Another new year has started and like many of us, I’ve jumped on the bandwagon of committing to personal and professional improvements in the coming year (and this year, I’m determined these resolutions will extend beyond mid-January!). On that note, I’ve created a list of interactive marketing resolutions that each of us working in higher education marketing and enrollment management should take to heart in 2009.
Benchmark your current interactive marketing efforts
Amid your closet cleaning, desk organizing, renewed commitment to eating right or training for a marathon, make time to assess your interactive marketing practices - the good and the bad. Start by examining your current efforts in search engine marketing (both natural and paid) and email marketing. These are foundational interactive marketing channels and are ones you should master before jumping on the bandwagon of emerging tactics.
Start by spending a few moments making a list of how prospects would search for you online. Then, search those same keywords and phrases and see what happens.
Do you appear? Do your competitors?
Take note of your rankings (if your institution or programs appear at all) for both natural and paid search returns. Also, for instances where you are in the search results, what pages appear? I’ve worked with clients in the past year and found press releases from five years ago (about a program that had been discontinued the previous year) still showing up as the top return in natural search (not exactly what the institution had in mind!).
Keep notes on what you find because this is going to help determine what you’ll be working on related to search engine marketing in the remaining resolutions.
When assessing your email marketing efforts, keep the following in mind: email is a one-to-one conversation medium not a pipeline to shout, blast, nor broadcast a one-way dialogue.
It’s neither a panic button to generate last minute response nor an ‘extra kick’ for your direct mail campaigns. These short term response hits invariably lead to longer term problems such as your student pool tuning out to your email messages as they move closer to an enrollment decision.
Take a quick audit using the DemandEngine assessment tool to get an idea of areas where you may need to do some work.
Adopt the mindset of student value, not interruption
Interactive marketing programs that balance prospective student needs with enrollment goals can increase engagement levels throughout the recruitment cycle. Remember that the goal is an ongoing conversation that leads to a desire action (enrollment, registration, donation, etc). Identify how you can provide value to your target audience in a way that initiates and continues a dialog.
Develop an interactive marketing strategy
Your interactive marketing program should be a key strategy supporting your overall enrollment, fundraising or business plan for your department or the entire institution. Do away with ad-hoc marketing campaigns and replace them with intentional communications focused on a conversation. A contact plan should be a supporting component of your overall strategy and have a primary objective - to deepen the relationship with your target audience.
Plan to integrate all marketing channels
Coordinating online lead generation, email, telecounseling, travel and direct mail is worth the headache. Employing the time-tested principles of direct response marketing will ramp up your email program’s performance. Two examples (from undergraduate admission and continuing education, respectively) are:
• Reinhardt College, for example, uses prospective student email behavior to focus recruitment staff and to make informed calls.
• The University of Alabama College of Continuing Studies has integrated paid search marketing and email marketing to generate inquiries and begin immediate cultivation of these prospects.
By taking the time to work through each of these resolutions in the next twelve months, you’ll end 2009 on an interactive marketing high. Happy new year!
If you’ve got questions or examples of how you’ve already made progress on one of the resolutions above, post a comment to share with other readers.
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