Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter

26 September 2006

Early fall greetings to everyone. Here is southern Michigan you can already see the color turning in the trees. Always seems unreal to have that happen before October. But if L.L. Bean can send a Christmas catalog in mid-September, before fall officially arrives, I guess dates don’t mean much anymore.

Give a gift to a friend anytime. Send them to www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com for a subscription to this newsletter. Name, email address, and 10 seconds are all it takes.

I was very pleased to hear last week about audiences of 60+ people volunteering time to attend upcoming web writing seminars at University of Houston-Clear Lake and University of Waterloo. Presenting your web content in web-friendly reading style is one of the really nice presents you can give your web visitors. And you don’t have to wait until Christmas. Start by attending one of my upcoming writing for the web sessions for CASE in October or AMA in November. Details are at the end of this newsletter. Or have me come to your campus. No limit on how many can attend.

Are you just a bit bemused about the attention Harvard is receiving for dropping early admissions? Yes, Princeton has followed along. But for how many college-bound students is this change really a special gift? With more and more people starting the college selection process earlier, one wonders if there are not more than a few who indeed make their “most desired” choice well before Christmas and don’t really want to wait until April 1 for an admission decision. Personally, I’ll pay more attention when Muhlenberg College and similar places decide against early admission. That, indeed, would be a more significant marketing note. Meanwhile, for a well-presented positive look at this practice, visit www.muhlenberg.edu/admissions/early.html

Interested in developing a more effective student recruitment plan for adults in the Internet era? Attend one of Carol Aslanian’s seminars this fall on “Internet Marketing: New Techniques to Reach Adult and Graduate Students.” Details are at www.aslaniangroup.com.

And now, here are your marketing news and notes for September.

Find Your College Students and Alumni on Myspace.com

How many of your students and alumni have Myspace pages? The top 10 schools, starting with Arizona State University at 60,762 people, are listed at collect.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=schools.main.

If you have a Myspace account, you can type in the name of your college on this page and find out how many people you have using the social networking site. You can sort by alumni and current students. Within those groups, you can search by age, gender, graduation year, academic major and more.

Be sure to check the “Grade your Professor” feature to see what people are saying in public about your faculty.

University of Illinois Will Start Early Admissions

Harvard is going one way and this flagship public university is going the other way.

In a change to reduce “a lot of anxiety” and inquisitive phone calls from applicants and their parents, University of Illinois will begin giving admission decisions by December 15 to some students who apply by November 15. Illinois will defer decisions for others who apply by November 15 until March. Read the Chicago Tribune story here.

Not the traditional “early admissions” practice but certainly a step that recognizes that some students simply have no reason to wait until April 1. How selective is Illinois? The admissions website reports 25,000 applications for 7,000 “available seats” but doesn’t say how many are admitted to fill the class. Review admission percents by ACT, SAT, and class rank at www.oar.uiuc.edu/future/freshmen/requirements.html.

Pew Internet Report: Future of the Internet II

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has just announced a new report based on research among “technology thinkers and stakeholders.” You’ll find a link to the 115 page report in PDF form when you visit www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/188/report_display.asp.

To stay up to date in campus discussions about the Internet between now and 2020, you have to read this. Content is presented as part of 7 scenarios, from “A global, low-cost network thrives” (56 percent agree, 42 percent disagree) to “Some Luddites will commit terrorist acts” (58 percent agree, 35 percent disagree).

The 10 Cs of Branding

If you like to play the alphabet game in branding as much as I do, you’re doing to love reading and thinking about these 10 Cs from William Arruda, starting with Competent and ending with Current.

While you’re reading them, be sure to make notes about which ones are covered most strongly in your marketing communications today. When you’re done, you just might have a new set of guidelines on how to best improve what you are projecting about your brand. Travel to www.marketingprofs.com/6/arruda27.asp to get started.

Axia College Enrollment Update

Overheard at the TargetX seminar in Philadelphia last week was the news that the new University of Phoenix venture to enroll traditional age students is off to a fine start. So far 60,000 people are enrolled in one of 7 online associate degree programs. Will bachelor’s degrees be far behind?

If your competitive spirit tells you to pay attention now rather than later, visit www.axiacollege.com.

Track What People Say About You on the Web

Do you pay attention to what’s being said about your college or university on the Internet?

Rebecca Lieb gives you an easy-to-follow guide to learn what people say about you in “Are You Listening?” at www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623437.

Using Technorati as an example, she walks you through easy steps on how to use RSS feeds at several websites for automatic notification when somebody says something about you. It seems as if public relations offices at every college and university should be doing this and preparing periodic reports that include the proverbial good, bad, and ugly comments.

8 Principles for Highly Effective Landing Pages

Each time I read an article like this, it all seems so obvious. But then I visit another landing page and realize that most pages will still benefit from many if not all of the eight recommendations made by Dave Davies here.

Best to start with the definition: “A landing page is the page that visitors first see after becoming curious enough to click on a link to your site.” When you follow that note, you’ll pay special attention to the impact of any page that people find when they search for your school on the web. More than ever today, it isn’t just the “front” page. You probably have several pages that are landing pages for someone depending on the search words they use.

Reaching back to old time direct marketing days, Davies asks readers to think of the “Most Desired Action” you want people to take when they visit a page on your website. And then decide just how easy it is to do that. Is your call to action, for instance, prominent on the page?

You’ll also find suggestions to make your landing pages more important to search engines, a reminder to create pages that are easy to scan and how to do that, and more.

New 2007 Search Marketing Guide

Marketing Sherpa has just published a new guide to best practices in search marketing, based on results reported by more than 3,000 people who “conduct or supervise” search marketing efforts.

Visit www.marketingsherpa.com/exs/SearchMarketing_BG07_ExeSumm.pdf for a valuable 18 page introduction to a much larger report that you can buy. You’ll learn for instance that these marketers rate search engine optimization higher than either paid search advertising or other forms of online advertising for generating leads.

If you’re puzzling out a search engine strategy, add this to your reading list.

The Death of Websites, in two parts

Even if you’ve just spent a great deal of money renewing your website, only those planning early retirement will want to miss Dorian Sweet’s two columns on what the website of the future might look like. Start with www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623307 and then move on to the already published part II.

You’ll read about how video, social networking sites and more might help destroy traditional websites. Two of the best reminders: “The goal of a website is to be easy to use” and websites are “opportunities to truly engage the customer.”

Each time I finish a web site communication review, I realize how few of them are designed with ease and engagement in mind. But that will change. It really will.

9 Myths of College Admissions

Forbes magazine weighs into the college admission swamp with “College Admission Myths” here.

Scroll down to the bottom of this article for the link that leads to an interactive presentation of the 9 myths, starting with “The earlier you send in your application, the better.” You control the speed of the presentation. You’ll get advertisements with the myths that you can mute even if you can’t make them disappear.

Nothing revolutionary is on the list. In fact, these just might have been written by a committee of admission directors at selective colleges. But if you have a significant number of applicants in the demographic range of Forbes subscribers, visit and keep up with what the parents are reading.

Wisconsin Beats Harvard in CEOs, 10 to 9

The Wall Street Journal wants everyone to know that graduating from an Ivy League school isn’t a “must do” thing for ambitious young people who want to be CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

Going to a public university is fine as only 10 percent of the Fortune 500 leaders attended Ivy League schools. Of course, read on further and note that a high number of Ivy League graduates “have traditionally chosen careers in investment banks and at big law firms, where they could earn big sums quickly and wouldn’t have to start in entry-level management jobs.“

Is your public university included? Find the full story here.

Carnegie Mellon Offering Free Online Courses

How do you gain positive public relations and generate word-of-mouth referrals in the online world?

One way might well be to offer 11 online introductory level courses free of charge. No, you can’t get credit for them. You can register for the ability to save your work or you can just visit and be anonymous. Visit www.cmu.edu/oli/ for the list and start learning French or Physics soon.

11 Universities Using Personalized Printing

Once upon a time, long ago, I thought that personalized printing was the next great thing about to happen in higher education marketing communications. That wasn’t quite the case, was it?

Interest may be reviving, perhaps in part because viewbooks are shrinking in importance while personalized communications throughout the recruitment cycle is becoming more important as a way to increase conversion rates.

For a list of 11 schools featured by the Print on Demand Institute, visit my blog. You’ll see it as the second “recent” listing at bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/.

The group starts with Bob Jones University and ends with the University of Toronto.

My Upcoming Presentations in 2006

Register now for an event. Share questions and answers with people like yourself who are building a competitive edge in higher education marketing. Hope to meet you soon!

October 16-18, San Antonio, TX: CASE Annual Conference for Publications Professionals, “Writing for the Web.” Register at www.case.org/conferences/chfpub/frames.cfm.

November 9-10, Chicago, IL: The Aslanian Group, Internet Marketing: New Techniques for Reaching Adult and Graduate Students. Program details at www.aslaniangroup.com.

November 12-15, New Orleans, LA: AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education. Sunday afternoon tutorial on web writing and Monday Advanced Marketing session with Carol Aslanian on adult student recruiting. Program and registration details are at www.marketingpower.com/aevent_event24813.php.

November 29-30, Orlando, FL: The Aslanian Group, Internet Marketing: New Techniques for Reaching Adult and Graduate Students. Register at www.aslaniangroup.com .

Expand professional growth opportunities right on your campus. Select from the topics here. Or ask about creating a seminar just for you.

Schedule your presentation by writing me at bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com.

That’s All for Now

Be a marketing champion on your campus.

Bob Johnson, Ph.D. (bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com)
President and Senior Consultant
Bob Johnson Consulting, LLC

Bob Johnson Consulting, LLC

I offer consulting services personally to colleges and universities and together with the marketing experts at these partner firms:

Aslanian Group offers market research and enrollment management services to colleges and universities to increase their market share of adult students. Learn more at www.aslaniangroup.com.

Creative Communication Associates is a 22-year leader in the design and implementation of marketing communication strategies for colleges and universities. Learn more about CCA at www.ccanewyork.com.

mStoner helps colleges and universities with Internet strategies and website development to meet changing audience expectations, technologies, market pressures, and institutional positioning. For the details, visit www.mstoner.com.

TargetX brings the power of the Internet to recruit students and communicate with alumni through higher education’s only integrated suite of online tools. Explore what’s possible at www.targetx.com.

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