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Ch-Check it out

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Yes, that’s a Beastie Boys song title. While some may scoff at the idea of learning something from three guys who go by Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock — their 25-year career, international fan base and 2012 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is certainly no joke. And higher ed would be smart to listen up — there are serious lessons to be learned from this Brooklyn rap trio.

“The Beastie Boys Guide to Brand Storytelling” by Kimberly Bordonaro identifies seven elements that explain why their loyal following over the years didn’t happen because they got lucky. It happened through a unique blend of what the kids today would call “sick” rhymes, funky fresh beats, and for ...

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9
MAR
0

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Marketing, Storytelling

Marketing is like sex…

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Why?  Everyone thinks they’re good at it!

All joking aside, it’s true. Everyone from your brother to your boss has got their own definition of what marketing is and what makes it great (or horrendous, or remarkable, or offensive, or inspired…)

So much so that it can make it quite difficult for someone in my shoes to be confident my team and I are hitting the mark.

If you’re feeling my pain, then don’t miss this list of “10 Companies with Insanely Great Marketing.”

Of course you’ll glean insights from legends like Apple, Nike and Geico (I confess, I can’t get enough of Maxwell, the pig who cries “weee weee weeeee” all the way home. Never gets old.)

But as much as we all have ...

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2
MAR
0

Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Marketing

Mailing Millennials

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Talking about “snail mail” as an effective recruitment strategy is sure to raise an eyebrow or two, but don’t discount its benefits and the value it adds. In the second half of this year’s recruitment cycle, admissions offices are thinking more about acceptance letters, open house invitations and financial aid packages — all traditionally print recruitment pieces — that still work according to Deliver Magazine.

In the article “Making sense of the Millennials” by Allan Nahajewski, Millennials don’t mind direct mail. According to one study, Millennials say 75 percent of the mail they receive is valuable, and 73 percent of them have used direct mail coupons.

With this in mind — what’s the most effective way to use direct mail? ...

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13
JAN
0

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Communication Plans, Marketing, Millennial Generation, Millennials

Writing your school’s resume

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You’ve heard it a thousand times — Be distinctive; stand out from your competitors. You can’t do that with your faculty/student ratio, no matter how impressive. Or with your small class sizes, no matter how important. Or with the personalized attention your professors provide their students, no matter how beneficial.

Start your story with something that cuts through the college marketing clutter, say all the experts. But perhaps no one has said it quite like advertising executive Angie Jones.

“I have a Bachelor’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in marketing,” Jones writes in a recent blog post. Pretty good, but unfortunately millions of people in America have the same degree and emphasis, she says. “Education-wise, I don’t stand out from ...

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11
JAN
0

Categories: Authenticity, College Recruiting, Communication, Marketing

Marketing is the future

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American universities are not the only ones struggling with change these days. Sharply rising tuition and increasing competition from abroad have schools in the UK relying on marketing like never before.

For a higher education system that has hummed along since the 12th century, aggressive marketing was something other industries had to worry about. But that is changing, says Britain’s William Annandale, and he offers five predictions for the future of higher education marketing that may have relevance for those of us in the colonies:

Differentiate or die. “All HEIs [higher education institutions, as they're known in the UK] need to think clearly about their proposition and how they differentiate themselves. Importantly, this should be addressed from the perspective of target audiences: ...

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9
DEC
0

Categories: Change, College Recruiting, Communication, CRM, Marketing

Social media marketing IQ

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Getting more and more excited about marketing your school via social networking? That’s great, says interactive marketer Heidi Cohen, but first you need to check your social media marketing IQ.

“Here are 30 questions,” she writes in a recent ClickZ article, “that will help you assess where your organization is in terms of social media marketing maturity and where you may need to improve effectiveness.”

Cohen divides her questions into such categories as goals, strategies, content, metrics, budget — and the all-important “listening” factor. Included among the 30 are:

- Do you have brand monitoring and/or other analytics in place? These can range from professional social media monitoring to free options such as Google Alerts and Twitter Search.

- If you are listening as ...

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9
SEP
2

Categories: College Recruiting, Communication, Social Media, Social Networking

10 Lessons from Starbucks

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My TargetX colleague, Scott Parks, sent a great blog post link that I’d like to share with you. It’s 10 Lessons from Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s book Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul.

The blog post challenges radio broadcasters, who like college administrators are facing challenges, to “think how these lessons apply to you.”  The guts of the post are quoted below. Let me throw out the same challenge: Think how these lessons apply to you.

1.  Don’t Lose Sight of what Matters

“Our strategy was to do more of what worked in the past.  But we were not pushing ourselves to do things better or differently. ...

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22
JUN
0

Categories: Best Practice Documents, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Customer Service, Storytelling, Student Workers

Forget Facebook, if you want to yield students you should be on YouTube

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Any dyed-in-the-wool Gen Xer can tell you that the first video MTV played when it launched on August 8, 1981 was Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. Not as many can tell you the second video played on MTV. Do you know?

Video facts you need to know:
-43% of current prime time internet traffic is real time entertainment ( 12.2.2010)
-Netflix streaming accounts for 20% of internet traffic on any given evening (BusinessWeek 12.2.2010)
-Cisco predicts that by 2013 video will be 90% of consumer internet traffic (TechCrunch 7.9.2009)
-YouTube is a top “search engine” accounting for 28% of Google searches (Google 1.31.2011)
-There are 500 million monthly YouTube ...

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3
FEB
1

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, College Recruiting, Communication, Communication Plans, Did You Know?, Facebook, Free on Friday Webcasts, Social Media, Social Networking, Storytelling, Student Yield, Videos, Web Traffic, Webcast, Your Website

Demystifing the Application Process

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If you work on a college campus, you are an educator.  You may not teach a class as an admission professional, but you should take ownership to educate the school’s applicant pool.

Often we assume that people understand the process, but they don’t. We need to take time (either while on campus during a visit or via the web) to explain the process.

A recent email that went viral around the TargetX offices was this video from Centre College in Danville, KY. This is one way they educate their applicants.

Sure, it is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it is entertaining and it does educate their applicants on the process at Centre.

How ...

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20
JAN
1

Categories: Applicants, Campus Visit Experiences, Communication, Facebook, Videos

Memorable words

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One researcher says people need to read something 8 or 9 times before they truly absorb it. Take your time, I’ll wait.

So, if that’s even partially accurate, what can you do about it? How can you make it easier for your audience to retain what they’re reading?

Communication expert Mark Murphy thinks he knows how. “It turns out that people forget a lot of what they read not because of some innate neurological limitation, but because what they’re reading is really unmemorable.”

The problem is our preference for writing “abstract” words instead of “concrete” words, says the CEO of Leadership IQ. You see it all the time in office memos, but we tend to do it in other writing as well, including ...

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10
DEC
0

Categories: College Recruiting, Communication, Publications

Marketing to Millennials

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The youngest are only 10, so you’re going to be dealing with the Millennial generation for years to come. That means you should overcome your sense of Millennial overload and continue to welcome new insight into how to reach these “vocal, demanding, discerning, shrewd and, yes, narcissistic” prospective students.

Advertising Age’s Thomas Pardee has written another psychosocial look at those born between 1982 and 2000, and he concludes with five tips for marketing to them.

  • Be fast. “For Millennials, there’s nothing worth saying that can’t be said in 140 characters or less. It’s not that they can’t handle long-form pitches, they just know you can do better. So do better.”

  • Be clever. “Smart and funny is the new rock ...
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29
OCT
4

Categories: Authenticity, College Recruiting, Communication, Generations, Millennials, Word of Mouth

The truth about branding

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Branding continues to dominate so much of the discussion in higher ed marketing, and Geoffrey James can’t figure out why.

The popular writer and commentator on sales and marketing reacted recently to a series of radio spots run by a Boston-based brand consultancy.

“They’re selling snake oil,” he writes, “because it’s not possible to create a brand through anything that’s typically done under the name of branding.”

Let’s start with the truth, he says. Your brand is the reflection of four things, and none of them is your logo, tagline or anything else that a marketing agency may try to sell you. Your brand is made up of:

- The quality of your products and services (50 percent).
- The way you treat your ...

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15
OCT
4

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, College Recruiting, Communication

Outstanding Ohio State Admissions Campus Visit Guide

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The Ohio State University has one of the best visit programs we have encountered, yet they’re always looking to improve the experience.

To inspire you, here’s a copy of the new piece:

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The creative folks in admissions worked hard to create a visit brochure that sets the expectation and reveals visit basics, while giving it the feel of a travel brochure. They’ve outlined Four Ways to Discover Ohio State: Sport Enthusiast, Foodie, History Buff and Academic Explorer. The brochure unfolds to reveal places and spaces in these themes complete with photos, insider tips and more.

At the CIVSA conference in Lexington this June, they told us that the majority of families bring the piece ...

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29
JUL
2

Categories: Best Practice Documents, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Campus Visit Experiences, Communication, Experience Economy Stuff, Twitter, Uncategorized

Increase your digital influence

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In admissions, you often cannot attend every conference you would like to, especially when there are so many throughout the year. So, why not attend the shortest conference ever? 60 speakers in 60 minutes.

ThoughtLead held their first 60 in 60 event on July 6. The Influencer Project: The shortest marketing conference ever, discussed how to increase a business’s digital influence in the competitive world of online media. Sixty speakers provided their personal advice on how you can do this today. After listening to the conference, there were several points that were extremely relevant to recruitment and admissions efforts on the web. Here are just a few:

“Make connections online and then go and meet them in person in the ...

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23
JUL
3

Categories: Authenticity, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Social Media, Websites, Your Website

Tell me a story

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People love stories, Jeff Kallay reminds us. They pay attention to them, learn from them, believe them and share them.

Storytelling has been our most effective means of communication since we developed language eons ago, and that’s more evident than ever in this new world of social networking.

So why do colleges still spend so much effort on branding and taglines, and so little effort identifying and telling their unique stories, asks Kallay, Consulting VP at TargetX and one of higher education’s most inventive marketers.

“When crafting your recruiting communications, find the stories that set you apart,” he says. “I’m often asked by admissions and marketing people how they find stories like that. I know this sounds simple, but you can find them ...

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18
JUN
4

Categories: Authenticity, College Recruiting, Communication, Word of Mouth

Be more social, be more…corporate?

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Corporate websites need to make an effort to be more social — does yours?

A recent blog entry from Hubspot.com says corporate websites are guilty of producing boring content. “These sites end up being a time and financial drain without delivering the appropriate value to current and potential customers.” Sound familiar?

If you have heard comments like this around your campus or by prospective students, then you should sit down with others and reevaluate your site’s priorities. Hubspot’s suggestion: “Four Ways to Make Your Corporate Website More Social.”

Focused on engaging customers and empowering them to share with others, Hubspot suggests a level of interaction between the customers and the organization that does not exist when the website spews one-way messages.

While the article ...

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21
MAY
5

Categories: College Recruiting, Communication, Communication Plans, Online Experiences, Social Media, Social Networking, Summer Projects, Web Traffic, Websites, Your Website

What makes a good message?

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Simple and true. That’s the key to effective marketing communications today, says agency executive Jeff Cannon.

“With savvier consumers and a flood of messaging, you have an ever-narrowing window within which to get your message right,” he says.

So he advises us to keep it simple. What does he mean? Focus on only one benefit or point of differentiation per message, whether it’s an ad, email promotion or blog post. “If you have more than one point of differentiation, save it for another message,” he says. “There will be another time and place to get it out.”

Simple messages are easier for your audience to understand, to remember and to repeat and pass along, says the president of Think Cannon LLC.

And make sure ...

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14
MAY
1

Categories: Authenticity, College Recruiting, Communication

Time to kill social media?

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This is pretty deep, admits consultant Rob Key, but think of social media in the context of a 9th century Zen warning about mistaking the messenger for the message. “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him,” goes the saying, because when you become fixated on the intermediary you lose the deeper meaning of the message.

Marketers are currently obsessing over the intermediary — Twitter, Facebook and other technologies that help circulate their message.

Key studied online conversations about social media and discovered they’re dominated by talk of the tools, with little attention paid to the larger meaning of how the social phenomenon is impacting marketing.

“In our view,” he writes, “social media is about the evolution of human communication. Cultural ...

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23
APR
4

Categories: College Recruiting, Communication, Social Media

You've got 8 seconds. Maybe.

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Most experts say you have 5 seconds to make your case in an email promotion. Alex Madison and Lisa Harmon are much more optimistic about the time your recipients will invest in your hard work. They’ll allow you 8 seconds.

But don’t rejoice yet. The digital-marketing pros say you have to accomplish a lot in those extra seconds. They say you need to definitively answer your readers’ three biggest questions or risk losing them:

- What is this email about?
- Why should I care about it?
- What should I do about it?

The answers to these questions will vary across different industries, products and message types, they say, but there are some best practices that will help you be successful no ...

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9
APR
2

Categories: College Recruiting, Communication, Email

Taming the social media beast

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Marketers in all industries — including higher education — feel overwhelmed by the looming presence of social media. They know they have to use the tools of the social web, but struggle with how to do so effectively.

Some still aren’t sure where to begin, concerned that they’ll make mistakes and alienate the very people they’re trying to cultivate. “Almost every marketer I meet asks me how does social media marketing work,” says Mary Henderson, CEO of an online technology firm.

A recent gathering of executives from businesses and colleges in the Raleigh-Durham area looked at the promise and pitfalls of social media and offered the following observations:

  • Social media is a beast that cannot be avoided.
  • Listen, observe, crawl before you jump into ...
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12
MAR
0

Categories: Communication, Free on Friday Webcasts, Social Media

Yielding best-fit students

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Forget about the top of the funnel, Jeff Kallay has been saying for years. It’s all about yield.

The popular thought-leader and campus-visit guru is about to put his money where his mouth is. Or, more accurately, your money.

Kallay is now heading up a new consulting venture that promises to be different from anything in the higher education industry. He wants to help a select group of colleges find unique ways to connect with best-fit students.

“I’m looking for ‘change agents,’” he says, “people who recognize that the old ways of doing things aren’t working anymore.”

One of those old ways is using mass marketing to fill the top of the recruitment funnel with as many warm bodies as possible. “Completely outdated, expensive ...

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26
FEB
0

Categories: Change, College Recruiting, Communication, Student Yield

Learning from Apple

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Young people’s love for all things Apple may offer lessons for college recruiters.

The Cupertino company and its iconic leader, Steve Jobs, fascinate marketers and motivate them to look for larger meaning in Apple products and ads.

Most recently, the New York Times’ Steve Lohr wrote about the new iPad and how it continues a philosophy of product design that has applicability in higher ed marketing.

Jobs runs counter to the prevailing thought in product design that “more is better,” writes Lohr. Instead, he creates “edited products that cut through complexity, by consciously leaving things out — not cramming every feature that comes into an engineer’s head.”

Overstuffed viewbooks, promotional emails and other recruiting communications would benefit from such a philosophy.

In addition, writes Lohr, ...

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5
FEB
2

Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication

An air of desperation

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For years we’ve followed the communication from colleges to prospective students both online and in print.  But recently the TargetX team has noted an interesting trend – an air of desperation in the messages. For example, take the following subject lines received by one prospective student:

  • We’re still interested in you ______
  • Able to accept more applications
  • Notice for _____: Today is the deadline!
  • Urgent notice: Today’s deadline!
  • I’ve put you first, _____
  • Your deadline is almost here
  • _____: Your response is needed …
  • Time’s running out!
  • We’re invested in you
  • _____, there’s still time!
  • Is this your email address?
  • Is this email reaching _____?
  • _____, I’m looking for your application …
  • My records show that …
  • I’m sorry ____ …

Perhaps more surprising are the schools sending these messages – name brand schools that one ...

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16
JAN
5

Categories: Authenticity, Communication, Millennial Generation, Student Yield

Words that drive us crazy

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“Honestly,” begins your friend when offering advice, implying she hasn’t always been honest in the past. “Interesting,” responds a colleague thoughtfully after you’ve asked a simple yes or no question. “To make a long story short,” says a neighbor — and you know you’re about to miss your favorite TV show.

These are some of the words and phrases that drive readers crazy. Imprecise, misleading and banal, representing lazy thinking and fuzzy logic.

Like the misuse of anymore instead of lately. “Food has gotten so expensive anymore.” Or the overuse of ubiquitous. “I heard this word used at least 10 times by different presenters during a recent conference,” responded one reader. “It was ubiquitous.”

Phrases like take it to the next level, last ...

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20
NOV
3

Categories: Communication, General, Publications

XpertTip No. 133: How are you structured?

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Greetings from Boston!

I’m here in bean-town for this year’s American Marketing Association Higher Ed Symposium (or simply “AMA” to avoid the mouthful).

I’m excited to have an opportunity to speak again this year and rub elbows with some of the brightest marketing minds in the business.

Already I’ve had some great conversations — like my nice chat this morning with Shelley Wetzel (of eduWEB Conference fame).

Shelley wanted to know if I could point out some folks who are changing their structure to bridge the admissions/marketing gap at their institution.

It’s something I’m seeing more and more of as communication plans become increasingly complex and clients attempt to wrap their brains around social media strategy.  I guess you could say the need for a ...

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16
NOV
3

Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Social Media, Uncategorized

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