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

Featured Interview: Business Management Consultant, Michael Clifford with Mike McHugh, PART 1

Who is Mike McHugh?

Mike McHugh runs marketing for Plattform |www.plattform.com| one of the largest companies that provides inquiries for colleges and universities nationwide. He has been in the business for 15 years, and the company has just celebrated their 25-year anniversary in July. It is specifically focused on higher education and helping recruit new students.

Business Management Consultant, Michael Clifford: Do you have a clear definition of your target market, and how do you recruit students?

Higher Education Marketing Consultant, Mike McHugh: We tend to kind of think of marketing from a funnel perspective, not unlike the admissions funnel, marketing funnel, etc. So we ask ourselves, “how do we create demand in the marketplace either for individual programs; is there a lack of name recognition for institution; do consumers know about the specific program offering?” We need to know if this is a viable and/or growing degree field down through paid search, organic search and how we kind of capture people that are interested and are looking for a specific institution or that degree (but they don't know where they want to go).

So you find a lot of prospective students who have an idea of what field they want to study, but they don't know where they want to study. It is our job as marketers to help an institution figure out, “How do I capture those people that are out there looking for a home,” in order to fill their degree needs. That can run from collateral development to web marketing, traditional media, digital…anything.

Business Management Consultant, Michael Clifford: Tell me more about analyzing existing student and alumni to develop a profile to find the right kind of student. We’re now more and more in the online world--it’s not how many students you enroll, it’s the quality of the student you enroll and whether they are right for the program.

How do you do that technically and creatively?

Mike McHugh: There are multiple pieces to that. Our higher education marketing firm prefers a very data driven approach, so that even though we’ll do some qualitative measures such as focus groups, what we really get is a student population census. Essentially, we’re looking for name, address and other information about consumers. We can then use different tools to match that up against census track information, media habits, income levels by different communities. It’s a pretty rich profile around a person, and is amazing when you look at the personas we develop for all our clients.

Our marketing firm can help them understand where their students shop, and how they use products:

• Are they a Whole Foods kind of consumer, or are they a Costco?
• Are they buying things in bulk?
• Do they rent or do they own?
• What’s the estimated household income where they live?
• What kind of magazines do they read?
• Where do they tend to go on vacation?

Once we get a good understanding of what this student looks like outside of the classroom we have an understanding of how we actually message to them and what things are important to them.

• Are they career advancers?
• Are they career changers?
• Are they looking for a degree for mastery, or is it more of a utilitarian approach?

The degree is a means to an end as opposed to just an end in and of itself. Our higher education marketing consultants want to be able to understand that so we can understand how to reach them: how do we find the right message points that are going to resonate with that consumer.

Business Management Consultant, Michael Clifford: If you were the president of a college about to embark on launching an online degree program, what are the first 2-4 steps from a marketing perspective that you would take?

Mike McHugh: The first thing that I would do from a marketing perspective is start at the end! I’m a very big Stephen Covey fan, “begin with the end in mind.” What are the degrees that that students need in order to accomplish their goals? What’s the job market look like wherever I’m going be recruiting? What’s growing, what’s in demand, what’s not being served? If I can start there and have a good, positive outcome for students, I think I’m going to be successful.

Next, I want to figure out what degrees - what programs - I want to have in order to help students achieve those outcomes. Then I start working on how to promote those. Ultimately, if you’ve got a great product, it will promote itself to a certain extent. Next our higher education marketing firm figures out whether it’s TV, newspaper or the radio and what keywords. Those kind of tactical decisions are less important than right product, right place and right message. Those are the most important things to focus on.


Stay Tuned for Part 2

To continue reading Mike McHugh’s fascinating insights into higher education marketing practices for Christian colleges and universities, stay tuned for the second 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

Higher Education Consulting: Online Education is the New Endowment...

Higher education management consultant, Dr. Michael K. Clifford, talks about the necessity of modern universities and colleges getting online.

Well, we are all facing yet another incoming enrollment for the fall!

Significant Systems, our unique nonprofit higher education consulting organization, offers money, management, and marketing to help enhance online operations to provide surplus funding for a select number of high-quality institutions. We believe:

“Online Education is the New Endowment”

For Example: An endowment of $100 million is usually allowed to spend approximately 4% of the return-on-investment each year. Our higher education management firm’s model will show how 1,500 online students are equal to a 4% return-on-investment on a $100 million endowment.

15,000 online students offer a return-on-investment equal to a $1 billion endowment for your institution.

Which begs the question: how long will it take your Development Office to generate a $100 million+ endowment versus how quickly we can collaboratively generate 1,500 or more online students?

We are seeking to fund institutions that are perfectly positioned to take advantage of our no risk funding. Our higher education consulting firm offers our unparalleled successful experience in helping to create, plus manage, the most successful online higher education schools ever created.

Please consider scheduling a 15-minute phone call with me personally to dream together about creating a proven new model for your institution to help broaden access using technology to reach more people with your Mission-Objective, while creating significant financial stability via surplus for your institution?

Sincerely,

Dr. Michael K Clifford, Chairman

Dr. Michael Clifford is a higher education thought leader and entrepreneur with a passion for making higher education attainable to anyone with the dream of a degree.

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

Academic Coordinator Answers the Question: What’s the Big Deal About Christian Higher Education? PART 3

In this three-part article series, senior academic advisor Wayne Clugston provides insights on historical traditions and experiential knowledge needed to make academic innovation relevant both to past and future purposes.

Welcome to the final installment of this three-part article series in which we speak to academic coordinator and education management consultant Wayne Clugston on a variety of issues surrounding Christian higher education in the 21st Century. Let’s continue…

Question: Traditionally, online education has been delivered by part time adjunct faculty.  What are your thoughts going forward as this distribution matures regarding full-time faculty versus adjunct faculty?

Clugston:“The adjunct instructional model in online programs was introduced pragmatically, out of necessity, to offer learning in an environment essentially external to the university. Gradually, by design, there is a trend to integrate higher education online programs into the campus environment--a model likely to be widely adopted.

“With this change, full-time roles are being developed for online professors. The greatest contribution of the model so far--besides legitimizing the online modality--has been the measurable improvement in the collegiality and professional development of online instructors and academic coordinators. This pattern, in turn, stimulates shared commitment to quality and academic excellence.”

Question: How can an institution figure out what online degrees to offer that will be in demand three to seven years from now?

Clugston:“The general rule in the marketplace is that many of the jobs that are popular at the point a university student completes the four-to-six years it commonly takes to earn a bachelor's degree didn't exist when that person's higher education journey began. These rapid changes apply to new areas of expertise and knowledge concentrations rather than to entirely new degree programs,” explains higher education management consultant, Clugston.

“Tracking Department of Labor statistics provides important knowledge of changes in employment profiles and trends on a national scale. An important balancing consideration involves gathering data related to particular affinity market opportunities associated with the university. Online degree programming needs to address "localized" learning needs as well as national ones. As competition for online students increases, this focus is essential.”

Question: We hear parents reacting to the sticker shock of expensive general education at traditional Christian college and universities.  Can you offer any solutions to help maximize affordability for a family whose student desires a four-year Christian degree?

Clugston:“Private colleges and universities that find a way to offer selected General Education courses online at a reduced tuition rate are discovering that this approach attracts students. (And, of course, eases parents' financial burdens.) But, it also contributes to student retention. Such "special-rate" courses are being offered successfully online as a way to set them apart from traditional offerings and schedules. Students fit them into their total degree plan at their convenience.

“Particular groups of students benefit from them: high school students seeking advanced placement, international students wishing to accumulate some credits before coming to the United States, and students in designated special situations. Some institutions allow one or two such online courses to be taken each year by every student--as an ongoing retention incentive. In the future, residential campus enrollment in baccalaureate programs may consist of upper-level students primarily.”

Question: Can you, as an academic coordinator, cite any legitimate studies that enforce the fact that online learning might be more effective than traditional classroom experiences?

Clugston:“Many studies have shown that the effectiveness of college-level learning in an online environment is equal to or greater than in the traditional classroom environment. The most recent data collected by Eduventures, the leading research and higher education management consulting organization, show that the percentage of consumers who believe the quality of online learning is equal to the quality of classroom-based learning has steadily increased over the last decade or so: 58% percent held this view in 2000; 71% held it in 2013.”

Question: If you were president of small Christian college or university what immediate strategic changes would you make to ensure that your institution not only survives, but thrives for the next ten years.

Clugston:“The most important strategic questions I would consider are: (1) "In ten years what balance should exist between the university's on-campus, classroom-based degree programs and its online degree programs?" and (2) "To what extent should they be integrated?" These questions, then, require consideration of necessary changes.”

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

Higher Education Management Consultant Answers the Question: What’s the Big Deal About Christian Higher Education? PART 2

Welcome to the second installment of this three-part article series in which we speak to higher education management consultant, Wayne Clugston on a variety of issues surrounding Christian higher education in the 21st Century. Let’s continue…

Question: Technology is driving the placement of all academic materials, student records, and management of faculty into the Internet "Cloud." Do you have any thoughts regarding "anytime anywhere" accessibility to all of these areas?

Clugston: “Increasingly, we are encountering university leaders who recognize this paradigm shift. Mobility and immediate access to data continue to spiral as personal values in contemporary culture. It's important for university leaders to respond, to create technological access to learning opportunities that are not time and place bound. Such steps diminish the distinctions between on-campus (internal) and external learning opportunities,” says education management consultant, Clugston.

“In the near future, cloud-based learning support services will be the preferred model--providing single-location access to all data relevant to a learning program, resources for collaboration, capabilities for digital portfolio development, and opportunities for immediate learning engagement.”

Question: How much does a college degree contribute to a student's life-long well being?

Clugston: “The lifetime earning differential between those who have a bachelor's degree and those who don't is widely known, and significant. At the same time, the developmental contribution of the bachelor's degree experience is rarely fully measurable on graduation day. But, the broad knowledge perspective, critical thinking abilities, and communication skills gained in a bachelor's degree program become strong influencers over time. They constitute an informing vision that enables individuals to change, to grow, and to continue to learn on a life-long basis.”

Question: We talk about Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 interactivity in online courses and textbooks. What advantage is there for an institution to invest in a Level 3 interactivity?

Clugston: “Technologically driven interactivity needs to be carefully designed in the online classroom at every level. Level 1 and Level 2 technologies tend to be effective in identifying concepts and in reinforcing memory and knowledge. Level 3 interactions are more comprehensive--designed to stimulate and measure higher level cognitive and affective behavior.
“Questions such as the following should be considered by higher education management consultants to ensure optimal use of technological widgets at every level:

• How does the interactivity contribute to learning?
• Can its effectiveness be measured?
• Does the interactivity allow exploration of theories or concepts that are central to the course?
• Does manipulation of the technology stimulate creative or critical thinking related to course outcomes?”

Question: What have been some of the objections you have heard from traditional faculty when you as an education management consultant have been involved in helping an institution launch online degrees?

Clugston:“Individuals who recognize that the post-traditional learning environment is a reality tend to have concerns, rather than objections. However, their primary concern is usually not about being displaced; it's about being unprepared to move into an online instructional modality. Common issues relate to:

(1) Developing course materials in a non-semester format, and
(2) Adopting facilitative methodology to replace their familiar lecture-based methodology, as a means of motivating and supporting student inquiry.

“When faculty members with classroom teaching experience are orientated to the principles of learner-centered inquiry and shown how students' data-driven, step-by-step progress in relation to course learning outcomes can be monitored and measured, their openness to the online instructional environment usually changes in positive ways.”

Question: What tips would you as a higher education management consultant give leadership regarding ongoing management of online faculty whether full time or adjunct?

Clugston:“A mentoring model has many advantages. All of us who teach at a university level reflect characteristics of professors we've known in our undergraduate and undergraduate classroom experiences. In the same way, an experienced, effective online mentor and higher education management consultant can be an inspiration to a colleague who is teaching online for the first time. Online methodologies are still in their infancy. It is important, therefore, to arrange Faculty Forums where successes and failures are discussed and online pedagogy is fine-tuned in a collaborative community of professional practitioners.
Stay Tuned for Part 3

To read more of higher education management consultant Wayne Clugston’s thoughts, stay tuned for the final installment of this three-part article series, coming next week.
Contact Significant Systems

To learn more about our education management consulting firmSignificant 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

Education Management Consultant Answers the Question: What’s the Big Deal About Christian Higher Education? PART 1

In this three-part article series, senior academic advisor Wayne Clugston provides insights on historical traditions and experiential knowledge needed to make academic innovation relevant both to past and future purposes.

 Wayne Clugston is a higher education management consultant and a pioneer in developing and delivering curriculum designed for adult learners. After 18 years of administrative responsibilities on traditional Christian college campuses, including leadership as an academic dean, he formed an educational services company that developed an “Organizational Management” degree-completion curriculum and successfully licensed it to more than 60 accredited colleges and universities located in 23 different states. Many of these clients were faith-based institutions that were poised to address working adults’ educational needs: ready to embrace change.

An entrepreneur, Clugston is co-founder of Bridgepoint Education, Inc., now a public company which owns two regionally accredited universities serving more than 75,000 students, many completing undergraduate and graduate degree programs online.

In his role as senior academic advisor and education management consultant, he provides insights on historical traditions and experiential knowledge needed to make academic innovation relevant both to past and future purposes. Clugston earned a BA degree in English from Roberts Wesleyan College and an EdD in Educational Leadership from Seattle University.

Question: Tell me the attributes of the best Christian professor in your memory?

Clugston:“I was most influenced by Christian professors who were scholarly co-journeyers, models of Christian grace who facilitated intellectual inquiry and the pursuit of truth—women and men who didn’t tolerate easy answers.”

Question: You have worked with hundreds of Christian college and university presidents, provosts, and faculty. Tell me the attributes that you have seen in a president that you admire.

Clugston: “The most effective presidents are individuals who have passionate vision, tenacious focus, and wisdom to creatively blend strengths of their colleagues, insights from providential perspectives, and constituent participation to build an interdependent community.”

Question: How do you integrate an institution’s cosmology of faith into textbooks and courses?

Clugston:“In most instructional situations in the Christian university, you accomplish it best by creating an open environment intentionally designed to stimulate incisive discussion and personal discovery within the framework and tenets of the Christian faith. Henri Nouwen's observation is worth considering:

"Teaching, from the point of view of a Christian spirituality, means the commitment to provide the fearless space where questions can be responded to, not by prefabricated answers, but by an articulate encouragement to enter into them seriously and personally."”

Question:How can a Christian college or university make sure that its online adjunct faculty represent the institution in the same manner as a full-time faculty member might for the traditional campus student experience?

Clugston:“Using the same hiring criteria for full-time, on-campus faculty and for adjuncts is the soundest approach: it creates continuity in institutional purpose and collegiality in relationships—factors which support a governance structure that effectively includes representation by both full-time and adjunct faculty,” says higher education management consultant, Wayne Clugston.

Question: We hear so much about retention or persistence. We hear that Christian colleges and universities have a higher graduation rate than other regionally accredited institutions. What tips can you give the leadership of a Christian college or university with respect to improving its overall graduation rate?

Clugston:“It’s all about community building and creating meaningful relationships—things that many Christian universities do well. In the online environment particularly, supportive one-on-one communication with students is essential. These personal contacts by student services advisors need to be strategically and frequently made in the days and weeks immediately following enrollment. Online instructors should be specifically trained to be “encouragers” who are always attentive to opportunities to respond holistically to student needs.”

Stay Tuned for Part 2

To read more of higher education management consultant Wayne Clugston’s thoughts, stay tuned for the second installment of this three-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

Marketing Strategies for Higher Education: Fasten Your Seatbelts for the Mobile Revolution!

This fall's College Freshman is the first, born-digital generation. Are you equipped to help shape them?

About ten years ago, I was telling Dr. Michael Clifford about all of the training and education we were delivering to corporations over mobile and handheld devices. I said: “One day students will learn, and perhaps complete entire degrees, via mobile devices.” After the laughter died down, he said he would seriously discuss this futuristic point.

Fast forward to ten years later, and we are in the midst of that mobile revolution.

After the launch of the groundbreaking iPhone, Android OS, tablets, and other seriously usable mobile innovations we have a global society of seven billion mobile devices, covering 80-90% of the world’s population (if you count those of us who have two or more devices) and a culture that conducts over 50% of its online social interactions through mobile devices (Zuckerberg, 2011).

Couple that with the average college-aged mobile device user checking their device 115 times a day (Roster, 2013) and you have the makings of a revolution. Not to mention the fact that the cost of delivering knowledge, health information, and accredited education online and through mobile devices has come down substantially. Do your marketing strategies for higher education take all of this into account?

In fact, one of the highlights of my 2012 was getting a call from Michael stating that he had become a true believer based on conversations with Apple, publishers, and schools across the globe that indicated that the vision we set out on as higher education consultants over ten years ago was finally starting to gain traction in the marketplace of ideas as well as produce actionable, tangible offerings.

About Significant Systems and our Marketing Strategies for Mobile Higher Education

SignificantTechnologies, a subsidiary of www.significantsystems.org, is a perfect example, selling licensable courses that are low cost, mobile accessible, iTunes U and iBook integrated, and recommended by credit for the ACE, making it easy to transfer between 1800+ schools. As higher education consultants, we don’t just want to bring these to the market though: we want to bring them to your school.

The ability to integrate these courses and online educational resources, like iBooks and iTunes U content, into the existing accredited and personalized system allows for a far greater impact than just another set of online courses delivered on small devices. Our marketing strategies for higher education aim to combine both high tech and high touch and this means supporting the personalized learning experience traditional institutions provide to ensure student success.

While many aspects of MOOCs and other recent learning innovations show great promise, what good is the technology if hundreds of thousands of students start courses but low completion rates lead to less student success and ultimately interferes with the degree, job, and life purpose someone is called to? Isn’t that what we’re really about as educators and innovators?

Your Own Digital Publishing Company?

Our higher education consulting firm is now scheduling appoints for our private one-on-one webinar presenting how a regionally accredited institution can create or enhance their digital publishing company. Our marketing strategies for higher education now include over 100 super high quality textbooks, which can be fully branded and customized by faculty.

These books will lower the cost for the student by 2/3rds while creating income for faculty. Most importantly, these books can be inculcated with the cosmology of the institution. And these can be available under the institution’s brand on Apple’s iTunes and iBooks for instant broadband distribution in 155 countries globally.

We’d love to get your thoughts. Please let us know if we can schedule webinar for your institution to demonstrate our fresh digital learning assets for your institution.

Contact Significant Systems

To learn more about Dr. Michael Clifford and 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

Higher Education Consulting Firm: Calling All Leaders

Every institution should have clearly defined Mission-Goals they would like to accomplish in the next ten years.

In our discussion with Christian colleges and universities over the last 15 years, we have found most Presidents can’t even think about one or two of their most passionate Mission-Goals because they are forced to deal with the "crisis at hand," or they have settled into the short-term planning cycles of one to two years.

None of this is evil. But our Bible clearly states that, "The people perish without a vision." Good leadership states, "Vision perishes without the people." 

Some Mission-Goals we have heard from Presidents and academic coordinators are:

• Help more students receive a Christ-centered education

• Retire debt

• Lower Tuition and fees

• Broader Access

• Less Student Debt

• Purposeful Graduates Career Preparedness

• Build or improve buildings

• Scholarships

• Faculty Sabbaticals or Research

• Support Internships or Missionaries

• International Outreach

• Increase institutional salaries

• Create/Publish original Academic content

What are some of the major areas that contribute to a higher educational organization’s stagnation?

• Lack of a "Culture of Innovation"

• Slow or outdated Processes

• Negative Nellies

• Regulatory Issues

• Lack of Institutional Buy-In

• No Vision for the Use of the Cash Surplus

• Faculty resistance

• Balanced Budget

• Debt Ratios

• Uninterested Board of Trustees

• Unreasonable Expectations

• Lack of Mission-Goals Alignment

Once a leader or academic coordinator can collaboratively focus their entire organization on a few key elements, we have seen passionate synergism accelerate the all-important metrics of an institution.

Leadership

Here at our higher education consulting firm, we have found that the keys to achieve the funding to fulfill the stated Mission-Goals include:

Higher Education Management Key # 1: Relentlessly analyze, optimize, and execute re negotiations on every single line item expense for the entire institution. Our experience has shown us that institutions can create 10-30% "found-funds" through this disciplined process.

Higher Education Management Key # 2: Outsourcing to experts with funding online operations. Aligning economic and mission objectives with key outsource partners that have the expertise and upfront funding to propel online operations is the fastest pathway for an institution to create surplus funding to achieve Mission-Goals.

Higher Education Management Key # 3: Motivating all stakeholders to come together in a highly focused strategy of execution via "prayer and action" to achieve the Mission-Goals. Leadership requires getting everybody on the same page. Once every stakeholder can clearly articulate not only the Mission-Goals, but where they individually are in the collective timeline of success, the passionate synergism accelerates the goals.

We believe from experience that achieving an institution's Mission-Goals is attainable if all three of these keys are deliberately embraced.

Our nonprofit higher education consulting firm carefully selected five partners who love Jesus, cannot be hired for a paycheck or even consulting fees, share a mutual passion to enhance Christian education, have world-leading track records in their very specific deep domain expertise, and are collectively focused on coming alongside a President of a Christian college or university to move you from surviving to thriving. For us, this is a ministry within the business world. 

We are a team. It is our passion. 

Here is what we look for in a partner school before we consider investing:

• Mission Alignment (passion)

• Geographic Location

• Underserved Market

• Niche Programs

• Plans for Growth

• Strong Affinity Channels

• University Reputation

• Academic Quality/Integrity

• Culture of Innovation

• Institutional Integrity

Our higher education marketing consultants were recently in a meeting with one of the world's largest faith-based charities. I was completely caught off guard and then remarkably blessed after the meeting when I realized the Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Chief Operating Officer, and President of the organization could articulate their Mission-Goals by finishing each other's sentences as though one person was speaking. However, the most remarkable revelation for me was they were speaking in terms of 10 years, 50 years, 100 years and 150 years. 

It reminded me of an admonition I learned from my spiritual mentor, Dr. Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ International (Cru) in which he taught us, "Live as if Christ is returning in a moment, but plan as if He will return in 100 years." Many times in my life, ministry, and/or business I have forgotten this very sage advice. 

Academic coordinators and education leaders, beware of industry experts who tell you, "You cannot plan beyond three years." This may be wise advice if it means a Ten-Year Strategy to achieve your Mission-Goals must include monthly and yearly "recalibrations" based on achieving certain metrics. But do not lose sight of the Big Vision. 

Before we close together, one special comment regarding a President's role within an institution. Over the last 30 years I have had the pleasure of serving many leaders, especially in Christendom. 

Playing a small role, I have served Oral Roberts during his growth of Oral Roberts University, Pat Robertson as he built Regents University, Dr. Bill Bright at the launch of Kings College in New York City, Father Michael Scanlon when he became President of Steubenville University, and Dr. Jerry Falwell before Liberty University had online programs. 

Yes, I served, consulted, encouraged, prayed, and volunteered; but most importantly, I learned by observing. What I learned is that these leaders all had similar character traits. They were:

• Humble

• Gentle

• But Powerful in their communication of their mission and brand.

SignificantSystems.org is a higher education consulting firm dedicated to providing the needed funding and expertise to enhance Christian Higher Education. We come alongside the institutional leadership to understand the top two Mission-Goals to be achieved in ten years. Then we collaboratively serve together to create a strategic plan for success. We are not consultants; we are co-laborers in the harvest.

Our Approach is Deliberate:

• Discovery: Data collection

• Diagnose Complex Problems: Build Detailed Financial Models

• Design Mission-Goals Solutions: Ten Year Strategy

• Deliver the Mission-Goals: Execute, Evaluate & Optimize

Once we understand your Ten Year Strategy, we provide the Money, Management, and Marketing to super-charge the plan. We do all of this with no upfront funding or risk from the institution. 

In closing, Christian higher education will be facing both incredible challenges and opportunity simultaneously in the next decade. We encourage Presidents and their leadership teams to dream and dream big. Do not become discouraged, nor sweat the small stuff. Keep your eye on finishing the race. Together we can achieve far more than we can imagine if indeed we dream big.

We'd love to get your thoughts, so please don’t hesitate to Contact Us – we can even schedule a webinar for your institution. This will help us understand if our providing Money, Management & Marketing for your institution can super-charge your Mission-Goals.

Contact Significant Systems

To learn more about Dr. Michael Clifford and 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