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| Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter |
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27 June 2007 Greetings as summer is starting in Michigan and the weather people are predicting an unusually warm season. That might be, but the highest temperatures will seem mild compared to the 110 degrees in Phoenix I’ll feel tomorrow on the way to Northern Arizona University. Best wishes to everyone for a summer that is everything you want it to be. Fans of web seminars and web marketing will want to consider one or both of two events I’ll be doing for Academic Impressions on consecutive Mondays in late September and early October. Visit the Academic Impressions website for descriptions and registration information. Over at my blog, I’ve recently added several new additions to the links to admissions offices using Instant Messaging in student recruitment. Links to the new schools are at bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/ and the complete list of 24 schools is at the August 21 posting. If you’re use IM in recruitemnt and aren’t listed yet, let me know at bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com. And now, here are your marketing news and notes for June. Take a Quick Quiz: “Omnivore,” “Lackluster Veteran,” or “Off the Network”? If you ever wondered where you or your friends and colleagues fit with regard to what the Pew Internet & American Life Project calls “ICT” or Information and Communication Technology, spend just 5 minutes or less at www.pewinternet.org/quiz/ and take their quiz. When you’re done, you’ll know where you stand among 10 different types of people, from “Omnivores” to “Off the Network.” And since this has been used for regular Pew surveys, you’ll see how you compare to overall survey results. For each category, Pew tells us the median age, the number of IT devices owned and the percent with broadband access in the home. The marketing message from this is complex. Despite the iPhone frenzy that’s about to take place, people aren’t easy to categorize in the world of electronic communications. No single group is larger than 15 percent of the population. Only 8 percent are “Omnivores” and they are matched by the 8 percent described as “Lackluster Veterans.” You can guess which ones are most likely to be in line for an iPhone this week. 10 Marketing Tips from a Summer Intern Here’s Pete Blackshaw’s report on the value of listening to and learning from his annual summer marketing intern, in this case a chap from Middlebury College, to help stay in touch with future marketing possibilities. Some of the elements covered here: old information kills reputations, MySpace is old news, Wikipedia is great, simple presentation wins friends, Google is getting scary. Visit www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3626244 and spend a few entertaining and informative minutes that might challenge conventional wisdom and point your planning in new directions. MySpace Leads as Search Destination MySpace may be “old news” for the coolest of the cool, but it is still a popular website destination that gets about 80 percent of the traffic to social networking sites. Market erosion might be on the way, but it isn’t here yet. Highest growth rate is reported among women, 25 to 40 years old. The MySpace strength is reflected in the May ClickZ report on the most popular search engine terms for May. At www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3626267 you’ll find the 10 most popular destinations in 10 categories. Variations for MySpace capture two of the 10 spots under “Blog and Personal Web Sites.” Creating Effective Web Advertising If you’re a bit perplexed about the world of effective web advertising, you will appreciate Alexander White’s article on “Typography and Web Advertising: Making Every Opportunity Count” here. White notes two primary “principles”: content of the ad has to be interesting to the target audience and presentation of the content has to be “compelling.” Most of this article focuses on how to make best use of fonts and other design elements to create effective ads. But do note the order of the principles. Without the right content, the critical design element is wasted. You’ll find an introduction that reviews various types of web advertising and restates the most important point for anything on the web: keep it simple. Rating Colleges and Universities Members of the Annapolis Group, representing liberal arts colleges, have launched a new effort to diminish the popularity of the US News & World Report college ranking system. Will it work? Will the public accept a system developed by colleges themselves to help people select the college that’s right for them? Time, and how the eventual system works, will tell. Some details about the new effort are here. Whatever your thoughts about the US News system, you may find postings of interest in the blog of Robert Morse, direct of data research for the paper and long-time defender of the ranking system. The blog, “Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings,” is at www.usnews.com/blogs/college-rankings-blog/. In a May posting, Morse notes that US News will again invite colleges participating in the National Survey of Student Engagement to publish results in the paper. The NSSE survey remains one of the best measures of how current students feel about their college. More colleges that participate should make the results public. Visit nsse.iub.edu/html/institutions.cfm to see if your college uses NSSE. Building Your Own Search Marketing Team If you want your website to be more search engine friendly but don’t want to or can’t afford to hire out the work, the “How to Structure an In-House SEO Team” at searchengineland.com/070620-084055.php may help you get started. The article will help you set realistic goals, find a team leader with the right skills, balance the tension between IT and marketing people, and more. MySpace Friends for Drury University How popular are college websites on MySpace? Back in my March newsletter, I included an item on the Drury University website at www.myspace.com/druryuniversity. On that visit, Drury had 1,684 “friends” listed. Today, in late June, that number shows modest growth to 1,718 friends. I’ll report the total each month from now through the end of the year. Future Accountability for a Major Gift How do you get a university to pay attention to what you’d like to accomplish with your gift? For starters, make receiving the second half of a $50 million gift depend on successfully achieving criteria set out for use of the first $25 million. That’s what the University of Michigan will have to do as part of a major gift to support a new Cardiovascular Center. You’ll find comments on the idea of advance standards at the Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog at chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=2565. Is this another example that colleges and universities are losing independence in the marketplace? OK, this isn’t going to work for most annual fund contributions. But it is refreshing to note that someone plans to pay ongoing attention to the focus of their favors as the years unfold. See the “benchmarks for success” at www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2007/cvcgift.htm. Impending Demise of YouTube? Yes, YouTube continues to grow faster than any other social networking site, measured by the volume of videos posted and viewed. But that doesn’t mean that the long range dominance of YouTube is any more certain than many people once thought it would be for AOL. That’s the theme of the MediaWorks article at adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=118688. What’s more important than YouTube is the emerging role of video as a replacement for text content on your own website. If you want to move more rapidly into the future, you need to combine the interest in story telling with videos that speak to topics important to your audience. That, for instance, is what the Kenan-Flagler Business School is doing with videos that speak to career advancement and the challenges of balancing work, school, and family life. Watch the results at www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/programs/emba/advance/balance.cfm. Phoenix is Top Online Advertiser in April University of Phoenix Online placed first in April by spending $16,460,000 for online ads. And that’s not total spending for Phoenix. The regular University of Phoenix effort added another $3,998,000 to rank 20 among the top 50 advertisers. If you think Phoenix is just about everywhere on the web, you’re right. Another group advertiser, Classes USA, ranked 32 with $2,925,000 spent. See the full list at www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3626213. Do Men Receive Preferential Admission over Women? Listen to an NPR podcast for the views of US News & World Report on the impact that a need for gender balance is having on the relative admission chances of women applying to highly selective colleges. You’ll find the interview with Alex Kingsbury and NPR staff at www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11185546. How soon will we hear an interview about preferential financial aid packaging or scholarship awards? My Upcoming Presentations in 2007 Share questions and answers with people like yourself who are building a competitive edge in higher education marketing. Hope to meet you at one or more of these events! July 18-20, Chicago, IL: ACT Enrollment Planners Conference, “A Marketer’s Guide to Better Search Engine Visibility” (pre-conference workshop) and “The Evolution of Publications in an Internet World.” Expect a website link soon. July 22, Baltimore, MD: eduWeb, Keynote presentation. Follow development of the conference program and read the conference blog at www.eduwebconference.com. September 24, Web Conference: Academic Impressions, “Improving your Website to Engage Prospects.” Outline and registration at www.academicimpressions.com/web_conferences/0907-website-engagement.php. October 1, Web Conference: Academic Impressions, “Writing Right for the Web.” Outline and registration at www.academicimpressions.com/web_conferences/1007-web-writing.php. November 11, San Diego, CA: AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, “Writing Right for the Web: Key Steps to Engage Your Visitors and Increase Your Search Engine Visibility.” Registration details for the Sunday afternoon 3.5 hour tutorial available soon. December 10, Chicago, IL: CASE District V Conference, “Writing Right for the Web.” Link to the conference website available soon. Expand professional growth opportunities on your campus. Host a seminar to increase the Online Marketing skills of people on your campus and get a better ROI on your future investments. Schedule your presentation soon for September or later. Contact me at bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com. That’s All for Now Be a marketing champion on your campus.
Bob Johnson, Ph.D. (bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com) 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. Gerry McGovern offers unparalleled expertise in customer-centric website content and the Customer Carewords research program to identify what that content should be. More about Gerry at www.gerrymcgovern.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. Newsletter Archive
28 May 2008 |