Higher Education Needs Content Marketing

Editor's Notes

1. Brice intro. The digital landscape is altering the paradigm of higher education – in teaching, in learning, and in recruitment. EVG is bringing more than a decade of digital publishing and marketing experience into this market. [Talk about other high ed clients and how we have helped.]
2. In January 2013, Moody’s Investors Service put a negative outlook on the entire higher ed sector, which comes only a year after they downgraded the credit ratings of twenty-two colleges. Expenses are growing faster than colleges can keep up with. It is no secret that higher education is more competitive than ever. The most competitive institutions frantically try to climb over one another to be the first to connect with a potential student. And it isn’t just the for-profits either. Many non-profit institutions are beefing up their advertising budgets and marketing departments in order to hold onto their corner of the market. Some non-profits are dedicating more than 20 percent of their annual revenues to drive their message to the masses.
3. In January 2013, Moody’s Investors Service put a negative outlook on the entire higher ed sector, which comes only a year after they downgraded the credit ratings of twenty-two colleges. Expenses are growing faster than colleges can keep up with.
4. Despite evidence to the contrary, some colleges still think the tough times are a temporary inconvenience — that eventually they will again be able to pass on their additional costs to students or get more money from the state and federal governments.
5. The biggest challenge for universities is to become businesses while maintaining their core functions of creating, processing and disseminating knowledge that can be applied to the issues of our time.
6. Brice – this will click through some examples in slide show view. These websites all look the same. They sound the same. There’s nothing that sets one apart from another. How can you differentiate in a digital landscape?
7. Brice – this will click through some examples in slide show view. These websites all look the same. They sound the same. There’s nothing that sets one apart from another. How can you differentiate in a digital landscape?
8. Moving forward, staying competitive will require an ability to quickly implement and pivot new approaches to outreach and communications. Rather than building upon an existing infrastructure that may have limited versatility, it is important that institutions look to marketing and technology solution providers with focused expertise to develop a framework of technology and an understanding of current best practices in their respective areas. This way, schools don’t start from scratch with new initiatives and end up implementing when it is simply too late. Some of the most important areas to avoid “do-it-yourself” approaches include marketing communication systems, website development and mobile content creation. However, the gaps are unique for every institution and should be handled as such.
9. Developments in the Internet, virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), digitalisation, and mobile telephony are revolutionizing how we communicate and how we learn. How do you break through the clutter?
10. Higher education is no exception to the lightening-fast changes. Concurrently with new technological developments, society's needs and paradigms of knowledge are changing, and government education budgets are shrinking just when the demand for lifelong education is expanding.
11. Universities have undergone a series of paradigm shifts from the classic Aristotelian model of the Greeks to the Ptolemaic Library at Alexandria and then from the medieval European university to the modern university we are familiar with. In responding to the needs of the society in which it operates,It’s time for a new paradigm shift. This is nothing new. But the shift isn’t only in how we teach and are taught, but in how we keep our institutions alive.
12. Slide that says “Tell your institution’s meaningful and compelling story (with white banner like value’s slide)Second: California School of Law - California Western School of Law used to get enough applicants but not enough who were truly a good fit, as its high attrition rates reflected. Working with a marketing company, the institution’s leaders created a brand identity reflecting its diversity, versatility, collaboration, compassion, academic rigor, and concern for ethics. A new motto, “What law school ought to be,” has been used since spring 2005 in a variety of marketing, outreach, and admissions materials. The campaign draws prospects into a conversation about how the school views the law, and those who aren’t the best fit now tend to opt out of the applicant pool. Despite a national decline in law school applications, the class that enrolled in fall 2006 is both the largest in three years and considered the best-fit group ever seen at the institution.Third: University of San Francisco – Capitalizing on their unique location and the area’s history, University of SF used humor to gain attention. This is a Jesuit Catholic school – rather than whitewash that, they utilized that as their core identity and built a campaign around their platform. The idea was to gain visibility and create buzz around their concept: “Change the world from here.” Fourth: American University’s WONK Campaign - integrated university-wide marketing campaign designed to promote American University’s brand objectives by strengthening the school’s academic and research reputation, enhance the quality and diversity of both undergraduate and graduate enrollment and improve engagement, support and advocacy among alumni (RESULTS: University reports that campus campaign awareness is extremely high (around 90 percent), the university’s website has seen a 35 percent increase in traffic and a 21 percent increase in page views, and the school’s admissions website has received an 88.9 percent increase in traffic.  Fall applications for the school also increased by 25 percent.)
13. Slide that says “Tell your institution’s meaningful and compelling story (with white banner like value’s slide)Second: California School of Law - California Western School of Law used to get enough applicants but not enough who were truly a good fit, as its high attrition rates reflected. Working with a marketing company, the institution’s leaders created a brand identity reflecting its diversity, versatility, collaboration, compassion, academic rigor, and concern for ethics. A new motto, “What law school ought to be,” has been used since spring 2005 in a variety of marketing, outreach, and admissions materials. The campaign draws prospects into a conversation about how the school views the law, and those who aren’t the best fit now tend to opt out of the applicant pool. Despite a national decline in law school applications, the class that enrolled in fall 2006 is both the largest in three years and considered the best-fit group ever seen at the institution.Third: University of San Francisco – Capitalizing on their unique location and the area’s history, University of SF used humor to gain attention. This is a Jesuit Catholic school – rather than whitewash that, they utilized that as their core identity and built a campaign around their platform. The idea was to gain visibility and create buzz around their concept: “Change the world from here.” Fourth: American University’s WONK Campaign - integrated university-wide marketing campaign designed to promote American University’s brand objectives by strengthening the school’s academic and research reputation, enhance the quality and diversity of both undergraduate and graduate enrollment and improve engagement, support and advocacy among alumni (RESULTS: University reports that campus campaign awareness is extremely high (around 90 percent), the university’s website has seen a 35 percent increase in traffic and a 21 percent increase in page views, and the school’s admissions website has received an 88.9 percent increase in traffic.  Fall applications for the school also increased by 25 percent.)
14. Slide that says “Tell your institution’s meaningful and compelling story (with white banner like value’s slide)Second: California School of Law - California Western School of Law used to get enough applicants but not enough who were truly a good fit, as its high attrition rates reflected. Working with a marketing company, the institution’s leaders created a brand identity reflecting its diversity, versatility, collaboration, compassion, academic rigor, and concern for ethics. A new motto, “What law school ought to be,” has been used since spring 2005 in a variety of marketing, outreach, and admissions materials. The campaign draws prospects into a conversation about how the school views the law, and those who aren’t the best fit now tend to opt out of the applicant pool. Despite a national decline in law school applications, the class that enrolled in fall 2006 is both the largest in three years and considered the best-fit group ever seen at the institution.Third: University of San Francisco – Capitalizing on their unique location and the area’s history, University of SF used humor to gain attention. This is a Jesuit Catholic school – rather than whitewash that, they utilized that as their core identity and built a campaign around their platform. The idea was to gain visibility and create buzz around their concept: “Change the world from here.” Fourth: American University’s WONK Campaign - integrated university-wide marketing campaign designed to promote American University’s brand objectives by strengthening the school’s academic and research reputation, enhance the quality and diversity of both undergraduate and graduate enrollment and improve engagement, support and advocacy among alumni (RESULTS: University reports that campus campaign awareness is extremely high (around 90 percent), the university’s website has seen a 35 percent increase in traffic and a 21 percent increase in page views, and the school’s admissions website has received an 88.9 percent increase in traffic.  Fall applications for the school also increased by 25 percent.)
15. Slide that says “Tell your institution’s meaningful and compelling story (with white banner like value’s slide)Second: California School of Law - California Western School of Law used to get enough applicants but not enough who were truly a good fit, as its high attrition rates reflected. Working with a marketing company, the institution’s leaders created a brand identity reflecting its diversity, versatility, collaboration, compassion, academic rigor, and concern for ethics. A new motto, “What law school ought to be,” has been used since spring 2005 in a variety of marketing, outreach, and admissions materials. The campaign draws prospects into a conversation about how the school views the law, and those who aren’t the best fit now tend to opt out of the applicant pool. Despite a national decline in law school applications, the class that enrolled in fall 2006 is both the largest in three years and considered the best-fit group ever seen at the institution.Third: University of San Francisco – Capitalizing on their unique location and the area’s history, University of SF used humor to gain attention. This is a Jesuit Catholic school – rather than whitewash that, they utilized that as their core identity and built a campaign around their platform. The idea was to gain visibility and create buzz around their concept: “Change the world from here.” Fourth: American University’s WONK Campaign - integrated university-wide marketing campaign designed to promote American University’s brand objectives by strengthening the school’s academic and research reputation, enhance the quality and diversity of both undergraduate and graduate enrollment and improve engagement, support and advocacy among alumni (RESULTS: University reports that campus campaign awareness is extremely high (around 90 percent), the university’s website has seen a 35 percent increase in traffic and a 21 percent increase in page views, and the school’s admissions website has received an 88.9 percent increase in traffic.  Fall applications for the school also increased by 25 percent.)
16. Your audience searches, interacts, and learns online. High school students use digital to search for schools, visit websites, schedule tours, and talk to other students about universities. This trend is only going to increase.
17. Your audience searches, interacts, and learns online. High school students use digital to search for schools, visit websites, schedule tours, and talk to other students about universities. This trend is only going to increase.
18. Your audience searches, interacts, and learns online. High school students use digital to search for schools, visit websites, schedule tours, and talk to other students about universities. This trend is only going to increase.
19. Your audience searches, interacts, and learns online. High school students use digital to search for schools, visit websites, schedule tours, and talk to other students about universities. This trend is only going to increase.
20. Your audience searches, interacts, and learns online. High school students use digital to search for schools, visit websites, schedule tours, and talk to other students about universities. This trend is only going to increase.
21. Your audience searches, interacts, and learns online. High school students use digital to search for schools, visit websites, schedule tours, and talk to other students about universities. This trend is only going to increase.
22. Your audience searches, interacts, and learns online. High school students use digital to search for schools, visit websites, schedule tours, and talk to other students about universities. This trend is only going to increase.
23. This isn’t just marketing to the point of enrollment. It’s an institutional shift – the separation between pre-enrollment communication and the post-enrollmenValuable data captured prior to enrollment can help drive relevant communication and services to students as they work to completion. On the flip side, student data has the potential to guide marketing decisions in a variety of ways. t student experience must be eliminated.
24. With massive open online courses (MOOCs) entering the picture at a rapid pace, the need to customize the experience from website visit to graduation will skyrocket in the next decade.
25. The force behind these changes is the ever-growing expectations of the student. Students want a program that is customized to fit their needs. Thanks to growing competition, they are often able to find it.