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Unfortunately for higher education marketers, there is only so much program-specific information a University can espouse before its branding message becomes just another noisy, unrecognizable foghorn on the mist-cloaked, higher-ed seas. To differentiate your school’s programs, brand and message, consider marketing sideways. “Use a peripheral but more human and interesting component of your brand to tell a story that compels your customers and prospects more so than any product feature or benefit,” writes Marketing Keynote Speaker and Best-Selling Author Jay Baer. Baer’s article cites The King of Sideways” – Subway’s Jared Fogle. Subway’s campaign positioned Jared’s weight-loss story in front of customers who would hopefully relate and identify with Jared. The story appears to have worked. Jared is in his fifteenth year as a Subway spokesman with a net worth of $15 million. Sideways marketing is nothing new and certainly doesn’t begin or end with Jared. This marketing technique has been used by an uncountable number of brands – think … Continue reading
Posted in: content marketing, higher education content marketing agency, higher education inbound marketing agency, Inbound Marketing
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An Inbound Marketing Plan is similar to a marketing plan but exclusively focused on achieving business goals by creating and igniting relevant, trust-building and shareable content. It answers fundamental questions like “who, what, why, where, when” for the inbound initiatives such as blog posts, social media posts, online press releases, articles, infographics, polls, white papers, thought-leadership events, etc. 1. Goals What do you want more of? What goals are you trying to achieve? How does your plan support your business strategy? 2. Keyword Guide Keyword Guide is the cornerstone of an inbound marketing plan. Before you start creating content, we recommend researching and formalizing a Keyword Guide to ensure that you reap the search benefits from your work. The Keyword Guide is comprised of keywords that rightfully belong to your brand and that you need to claim. These keywords are classified into categories such as reputation, geographic, products/services, decisioning, etc. and must be squeezed into (or baked into) every piece … Continue reading
Posted in: Inbound Marketing
Pendulum is swinging away from paid marketing towards inbound marketing. Elliance, a firm believer in the power of AND-thinking and not EITHER-OR-thinking, recommends that marketers embrace both. In fact, we see the relationship between inbound marketing and paid marketing as follows: i.e. they are good alone, but better together. While paid marketing gives a short-term boost, inbound marketing creates an enduring foundation. In reality, with inbound marketing as part of the mix, marketers can reduce their paid marketing spend over time.
Posted in: Inbound Marketing, PPC strategy
Here is how you might want to organize your team to achieve success with your inbound marketing campaign: 1. Strategist: A domain expert who carries the torch of the client perspective. 2. SEO Marketer: Ensuring that all fresh content is informed by a Keyword Guide as part of larger keyword strategy. 3. Editor in Chief: The mastermind behind conceptualizing content ideas, delegating them to the content team and ensuring the created content is remarkable and share-worthy. 4. Content Creators: A team of copywriters, interactive designers, photographers, and videographers responsible for creating compelling content. 5. Community Manager: Responsible for igniting the content on blogosphere, social platforms and related destinations. 6. Paid Marketer: Inviting target audiences to consume content via supplementary paid media. 7. Data Scientist: Guides tuning and adaptation of campaigns based on data captured in various analytic tools. Also measures the success of your inbound marketing campaign. 8. Inbound Project Manager: Masterful orchestrator of all inbound activities being executed by … Continue reading
Posted in: Inbound Marketing
Over the past few months, I’ve heard from a growing number of prospective clients interested in inbound marketing in higher education. They may not call it inbound marketing — maybe they’re asking for help with blog posts or website content — but inbound marketing is what it comes down to. And to me, inbound marketing comes down to one thing: building trust. Traditional marketing sends a message. It’s a one way enterprise: an advertisement, a billboard, or a brochure. Inbound marketing builds a relationship. Social posts, for example, do more than just deliver a message. They invite a response. They begin a conversation. A conversation leads to a relationship. And a relationship (online, just like in real life) must be built on trust. In terms of higher education, prospective students are looking to form an impression of an institution. Is this a college where he or she might feel at home? Is this a student body where he or she … Continue reading
Traditional outbound marketing relies heavily on interrupting prospective customers with advertising, direct mail, etc. Inbound marketing takes a much different approach: earning attention and trust by providing valuable content and embracing personal interaction. Inbound marketers help clients “get found” via search engines, word-of-mouth and the sharing of content. These tactics also tend to engage prospects who already have an interest or inclination toward a particular offering, resulting in a pool of high quality leads who are more likely to convert. 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 … Continue reading