Meet Denise Tolitsky, Higher Education Management Consultant and Executive Director of Marketing Operations here at SignificantSystems.org

Watch Denise’s Introductory Video 

Hi, I’m Denise Tolitsky, a Higher Education Management Consultant and Executive Director of Marketing Outreach for Significant Systems. In my role, I form a team at the university that will build community awareness of the program offerings in a territory about a hundred-mile radius from the campus. By doing this, I am talking with organizations, non-profits and churches about the university and their program offerings to get them interested in attending either Bachelor’s level education or graduate school at our partner universities.

Professionally, I spent 12 years working at a small investment firm, and the reason I went into higher education per Christian universities is the satisfaction that I was receiving by being involved in higher education, healthcare and the Christian aspect. And it brings joy and a great satisfaction personally and professionally to see students, working adults start finding their dream, and graduating with that dream by the help with what we do here at our higher education consulting firm, SignificantSystems.

Accreditation of the university is extremely important for transferring of credits, or moving onto a different school for a different degree. And regional accreditation is the preferred accreditation versus national accreditation. Partner universities that our higher education management consultancy represent hold regional accreditation, and it’s a very well-respected accreditation that you’ll be able to take any classes with us, and possibly transfer into an Ivy League school if need be.

Contact Significant Systems

To learn more about our higher education management consulting firm Significant Systems, check out our website. If you have any interest in pursuing our new model of education for your institution, Contact Us.

Remember, our goal is simple:

• Provide Broader Access
• Lower Tuition and Fees
• Leave your Institution with Less Debt and More Graduates
• Facilitate Education with a Purpose

Looking forward to our possible conversation!

Dr. Michael K. Clifford

Chairman

Higher Education Management Consultant

760.801.5021(My personal cell)

mkc@mclifford.com

http://www.significantsystems.org

Higher Education Market Research Guru, Dr. Michael Clifford Presents: Education Marketing 101

This article presents a video transcript of education consultant Dr. Michael Clifford, who talks about marketing and advertising for higher education institutions.

 So many Presidents have called me and said: "You know, I don't understand what to do with my marketing budget or my advertising. We've got all this money allocated and I can't figure out if it's working." Higher education marketing research is kind of like nailing Jello to a tree. You're trying to figure out if your advertising is working. And you know what? I tell them that's what the CEO of Proctor and Gamble said:the company that spends more money advertising than anybody on the planet. He said the same thing.

So where do you begin?

Begin with a High-Level Marketing Audit

When my higher education marketing firm is asked to come in and see if we can enable or enhance an institution's marketing efforts, we like to start with a high-level marketing audit. Just like a regionally accredited institution has to have a third-party audit for the Department of Education every year (a financial audit),we like to do a marketing audit. And it starts with a list of discovery questions.

At Significant Systems (our education management systems firm), we put a big team together: probably 15 or 20 people for a marketing audit. Anad agency would probably charge $50,000 for an audit of this sort, but we don’t regard ourselves as traditional consultants -that's not the way we work. We don't charge for this process at all. Instead, we like to put together a co-investment, co-laboring partnership, which is a whole other topic of how our higher education marketing research team works together. But on the marketing audit, we look for what's working first and foremost.

Things We Look At During a Marketing Audit

We do a deep data analysis of your existing students by demographic. We want to see the traditional 17 to 23-year-old who went from high school to a Christian college or university. We want to see the returning students that come back at 25 to 30 years old and want to live on the campus and finish their degree. We want to analyze adult degree completion, if you have it online on a campus, etc.

We get big data sets and we build very large data sets. From that, we start finding out what's working. We need to understand who the perfect student is for your higher education institution. It no longer makes sense to cast this wide net and run TV ads, print ads, banner ads, and buying inquiries from vendors who run banner ads. It doesn't work because if you don't get the right kind of student, the student's going to be unhappy, they're going to drop out, and you're going to lose all your marketing money.

Higher Education Marketing Research: Focus Groups

So we start first with a marketing audit, we have to understand the data. We then move to focus groups where we meet with alumni, we meet with students, we meet with faculty, we meet with people that have gone to work at a company that graduated from your institution, and we want to talk to the employers. From that focus group and from the data analysis, we start figuring out what's working.

Many times, our higher education marketing research reveals little nuggets here and there in the Affinity channels (Affinity channels meaning groups that have some reason that they love and support the institution) that are really working despite not being funded. And we find other buckets of money just being horribly wasted because somebody on the leadership team decided, "Wow! This is a great slogan, this is a great way to recruit students," but there's no data-driven analysis to support it. Usually you find out after you've spent the money that it didn't work.

So we research who the students are and why they came there in the first place: we look for those branding, unique differentiations in the marketing of why they came. We look for areas that are working well, then we start drilling down and drilling down on those areas. And that has to translate into the brand...we've got to get the brand right...we've got to get the website right (most of the websites are broken and in horrible shape, they're thrown up there like billboards or bulletin boards).

Your Institution’s Website and Social Media: Critical for Effective Marketing

People don't realize that the institution's website is the 24-hour, 7-day-a-week store. It's the retail presence of your institution, so it's got to be dressed up and beautiful and ready for business 24/7. And then we go social. We find those Affinity groups, and we use social media and we use boots on the ground to find them. But it begins with a marketing audit to figure out what's working and what isn't working.

And another thing we find - and I'll close with this – is that many times the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. At the leadership level, the marketing budget may be approved, but then it often turns out that one Dean gets to go do this and another Dean gets to go do that. This is a major a problem too when it comes to effective education management systems.

The marketing audit allows our higher education market research firm to create an integrated marketing plan, where we pull together everything we’ve learned (based on data, focus groups, analysis of students, number crunching and financial analysis of what's been spent). Using this, we'll be able to build an integrated marketing suggested plan for the institution.

We usually look at a 50-70% reallocation of what has traditionally been spent in marketing that will enhance the overall institution. It's no longer about marketing just one online program or two online programs. There has to be a brand, there has to be an integrated marketing plan to get the efficiencies of scale to recruit the right kind of students.

Contact Significant Systems

To benefit from this amazing service and totally free market audit, please don’t hesitate to contact Dr. Michael Clifford at Significant Systems! You can learn more about our education management consulting firm by checking out our website. If you have any interest in pursuing our new model of education for your institution, Contact Us.

Remember, our goal is simple:

• Provide Broader Access

• Lower Tuition and Fees

• Leave your Institution with Less Debt and More Graduates

• Facilitate Education with a Purpose

Looking forward to our possible conversation!

Dr. Michael K. Clifford

Chairman

760.801.5021(My personal cell)

mkc@mclifford.com

http://www.significantsystems.org

Featured Interview: Higher Education Consultants Michael Clifford with Mike McHugh, PART 6

In this six-part article series, higher education consultant Michael Clifford thoroughly interviews marketing guru Mike McHugh on everything college presidents and leaders should know about getting their brand visible, both online and offline.

Higher Education Consultant, Michael Clifford: How many people every day work in your company to help generate inquiries and branding opportunities for colleges and universities?

Mike McHugh: Our higher education market research firm has approximately 550 people within our company that are working on something for our clients every single day, whether it’s producing a print ad that’s going to go in a newspaper or a magazine, making phone calls to prospective students, developing digital assets… any number of different activities, and that’s spread across three different continents. Even domestically, we’re in ten different states. We’ve become kind of a virtual higher education market research firm in many ways.

Higher Education Consultant, Michael Clifford: Tell me about the importance of advertising and marketing a program versus a school brand.

Mike McHugh: Program versus school brands is a really interesting conversation. What universities will typically gravitate toward is branding of the university and the institution. The reality is consumers are typically looking for programs.

So again, if you go to search engine query data, which I think is really the best place to go in order to understand the mindset of a prospective student, the bulk of queries and searches on Google, Bing–different engines–is for individual programs, where consumers know what they want to study but they don’t know where they want to study it. That’s the most important place to be. You want to optimize keywords for your programs of study. You also want to do that much more so for the program area as opposed to the degree level.

One of the mistakes a lot of institutions make is they try to go after bachelor’s degrees or associate’s degrees. The degree level at that point in time is less important to the consumer than what they’re going to study. It’s not so important to them how long their studies are–they actually don’t want to think about how long they will be in school at that point in time. So when you’re marketing and branding your institution you really want to think about that.

The reality is that over time though you have to have an institutional brand that you’re known for. How do you differentiate across your institution, let alone each program individually? Because that’s where you can create efficiency: that’s where your scale opportunity comes from. It’s really the balance of both of them.

Higher Education Consultant, Michael Clifford: If I’m a president, I put you in front of my board and you have ten minutes to talk to them about their brand and marketing, what would you say?

Mike McHugh: I’m going to communicate what it is that our higher education market research firm wants to be known for, who it is that we view as our primary competitors for students, who our ideal student is and how we’re helping that student to make the decision about choosing our institution.

Higher Education Consultant, Michael Clifford: How often should a university at the board level stop and review their marketing plan?

Mike McHugh: At a board level I think that there should be a deep dive on an annual basis with a review probably every six months. Again, my belief is that the board level responsibility is to hammer home and make sure that everyone at the institution understands that marketing has to cover the entire institution. This is how is the university is perceived for new students, for existing students and for employers in the community… it’s every stakeholder of that university that’s important, and I think the board should understand that and understand how the university is reaching out to you and messaging to each of those constituencies.

Higher Education Consultant, Michael Clifford: How important are ongoing relationships?

Mike McHugh: Usually, we just contact alumni about making a donation: “Would you donate $500 a year. Alumni are ultimately the ambassadors of the university, so we really want to ideally engage them in that process. It’s not just about money… our higher education market research firm also wants their time, their talent, their referrals, their connections for our clients.

I think one of the companies that have really revolutionized marketing in many ways is Amazon, for a number of different reasons. One of the big reasons why people go to Amazon and use it as a site to make purchases is the review process. Having an engaged alumni network that is not just helping to support the foundation, but also giving positive referrals, being engaged with new students and connecting with people is absolutely critical.

Higher Education Consultant, Michael Clifford: I’ve heard you talk about the importance of career development and career placement, and I know you’ve just created a new company along those lines.

Give us some highlights about how important it is for an academic institution to help a student find their purpose and their career.

Mike McHugh: I believe it’s very critical. As the cost of tuition goes up–and it’s almost getting kind of ad nauseum with the amount of information about that–the focus on the value of education and the outcome becomes more critical all the time. The idea of education is a means to an end as opposed to an end in and of itself, and so placement is absolutely critical for the long-term viability of an institution. If your graduates aren’t getting jobs so that they can repay loans, be successful and accomplish their goals, you’re not going to have an effective and engaged alumni in order to help recruit new students.

So I think career preparation is absolutely critical. I think that the curriculum also has to be designed with that in mind. You have to make sure that your curriculum matches the skills that employers are looking for, and I think there are some universities that are doing a good job, as well as some that aren’t doing a good job. Certainly, the rate of change in the private sector makes it very difficult for an institution to keep up, but in order to be successful you have to be there.


Contact Significant Systems

To learn more about our higher education management consulting firm Significant Systems, check out our website. If you have any interest in pursuing our new model of education for your institution, Contact Us.

Remember, our goal is simple:

• Provide Broader Access
• Lower Tuition and Fees
• Leave your Institution with Less Debt and More Graduates
• Facilitate Education with a Purpose

Looking forward to our possible conversation!

Dr. Michael K. Clifford
Chairman
760.801.5021(My personal cell)
mkc@mclifford.com
http://www.significantsystems.org

Featured Interview: Education Management Consulting Expert, Michael Clifford with Mike McHugh, PART 5

Education Management Consulting Expert, Michael Clifford: If you were to approach a Christian college or university and they asked you to do a marketing audit, tell us a little bit about what they would have to do supply information to you.

What you would be looking for and what the benefits of that marketing audit might be for them at a high level? How could you help them reshape an integrated marketing plan as a result of your audit?

Mike McHugh: When our higher education marketing firm goes in to work with an institution on a marketing audit, there are really three things that we are working with them on. The first is getting a solid understanding of who their current students are and who are the students that they want to attract. We can work with them on focus groups, a lot of data analysis, customer profile and audience targeting to determine where their students are coming from geographically, but also determine their profile… what are their media consumption habits, what resonates with them and why did they pick that institution. We also talk with people that didn’t select the institution; they ultimately enrolled either at a different school, a community college or decided to delay their decision… we also want to understand those thought processes.

The second thing we want to do is get a good feel for the university, their brand, who it is that they want to be, how differentiated are they, how do they compare against their peer set or against their competitors, whether it’s on the residential or the online side.

The last area that our higher education marketing firm looks at is how to promote this message. What we find is that a lot of institutions start at the end. They ask, “How much money should I spend on media?” or “what keyword should I buy?” What our audit process and recommendation does is first find who the audience is that you have right now and that you want to have. The second thing is: who are you, who do you want to be and what do you want to be known for. After that, we can figure out how we go out and get that brand in front of your target customers in order to grow your overall student enrollment.

We bring it all together.

Education Management Consulting Expert, Michael Clifford: We hear a lot about of social media and the incoming college freshmen, how they are totally social media driven in the way they think and in the way they talk. They’re the first digital generation.

How important is social media–and maybe for those of us that are over 60–tell me what social media is and then we’ll go a little deeper.

Mike McHugh: There’s a whole separate conversation whether it is really social or antisocial media in terms of interacting but we can save that conversation for another day. At the core of an institution’s marketing, there are two things of which you’ve got to be cognizant… your website and your social media presence. That is the absolute place where a higher education marketing firm has to start, and it is your storefront in the digital and modern world, especially when you’re talking about these types of consumers. They are absolutely going to be researching you: looking for recommendations, reviews, content and other peoples’ perceptions and opinions about your institution on social media. That is primarily going to take the form of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

The reality about the younger generation is that if you’re looking at students coming out of high school, Facebook adoption and usage isn’t what it used to be. They are gravitating more towards Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter to a certain extent. So even within social media, it varies a lot by the specific demographic. How do you get into that?

There are advertising opportunities; you want to be able to develop your own page with rich amounts of information. This leads back to our same conversation about content. Social media is a great place to represent, display and get that content information out there for prospective students to interact. I like to think of social media as the way a prospective student has a campus tour from their couch.

They are able to virtually interact with other students, alumni and faculty… all at the same time. They’re doing this at the same time they’re watching television. It’s not a dedicated visit, but that’s what social media is to today’s youth.

Education Management Consulting Expert, Michael Clifford: How important is branding? We hear a lot about branding and the messaging of branding.

Tell me a little bit about how you approach an institution’s brand.

Mike McHugh: This is an area that is getting a lot more attention in the last couple of years, and I think it’s been missing from a lot of higher education marketing firms in the past, where universities have been extremely focused on branding, oftentimes from a sports perspective but not necessarily from an institutional perspective.

What we see with schools is that they are very good at branding and differentiating the category. We need to know if we are talking about a Northeast liberal arts college, or a Midwest public university. They can differentiate the category, but they are not good at articulating what makes them different within a cluster of Universities. If they can’t do that with us as their partners, how are they going to be able to do that with prospective students?

So while there is more pressure on overall students, the pie for higher educational enrollments isn’t growing the way it did in the past. It’s now more of a market share play; for lack of a better way to describe it. The ability to differentiate the brand becomes critical for higher education marketing firms. We’ve looked at it and described it a lot in terms of a comparison to a retail environment. When you have a relatively undifferentiated product being offered at a relatively undifferentiated price point, it becomes a commodity. Branding is ultimately how you separate yourself from other commodities in a premium value kind of competition. It’s critical.

Stay Tuned for Part 6

To continue reading Mike McHugh’s fascinating insights into higher education marketing practices for Christian colleges and universities, stay tuned for the final installment of this six-part article series, coming next week.

Contact Significant Systems

To learn more about our education management consulting firm Significant Systems, check out our website. If you have any interest in pursuing our new model of education for your institution, Contact Us.

Remember, our goal is simple:

• Provide Broader Access
• Lower Tuition and Fees
• Leave your Institution with Less Debt and More Graduates
• Facilitate Education with a Purpose

Looking forward to our possible conversation!

Dr. Michael K. Clifford
Chairman
760.801.5021(My personal cell)
mkc@mclifford.com

Featured Interview: Higher Education Consulting Expert Michael Clifford with Mike McHugh, PART 4

Higher education consulting expert, Michael Clifford: If I wanted to spend a million dollars recruiting students for my institution… give me a high-level boardroom presentation of how you would split out those million dollars.

Mike McHugh: The first thing our higher education marketing firm is going to look at is implementing the first 10% of that million dollars in funding creative and asset development… whether that’s TV commercials, brochures, collateral, the website. You have to have solid digital assets and/or tangible assets to be able to use for marketing.

After that, we’re looking at using 20-30% of our dollars for top-of-the-funnel brand awareness and demand creation, whether that’s television, online display, online video and radio. So the Hulu, YouTube - channels like that - are really growing. That will get more people looking for the institution.

The balance of the dollars then we’re primarily spending on pay-per-click marketing, search engine optimization and social media. We’ve now got people looking for education or maybe even looking for us. How do we make sure they find us and we capture that marketplace and ultimately move them to the matriculation process and turn them into students.

Higher education consulting expert, Michael Clifford: How important is television, radio, direct mail and brochures for a university compared to SEO and social media?

Mike McHugh: Our higher education marketing firm would really put SEO and social media as the first, most critical component of your marketing, because that is when a prospective student reaches the university. Again, this is kind of your digital storefront—it’s how they reach the university. They have to have a great experience and interaction there. The difference is that television, radio, print–they are all avenues to get them to come to that storefront in the first place.

If you don’t have a high degree of brand recognition, or you are trying to extend into a new market–you’ve got new degree offerings or programs you’re trying to get out there–that’s when you really want to look at these broad-reaching, mass mediums in order to bring people to your storefront.

So a lot of it depends on what your brand recognition is… the amount of demand for your marketplace, or how you want to use those. It’s not that they are the right channels, the wrong channels or necessarily the order. It depends on what your current marketing mix is and how you are performing for where you need to go. Social media, SEO, digital, your website… all absolutely critical and number 1.

Higher education consulting expert, Michael Clifford: How important are curriculum, textbooks, in other words - the actual academic product?

Mike McHugh: That’s in many ways, the core. That is the university. That is the product that we are bringing to the market to further consumers. It’s so critical. It has to be up-to-date and contemporary. It has to be something that meets the needs of the marketplace, so it has to help students gain knowledge that is relevant for them right now: help them achieve what their goals and career objectives are.

So it is important that curriculum be reviewed and updated, whether it’s the programs themselves or just how it’s being taught. E-books, virtual interaction: there is a whole concept around the gamification of education, to really fit with a lot of what is going on with today’s youth. All those things our higher education marketing firm finds to be really important to be innovative and cutting edge.

Stay Tuned for Part 5

To continue reading Mike McHugh’s fascinating insights into higher education marketing practices for Christian colleges and universities, stay tuned for the fifth installment of this six-part article series, coming next week.

Contact Significant Systems

To learn more about our education management consulting firm Significant Systems, check out our website. If you have any interest in pursuing our new model of education for your institution, Contact Us.

Remember, our goal is simple:

• Provide Broader Access
• Lower Tuition and Fees
• Leave your Institution with Less Debt and More Graduates
• Facilitate Education with a Purpose

Looking forward to our possible conversation!

Dr. Michael K. Clifford
Chairman
760.801.5021(My personal cell)
mkc@mclifford.com

Featured Interview: Higher Education Consultant Michael Clifford with Mike McHugh, PART 3

Higher Education Consultant, Michael Clifford: Let’s talk about paid SEO.

I think I understand what you said about free and paid, and how someone does it, what the budget is, how it all works…

Mike McHugh: Paid is essentially a Google web page, the top three listings, and then along the right are sponsored ads. So there would be a light shading there. That is where each time a user clicks on one of those links, the advertiser–in this case the university–pays per click for that. So what you do in the process of paid search marketing is to pick what keyword you want to bid on and how much you want to pay for those clicks.

Higher Education Consultant, Michael Clifford: Give me an example for a Midwestern university of a keyword.

Mike McHugh: You might be looking for Kansas universities or psychology degrees in Kansas. It might be a keyword that you say, “I want a psychology program, whether it’s at a bachelor’s or a master’s level,” where it doesn’t matter, you want to bid on that keyword.

Google, Bing and different search engines have different tools to estimate how much money you need to spend. At each of those different positions, you’re going to spend a different amount of money. It’s not a pure auction but the simplest way to think of it is: the higher you spend, the higher you’re going to be listed first-to-eighth position on a page, and you’re probably going to be looking somewhere for education keywords between $5 and $30 per click.

It has become a very competitive marketplace, and you’ll pay per click. Ideally, what higher education market research firms want to do is measure how many of those clicks ultimately turn into prospective students, and then how many of those prospective students are going to end up at the University so you have an idea of how cost effective the marketing channel is for you.

Higher Education Consultant, Michael Clifford: What kind of conversion rates are you seeing on SEO projects?

Mike McHugh: When we talk about conversion rates, there are two different rates that people typically talk about. The first is from a visitor to an inquiry. That’s when people come to your website that might ultimately become a prospective student. On that, you’re looking anywhere from 2-6% on average, depending upon the institution. Some can be higher; some can be a little bit lower.

Ultimately, higher education market research firms look at the people that request information about the institution off of your website… how many of those actually turn into an applicant or enrollment. That can vary dramatically between different marketing channels. On someone coming from an organic search, you’re looking somewhere in the 6-10% range of prospective students that actually will enroll. If someone’s coming from paid search marketing activities, you’re looking a little bit lower. Those are probably in the 3-5% range, again depending on the program and degree level.

Higher Education Consultant, Michael Clifford: We talk a lot about high touch/high tech. A lot of what you’re talking about is high tech to be able to geo-target people using Internet data, and big data techniques of analyzing people.

Once somebody gets on the phone, how important is that person in the contact center?

Mike McHugh: It is critical, and I totally agree with this high tech/high touch kind or approach. The motto that my grandfather taught me that I kind of go back to this:

Business goes where it feels comfortable.

There’s always the question of how higher education market research firms can help a consumer–even in a highly technological environment–get comfortable with that institution. If you do go through forums, surveys and different focus groups, the number one reason you will almost always hear from a prospective student of why they enrolled in the school is that they had a personal connection with the Admissions representative. They will tell you that that is a big part of what drove them to make that decision.

All of this technology has to be used in order to create efficient systems and processes to measure repeatable performance. It’s a Six Sigma-ish kind of aspect, but it wraps that around a human interaction touch point. Even online learning is becoming more interactive with virtual touch points and connections with people. That is ultimately the beauty of education: connecting people with knowledge. You’ve got to have people in order to do that, and then wrap the technology around it.

Don’t make the people get wrapped around the technology.

Higher Education Consultant, Michael Clifford: Good point! So it looks like the technology brings people to a phone call, and then the person on the phone–the recruiter, the information person–establishes a relationship. Then the enrollment process takes place.

How important is faculty with respect to the overall marketing presence, and student success to the overall integrated marketing plan of a university?

Mike McHugh: I don’t think the role of faculty can be understated. One of the things I feel very passionately about is that we don’t think of marketing in the right context oftentimes when it comes to institutions and schools. We sometimes think of a marketing job as one in which we create new students in the school. The reality is that higher education market research has to do with all parts of an institution. It’s new student messaging, it’s retaining of existing students. That’s on the marketing department; that’s on faculty.

Faculty has got to be involved in new student recruitment. Also it’s on the alumni. It’s on getting information, bumper stickers, t-shirts… anything in the hands of different people. Every time a faculty member goes out to dinner and they’re wearing their university shirt, they’re marketing and branding that university. Every time that they interact with a prospective student, they’re branding and marketing that university. So we have to think of marketing as everyone’s responsibility, and it has to be evaluated across the entire institution… not just new students.

Stay Tuned for Part 4

To continue reading Mike McHugh’s fascinating insights into higher education marketing practices for Christian colleges and universities, stay tuned for the fourth installment of this six-part article series, coming next week.


Contact Significant Systems

To learn more about our higher education market research firm Significant Systems, check out our website. If you have any interest in pursuing our new model of education for your institution, Contact Us.

Remember, our goal is simple:

• Provide Broader Access
• Lower Tuition and Fees
• Leave your Institution with Less Debt and More Graduates
• Facilitate Education with a Purpose

Looking forward to our possible conversation!

Dr. Michael K. Clifford
Chairman
760.801.5021(My personal cell)
mkc@mclifford.com

Featured Interview: Academic Coordinator Michael Clifford with Mike McHugh, PART 2

In this six-part article series, higher education consultant Michael Clifford thoroughly interviews marketing guru Mike McHugh on everything college presidents and leaders should know about getting their brand visible, both online and offline.

Academic Coordinator, Michael Clifford: What do you see as some of the upcoming challenges in the digital space, and what are you doing to stay ahead of those?

Mike McHugh: There are a few difficult challenges in the digital space for higher education market research firms. The biggest thing that’s happening on the digital side is what’s going on with search engine optimization. On the digital side, there are a couple of big players: Facebook, YouTube and Google. Looking at Google, where education is one of the top ten marketplaces across all different industries also, the main dynamic is not only is post-secondary enrollment slowing down and actually declining, but total search query volume on Google was down year-over-year in the last quarterly report they released.

This means that you’ve got a finite volume of people out there looking for education and degree programs right now, but you have more and more entrants into the marketplace. The for-profit sectors have been very aggressive historically. The traditional university and not-for-profit sector now is beginning to create more online programs; they’re getting more aggressive and assigning more dollars to their marketing.

The result is a pie that’s being split in more and more ways, and that leads to less efficiency, higher cost per inquiry, higher cost to attract students, more focus on brand differentiation: just a more competitive and difficult marketplace. That’s really what I think presents the challenge in the digital side. You no longer just have this rising tide that everyone could be successful. Higher education market research firms have to now separate themselves and the bar is really going up on a daily basis on digital marketing.

Academic Coordinator, Michael Clifford: Okay, so you've just hit on the back end of the front end of the marketing.Tell me about the business process systems, at a high level, to support something like PPC.

Mike McHugh: A lot of this comes down to a technology-enabled process. Ultimately, if higher education market research firms want to be able to do this at scale, you're managing a portfolio of anywhere from 100 to 100,000 keywords depending upon the number of degrees… the geographical scale of an institution. Different websites and search engines have their own interfaces, but usually you're looking at some kind of either proprietary system or specific bid management systems in order to manage that portfolio of keywords.

In addition, you're keeping track of how much money is spent on each keyword, how much you spend on a daily basis, on a monthly basis, what are the performance metrics of those and then making adjustments. There are all sorts of additional complexity around different match types, broad matching, negative matching - complexity that's there. At the most rudimentary place, higher education market research firms need a system for what keywords you want to bid on, how much money did you spend on them and what did you get for that amount of money that you spent.

Academic Coordinator, Michael Clifford: What are the benefits of your current media choices and SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

Mike McHugh: Search engine optimization is the process of helping to get your website to rank better on search engines, so right now essentially it’s a Google world in terms of search engine marketplace. Consumers will go out, they’ll type in individual keywords, so a set of Google results is their organic listing–you don’t have to pay to be in there, but they’re determining what are the most relevant and useful sites for consumers? So the job of an SEO is to help get a website to rank better in that algorithm that Google, Bing, Yahoo, different search engines use.

Academic Coordinator, Michael Clifford: If you were talking to the president of a Christian college or university and they had no knowledge of SEO how would you get them started?

Could you give me a few easy steps of what you would do to help them?
 

Mike McHugh: I’d boil it down to probably two easy steps. Essentially, our higher education market research firm refers to it as “on page” and “off page.” Without getting too complex, “on page” is a website that is set up to be search engine friendly. It’s easy to find. Think of it as having to give someone directions to make it easy to get to your house. You want to have a clear turn left here, turn right here–don’t make it convoluted. The second thing is to focus on putting out content and information on your website that consumers want or need.

One suggestion we have been making to colleges and universities is to move the ownership of SEO into the librarians’ hands. We’re finding that librarians have a lot of technical expertise that they didn’t have 20 years ago. They’re also the keepers of a lot of content for the university.

Academic Coordinator, Michael Clifford: Do you have any comments along those lines?

Mike McHugh:I don’t know that we’ve specifically explored that. I would agree that if you think the library has many ways of archiving and being able to manage digital and creative assets, which is where a lot libraries are moving (more to the digital realm), it makes a lot of sense; but yet my question is where can you get a person that can control all the different pieces of content of information by the univerThat’s the thing
when higher education market research firms talk to schools; they think, “I have to create all this content.” The reality is it’s all over the university–they just don’t have it harnessed in any one place. Getting it there–the idea of promoting it and displaying it on the website–that’s easy. It’s just getting all those digital assets into one place in an inventory. That’s the challenging part, so I think that the library idea is really good.

Stay Tuned for Part 3

To continue reading Mike McHugh’s fascinating insights into higher education marketing practices for Christian colleges and universities, stay tuned for the third installment of this six-part article series, coming next week.

Contact Significant Systems

To learn more about our education management consulting firm Significant Systems, check out our website. If you have any interest in pursuing our new model of education for your institution, Contact Us.

Remember, our goal is simple:

• Provide Broader Access 
• Lower Tuition and Fees 
• Leave your Institution with Less Debt and More Graduates 
• Facilitate Education with a Purpose

Looking forward to our possible conversation!

Dr. Michael K. Clifford
Chairman
760.801.5021(My personal cell)
mkc@mclifford.com