Instagram
[fts_instagram instagram_id=256737344 super_gallery=yes image_size=100px icon_size=50px space_between_photos=1px hide_date_likes_comments=yes center_container=yes image_stack_animation=yes type=user]
Twitter
[fts_twitter twitter_name=elliance]
Marketing ROI formula is easy enough: However, working with higher education clients for more than two decades has made it clear to us that calculating marketing ROI is challenging, especially in our current era of media fragmentation, device proliferation, and tight marketing budgets. Four reasons why: Unrealized Attribution of Incremental Gains to Marketing Efforts: Pinpointing a prospect-to-enrolled conversion to a specific marketing tactic is hard because a conversion may be the result of multiple marketing stimuli spread out over multiple marketing channels over a period of few years. Multi-touch and multi-channel lead attribution models, though available in the form of sophisticated software tools, are not well understood, are difficult to implement, and are simply unaffordable for a majority of colleges. Thus, connecting the dots across a campaign’s multiple components is next to impossible. Inadequate Support for Source Tracking: The next best alternative to attribution software is to deploy simple source tracking, where source-of-lead signals are passed from digital touch points … Continue reading
Posted in: Analytics and Metrics, Enrollment Marketing, Higher Education Marketing, Higher Education Marketing Metrics
Leave a comment
There isn’t an algorithm for defining brand architecture for higher education. However, some heuristics or common patterns exist that will help colleges and universities frame their specific situation. Here is a start: I. Branded House: This model applies to most private colleges. Harvard is a great example of this. Note how Harvard’s parent brand has great equity and visually plays a dominant role for all its graduate schools. Most private schools are quite protective of their parent brand name, which is wise, but certain situations demand exceptions. II. Branded House with some exceptions: Though Harvard, the oldest university in the US, isn’t willing to give up its primacy for anyone, University of Pennsylvania is willing to let wealthy donors get primacy in naming rights. For most of us, Wharton comes to mind. Interestingly, Wharton at UPenn was named in 1881. Kellogg at Northwestern was named in 1908. In an expanding world of university choices, Universities ought to turn their business, … Continue reading
With much excitement, we are launching the first inbound marketing web resource for higher education marketers and enrollment marketing teams. It’s free and comprehensive. As the old era of traditional college search comes to an end, inbound marketing heralds the new era of authentic, high-quality, content marketing that deepens brand trust, secures SEO rankings, and fosters social sharing with the spirit of attracting more of right-fit prospects. Colleges are not only recruiting students to meet their enrollment goals, they are also recruiting future brand ambassadors and life-long donors. The Inbound Marketing For Colleges Flashcards website includes five sections: audiences, strategies, tactics, tools and ROI, so those working in higher education marketing can understand how inbound marketing works. Inbound marketing is magical because it’ll impact the shape of the admissions funnel and student life cycle in four different ways: Because prospective students will discover the college using Google search, it’ll bring seekers and right-fit prospective students to your website. These prospective … Continue reading
Here are Q2 charts from Google that shed light on what’s happening with higher education related searches:
Posted in: Higher Education Marketing
Increasingly, colleges are finding themselves in tough situations: budgets are shrinking, competitors are multiplying and academic offerings are expanding. So what should a college do? One game plan to outsmart competitors without outspending them is to elevate the brand by creating a distinctive integrated campaign. Babson, Ithaca College and American University have done just that. All three came up with unifying brand campaigns, which have raised the tide for the entire institution. Babson College Babson, after being known for years as “The Entrepreneurship School” and doing nothing about it, finally decided to embrace its destiny and created a campaign around owning the concept of “Entrepreneurship”. They have engaged in a integrated marketing campaign around the concept of “Define Entrepreneurship”. It is lifting the entire brand. Ithaca College Ithaca College, realizing that battles could not be won on a tiny budget, bet their farm on a campaign called “Ready”, and never looked back. American University American University, located in the town … Continue reading
Three simple reasons we love working with colleges and universities: It keeps us smart One of our favorite parts is working with smart professors, which perpetually keeps us at the edge of digital knowledge and emerging ideas. It keeps us sharp Because colleges and universities don’t have big budgets, we have to constantly help them outsmart, outwit, and outcompete without outspending. Now that’s a great discipline: do more with less. It keeps us empathetic To be great at it, we have to really understand people from all generations. Marketing to undergraduates keeps us as tech savvy as Gen Y’ers and millenials; marketing to their cost-conscious boomer parents keeps us connected to the craft of articulating value; and marketing to adult and graduate students keeps us deeply connected with what tickles Gen X’ers. The discipline of working with colleges and universities serves us well when we are serving other industries such as manufacturing, business services, community banks and nonprofits. Learn more … Continue reading
Posted in: Higher Education Marketing
The litmus test for greatness of a web design agency is how well it can operate in tight spaces. We were recently asked to create miracles in extremely small spaces, within the constraints of pre-existing templates and CMS for Carnegie Mellon’s Masters in Software Engineering program. Yes, we redesigned their logo, rewrote the critical copy, fortified the calls-to-actions and strengthened the information architecture of their website, but we were really proud of the headers we created for them. They are confident, tell stories and invite prospects to explore the programs. Judge for yourself: Now, who wouldn’t want to join the club of these smart software engineers? Even though the jury is still out, it appears that these miracles in tiny spaces have led to an increase in applicants. Wow, indeed. More to come. As our prestigious 2009 Interactive Media Awards show, we are one of the top higher education web design agencies and in the US. We share this limelight … Continue reading
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 flavor of Christianity that is narrow enough to attract the right-fit Christians and broad enough to attract other denominations and people of different faiths from around the world? If you survey Christian college websites, you will see a few flavors of treatments: (a) Address perfect-fits, but ignore others. (b) Beyond the logo and tag lines, don’t address Christianity at all. (c) Caricaturize the college’s flavor of Christianity by leaning on a picture of their beautiful chapel. (d) Mention the Christian roots only in the history of the college. You will be hard-pressed to find instances of colleges that are comfortable unapologetically embracing the roots of … Continue reading
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. 2. The war is on for claiming the top rankings on search engines. 3. Web analytics are the rage, specially because they are self-service tools. Basics, mind you. Not connecting the dots and answering tough questions such as how should we allocate the marketing budget. 4. Branding of colleges and universities is moving full steam ahead. 5. The search for the CMS holy grail continues. 6. Mobile development is all the rage. Lots of mobile framework talk at every conference. 7. Marketers are struggling to figure out social media ROI. They simply don’t know the extent to which social media efforts help achieve enrollment, advancement, … Continue reading
Posted in: Higher Education Marketing
At the last AMA Higher Education Marketing conference, President Mark Putnam of Central College, profoundly claimed that he could know the health of any college by looking at just two metrics: yield and retention rate. This led me to a hunt for other metrics that college presidents consider indispensable. Here is what I have found so far: 1. Size of endowment, the war chest to attract the most talented students and faculty with financial aid and salaries. 2. Geographic reach of enrolled students, which is a measure of diversification and college reputation. 3. Average test scores, which pegs a college’s brand position in the prestige hierarchy. 4. Discount rate, the difference between the sticker price and what a student actually pays, directly impacts the net revenue or financial health of a college. 5. Acceptance rate, or conversely rejection rate, is a direct measure of school’s reputation and selectivity. Understandably, the more a college rejects, the better its reputation gets. 6. … Continue reading