Building a Digital Marketing Strategy from Scratch

Building a Digital Marketing Strategy from Scratch: A Babson College Story
Gene Begin
Digital Marketing Director
Babson College

Babson College
Small, private college 14 miles west of Boston
#1 in entrepreneurship for 18 and 15 consecutive years
Approximately 2000 undergraduate and 1300 graduate students, representing more than 74 countries
Undergraduate program (top 20 in business)
Graduate program - MBA and MS degrees (top 40 in business)
Executive education program (top 10 U.S. and top 15 in the world for custom programs)
Babson Global, which works with corporate, university, government, and foundation partners to advance entrepreneurship education and Entrepreneurial Thought and Action® worldwide

The Babson InterwebsAs of March 2011
Black hole of a website redesign project
Siloed business units, with no institutional strategy
Not the best relationship between IT and Marketing
Web resources across campus within business units and IT
Traditional web support model
Throw it over the wall and we’ll put it up
“Content monkeys”

Approaches for Building a Digital Marketing Strategy from Scratch

Entrepreneurial Thought & Action (ETA)
ETA uses “effectual” logic that is based on asking the following four questions:
Who am I? (My identity as shaped by culture and context, skills, and abilities)
What do I know? (My knowledge and training)
Whom do I know? (My professional and social network)
How do I bring these 3 elements into a network of participants who can co-create an opportunity?
Source: Babson College Strategy , Version 2.1 ( May 2009)

Be a Politician…
Assess the current campus landscape
Resource needs
Business unit goals
Build relationships
Internal (staff, faculty, students)
External (alumni, governance)
…but too much of a politician
Deliver on the campaign promise!

Listen, Learn & Engage
Benchmark
Learn from not only the best, but those who have shared their mistakes
Listen to your peers
Campus experts
#highered peers
Industry experts
Bring the experts to campus
#edugurusummit

Building a Digital Marketing Strategy from Scratch

Where Does Digital Marketing Strategy Fit In?
* As defined by Mark Greenfield, eduGuruSummit, March 2011

Graduate
Ugrad
Advancement
Executive Education
Goal Planning? Who is Our Preferred Audience?
Granting Organizations
& Foundations
Alumni
Governance
HR Developers
Working
professionals
Parents
Faculty, Centers,
and Institutes
Policy Makers
Educators/Academic Institutions
Students (Prospective & Current)
Guidance
counselors
Employers

Develop 3-Year Business Plan
OUR PLAN
Year 1: Laying the Foundation
Team, Governance, Process AND Education
Year 2: Advocacy Marketing
Better alumni engagement => more participation => better student experience => better alumni engagement
Year 3: The True Mobile Marketing Experience
The next era of mobile marketing, live-social, geo-location and QR code marketing

Year 1: Resource and Goal Alignment
Build out team to meet business unit needs AND institutional needs
Hybrid, hybrid, hybrid
Development resources
Business unit goals
Team experience
1 director, 5 digital marketing specialists
1 Senior DMM focused on Institutional web support (CSS and UI)
1 DMCM focused on UG web support and Institutional community management (SM)
1 Interactive Media Specialist focused on Executive Education web support (development)
1 DMCM for Alumni & Friends Network (content curator)
1 DMCM for Graduate School (TBH)
LESSON LEARNED:
Hire quicker.
But still hire right.

Establish Governance Model
True Web Governance *
Establishes authority and accountability
Defines the role of the campus units as it relates to the web and establishes how they will support web efforts
Involves senior leadership
* As defined by Mark Greenfield, eduGuruSummit, March 2011

Babson Governance Model
WEBSITE
SOCIAL MEDIA
LESSON LEARNED:
Clearly and continuously articulate roles & responsibilities.

Distributed Governance Model for Informational Website Maintenance
Permissions
Super Authors
Digital Marketing and IT A&D teams (10 – 12 individuals)
Access to alter home page, web parts and all parts of templates
Authors
5 – 10 individuals
To be treated as power users; individuals to be determined by digital marketing team
Access to edit web parts by subsite, in addition to the editing accessing outlined below
Editors
60 to 70 staff
Access to edit content area by subsite level
Also, 200 faculty have access to edit so they can update their bio
LESSON LEARNED:
Continuous
check-ins with business unit contacts on responsibility due to turnover

Digital Marketing Governance Support Model
Online ticketing web support system for short-term needs
Online project tracking for longer projects and integrated creative production plans
Cross-functional support

Content Strategy
Audit
- Go be that politician across campus
Assess
- Asset type and channel
Prioritize
- Strategy and goals
Build
- 6 month plan
Develop
Creative production, curation and re-imagination
LESSON LEARNED:
There’s more content on your campus than you can ever imagine … or re-imagine!
After 3 months, check in and start audit cycle again

FOCUS!

FOCUS!
Develop goals, tactics, and ACHIEVABLE measurements
Prioritize the aspects of your digital marketing mix that…
A. Align to the institutional strategy
B. Need the most help
For us:
B. Website redesign
A1. Social media strategy, branding and guidelines
A2. First steps of the mobile mix
LESSON LEARNED:
Focus on education and training first

FOCUS!
Understand your limitations
Engage with experts
Mobile mix
Media-buying
SEO strategy
LESSON LEARNED: Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

#higheredweb Manifesto

Break the Silos!
IT and Marketing
Faculty and staff
Across business units

Educate. Educate. Educate.
Be a change manager.
“To do disruptive innovation, you have to be willing to be misunderstood for a very long time.” – Jeff Bezos

THANK YOU!Gene BeginDigital Marketing DirectorBabson Collegegbegin@babson.edu @gbegin http://www.linkedin.com/in/genebegin http://www.slideshare.net/gbegin

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Building a Digital Marketing Strategy from Scratch

by Gene Begin

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