Aha! :: Elliance Blog

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 […]

Here are Q2 charts from Google that shed light on what’s happening with higher education related searches:

Mr. Gilka, Director of Photography at National Geographic, recently passed away. He was adored, feared and respected – all at the same time. Two quotes from his Remembrance in the latest issue of National Geographic Magazine stood out. “He pinpointed talent like a heat-seeking missile, assembling a team that would bring the excitement, immediacy and […]

When you search on Google, your results include data that is part of their Knowledge Graph – Google’s name for the way information is displayed beyond the normal search results. As part of the knowledge graph, Google lets you link your website search listings to your Google+ account using microdata. I used www.elliance.com as a […]

I’ve been speaking to lots of prospective clients these days about branding in higher education. I like these early conversations. Listening to people talk about their individual challenges and opportunities is one of my favorite parts of the job. Working in higher education isn’t easy, but in my experience, the people who make a commitment […]

Tonight, the Pittsburgh Pirates host their first playoff game in more than two decades, just a few blocks away from Elliance headquarters. What might anyone involved in higher education branding take away from the most surprising team in Major League Baseball? We offer 5 brand “signs” worth stealing from the Pittsburgh Pirates: 1. Be real… […]

Experienced non profit fundraisers will tell you there are many steps in planning a successful philanthropy campaign. For a large comprehensive or capital campaign, one of the more critical phases is the development of the case statement. The case statement plays a key role in articulating the rationale for fundraising and energizing gift officers and […]

This is part 1 of my 3 part blog post about the best solution to your .edu website. Please stay tuned for the following posts. Now that nearly a quarter of web traffic is coming from mobile devices*, we’ve come to a crossroads over the best solution to a large webpage such as an .edu […]

I love ROI. You can probably tell from my Twitter handle: @LuvROI. Yet, we marketers don’t often push our metrics far enough to effectively measure ROI. I’m not talking about impressions, frequency, clicks and other traditional campaign measurements. Not at all. Rather, we should view marketing outcomes through the same revenue-focused lens used by senior […]

Email is one of the most widely used digital marketing tools in the communications landscape, and every email marketing platforms has built-in tracking to report on metrics such as email delivery, bounce, open, click-thru and un-subscribe rates etc. However, this integrated email tracking systems can’t provide insight on activities and behaviors of email referrers on […]