration when shaping college brands.
Listening to brand ambassadors
Brand insights and cues often arrive as faint signals from unlikely sources. Many brand ambassadors fly under the radar, and thrive in the nooks and crannies of academics, service learning, and student affairs. As brand people, it’s our job to find and mine their stories. The following is the list of brand ambassadors and mechanisms:
1. Individual Students
We like to holdcandid and crucial conversations that allow nuances to surface. How are students blending course work, majors and minors, for a changing world? What polarities are they holding? Are they learning how to secure their first job or life skills that will serve them for a lifetime? Are they naturally embodying the college’s origin story? How has their relationship with the professors changed over time? We interview a sufficient number of diverse students to get a cross-sectional view of the brand.
2. Student Pairs
Pairing up freshman and seniors or rising sophomores and seniors is a great way to tease insights. What expectations did the freshman bring about college-level teaching and learning? Where and how did the hard lessons and best surprises come? Grounding this format with details related to freshman seminar and senior capstone courses might yield insights for prospects (and parents) about the progression students make from knowledge seekers to critical thinkers in four years.
3. Individual Faculty
Once again, we like to holdcandid and crucial conversations with faculty that allow nuances to surface. Who thrives? What’s their definition of right-fit? What polarities are they holding? We interview a sufficient number of them to get a cross-sectional view of the brand.
4. Individual Alumni
How are alumni revisiting the essential value of their degree as they mature into fully reflective professionals? Did they learn just enough to graduate in four years or start working in their first job, or is their education serving them across multiple careers and a lifetime?
5. Hallway Conversations
We routinely listen to hallway conversations for hidden gems.
6. Cabinet and Board Members
They can provide hints of the brand essence, but often their institutional voice is less aligned with the brand voice.
7. Tour Guides and Admissions Counselors
They are usually too wrapped up in talking points. Great ones translate stories of student-faculty engagement to the tour setting.
8. Quantitative Research
While quantitative data adds some value when defining a brand position and giving it voice, it’s the qualitative findings — real-time observation and institutional memory — that light the way.
9. Essential Analytics
In the early stages of a higher education brand discovery, we sift through reams of institutional data (enrollment, giving reputation, alumni appeals, faculty vitae and college publications) and external data (NSSE, IPEDS, college reviews). From this data, we extract a few essential insights that guide brand development.
10. Focus Groups
Focus groups are great for testing brand concepts but the biggest shortcomings of focus groups is thatalphas tend to dominate the room, quiet ones tend to hold back and nuances are lost. Cognitive biases such as the cheerleader effect kick in i.e. the tendency for people to appear more appealing – happier, self-directed, ambitious, committed – in a group than in isolation.
Frankly, it’s better to have five quality conversations than to have fifty interchangeable interviews. As always, one great insight is better than a thousand good ideas.
Built right, great brands are real, authentic, singular, differentiable, resonant, community-minded and they transcend all aspects of the college. Ultimately, they merchandise hope, win hearts and minds of college stakeholders.
