Aha! :: Elliance Blog

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No Excuses SEO: A Search Marketer’s Playbook

You’re getting sloppy, SEO people! Let’s talk fundamentals. I’m sick and tired of hearing your excuses, about how the game has changed, and you’re caught standing there flat-footed like a kid who just hit his first tee ball. Shape up! I’m busting out the playbook. The following are inexcusable excuses: 1. “Search has changed dramatically […]

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Recruiting International Students: Colleges Go Direct

The hunt for revenues continues for colleges. With strained budgets and weakened endowments, colleges are in perpetual hunt for sources of alternative revenues. For the last two decades, it was all about expanding their product lines by offering graduate programs, certificates, degree completion, corporate training, and online programs. Now, with drums of riches beating in […]

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Writing Effective Higher Education Paid Marketing Ads, Part 2

Last month, I shared some important factors to consider when writing PPC (pay-per-click) ads Part 1. Today, I want to share some thoughts about writing effective PPC ads that are industry specific — particularly for higher education paid marketing campaigns — and ensuring that they fit into your competitive mix. 1. Use strong call to […]

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What does a day at the beach have to do with marketing higher education?

I just returned from the beach. I have to admit, it’s not a place I always want to go, but it’s always a place I never want to leave. For me, the beach is nature’s ultimate creative expression. It has only three elements – land, sea and sky – yet it delivers an infinite number of […]

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Christian College Marketing

Marketing of Christian colleges is a nuanced art. It requires a sensitive touch and storytelling that answers two big questions. The first one is a burning question that haunts all of us at some deeper level: how do we reconcile Scriptures/faith with modernity? The second question is an institutional one: how can we define our […]

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RIP Social Networking, Long Live Social Networking

A couple of weeks ago, a little-known company called App.net publicly launched a grand experiment. Founder and CEO Dalton Caldwell announced a crowd-funding campaign to raise $500,000 in 30 days, for a new social networking platform that aims to compete with the likes of Twitter – except without the help of advertising. “We will never […]

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Navigating the Communications Landscape

Whether you’re an association, a non-profit organization, a university, a bank, or just an occasional blogger with delusions of grandeur, the communications landscape today is fascinating, challenging, fast-paced and, above all, complicated. The standalone monthly magazine is becoming a thing of the past. Email newsletters have long since ceased to be the answer to our […]

9 College Turnaround Strategies
College Turnaround Strategies

In the era of declining college applications, how does a college gain an outsized share of a shrinking market? Here are 10 strategies that visionary college presidents and their teams are continually deploying to fortify and turnaround their institutions: 1. Invest in Branding. Babson has positioned itself as THE college for entrepreneurship, American University as […]

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Higher education marketing trends for 2012-2013

Because I present and visit so many conferences in higher education, many people ask me what’s hot right now in higher education marketing world. Here are a few trends that I am seeing these days: 1. Responsive website design is picking up steam, after the launch of Notre Dame and UC San Diego responsive websites. […]

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Is Brand Voice really that important?

Last week, I was floored. A prospect looked at our portfolio and clustered our work into two groups: like and not like as much. Asked me if I could explain why. I looked at the two groups and quickly realized that the the ones he liked were all written by our storytellers/copywriters from scratch and […]