According to a 2012 E-Expectations study by Noel-Levitz, 93 percent of prospective high-school students remain willing to provide schools with their e-mail addresses. Nearly 70 percent will readily consume marketing e-mails even from schools with which they are not familiar.

           1.  Define your goals

Start by defining your goals. They must be integrated into your overall content strategy. Goals must be very specific: for instance, increase prospects by 12%.

Before developing a newsletter, it’s important to ask yourself what focus it will have and how that fits into your overall marketing strategy. Readers have short attention spans that are continuously getting shorter. If they don’t immediately see something relevant and interesting, your email gets deleted. Producing unique content by segment returns routinely justifiable results. The University of British Columbia features several newsletters to appeal to diverse audiences interested in its various programs. Dalhousie University provides email newsletter templates and consulting services to assist its various departments in developing campaigns consistent with its brand.

            2. Define your audience

Who do you want to reach and stay in touch with? Should you have one or several newsletters? This can be a matter of resources and commitment within each department, but the closer the content comes to meeting the reader’s specific interests, the better. Of course, recruiting future students is always a top priority and newsletters can be an effective tool in this regard.

Example: The University of Waterloo provides a very simple sign-up process, clearly showing a contact name, an example of a previous issue and the “unsubscribe” option.

Many colleges and universities reach out to current students and the college community by letting them select which newsletter is most relevant to them.

Example: Capilano University encourages students to sign up for newsletters in one or many subjects.

Newsletters are a popular resource for connecting with alumni, particularly for fundraising efforts.

Example: The University of Toronto offers a newsletter specifically for their senior alumni (over 55), with PDF copies that are easily printable.

            3. Determine how often you will publish

Maintaining a regular schedule is great, but your priority should be on developing relevant content to share. If you send too frequently, you risk recipients unsubscribing from being perceived as a spammer. Some newsletters let new subscribers choose frequency-specific options (“weekly”, “monthly”, “bimonthly”, etc.). Testing which day of the week and times of year are most effective, along with the relative success of all other aspects of your publication, should be an ongoing process.

            4. Continuously develop your contact list

Generate awareness of your newsletter:

• On your website
• Ask students to sign up on social media
• If it is a general newsletter, have a sign-up button at the end of all your outside communications
• Communicate what they will receive and the benefits of signing up. For a prospective students’ newsletter, an effective call to action could be “Stay tuned to what is happening on campus!”

Remember that quality in a contact list is always more important than quantity. Review anti-spam regulations to make sure you comply with the law. Email subscribers are seeking more than just great content delivered to their inboxes. Some colleges may have the resources available to encourage a loyal reader base by offering special e-books, podcasts, study guides for standardized tests, or other exclusive knowledge that typically isn’t free.

Photo source: www.bookstoreguide.org

            5. Create engaging, digestible content based on your audience

Busy readers are likely to browse a newsletter before deciding if any article is worth reading. Enhance your usability with punchy headlines, easily readable short stories and attractive visuals. Since people generally process information better in smaller chunks, be aware that in a newsletter with ten articles, most readers may perhaps only read two or three. Shorter, more frequent delivery might be preferable. Subject lines have to instantly engage, and by limiting what is displayed to an introductory paragraph, encouraging readers to click to see the full article on your website, browsing becomes easier and your website’s traffic is increased.

Be creative and fun with your content, using short paragraphs, sub-headings and bullet points to enhance readability. Be personable in your tone and encourage interactivity whenever possible. Is there a named contact with personal contact information? Even better – include a phone number and headshot. Let your audience tell you what they want with a reader poll, perhaps promoting engagement by offering prizes.

            6. Use Google Analytics to track your newsletter’s impact on your traffic

Studies analyzing online behaviour suggest email newsletters are the best way to drive users back to websites, where the real engagement takes place, so it is imperative that users are directed to an optimal student recruitment landing page. Feedback and your website’s analytics will allow you to constantly improve the effectiveness of your message and fully integrate the newsletter into your education marketing strategy. This video shows how Duke University’s Nasher Museum used analytics and reporting tools to adjust their focus and increase traffic.

How has your college or university’s newsletter helped you connect to your audiences?

So the questions is “ What kind of conversion rate can you expect?”

I remember the first time I ran a higher ed PPC campaign, with the help of an outside consultant, and asked them that same question. Technically, they knew their stuff but had not worked in higher education before so I got back the inevitable “ it depends” answer. I was a bit frustrated and felt like I was being “managed”, but accepted it and carefully watched things roll out to educate myself on what was reasonable. It turns out that  ”it depends” was and is still a reasonable answer given the wide variability in conversion rates that organizations get, as seen below.

Source: Marketing Sherpa

The good news is that we can do a bit better today than “it depends” to help new PPC marketers understand what to expect from their higher ed campaigns. I particularly like to pull out  the following stats to help define some baseline expectations for our new higher ed PPC clients. These stats present a typical day in the life of PPC activity on Google, collected back in Nov 2012 . (They are a combination of data from the jobs and educational vertical but I still think it is very informative about our sector because of the significant overlap. Click thru here to see the whole infographic from Wordstream to see this same breakdown across the top 10 industry PPC verticals. )

So let’s look closely to see the important insights of this data:

1) TOTAL AD IMPRESSIONS: Education accounts for the most ad impressions across the top 10 verticals. Wow, so who is doing all of this educational PPC advertising? Well if you look down a bit you will see that it is the largest private, for profits, including Phoenix, ITT, Devry and Kaplan who dominate. In fact, Phoenix has claim to the title of being the biggest PPC advertiser on Google. Yes that is correct, they spend more money on PPC than any other company in the world. That should be a very sobering thought if your programs compete with theirs and you are just getting into the market now!!

2) CLICK THRU RATE: Education also lays claim to having the lowest click thru rate at 1.72% of the top 10 PPC verticals. This fact is a bit scarey for many first timers but once you understand that cost per lead is actually more important that click thru  rate then it becomes a bit more manageable.

3) COST PER CLICK: So an average cost per click in education is $1.80. This is a good figure to use if you want to project how much budget you will need to participate in the PPC marketplace

4) CONVERSION RATE: A 6 % conversion rate in higher ed seems quite reasonable to me. Some campaigns we have run do much better than this but to get that kind of result takes experience and lots of A/B testing to make it happen.

So given these industry averages, here is what a $1000 PPC budget will get you:

$1000/$1.80 per click = 556 clicks
556 clicks x 6% conversion rate = 33 leads
$1000/ 33 leads = $30.30 per lead

5) GOOGLE DISPLAY NETWORK: Note the stats about the Google Display network on the right of the graphic. Display ads are the text or image based ads that you can place on a PPC basis on 3rd party sites who are members of the Google Display network. A huge amount of money is being spent there these days, with very modest click thu and conversion rates compared to Adwords,

Here is an estimate of what that same $1000 will get you on the Display Network|:

$1000/$.34 per click = 2941clicks
2941 clicks x 2% conversion rate = 59 leads
$1000/ 59 leads = $16.95 per lead

So as you can see that the cost per lead is almost half that of the main Adwords network. Of course the big question unanswered here is about lead quality. Which leads will ultimately convert to student at the highest rate? Generally Adwords leads are of higher quality but don’t make assumptions with respect to your campaigns. You must try to be certain of the outcome.

There are other PPC ad scenarios, including Mobile ads and Retargeting ads, but we’ll leave those for discussion another day.

So how do educational PPC conversion rates compare to conversion of organic traffic? Once again the answer is it depends on the nuances of a particular organization’s website, “product” and value propositions

Here is an example of variability of conversion rates on organic traffic from Marketing Sherpa. Once again, “it depends” applies.

 Source: Marketing Sherpa

I hope this has been helpful to set some basic parameters around what you can expect as you are entering the PPC marketplace for the first time. It a very competitive marketplace so do your homework and make sure you have optimized your campaigns to produce a reasonable level of ROI right from the outset.

We would love to hear your insights from your experienced into what has worked best for you in higher ed PPC and what strategies and tactics you’ve used to produce your highest conversion rates.

Avec près de 98 pour cent des étudiants impliqués dans les médias sociaux aujourd’hui, le marketing pour médias sociaux est devenu indispensable à tout effort de marketing pour les collèges et universités. Nous proposons une stratégie d’intégration pour tirer profit de toutes les plateformes pertinentes à votre public et à vos objectifs de marketing sur les médias sociaux. Vous pourrez ainsi continuer à développer votre marque et votre présence pour une augmentation continue de votre retour sur investissement.

Personnalisez votre connexion

Nos solutions de marketing sur mesure pour les médias sociaux peuvent vous aider à:

• développer votre image en ligne
• augmenter le trafic vers votre site Internet et toutes les plateformes de médias sociaux
• améliorer votre taux de conversion et votre génération de prospects en ligne
• créer des communautés en ligne pour vos étudiants, professeurs, personnel, et anciens élèves
• positionner votre établissement comme leader dans votre niche
• contrôler votre réputation en ligne.

Optimisez et échangez

Notre analyse compétitive approfondie vous permettra de:

• identifier les plateformes de médias sociaux les plus pertinents pour votre école
• définir un ensemble de tactiques claires visant à étendre votre présence
• veiller à ce que tous vos événements et messages soient plus visibles en en faisant la promotion directement au public cible
• déterminer des tactiques spécifiques pour intéresser vos fans et les abonnés, et gérer vos communautés.

Gérezvotre réputation et vos progrès

• Surveillez la réputation de votre école, réagissez au bon moment et modérez le ton de la conversation autour de votre établissement.  
• Choisissez des outils analytiques généraux et spécifiques à votre performance dans les médias sociaux.
• Déterminez ce qui intéresse votre public grâce à des rapports mensuels d’analytique pour les médias sociaux.

Un contenu clair et utile est vital pour convertir des clics en prospects. Nous pouvons vous aider à rendre tout contenu (textes, images et vidéos) sur votre site Internet essentiel et informatif, offrant le message exact que vous souhaitez délivrer à vos visiteurs.

Nous offrons quatre principaux services afin d’améliorer votre stratégie de contenu et de développement :

Audit de contenu

• Obtenez une vue panoramique de votre site Internet et autres médias en comparaison aux meilleures pratiques de la concurrence.
• Identifiez vos points forts et vos faiblesses, et examinez les opportunités afin que votre collège ou université se démarque.
• Recevez un inventaire quantitatif pour mieux comprendre le volume/trafic de votre site Internet.
• Recevez un inventaire qualitatif pour connaitre le type de contenu et média qui attire le plus de trafic.

Analyse de contenu

• Découvrez exactement ce que votre public cherche à savoir lorsqu’il vient sur votre site.
• Déterminez quels formats de contenu (site web, blogues, médias sociaux , vidéos, podcasts, etc.) conviennent le mieux à votre audience.

Planification de contenu

• Implantez les outils d’une stratégie de contenu et les meilleures pratiques afin d’améliorer l’expérience de votre public sur votre site web.
• Apprenez à prioriser les révisions de votre contenu web.
• Créez et implantez un calendrier de contenu.

Création de contenu

• Du contenu web attrayant et optimal, incluant site web, blogues, bulletins de nouvelles, littérature promotionnelle, et articles pour l’optimisation pour moteurs de recherche.
• Des publications mensuelles et syndicalisation d’articles SEO.

Créer un site Internet clair, efficace et optimisé  est crucial afin devous démarquer marque de la concurrence. De la conception de votre image de marque à la création complète et à la gestion de sites web, HEM offre des services de design et de développement Web complets. Ces services assurent que le site Web de votre école est entièrement optimisé et visible, à l’esthétique gérables et engageante, et les systèmes de gestion de contenu.

En phase avec votre public

Développez une marque qui vous ressemble vraiment:

• Évaluez votre marque, sa perception, sa réputation et son efficacité en termes de marketing grâce à vos données sur le site.
• Voyez comment vos concurrents se portent en termes d’image de marque.
• Développezune marque qui résonneauprès vos étudiants, professeurs et autres intervenants.
• Concevez un logo et un slogan qui capturentl’essence de votre établissement.
• Déterminez quel nouveau contenu doit être développé et lequel peut tout simplement être repositionné.
• Recevez des conseils sur le lancement et la culture de votre marque.

Alignezvotre image sur vos valeurs

Offrez un site Web qui capture vos idées:

• Améliorez votre site pour l’optimisation pour moteurs de recherche  et et les médias sociaux.
• Créez une architecture de site Web conviviale.
• Mettez en œuvre une esthétique qui correspond à votre marque et interpelle votre public cible.
• Créez un site web pouvant répondre aux besoins de vos étudiants et prospects où qu’ils soient (mobile, tablettes, ordinateurs, etc.)
• Intégrez un système de gestion de contenu facile à gérer et flexible.

Aussi connu sous le nom deréférencement payant, le marketing coût par clic offre à votre école la capacité depromouvoir des programmes spécifiques pour des groupes d’étudiants différents. Votre école peut mener une campagne marketing coût par clic sur tous les réseaux importants, notamment Facebook, Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft Ad Center et Linkedin.

Notre service de marketing coût par clic offre:

• La possibilité de choisir les mots clés pour lesquels vous voulez que votre site se classe;
• Des annonces affichées sur la première page de résultats d’une recherche organique;
• Un contrôle complet de votre budget CPC et du message publicitaire.

Une campagne de marketing coût par clic efficace peut facilement être optimisée afin de réduire votre coût par prospect et augmenter votre retour sur investissement. Contactez HEM dès aujourd’hui pour en savoir plus sur le référencement payant.

Le marketing coût par clic pour les écoles implique:

• Une recherche par mot clé globale:  Les mots clés sont au cœur de la réussite d’une campagne de marketing coût par clic. Malheureusement, ils ne tombent pas tout simplement du ciel. Une recherche par mot clé globale est nécessaire afin de tester les mots clés et expressions les plus populaires etchoisir lesquels cibler.
• Une gestion des enchères minutieuse et approfondie:  Le monde des enchères du marketing coût par clic peut être rude. Sans une attention et des ajustements continus, vos offres peuvent en efficacité et rentabilité. Une gestion minutieuse de ces enchères permet d’augmenter le nombre de clics, de cibler les annonces géographiquement, de peaufiner un texte d’annonce et d’optimiser votre coût par prospect.
• Des suivis, mesures et rapports continus:  Les campagnes de marketing coûts par clic doivent être régulièrement suivies et mesurées afin de déterminer votre taux de clics, les clics qui vous rapportent le plus, et surtout, les clics qui vous coûtent le plus.

L’optimisation pour moteur de recherche est la méthode la moins coûteuse d’augmenter votre visibilité en ligne. Avec 80% du trafic Internet en provenance des moteurs de recherche, il est clair que placer votre site au sommet des résultats est la priorité absolue. Mais une fois que vous avez atteint le sommet, il est important d’y rester. Notre équipe vous fournit les stratégies et les outils pertinents pour vous assurer de maintenir une visibilité constante et un trafic de valeur.

Réduisez vos coûts tout en augmentant votre visibilité

• Générez un trafic important sur votre site Internet.
• Augmentez votre génération de prospects en ligne.
• Ayez un impact sur le classement à long terme de votre programme ou de votre école.
• Devenez plus visible pour les mots clés de votre programme.
• Soutenez vos efforts de développement de votre marque
• Figurez sur Google Maps et les recherches locales dans votre région.

Restez au sommet

Afin de vous aider à rester au sommet du positionnement pour les moteurs de recherche, nos experts SEO vous aideront à :

• mener des recherches de mots clés approfondies afin de déterminer le classement de votre école pour des programmes particuliers
• vous assurer que votre site est indexé correctement
• créer des mises à jours régulières afin d’être pris en compte par les programmes automatiques (spider) et robots
• créer du contenu SEO efficace : blogues, communiqués de presse, articles et infolettres
• créer des liens de grande valeur grâce à la distribution de votre contenu où les étudiants (et les moteurs de recherche) les trouveront
• déterminer une stratégie pour rester au sommet des pages de résultatsmalgré des changements soudains d’algorithme

La clé pour augmenter le nombre de vos étudiants potentiels en ligne est d’avoir un site web visible et facile d’utilisation. Face à la compétition de nombreux autres collèges, il est important pour votre site web d’apparaitre en haut du classement. Mais comment pouvez-vous y parvenir? C’est compliqué, mais nous pouvons vous aider.

Nous utilisons la stratégie en ligne la plus effective pour augmenter votre conversion de clics en prospects. Que vous souhaitiez recruter au niveau international ou local, nous pouvons vous aider à attirer le trafic vers votre site Internet et s’assurer que les étudiants se retrouvent sur les bonnes pages.

Attirer plus d’étudiants

Notre équipe peut vous aider à :

• optimiser les principales sources d’étudiants potentiels de votre site à l’aide de Google Analytics
• élaborer les meilleures tactiques stratégiques de marketing coût par clic, optimisation des moteurs de recherche , courriel, mobile et marketing des médias sociaux
• créer des annonces qui sont géo-ciblées pour le marketing coût par clic et ce pour les moteurs de recherche et les plateformes sociales pertinentes
• créer des pages d’arrivée optimisées (formulaires) sur votre site Internet et sur les plateformes pertinentes de médias sociaux, et mesurer les résultats à l’aide de Google Analytics
• augmenter votre visibilité auprès de catégories d’étudiants potentiels inexploitées (à temps plein, formation continue, international, etc.)
• augmenter le nombre d’étudiants potentiels en provenance du trafic mobile

Réduisez votre coût par prospect

Maximisez votre investissement en :

• identifiant la solution marketing la plus efficacepour le public de votre école
• déterminant le retour sur investissement des clics
• gérant soigneusement votre budget pour les annonces sur Google et les médias sociaux
• testant et en modifiant continuellement les appels à l’action et en ajoutantbdu texte sur les pages d’arrivée pour un taux de conversion optimisé
• recevant des rapports mensuels et annuels qui vous aident à traquer et mesurer le progrès dans le comportement.

Le marketing web fait surgir beaucoup de questions: Comment savoir si vos initiatives marketing fonctionnent réellement? Plus important, lesquelles fonctionnent mieux que les autres? Votre site web peut-il faire face à vos compétiteurs en ligne? Quelles campagnes web pouvez-vous lancer afin d’attirer davantage de nouveaux étudiants à vos portes ouvertes? Toutes ces questions méritent des réponses, et ces réponses se trouvent toutes dans Google Analytics.

Google Analyticsvous donne accès à des informations cruciales qui vous permettent de créer une série de critères, paramètres, et ciblespour vous aider à mieux comprendre comment vos stratégies de marketing sur le web fonctionnent, et lesquelles produisent le meilleur retour sur investissement. Mettre en place Google Analytics est une des étapes les plus importantes afin d’améliorer votre site Internet et les performances de votre marketing sur Internet.

Sachez où vous vous situez

La mise en place initiale de Google Analyticsvous permettra d’obtenir :

• des mesures sur le retour d’investissement de toutes vos initiatives de marketing
• un aperçu de votre présence en ligne (sites Internet, médias sociaux, publicité, etc.)
• le détail de l’efficacité du design de votre site Internet
• des indices sur la meilleure façon d’augmenter le nombre de vos visites.

Contrôlez votre investissement

Une utilisation continue de Google Analytics vous permettra de :

• mesurer et suivre l’évolution de votre retour sur l’investissement en temps réel
• augmenter la conversion de votre but grâce à des tests A/B ou a variables multiplies
• ajuster vos initiatives de marketing afin qu’elles représentent vos buts
• utiliser des outils personnalisés qui mesurent les initiatives marketing sur le web, mobile et hors-ligne
• identifier les buts les plus pertinents pour votre établissement (formulaire en ligne, portes ouvertes, publicités, etc.)
• recevoir des rapports mensuels afin de mieux saisir l’impact de vos efforts marketing.

View Part 1: Multi-Attribution Modeling

In the second part, we will talk about multi-channel attribution using Google Analytics. Google introduced multi-channel attribution to all analytics users in September 2011. Previously it was available to premium account holders only.

Before we dive too deeply into multi-channel attribution reporting, let’s discuss a few of the key channel attribution elements:

Acquisition Channels: Also known as channels or touch points, acquisition channels are the source of traffic to your college’s web properties. E.g. Organic search, affiliates, paid advertisements, etc.

Channel Grouping: In multi-channel attribution reports, channel grouping is the set of channel labels. Google Analytics offers two types of channel grouping:

• Basic Channel Grouping: This is the set of predefined channel labels. Google Analytics defines following channel labels as part of basic channel grouping:

Display, paid search, organic search, social, referral, email, direct and other advertisement.

• Custom Channel Grouping: This is user defined channel grouping. You can create as many channel groupings as you want – there is no limit. To create your channel grouping you can copy the basic channel grouping to get started or create your new channel grouping from scratch.

Fig.1: Channel Grouping

Conversions: In multi-attribution funnel reports, Google defines conversions as the sum of number of conversions and number of e-commerce transactions (if enabled).

For example: If 18 visitors filled out your college’s application form online and 42 students paid tuition fees via e-commerce transactions, the multi-channel funnel report will show 60 conversions whereas other Google Analytics reports will show 18 goal conversions and 42 e-commerce transactions.

Fig.2: Conversions

Conversion Path: This is the sequence of interactions between visitor and acquisition channels that lead to conversion. Google Analytics records conversion paths via visitor cookies (_utma).

For example: If a prospective student first visits your college’s program page from a Google PPC campaign, then returns as an organic search visitor, identifies a program of interest, leaves to search for program reviews and later comes back through some review board to eventually complete the conversion, the multi-channel funnel report will show the following conversion path:

Fig.3: Conversion Path

Interaction: Also known as touch, this is an exposure to the acquisition channels. E.g. In the above conversion path, each exposure will be recorded as an interaction in multi-channel funnel reports. In a conversion path, channels can play three roles:

First Interaction: First referral (or initiator) on the conversion path.

Assist Interaction: Any non-last referral on the conversion path.

Last Interaction: Immediately preceding the conversion referral.

In the above mentioned example, the multi-channel funnel report will show “Paid Search” as the first interaction, “Organic Search” as an assist interaction and “Referral” as the last interaction.

Assisted Conversions: These reports for a given marketing channel analyze all interactions other than the last one that lead to a conversion.

Get started with Multi-Channel Attribution in Google Analytics

1. Ensure your college’s marketing efforts are measurable. E.g. Analytics code on landing pages, campaign link tagging, etc.
2. Ensure you have a clear “Call-to-Action” and a clear vision of your audience’s interaction and behavior on your web properties.
3. Ensure conversion goals and e-commerce tracking (if applicable) are configured.

Once you have all of the above in place, launch your campaign and wait for a couple of days for data to be collected. Multi-channel funnels in Google Analytics can be located under Standard Reporting > Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels

Google offers five types of multi-channel reports:

1. Overview Report: This represents how various acquisition channels work together to create conversion. Out of the box, it will show you which campaign and acquisition channels are driving your desired results (also known as “upper funnel channels”, because they often result in a visitor’s first exposure to your college’s web ecosystem in the longer path of conversion). The interaction of channels can be visualized with a Venn diagram, where the overlapping area represents the degree to which visitors were exposed to all the intersecting channels and the size of each circle represents the volume of conversions coming through that acquisition channel.

    

   

   Fig.4:Overview Report

    

2. Assisted Conversion Report: This report displays the number of conversions for which each non-last marketing channel appears on the conversion path.

    

   

   Fig.5: Assist Conversion Report

    

3. Top Conversion Path Report: This report can help your marketing team understand how channels interact along a conversion path, and how long it takes visitors to convert. This report summarizes all the unique conversion paths that lead to conversion.

    

   

   Fig.6: Top Conversion path

    

4. Time Lag Report: This report can help you analyze how many days it takes visitors to convert (within a 30 day period).

   

   Fig.7: Time lag report

    

5. Path Length Report: This displays how many interactions it took for a visitor to convert.

   Fig.8: Path Length Report

    

Through multi-channel reports your college can determine:

1. How various acquisition channels work together to create a conversion
2. How much time a visitor takes before converting into a lead
3. What role did prior touch points play in a conversion
4. How to attribute conversion to an acquisition channel

It is common to experience data discrepancy between multi-channel funnel reports and other Google Analytics reports due to the following reasons:

• Multi-channel funnel data lags up to 48 hours
• In other Google Analytics reports conversion is equivalent to goal conversion (e-commerce transactions are mentioned separately whereas in multi-channel funnel reports conversion is calculated as the sum of goal conversions and e-commerce-transactions)

The last decade has experienced a remarkable proliferation of marketing channels, strategies and technologies. Marketers and analysts are challenged to stay on top of the emerging opportunities. Attribution is not an exception to this pattern; it’s one of the solutions to enhance accountability of marketing efforts. Attribution, if done properly and across silos and touch points, can finally fill in the gap for analysts and answer the question of what is working and how.

How do you plan to use Google Analytics multi-channel attribution to gain better insights into your college’s marketing efforts? Share your ideas and comments!

In higher ed, SEO is often overlooked as a priority in the marketing mix. I believe one reason for this is that higher ed marketers have an over-inflated sense of their branded keyword rankings because of the (no longer existing) .edu authority factor and simply don’t take the time to push program keywords any further. Regardless, a competing program’s .edu domain has authority equal to their .edu domain, leaving them on a level playing field for program level keywords. Effectively managing these basic SEO elements can produce a very positive ROI on your marketing investment and give your page’s higher search engine rankings.

SEO experts spend lots of time analyzing the search results of their pages to try and understand the nuances of the search engines ranking algorithms. If you are looking for that level of detail, (and debate), there are lots of other resources available online. With the release of the new Google Penguin update this last week, the SEO  community’s wheels have once again begun to spin rapidly to decode the any changes that will affect their current site rankings. We will leave that to the experts and focus on basic SEO, where the 80:20 rule applies. You can get 80 % of the benefits of on-page optimization by focusing on the 20% of the factors that are critical.

So let’s take a look at these key on-page factors:

Content

1) As I am sure you are quite sick of hearing, high quality, unique content is the most important element in your on-page SEO strategy. The search engines reward fresh, genuine, novel, finely tuned content with high rankings. It is a simple and as hard as that. Get you content strategy in place and start regularly publishing high quality content and you will see your results climb.

HTML

2) Page Title tags – Title tags are the main text headings that describe your pages. They show up at the top of your browser, in your browser tabs, and in search engine results as seen in the highlighted text in the examples below.

Best practices recommend that you put your brand name and the main keywords up front in the phase. Maximum length should be about 70 characters.

3) Meta description - The meta description is not important to your search engine ranking per say, because search engine generally ignore this tag, but it is key to describing what is on the page for the visitor by bolding of the text in the visual snippet presented in the search result as below.

4) Keywords - Please don’t stuff your pages with keywords to get higher ranking. That will not work, and in fact, might get you penalized. The experts say to use them 2 – 3 time on a short page and 4- 6 times on a long page. It also helps to get the main keywords positioned early in the page.

In the example below, keywords, as defined by the page,

<meta name=”keywords” content=”BCIT, mechanical engineering, B.Eng, design, manufacturing, systems, BTech in manufacturing”> 

are seen as highlighted text;

5) H1 (Headline) tags – Although it is not clear that the H1 tag helps in ranking, it is still recommended by most experts as a important element of your on-page optimization. The H1 tag should be used to indicate the headline of the page.

The H1 tag for the previous BCIT page example is:

“h1 id=”tagline”>A Career in Mechanical Engineering Awaits You!“

6) Alt Image tags – Alt image tags provide a text description of images on your page. Keyword phrases should be used where possible in the tag.

7) Internal links – Insert at least one link on each page within the content of the page that links back to a higher level, related category page on your site.

Info Architecture

8) Your URLs – The URL titles of your pages should semantically represent the information hierarchy of your page. Here is a good example below. Good URLs make it simpler for search engines to determine what search queries are most relevant to your pages. Short, descriptive URLs are good for search engines rankings and from a user point of view, very helpful when browsing your site.

Performance

9) Crawl ability – This is probably self-evident but your site should not have any crawl errors. For example “404 page not found errors” are a pretty serious no-no with respect to the search engine and definitely have an effect on how they rank your site. A current site map on your site also really helps out to make sure your content is all searchable.

10) Page Load Speed - Page load speed seriously affects the user’s experience on your website so it only makes sense that if your site is clunky and slow that the search engines will penalize you with respect to your page ranking. Users expect pages to load within 2 seconds and start dropping off like flies for every second longer they have to wait. Page load speed can be tested with many freely available tools so it is fairly easy to diagnose this if you have a problem. If you do have a problem, get to work to optimize those pages to improve the load time. Get your techies involved to help you out with this process if it looks like you have serious load time problems. A server upgrade may be needed if you system is maxed out.

We have covered the main elements which effect your page rankings in this post but if you are really interested in this material, then dig deeper into the references and you will find out about hundreds of lesser elements that will also have an effect. Of course no one but the search engine people themselves actually know the absolute impact of these variable so recognize that these are best guesses on a system that is always in flux. But we do the best we can…..

How much time do you invest in managing your website’s  main SEO elements at your institution? What single element in your site development or maintenance do you think has the most impact on your rankings? Are there other elements that you have prioritized?

References:

The Beginner’s Guide to SEO http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

On-Page Factors http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/on-page-factors

Search Engine Land’s Guide To SEO http://searchengineland.com/guide/seo

The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors http://searchengineland.com/seotable

‘Tis the season again! With graduations ceremonies around the corner, many colleges are looking for last-minute solutions to bring more fun and sharing to the ceremony through social media.  After all, a graduation is the perfect time to boost your students’ engagement.  Here are 3 tips to make your graduation ceremony more interactive and  enhance your other education marketing efforts:

1. Create a hashtag for the ceremony: Hashtags can be used for Twitter and Instagram and will allow you and everyone following the hashtag to share stories about your event. NYU used the hashtag #CongratagradNYU to have families and friends congratulate their graduates. No need to have your Graduation ceremony at the Yankees Stadium like NYU to make it fun!  A simple screen in the graduation arena/auditorium can be a fun way to add memories to the ceremony. The University of Central Oklahoma used the TweetBeam feature and thus tripled the engagement from last fall. This new way of visualizing Twitter loads tweets live from Twitter on one page that can be customized by creating walls for any topic. (In the example below, the keywords were “queensu2013″ , for Queens University’s 2013 Convocation.)

2. Ask your students to tag themselves: Ask students and attendees to use your specific hashtag to share pictures of the event on Twitter and Instagram. Then feature the shared pictures on Facebook and ask your grads to tag themselves. The University of Southern California posted hundreds of photos on its Facebook account within hours of the ceremony ending, with the simple message of, “Congrats to all our 2013 graduates! These photos were collected from this year’s USC grad social media campaign. See yourself or your friends here? Tag them in your comments and give them a big “fight on!” Everyone started liking, tagging and commenting immediately, keeping the party going way after the end of the ceremony. New tools are now available to allow attendees to tag themselves in very large crowds. Boston University decided to use Giga Tag that allows users to tag themselves, and share shots with their communities. Here is a peek at Boston University’s graduation ceremony Giga Tag.

3. Share your graduates’ personal stories on video that will be played at the ceremony: In the weeks leading to graduation, Boston College featured interviews of seniors that were about to graduate. They then created a video series, Class of 2013 Seniors to Remember. A great way to connect and bring electricity to your ceremony.

What will you do this year to make your college’s graduation ceremony more interactive?

Source: postano.com

1. Develop a social media strategy
   • Define your social goals: Along with the Marketing team, determine what your college wants to achieve through social media. Determine what success will look like on your Analytics tool. More traffic to your site? More leads? More registrations? Do not limit your goals to “increase numbers of leads”, but aim for precise success metrics: “Increase the number of leads from social media by 50”. It will make the goal more realistic and will increase your chances of success.
   • Define your social channels: Facebook is still one of the main social media platforms for colleges, but recent studies show that students are leaving Facebook to platforms that are more specific to their social group or needs. Instagram, Pinterest, Scoop it, Storify it, Tumblr? How to reach your audience without spreading yourself thin through the social media race? The only way to think about it is to make sure you are relevant. Start by analyzing your students and prospective students: how are they using a specific network? Is it consistent with how you would be using the network to promote your college?
   • Gather your team:  Identify the persons who will be working on creating or keeping your college’s presence online. Your team should include staff from your main social goals. If the main gaol is specifically recruitment, have a member of the Recruiting team onboard. If it is just to promote the college image, include a marketing person. Make sure you consider creating a social media Student Ambassador team.
   • Define your keywords and key messages: Find out what keywords your college tries to rank for. Keywords should be part of your communications strategy. Various SEO tools can help you determine what they are. Make sure you use those keywords throughout your online activities and on social media.
   • Establish a social media content strategy that includes your college’s blog, but also all the content you need to create to be shared (videos, comments). For each month, determine how long you will spend on your various platforms, what you will be doing (sharing, community building, etc.), what you will be sharing with your community. This will make you save time as it will offer you a base of content while allowing you to share content spontaneously. Your social media content plan should also include a channel plan, defining how each piece of your content will be shared (time, platforms, etc.) Make your online presence consistent with your offline presence. This is beyond logo and colors. It pertains to the tone of your school online and offline, the atmosphere in your school.
2. Manage your college’s brand efficiently
   • Maintain a consistent image: Keep all your profiles updated with the right profile pictures, background and cover, as it is the first thing that potential students will see once the click, for instance on your Google+ account. Logo sizes and specs will change over time. So will the types of content. That is why it is important to manage your social media profiles on a daily basis.
   • Choose the right tools to manage your social media presence: there are many tools out there to help you manage all your accounts more efficiently Hootsuite, Spredfast or SproutSocial can also help you manage the image of your brand and spread your content effortlessly on different networks.
   • Be actually active on social media: Once you create an account on a social media platform, you need to be active on it: share relevant content and engage with your audience.
3. Monitor your college’s online reputation
   Social media reputation management is key to keep an eye on your college’s reputation and react appropriately. Listen to what is being said about your college.
   • Use the right tools: Many platforms allow you to do keyword search, which will give you an idea of the perception of your school. It is important to look for key hash tags for possible mentions. Other tools are available such as:
     • Google Alerts is a great way to start to receive emails every time specific keywords are being used online.
     • Tweet Beep which are Twitter alerts
     • Social Mention allows you to keep track of mentions and the sentiment associated to them
     • Finally, Mention, helps you create alerts for your college, your competitors, and get notified instantly when there is a new mention on any source on the web (forums, blogs, social media networks, videos, news, etc.) If you like a mention that comes out about your college, you can retweet it or post it on Facebook and share it with all your community. Mention can be used on different platforms on the web, desktop and mobile. There is a free plan that allows you 500 mentions per month.

   • Keep track of trends. Keeping track of all mentions and interactions will help you identify trends and react appropriately. Recently, some of our clients had to face the “Spotted at” trend, where students share anonymously on a Facebook page. Although the nature of the content was generally good natured, it could easily lead to bullying and had to be monitored closely. We helped our client determine what they could do to limit its effects and advised them to create a a policy about social media use in their school.

Google’s Adwords Extensions are enhancements to your ads that extend the functionality or content provided in the ad into a number of useful areas. They provide valuable “lift” that can help you to improve the ROI on those campaigns and meet those goals.

Map extension

This extension allows you to provide a map to your institution, right beside your ad. If a visitor clicks on the “Map of …” link at the bottom of the ad, the map on the right will appear, providing a guide to the student to your location. This extension is particularly useful to school’s marketing when geographic proximity to the school is an important student decision factor.

Additional website links within your site extension

This extension allows you to provide links to additional pages on your website within the ad itself. In the example below, this college, which has multiple campuses across Canada, has embedded direct links to campuses in different provinces, allowing searchers to immediately click through to the provincial level of details that are relevant to them.

Click-to-call a phone number extension

This extension provides a button within mobile PPC ads to click to call an institution’s inbound call centre. This mobile extension allows the prospective student to simply click, through the ad, to speak with a school representative to obtain the information that they are searching for.

Connect +1s from your Google Plus page extension

Authority and trust elements are very important in all types of advertising. This extension presents your Google Plus +1s number to your target student audience in your ad. This scenario provides one more reason why you need to add Google Plus to your mix of active social networks, as Google continues to build a tighter link between social “authority” and search.

Mailing list extension

This extension allows you to collect email address for your newsletter or mailing list, right up front through your PPC ad. This option enables a new strategy for PPC advertising. The extension might be used to collect emails for follow up information, to be added to a general mailing list or for an upcoming event notification like homecoming or alumni conference.

Live chat extension

The live chat extension puts your live chat link directly in front of your customer in the search ad. Live chat is beginning to be implemented on more and more higher ed websites but unfortunately I was not able to find an example of a college or university using this related feature. Here’s an example from the world of ERP software.

If you are currently running PPC campaigns, we recommend you take a little extra time to learn about these extension options to enhance your efforts. They will definitely help you increase your return on investment on what can be expensive, (but necessary), PPC advertising.

If you’ve used Adwords Extensions in your higher ed campaigns we would love to hear about how successful they have been for you. Which have given you the most dramatic results? Which ones have been most successful? Which would you recommend against and for what reasons?

References:

Google Support: Enhance your ad using extensions

SEOMOZ: 6 Ways Google Ad Extensions Can Improve your Adwords Campaign

FYI , this “research- based” post is a summary of info gathered from a number of blog posts of others and conversations I have had with our web analysts. ( See a list of these very helpful blog posts at the bottom of this page). We don’t have a lot of experience with UA yet but hope to have a site up and running with it in the near future. We’ll be back later with more comments based on our experience with UA, at a later date.

What is Universal Analytics?

Announced in Oct 2012, and then made available to the public in beta at the end of March 2012, Universal Analytics is the next major iteration of Google Analytics. It is a big change in how it tracks web traffic, moving from what has been a per visit approach, to a more visitor centric point of view. By assigning a unique client id to visitors, who register on your site, it tracks visitors across devices and touch points, including multiple visits, multiple browsers, multiple devices and off line behavior ( ie in your CRM system).

How Does it Work?

UA uses a new measurement protocol (a protocol is a set of rules) which let you send data from any device/system/environment (including smartphones, tablets, call center data, digital appliances, point of purchase systems or any online or offline customer contact point) to your GA account provided you have formatted your data according to the protocol. Through this protocol you can import offline conversion data into GA.

For now, experts suggest adding Universal Analytics tracking code in parallel to the existing Google Analytics tracking code on your current website. This is necessary to retain all of your past GA data. If you simply replace your “classic” GA with Universal Analytics you will lose all of your history. A migration path is promised soon from Google that will merge your GA history with Universal Analytics. New sites only require the Universal Analytics tracking code to track all activity going forward but you should also carefully consider UA’s limitations before you make a final decision to use it alone.

What are the Main Features of UA?

• Understand visitor interaction across devices and touch points by tracking multiple visits, multiple browsers, multiple devices.
• Track offline behavior – i.e measure call centre or CRM activity. UA will provide a better understanding of the relationship between online and offline marketing channels that drive sales and conversions than GA

For example, you might track a unique, prospective student across multiple visits to your site using each of their mobile, tablet and desktop devices, and then cross reference related call centre or CRM events, from deep in the recruitment cycle, back to the original lead source of the prospective student.

• integration of your college’s or university’s mobile application tracking and additional insights into performance
• More effectively track multi-channel marketing campaigns.
• Create your own custom dimensions and metrics to better understand your visitor behavior. (Dimensions are a characteristic of your visitor and typically appear as a row in your analytics report )

Issues?

• A migration path to integrate GA and UA data is not yet available.
• Currently a fair bit of technical knowledge is required to use custom dimensions, custom metrics and integrating data across multiple devices/ platforms. You should have some serious expertise on hand  to guide you in the adoption and use of UA. Also keep in mind that it is still in beta so the product will change and continue to improve with time. 
• Privacy is an issue. You will need to give your end users proper notice and get consent about what data you will collect via UA.

Implications in Higher Ed?

Universal Analytics provides visitor centric tracking that could prove extremely valuable to higher ed marketers as competition for paying students continues to increase. The ability to track visitor activity across multiple devices will help bring the expanding device universe back into some sense of focus. The ability to track and integrate off line activity, like call centre or CRM system activity could be the most important piece. The capability to calculate ROI across devices, across marketing campaigns and deep into the bottom end of the recruitment funnel will create a powerful tool that could change how higher ed marketers do their business. Privacy and complexity issues complicate and may limit the adoption of UA in higher ed but its potential is strong to be a game changer.

It is still very early in the introduction of Universal Analytics and to date I have not heard of any colleges or universities moving to it yet. We would love to hear your perspective on its capabilities and get your reaction on how important it will be in your web analytics future.

References:

Expanding Universal Analytics into Public Beta

Beginners Guide to Universal Analytics – Creating Custom Dimensions & Metrics

Resources for Learning About Universal Analytics

Universal Analytics: Switching to the Next Version of Google Analytics

The Power of Universal Analytics in the Palm of Your Hand

Recently we have begun to read about and hear an expanding range of opinion on the merits of RWD, based on real experience with it in the marketplace from both web design professionals and higher ed marketers. RWD is a particularly effective strategy for content rich websites like we have in higher ed. Large, complex sites incorporating multiple interactive applications and requiring mobile versions with different search and UI priorities present more of a challenge to this approach.

This post is an effort to collect and summarize some of the prevailing wisdom on RWD to provide the non-specialist with a summary of the pros and cons of RWD, specifically in context of higher ed. Given that RWD seems to evoke a “love it” or “hate it” response in so many people, I am sure I will offend the sensibilities of some by my comments so I would like to apologize for that in advance. (I am a Canadian after all). Regardless of its nature, I do look forward to any and all feedback.

I think it is important that people approach this conversation with as open-minded and balanced an approach to website design as possible. My approach to try and accomplish this has always been to start with business and marketing requirements of a site to determine its form, format and content.

Ethan Marcotte, author of one of the seminal works of RWD, also makes this point in his book “Responsive Web Design”.

            “But most importantly, responsive web design isn’t intended to serve as a
             replacement for mobile web sites. [...] And as a development strategy,
             it’s meant to be evaluated to see if it meets the needs of the project
             you’re working on.”

So let’s take a look are RWD from the point of view of its impacts on different stages of a website’s development, lifecycle and marketing effectiveness.

Site Design Considerations

- Creating one design in RWD, serving all platforms vs multiple designs for mobile, tablet, desktop or app saves time and money.
– One RWD design across all platforms provides a common user experience across those platforms. For example – A student discovers an interesting educational program using their mobile phone on the bus trip home, then go on their desktop at home to further investigate and enter into a website that has the look and feel and sensibilities of the one that drew them to it in the first place. That “scent trail” as referred to in conversion optimization, is a key factor in producing a positive outcome from a prospective student’s web experience.
– Implementation of RWD requires a complete site redesign and reimaging of web applications across desktop and mobile. It is an all or nothing approach that cannot be phased in partially.
– Building effective navigation in RWD for small screen formats (ie smartphones) can be a serious challenge. Sacrifices in design are often made to make it work effectively.
– Image optimization in RWD across multiple formats can be a problem
– Advanced page functionality ie forms, applications etc can be difficult to implement.
– If user intent and/or user requirements are different across platforms, RWD can be difficult to apply, particularly if a mobile page or app is optimized for touch or lead conversion.

This example of a mobile app from JP Morgan Chase Bank demonstrates how a mobile device is intended to be used quite uniquely versus the purpose of a desktop site. According to the company,  consumers used this feature to deposit over $4 billion dollars and the app has won several awards including the highly renowned Webby Award in 2011.

Source: sixrevisions.com 

Site Production Considerations

- Production of a RWD site is generally a more complex project management challenge than a traditional site, takes longer to build and the approvals process, because it is quite different can be more difficult to manage.
– A range of hardware platforms (and resolutions) are required to thoroughly test your RWD site. Emulators or simply scaling a browser window can be used but they never seem to be quite the same results as working on the real thing.

Site Maintenance Considerations

- One of the real benefits of RSW is that it is much simpler to maintain one code base than two or three. This has important implications on the skill set requirements of your team ( internal or external), the amount of time required for maintenance of your site, as well as your management resources to oversee them. Saving time, money and human resources is a high priority for minimally resourced higher ed Marcomm or IT web groups.

Site Performance Considerations

- RSW sites are generally slower to load than m.dot mobile sites. In the example below the responsive mobile and responsive full web page take approximately the same time to load. Even though the mobile page only displays part of it, it needs the time to download all of it at the front end. An optimized mobile site with the same content would typically load much faster. And the really important part is that every extra second of delay in page loading causes a reduction, (reported up to 7%), in conversion rate.

Source: Sixrevisions.com

SEO Considerations

- Google has publically declared that it likes RWD sites , and apparently ranks them higher.
– A RWD site will reduce your bounce rate on mobile visitors which increases lead generation and ultimately trickles down to increased registrations.
– Because there is only once site, RWD sites typically get better page indexing
– Inbound links are directed to one site.
– All of the above typically improve your search engine page rankings.
– If visitor search intent is different for your mobile vs desktop site RSW has its limitations. The example below demonstrates how keywords can be very specifically mobile and local search oriented. Often these are very different keywords than you would typically optimize your desktop site for.

Marketing Considerations

- Analytics for RWD sites are collected under one Google analytics account making it much simpler to oversee your site’s visitor traffic, goals and marketing ROI.
– The example below demonstrates how traffic, funnel and goal conversions can be analyzed by screen size.

 Source: Adobe Blog

- RWD sites have their limitations with respect to efficient A/B testing and conversion rate optimization tactics. The tuning of content and its presentation is more difficult to engineer efficiently across pages that are so scaleable.

As Marcotte’s quote suggests each site has different requirements and objectives and should be evaluated as such. RSW is very effective in certain circumstances but marketers need to be aware that it has its strengths and weakness and apply its use, accordingly.

What factors were most important to you in your decision to use RWD in your last redesign. Or conversely if you chose to stick with a desktop/mobile format strategy, what motivated your decision and with hindsight would you repeat it? What other considerations would you suggest to add to our list. We look forward to hearing from you.

Other Sources:

5 Ways Responsive Design is Changing SEO

Responsive Web Design: The Ultimate Guide for Online Marketers

Responsive Web Design is Not the Future

The Top 25 Responsive Sites of 2012

In recent examples where we’ve split off and launched mobile-only PPC campaigns to parallel existing PPC campaigns, we have seen lifts in conversion rate from baselines of around 5% to anywhere up to 18%. That’s a pretty amazing result in any market but it turns out this is not unique to higher education. With a bit of research on the web you will find many corroborating studies and reports that confirm that mobile is generally getting higher click through and conversion rates than traditional desktop format marketing.

So after recovering from the celebrations, and leveraging this strategy across a few more campaigns, we buckled down and tried to really understand what’s different about mobile lead generation and to identify the factors that are influencing these results.

So here is our thoughts on why mobile seems to be working well for us, so far.

1) Most mobile lead generation forms are simpler and less threatening

Out of necessity, most mobile lead gen forms, on websites or on mobile PPC landing pages, keep it really simple, often only requesting full name and email, as above . This makes good sense given the challenges of typing and the limited attention span of a visitor using a smart phone. It is also generally accepted that by keeping the number of fields to an absolute minimum that you will scare away the least number of prospects, who are afraid of being put into a hard sell sales cycle they if they provide phone number and address details.

The A/B test example below provides vivid proof of this behaviour.

        The Original lead gen form required: Full name and email
           Variation 1 lead gen form required: Full name, email and phone number

The additional commitment required on the part of the prospect student to provide a phone number was enough to dramatically reduce the conversion rate. I would argue that in this case these prospects are not necessarily poor quality prospects but that they were at the very beginning of their research into possible options, or in other words, at the very top of the recruitment funnel, and as a result, were not willing to commit to a the higher level engagement that might be facilitated if they provided a phone number.

2) Mobile is a much more “directed” search platform

Source: Search Engine Land

Searching on a mobile device often has different intent from the kind of searching we do on a desktop or with a tablet. Mobile searching is very directed, “mission-based” searching. If, in the moment, what we are doing in the real world, ( on the bus, in a line for coffee, etc), is more import than what we are doing in the virtual world, then we want to get in, find what we want, and get out. Mobile facilitates this type of searching best. In this type of a search, it is reasonable to expect that prospect students would convert, on an information request goal, more readily, that when in exploration mode while sitting at home on their desktop in the evening, when the have more time to gather and consider the nuances of the information they find.

Source: emarketer

This behaviour may change in the future as we move more and more towards our mobile devices as our primary internet access points, and transfer our search requirements to it, but at least for the present this seems to be the case.

3) Mobile search is used to find local information

     Google says that 95% of smartphone users look up local information regularly.
     Google says that 50 % of its searches on mobile have local intent.
     Bing says that 53 % of its searches on mobile have local intent.

Mobile searchers are thinking local and they are thinking immediate. Assuming, like most post-secondary institutions, that a large part of your target audience is in your local area, it only makes sense that mobile will produce higher lead generation conversion rates. Given these kinds of results, local search advertising is expanding very rapidly. My guess is that higher ed will likely contribute its fair share to its projected growth in the coming years.

Source: Search Engine Watch

4) Mobile leads to action

Mobile devices seem to be an almost perfect direct response medium. We want information on the go, and when we get it, we seem more willing to act on it.

     70% of mobile searches lead to action within 1 hour. 90% eventually lead to action
     90% of leads from other sources do not take action, leading to 2-5 % conversion rates
         Source 

     61% of mobile searches lead to an inbound phone call
     Inbound phone calls generally convert at 10 to 15 times the rate of other leads.
         Source

These general statistics should get your attention. Unfortunately I don’t have education market specific stats to further delve into but as the research becomes available it will be very interesting to see how much of these general online consumer behaviors will be  translated into the higher ed market. The success of mobile in producing inbound prospect phone calls is an aspect that should be considered closely to effect a closer integration of inbound marketing with your school’s admissions call centre.

Mobile has demonstrated its chops to us as an effective tactic in higher ed lead generation. Lead quality and conversion to student rates remain to be seen down the road but I have high hopes that these leads will prove to be of high value. I hope these insights will be helpful to other higher ed marketers as you extend your marketing activities into this new territory.

Do you have other insights into the effectiveness of mobile marketing from your experience. Have you seen similarly high levels of lead conversions from mobile sources? We would love to get your take on mobile and hear about its role in your marketing plans for the coming year.

Astute analysts have come to realize that simple marketing channel attributing methodologies, such as “first click” and “last click” attributions, are flawed and result in misallocation of school marketing budgets and efforts  (which further affect the overall campaign ROI) because most of them fail to provide full insight into how a user interacts with marketing touchpoints before the conversion happens.

What is multi-attribution?

Let’s consider a scenario of a prospective student trying to enroll in a diploma program.As a very first step, the student searches for “Accounting diploma” and sees Adwords ads from several accounting schools.Let’s say one of the schools that comes up in the search is McGill University. The student then then searches “McGill University,” visits McGill’s website by clicking on an organic result, leafs through a few web pages, and

leaves the site before making a decision. McGill University retargets this student a few days later through ad banners and the student comes back to the site, identifies a program of interest, leaves to search for program reviews, and then comes back through some review portal and eventually completes the enrollment

In the above scenario, a prospective student is exposed to the following marketing channels before enrolling into a course.

As we all know, most of the analytics tools use last click attribution by default. In this case, using last click would result in the review portal getting full credit for generating a new conversion. All of the previous touch points would not be acknowledged as being a part of the entire process. In contrast, multi-attribution tools track all the touch points that the prospect was exposed to before the conversion, and allocate credit among all these nodes accordingly. Understanding the role each touch point has can further help you make vital marketing decisions to manage advertisement budget at a macro level.

There are a few different ways to distribute credits when using a multi-attribution tool. Here are some of the most used ones:

Funnel Position: Classify the touch points as Introducers (the initiator), Influencers (touch points in the middle of the funnel) and Closers (last known touch point before conversion) and distribute credit based on organizational preferences.

Time decay:  Assigns the maximum credit to the touch point that occurred nearest to the time of conversation.

Algorithmic: Use statistical and predictive models while taking time decay and a linear model into account.

Even credit: Simply divide the credit evenly among all known touch points

Choosing the justified multi-attribution tool

Picking the right tool is perhaps one of the most vital decisions your college marketing team will make. Each tool is unique, they have their own algorithm, but for the sake of simplicity and effectiveness, here is a comprehensive set of parameters you should consider while choosing a multi-attribution solution.

Data accuracy and integrity:

The tool is nothing more than a way to visualize data. Quality data is persistent and continues to provide insights way beyond its projected life. In order for any multi-attribution solution to board your college’s needs, it is essential that it should be able to answer affirmatively to following questions:

1. Does the tool account for cookie deletion and the use of multiple browsers?
2. Does the tool retain historical data?
3. Can the tool track user interactions across both online and offline channels?
4. Does the tool store data at a granular level (including clicks)?

Customization and flexibility

 Make sure the tool is flexible enough with well-reasoned and built-in attribution models that you can easily pick from. Also ensure that the tool “Be clear about your goal but be flexible about the process of achieving it.”allows for enough customization to suit your organization needs and goals. Additionally, ask your vendor the following questions to make sure it’s the right fit:

1.  Does the tool allow you to easily build custom attribution models?
2. Does the tool allow you to use custom cookie windows?
3. Does the product allow you to change attribution methodologies?
4. Is the tool flexible enough to allow multiple models at the same time?

Deployment

IT resources at most colleges are already tight and don’t have the flexibility to allocate dedicated resources. In order to reduce (or avoid) extra overload, the proposed tool should meet the following criteria:

1. The tool should be easy to deploy.
2. The tool should play nicely with existing web ecosystem and tag management solutions.
3. The tool should be easy to maintain on an ongoing basis when new updates are deployed or changes are made for conversion optimization.

There are hundreds of multi-attribution tools in the market right now, and they all have their own pros and cons. While choosing the multi-attribution solution, keep in mind that data quality in particular is vital. In order to truly evaluate the performance of your marketing effort, your tool needs to have a robust tracking mechanism that can account for all user touch points on- and offline.

My Top 5 Multi-Attribution Tools:

 Over the course of my digital marketing career, I have used many different analytics/attribution solutions. Some worked, some didn’t, and some are just plain AMAZING. Here are my favorite five attribution tools:

Attribution modeling has become an inevitable essence in today’s competitive media market place, where audiences are bombarded by multi-advertisement messages. Using a multi-touch attribution model allows your college to track all user touch points and pull more precise information about user interaction with their brands.

Proper attribution still poses a number of challenges to marketers and institutes alike because there are so many parameters involved. There is no clear-cut answer to queries about weighting each channel or the impact that has on the value of a conversion. As technology and digital analytics continue to reinvent themselves, new answers will continue to appear.

In the second part of this post, we will discuss multi-attribution solutions using Google Analytics. Stay tuned, and in the meantime, please tell us about your multi-attribution solutions and share your feedback.

It never fails to surprises me a bit when we find this situation because effective SEO practice is fairly easy to understand and apply, but more importantly, it provides a huge ROI on minimal investment of time and money.

Here are four simple reasons why I believe you must invest in SEO:

Reason 1: SEO Will Give You Competitive Advantage

In the 2012 Noel-Levitz E-Recruiting Practices Study it was reported that 42 percent of four-year private universities, 34 percent of four-year public universities, and 21 percent of two-year colleges are investing in an SEO process to improve search results. Simply put, this means that;

 60 % – 80% of the higher ed market, (depending on the type of school),
DOES NOT INVEST IN SEO.

Clearly, if you are looking for opportunity to rise above your competitors in your target markets, search engine optimization can help you do that. With the rise of “Content Marketing” in the last year, I think that these percentages will fall in 2013 but there is still lots of gap to take advantage of.

Reason 2: Prospective Student Rely Heavily on Search to Find Schools

Prospective students use many means to identify and narrow down their top school preferences. But what most of the research on the topic seems to have in common is that students are using search engines is a primary “discovery” tool in this process.

 Source: 2012 Noel-Levitz E-Recruiting Practices Study

2/3 of the prospective student population use and highly value 
search engines to research colleges.

There is a confusing inconsistency here between what students are doing to find colleges and that schools are NOT investing in SEO to improve their likelihood of being found by students.

To Recap:
- Two thirds of students rely heavily on search to find schools
- Colleges must appear in the search engine rankings to be found.
- At least two thirds of schools don’t invest in SEO to improve their rankings.

     So why is that?

The best reason I have been able to come up with to explain this is that many marketers don’t understand the difference between branded and unbranded term searching. They must be assuming most students are doing branded searches on their college’s name and therefore they are always going to be found. And once they are on the home page they can draw them into their program pages and move them into their recruitment funnel. I am sure this does happen that way in some cases but my bet is that it is rare and getting rarer. It probably works for the Harvards of the world put given the super competitive nature of things at all other levels in the market it is assuming a lot to think that high rankings for you brand will mean success in non-branded competetive program areas.  It is much more likely today that students are searching on something like “best green architecture program on east coast”. Without a serious SEO effort you are not going to get found for these kinds of search terms. Conversely, a college that has invested in SEO for key distinguishing search terms like this will have a much better chance at being found by a prospective student.

So if these higher ed specific stats above are not enough to convince you, let me throw a few other arguments in here. These stats are general and not specifically for higher ed but they indicate some pretty important behavioral characteristics of search that I am pretty sure prospective students will also have.

Reason 3: You Must Rank Highly on Page One of the Results Pages to be Found

The research on this topic is pretty conclusive.

75% of seachers never scroll past page one results.
Source: Marketsharehitslink.com, Oct 2010

Assuming this applies to students, this means that 75% of your prospective students will never get to your website unless your website search results gets to page 1. Sobering, right?

Even more sobering is that you have to get to to the top 3 organic listings to really have chance of being clicked. You’ve probably all seen examples of eye tracking studies on how people interact with search engine results pages, like the example below.

The red area indicates where people’s eyes tend to focus.

60% of the clicks go to the top three results.
Source: Marketing Sherpa, 2007

Reason 4: Search Generated Leads Close at the Highest Rate

The quality of prospective student leads that you generate (or purchase) is relative to their source. You know this if you track conversion rates of different types of leads through your recruitment funnel. Search generated leads (also known as in-bound leads) are likely the highest quality leads you have, converting to registered students at the highest rate. This is a general market stat, and not education specific, but research indicates that:

14.6% of SEO generated leads will close, while outbound leads, (such as direct
mail or print advertising generated) have a close rate of only 1.7%.
Source: SearchEngineJournal 2012

So clearly if you want to increase your leads and registrations, focusing on SEO to produce them is a high return on investment option.

If you are part of the higher ed community that is not currently investing in SEO, I hope that these arguments will get you thinking about how you can increase your marketing ROI by investing some of your resources into search engine optimization.

SEO is non-glamorous, operates in the background, and is sometimes slow to have impact but it may still be the best investment you can make to improve your school’s recruitment performance. We end up doing some SEO work with almost every new client we start working with. And it works.

I’d really love to hear back from some of you who have specifically chosen not to invest your marketing budgets into SEO and get your reactions to my arguments. What other marketing channels are you using, in lieu of SEO and what kind of ROI are you getting with them?

 Feedly

Feedly shares many of the functionalities of Google Reader, such as keyboard shortcuts and tags, but offers a much more attractive interface, turning your feeds into a magazine-like reader.

It is available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari as well as on iPhone, iPad, and Android. The application allows you to share content on Twitter and Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest as well as via email. It is also free, just like Google Reader.

1. Simple steps to subscribe to Feedly:
2. Go to Feedly’s website
3. Get Feedly for Chrome/Safari or Firefox
4. Connect via Google Reader
5. Allow the access

Newsblur

Newsblur’s interface is very similar to Google Reader’s. It allows you to import all your subscriptions from Google Reader without creating a new account. It also allows you to hide or highlight specific content pieces. Just like Feedly, Newsblur lets you to share content on social media. However, a main difference is that Newsblur enables you to follow friends and to add comments to what you are sharing. For that, just connect your Newsblur account to your social media profiles. When you find an interesting story, click on the share button.  A small comment section will appear.

Newsblur offers a free subscription for to up to 64 feeds, with a premium account option starting at $ 24/year. With the traffic generated recently by the closing down of Google Reader, Newsblur has been overwhelmed with requests. That is why it is not accepting any new free subscriptions at the moment.

Simple steps to subscribe to Newsblur:

1. Go to the Newsblur website
2. Sign up or Login in
3. Enter a username, password and your Gmail address
4. Create account
5. You will be asked for a payment. You can ignore this request and on the same page re-enter website address
6. A Welcome from Newsblur appears. Click on Let’s get started
7. Then click on Import from Google Reader
8. Accept access to your Google Reader
9. Install the bookmarklet to share on Newsblur
10. Connect with friends (via Twitter or Facebook) (you can skip this step too)

The Old Reader

 Really popular among users who are switching to a new RSS feed, Old Reader is a web-based beta feed reader modeled after the old Google Reader. So for those of you who loathe change and are not interesting in testing other alternatives, this clone of Google Reader may be the right choice.  A major downside is its sluggishness to import subscriptions from Google Reader. Note that the Old Reader has no social features.

Simple steps to subscribe to Old Reader

1. Go to the Website
2. Click on Connect with Google
3. Accept access to Google
4. Import subscriptions: Choose an OPML file (You can grab it From Google Reader settings  page) and import

We have been experimenting with the 3 platforms and here is what we have found:

• Old Reader and Feedly are both free. Newsblur’s free option is currently not available to new users.
• Importing subscribers from Google Reader is easiest with Feedly and Newsblur, made by a simple click.
• We found Feedly was the easiest for sharing the news that you like with your community and friends.
• Also, because of its magazine-like interface, Feedly is the most modern and user-friendly.

We enjoy using Feedly and recommend it for your higher education marketing activities.

What about you? What Google Reader alternatives have you been using? Which ones would you recommend? Share your experiences!