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