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28 March 2007 Spring is almost here for everyone watching for early signs of flowers, green grass, and rising temperatures. And while we wait, marketing efforts continue to unfold, particularly those focused on enrollment deposits that bring the welcome news of accepted students likely to be on your campus next fall. Best wishes for fine results to everyone. I’m looking forward to meeting old friends and making new ones at the CASE IV district meeting in Dallas in a few days. If you are still filling in your card for professional meetings this year, check the opportunities at the end of this newsletter offered by ACT, The Aslanian Group, eduWeb, and the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education. You’ll have a great chance to mix and mingle and share your marketing ideas with the marvelous variety of professional colleagues that attend. I hope to see you at one or more events. Do a favor for your marketing friends. Send them to www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com for an easy, 10 second subscription of their own to my newsletter. And now, here are your marketing news and notes for March. 10 Best Practices for MySpace Marketing Whether you’re just thinking about MySpace Marketing or already experienced at it, spend some time following this step-by-step guide for colleges and universities to build an effective MySpace website to engage both future students and alumni. Some of the best practices include a calendar of campus events, a blog, and a “favorite” of the month feature. And, of course, gathering as many friends as possible who interact with you on a regular basis to increase your MySpace visibility. You’ll also find a list of 10 worst practices. Pay special attention to the first one: “Too much text!” The 20 steps to take and avoid are at www.diosacommunications.com/myspaceforhighereducation.htm. Drury University Marketing on MySpace To see one college MySpace website created by the people who brought you the 10 Best Practices, visit the Drury site at www.myspace.com/druryuniversity. Features include 6 videos on the front page and numerous links back into the regular Drury website. Alumni can sign up for an email newsletter. And for anyone in the early college selection phase, there’s an easy to see link to the “50 majors and academic programs” offered. Don’t miss the long disclaimer down the left hand column that tries to shield Drury from anything inaccurate or unsavory that might get posted to the site. When I visited, Drury had 1,684 friends. Ad Budgets for Ohio Universities At Kent State, the budget is $750,000. At Bowling Green, it is $500,000. The article at www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/16924350.htm runs through a variety of ways that advertising money is being spent in a state crowded with public and private schools competing for students. The list includes bill boards, TV ads around the Super Bowl, and MySpace ventures. How large is your budget? And how are you spending it? Don’t forget one of the best integrated advertising campaigns crafted by the University of Minnesota at www.brand.umn.edu/discover/howItUnfolds/index.php. After you visit, imagine the budget. Merit Scholarships in Jeopardy? For years merit scholarships have been a key part of many college and university marketing plans. When they work most effectively, they help schools increase their academic profile by enrolling higher numbers of people in the top 25 or 30 percent of the existing profile or just beyond it. Is that about to change under high moral pressure that merit scholarship programs divert funds from truly needy students who cannot afford college? Hamilton College gained center stage with the Boston Globe for deciding to discontinue merit scholarships for freshmen entering in 2008. Personally, I don’t believe that merit scholarships are inherently any more immoral than the “expected family contribution” amounts that emerge from FAFSA reports. With rising tuition levels, every college has to navigate its own path to help prospective students enroll. And for many, that means giving “merit” aid to families who simply refuse to pay sticker price to enroll. New Student Recruitment Opportunity on the Web Visit cappex.com/ to review a new venture designed to register college bound students on the web so that colleges can review their profiles and contact them for recruitment. After registering, students are offered an option to invite their parents and guidance counselors to sign up as well. The profile form asks for pretty standard information, although there’s nothing requested about distance from home that a student is willing to travel to college. Register yourself as a college-bound student and follow along to see how well colleges use this tool. I’m particularly interested in how much attention is paid to the high academic profile used in a recent secret shopper inquiry by colleges who practice “academic dreaming” in their contacts. 64-Page Email Marketing Guide You’ll find a great amount of interesting material in the DM News 2006 version of “Essential Guide to E-Mail Marketing” that’s now online at www.dmnews.com/cms/lib/6683.pdf. The guide contains 60 articles divided into “Basic,” “Intermediate,” and “Advanced” sections. The very first one is still the most important: “Relevancy is No. 1 Issue.” However experienced you are, you’re sure to find something of interest among the easy to scan titles. 12 Tips for Better Surveys Brian Henderson writes about 12 things you can do for a higher completion rate in your next online survey here. Some will seem obvious (keep it short, tell people why you are doing it) and some may not. But overall this is a quick way to make sure you’ve got the basics covered. The part I liked best was the urging to keep the demographic section at the end of the survey. And don’t forget that too many demographic questions annoy people when they can’t see how they relate to the survey at hand. How many are really in the “must have” category? Mobile Marketing Isn’t Prime Time Yet At my recent conference presentations on online marketing, people have started to ask about marketing messages to cell phones and other “mobile” devices. If you aren’t quite ready for this yet, that’s OK. Enid Burns at ClickZ Stats writes that technology problems and high subscription costs are hindering significant expansion in this area. One telling figure: about two-thirds of people with broadband connections have the requisite mobile phones, but only 5 percent are actually using the capability. Read the full update at www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625277. Strategies for Success in College Admissions As higher education marketers, we should pay attention to what’s said about college admissions in the popular press. The latest example is the USA Today article at blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/03/post_34.html#more and the responses that people are posting. Written by William Caskey, a former admissions person at Brown, the article tells readers that much of what’s said in public about college admissions doesn’t accurately reflect the game being played, particularly with respect to positions reserved for athletes, alumni legacies, and children of potential donors. Not really anything new here, but it is an example what you are not likely to read in the typical description of how students are reviewed for admission. Caskey uses the term “hooked” to note that more than 20 percent of applicants at some colleges have a significantly better chance of admission than the general pool. Without more transparency, he argues, colleges will create increased cynicism and distrust among the public. Especially, we can assume, if they are reading articles like this. Watching the Wind Blow Sometime things happening well outside the world of higher education marketing are worth watching to detect shifts in civilization as we know it. If your budget for recruiting adult students, for instance, is heavily invested in traditional media, take a few minutes to scan the AdAge article reporting a 22 percent decrease at Johnson & Johnson in “old” media marketing and a significant movement toward online activities. New or expanded activities are reported for specialized websites and email and search marketing. Read more at adage.com/article?article_id=115631. For a comprehensive survey on online elements most important to direct marketers, visit www.targetmarketingmag.com/story/story.bsp?sid=48429&var=story and download a copy of Target Marketing magazine’s “Media Usage Forecast 2007.” Understanding the Value of Links to Search Engines You’ll find Part 2 of Jennifer Laycock’s valuable series on “Why Links Matter” at www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/009627.html. This installment looks at how both your internal and external links help search engines understand the content on your website. Your new term of the day for the next cocktail party or web committee meeting is “latent semantic indexing.” That’s another way of saying that the artificial intelligence of the things crawling over your website continues to grow. Stay tuned for Part 3. Online Global Campus at University of Illinois It hasn’t been easy, but the University of Illinois trustees have approved an initiative to expand online education with a new Global Campus designed to compete with University of Phoenix and other online for-profit institutions. The original proposal for a for-profit organization at Illinois was killed by faculty reaction. The University still plans to invest $20 million in this venture and to start making a profit within 5 years. Read a summary of events and issues by the Chicago Tribune here. The original proposal from May of 2006 is here. For the formal reaction of the faculty senate, visit www.senate.uiuc.edu/gc_res.asp. A dissertation or at least a business school case study lurks here in the trials and tribulations of creating major product change at a major public university. SEO Points for Press Releases Colleges and universities post press releases to websites on a regular basis. But most of the ones I’ve seen fail to take advantage of SEO tips that will help increase visibility about the topic of the release. Too often a release written for traditional distribution is simply added as new content that fills web space without any online communications capability. That’s why a visit back to a 2004 article by Shari Thurow at www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3351131 will pay dividends. My favorite tip was a reminder to create links from a press release to other information about the same topic on your website. Search engines of course like links, but so does anyone who takes time to read the information about the marvelous new great won by a faculty member in your biology department. Show them links to related life beyond what’s in the release. Marketing Opportunity with Yellowfin Direct David Hazeltine at Yellowfin Direct is searching for a direct marketing person with experience in higher education fund-raising for account management and new business development responsibilities. Integrating online and traditional direct marketing is the key to success. Interested? Send a query to splash@yellowfindirect.com. 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 in the New Year! April 3, Dallas, TX: CASE District IV. Program details forthcoming at www.caseiv.org/conference/?CONTAINERID=95&CRUMB=3. May 30-31, Chicago, IL: The Aslanian Group, Advanced Online Marketing. Details are at www.aslaniangroup.com/events/default.asp. June 4, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island: Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education National Conference, “Marketing Communications and New Technology: Keys to Successful Engagement.” Program details are at www.ccaeconf.org/en/. 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. Expand professional growth opportunities right on your campus. Ask about creating a seminar to increase the Internet Marketing skills of people on your campus. Schedule your presentation in 2007 soon. 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
2 December 2008 |