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