Spring 2022, Issue 1
Dear Colleagues and Partners! I’ve always loved the joke that higher education marketing is a bit like building a plane while flying it. As a former community college PIO, it rings true to me because of the way I was always rushing from one almost-finished project to the next with barely a minute to breathe. On top of that, there was the constant pressure of keeping up with the ever-evolving world of digital media platforms, tactics, and strategies. If it seems like every time you have it figured out, some new challenge or change throws a wrench in your plans, you’re not alone. We’ve all been there and that’s why I founded Graduate Communications. To succeed in our jobs, we have to be flexible, forwardthinking, and willing to pivot on a moment’s notice—and sometimes, we just need a little extra support. What always helped me through these challenges was remembering that when we do our job well, people’s lives are changed. It can be easy to lose focus on the impact you make, especially as the demands of your job shift, grow, and change (and between you and me, sometimes those demands make no sense!). If there’s anything we hope you take away from this publication, it’s that what you do matters, and that if you need it, Graduate Communications is here for you in the same way that you’re there for your students. With Admiration and Respect,
Cheryl Broom
CEO & Co-Founder, Graduate Communications Cheryl@GraduateCommunications.com (760) 310-8724
How to
In This Issue
Measure Your Marketing Success
iMeasure Your Marketing Success
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Higher Education Industry Benchmarks
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CASE STUDY: Geofencing the Way to Increased Access with CVC-OEI
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What Secret Shopping Five Colleges Revealed
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Recruiting Adult Learners
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CASE STUDY: More Is Possible with Allan Hancock College Community Education
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What Apple & Google’s New Privacy Settings Mean for You
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What’s it like to partner with Graduate Communications?
One of the smartest things any higher education marketer can do is to take the time to determine what marketing activities are actually making a positive impact. But how exactly do you do that? Here are three ways to measure your marketing to see what’s working best.
Start with industry averages Industry averages give you a baseline for success and are a great place to begin. While these won’t tell you how many applications you generated, they will give you an idea about the efficacy of your tactics and collateral compared to other institutions. But you need to make sure you’re comparing apples to apples, so only use metrics from higher education— metrics across industries vary widely. Keep in mind that while impressions are important, the metrics that really matter are your clicks, engagements, calls, and website activities. These numbers tell you if your ads are leading to action. If you have a media buyer, all of this should be in your reporting.
Keep track of your applications
Watch this video to find out!
Graduate Communications is a full-service marketing agency that supports institutions of higher education and the success of their students and alumni through innovative and time-tested marketing, communications, and research tools, tactics, and strategies.
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Ideally, you would be able to track a potential student directly from the digital ad that they clicked on, through your application process, and all the way to enrollment. Unfortunately, most college enrollment systems stop tracking after application.
This presents challenges to college marketers who think they need to attribute enrollment to marketing activities. But here’s the rub— converting students isn’t actually your job, driving applications is. Why do we say this? Because marketing usually has no control over enrollment arc messaging (even though it should play a role.). So, instead of fretting about enrollment, ask your Institutional Research department for a few years of application numbers. Compare trends for spikes and dips. Apps should go up when you’re spending more marketing dollars.
a giant marketing spend.
Another approach we’ve used is a pop-up that’s triggered by prospects who click through a paid ad. This form asks for minimal info (typically their first name and an email). When your campaign ends, you can use that info to compare it against your applications and enrollments. This is another great way to track ROI (and also collect warm leads for retargeting).
You could also approach things from an institutional perspective. Let’s assume between tuition and apportionment dollars, that a fulltime student brings the college $1,000 in revenue each semester. With a $100,000 marketing spend, you would need to recruit 100 new students to “break even.” Again, this is an oversimplification, but we think it’s still a useful framework for understanding ROI and convincing leadership that your marketing budget is worth it.
Figure out your acquisition cost In its most basic sense, your student acquisition cost is the cost of convincing a potential student to apply and enroll (and then stay past census, but that’s another article!). This metric, as you might imagine, is integral to marketing success in pretty much every industry. Everyone wants to have as many “customers” as possible but not at the expense of going broke from
Here is a simple way to estimate your acquisition cost as it relates to marketing: Marketing Spend ÷ New Students (or Applications) = Acquisition Cost So, if you spent $100,000 on marketing and you brought in 2,000 new students, your acquisition cost is $50 per student. Not too shabby! We know this is an oversimplification, but it gives you a nice ballpark for performance.
How do you track your successes? Have a great way to track ROI? Drop us a line and let us know. We’d love to learn from you!
Like what you read? Visit GraduateCommunications.com/blog for a full version of this article and more practical tips and tricks!
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Higher Education
Industry Benchmarks Background
2022 Digital Marketing Industry Benchmarks
CVCOEI
Geofencing the Way to Increased Access
The California Virtual Campus (CVC) is a collaborative effort among California Community Colleges (CCCs) to ensure that more students are able to complete their educational goals by increasing both access to and success in highquality online courses.
Challenges CVC needed to run a sophisticated statewide digital marketing campaign to drive website traffic and market fall 2021 online classes at California community colleges. CVC wished to target nontraditional students looking for online career education. Past campaigns through other agency partners had fallen flat. The CVC needed a new approach that focused on reaching potential students in areas most impacted by COVID-19.
Solution Graduate Communications’ plan focused on geofencing health and wellness clinics, unemployment offices, discount food stores, food banks, career centers, and other community locations surrounding 25 California community colleges. In addition, we integrated keyword search retargeting, keyword contextual targeting, and targeted a curated audience for education within these college zip codes.
ACHIEVEMENTS! Impressions: 18,173,159 (double the number from previous campaigns!) Visits To Website: 28,781 (an increase of 6,000 from previous campaigns!) CPM: $4.31 (half of the industry average!)
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For more challenges, solutions, and achievements, check out our CASE STUDIES at GraduateCommunications.com.
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What Secret Shopping Five Colleges Revealed The stakes for recruiting and retaining college students have never been higher. One-in-four college freshmen who started their degree isn’t coming back, and colleges now have 1.5 million fewer students than they did five years ago. Suffice it to say, COVID-19 has changed the way prospects think about college and life in general. Amid this whirlwind of change, how should higher education marketers be positioning their institutions to achieve the greatest success? In our experience, scoping out the competition is a great way to learn what works. Here are four takeaways from a recent Graduate Communications project, sponsored by the Orange County Regional Consortium, in which we secret shopped two private universities and three Aspen Prize-winning community colleges.
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Personalized Communications Makes a Difference
At one college, our undercover shoppers immediately started receiving phone calls after they submitted an information request. In fact, the college kept calling until our researchers answered the phone. After the researchers were connected with an advisor, the correspondence continued via email. That initial conversation with the advisor stood out, too: our secret shopper was asked right off the bat if he/she would need financial assistance and was immediately connected with a financial aid advisor. At another college, secret shoppers received a personalized application URL that redirected to a list of tasks to complete before enrolling.
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Focusing On Alumni Spells Success
One college did an amazing job of spotlighting the accomplishments of former students both on their website and in their marketing. This attention created a clear sense of pride in the institution and provided social proof to our shoppers that that college makes good on its promises.
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3 Social Media That Wows Another college excelled with a TikTok account full of organic and fun content that showed what life was like on campus. Social media was also used to engage with the college’s home city and local community, showcase local events, and featured their mascot getting involved in the city’s vibrant culture. A different college drew our attention by using its own students in ads, using its mascot in curated videos and tours, and offering a car giveaway for students who enrolled and graduated within two years.
4 Don’t Forget About Retention In addition to recruiting new students, one college stood out for its attention on retaining the students it already has—in case you’re wondering, their retention rate is 20 percent higher than the national average! This is a really great lesson for all of us. You can market, market, market, but if you’re not retaining students, you’re not going to see your enrollment stabilize or or increase.
Putting What We Learned into Action Now for the fun part—putting these ideas into practice! Here are a couple implementation ideas in order of difficulty.
Tier 1:
Tier 2:
Easy-to-implement ideas
Raising your game
Prioritize lead generation: Get information forms out there and start calling people back instead of emailing. Some people aren’t ready to jump straight into an application; they want to talk to someone and get questions answered. Lead generation forms should be available on all important pages of your website, including your home page. This gives you a chance to make a personal connection with a potential student prior to the application process.
Keep things on the right platform: Short-form videos don’t belong on Facebook, and lengthy announcements don’t belong on Tik Tok. Not all content can be repurposed for every platform and getting this right will make a big difference.
Create standout social media: The use of mascots, motion graphics, and videos is a great way to stand out. Don’t forget to celebrate existing students, alumni, and their achievements, and be relevant to the community.
Create pride: The schools that really stood out to our shoppers were those that used creative avenues to generate a sense of pride. Highlight your alumni, and for incoming students straight out of high school, send them a fun “congratulations” envelope with confetti in it. Even just a simple congratulatory email after their application has been processed can go a long way!
Tier 3:
Taking it to the next level Make sure your retention communications makes students feel like they are more than just a number. Check out our report using the QR code below to see which west coast community college website was an exceptional example of a guided pathways model with program mapping that uses advisor check-in points along the way. Look at your own practices: It may be worth hiring an outside group to “secret shop” your own institution. It’s a great way to self-assess, find out where your enrollment funnel has issues, and identify where improvements can be made.
As part of this effort, the college boasted a studenthosted podcast that showcased student voices, created a sense of shared identity, and covered everything from campus mental health resources to study tips.
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Want all the secrets from our Secret Shopper Survey? Contact Cheryl Broom at cheryl@graduatecommunications.com to get your copy today!
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Recruiting
Adult
Learners
According to the National Student Clearinghouse, over one-in-three college students begin their education after the age of 25, while one-in-five college students begin after the age of 30, making nontraditional adult learners a significant and often overlooked community college audience. Prior to the pandemic, this demographic was projected to grow by an additional 23 percent by 2019. But as with many things, COVID-19 changed all that. Sadly, the latest enrollment data shows adult undergraduate enrollment in steep decline. Suffice it to say, recruiting and retaining adult learners will play a critical role in the recovery of both our regional economies and community college enrollments. Here are a few things we’ve learned from our work with numerous continuing and adult education centers about the needs of this unique demographic.
It’s Not Just About the Money
have to be young to go to college.
Many higher education marketers assume that adult learners only return to college to earn more money. While this is a well-documented motivation, it’s not the only one. As Daniel Ramirez, Interim Assistant Vice President for Marketing and Communications at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, discovered as part of his capstone project for his master’s degree, adult learners are just as often motivated by more personal reasons.
Your copy and outreach need to match, too. References to pop-cultural memes and slang may be well-placed for traditional audiences but shouldn’t be boilerplate for adult learners. Instead, explore themes like convenience, speed, online options, and personal and professional growth. Short-term and noncredit options that get adults upskilled and/or back to work fast are particularly attractive.
For his project, Ramirez interviewed and surveyed adult learners to understand their motivations and found that many were “getting to a point with their kids where they were starting to have the conversation about the importance of education and they felt hypocritical saying, ‘You have to go to college. It’s important.’ Yet they themselves hadn’t finished.” This intrinsic motivation is key to recruiting those adult learners who may be satisfied with their income, but still harbor the dream of obtaining a college degree and the cultural cachet that goes with it. Tapping into this demographic’s need to grow not just professionally but also as role models for their families and communities is a great way to add emotion to messaging that is often focused on economic benefits.
Show Them Themselves Imposter syndrome is a big one here. Adult learners are typically insecure about returning to college and your suite of iStock photos of 18-year-olds isn’t going to help. Diversifying your images ensures that your college isn’t inadvertently reinforcing the misperception that you
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Showcase Relevant Support Services It goes without saying that adults have different emotional and academic needs than younger students. To engage them specifically, focus on support services that speak to their specific needs (and fears) such as career and professional development services and opportunities, academic tutoring, alumni networks, job boards, veteran’s services, healthcare, basic needs support, and financial aid, to name a few. Mixing in messages that showcase these services is a great way to show adult learners that you’re there for them as much as you’re there for recent high school graduates.
Like what you read? Visit GraduateCommunications.com/blog for a full version of this article and more practical tips and tricks!
Background:
More Is Possible:
Allan Hancock College
Allan Hancock College’s Community Education Division offers noncredit classes that help students build job readiness, improve basic computer skills, learn English as a second language, and much more.
Challenges: The college’s Community Education Division had never marketed its programs before and needed to start from the ground up by developing compelling and persuasive marketing material that would increase interest in its diverse programs.
Solutions: Graduate Communications worked with the college to create an aspirational tagline focusing on career pathways and personal enrichment. We examined enrollment and curriculum for each program and determined the right mix of diverse photography and messages for each certificate. Key stakeholders were involved in the selection of messaging and photography, which the college used to develop its own landing pages for each program. Additionally, all materials were translated into Spanish so they could reach the largest audience possible.
ACHIEVEMENTS!
• “More is Possible” tagline created to focus on career pathways and personal enrichment. • Development of more than 150 pieces of creative material, videos, and advertisements to promote 10 unique programs. • The program reports a 50 percent enrollment ROI from subsequent marketing efforts.
For more challenges, solutions, and achievements, check out our CASE STUDIES at GraduateCommunications.com.
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What Apple & Google’s
New Privacy Settings Mean for You As new federal privacy regulations take hold and tech giants like Google, Apple, and Facebook adjust and adopt their own standards, you’re probably asking what it all means for marketing. Apple’s new privacy settings are intended to make it harder for digital advertisers to track iPhone users. At the same time, Google has announced that in 2023, Chrome will stop allowing third-party cookies. While browsers like Safari and Firefox have already blocked them, Chrome still handles 60 percent of web traffic in the U.S., and that makes this a significant change. From a marketer’s point of view, a world without third-party cookies and app data sounds pretty sad. But is it really? We don’t think so and neither should you. Here are a few reasons why.
Retargeting Isn’t Going Away.
Here are a few other ideas for retargeting going forward:
So we’re all clear, third-party cookies allow you to learn about your web visitors’ online behaviors, such as the websites they visit, the kinds of ads they click on, and recent purchases. A third-party cookie is what tells advertisers that you were just on the Coach website searching for purses and that they should serve you more ads for purses.
• Use high-quality content. Instead of sending an ad encouraging a student to enroll or apply to a program, create more compelling content. Try sending ads about what a student can do with a degree, or about the different types of programs available.
Previously, this provided a trove of behavioral data that digital marketers could then use to target users. While that extra layer of data will go away, the good news is, first-party cookies won’t. That means, when someone visits your college’s website, you’ll still be able to save a cookie to their computer (if they allow it) to retarget them later. All you need is a campaign landing page that’s set up to do just that. The other thing to remember is that retargeting really just refers to the process of marketing to people who have already shown interest in your product. When we think about it in the context of higher education, the first thing that comes to mind are applied-not-enrolled students and stop-outs. These are populations whose phone numbers and email addresses you already have. Better yet, since Google is still allowing you to use that data to serve ads (via a tactic typically called CRM targeting), you’ll still be able to target them.
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• Try a giveaway. Graduate Communications recently worked on a marketing campaign for a community college client where we sent an email poll using our first-party data. In exchange, everyone who took the poll had a chance to win a $250 scholarship. In one month, we got 400 people to fill out the form. It’s amazing what people will do for a chance to win something! • Follow up with previous students. Another email campaign we performed for a client targeted students who had started a Medical Assistant Program certificate but had not finished it. Those emails had a 51 percent open rate. • Collect first-party data. Considering the trend toward privacy is going to continue, it’s time to step up your use of first-party data! Not only should you be using landing pages and retargeting from them, but you should also collect user information. We’ve seen great success with pop-ups that ask for a name and email, giving colleges a chance to track that prospect’s journey and retarget them elsewhere.
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Emails and SMS Marketing Are Still the Bomb. As digital marketers, we’re always looking for the next best platform, media, or social network to conquer. But let’s not forget about the tried-and-true. Apple’s recent update is undoubtedly making things more difficult for email marketers (by impeding our ability to track open and click-through-rates on mobile) but email is still considered among the most effective medium for engaging and converting prospects. In the world of consumer products, email marketing can be up to 40 times more effective than social media. And while text messages may seem like a thing of the past, you should rest assured that they are not—according to some sources, text messages have a 98 percent open rate and a 19 percent CTR.
New Media Means New Opportunities. There’s one more thing we need to talk about: advertising for the next generation. Last summer, the announcement of new changes to all of Facebook’s platforms made it more difficult to target anyone under the age of 18. That was a great thing for children and parents, but not so much for education marketers who are providing a valuable opportunity. One platform, though, still allows targeting of younger users. TikTok is set to become the fastest-growing app of all time, expected to surpass 1.5 billion users in the next year. So, if you want to target younger users, TikTok remains a great opportunity. And even if TikTok eventually changes its targeting standards, the thing to remember is there will always be more great opportunities (and tactics) if only we’re willing to look for them. So, instead of worrying about these changes, we invite you to join us in celebrating the innovative thinking they will inspire. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
Like What You’re Reading? Subscribe to our e-newsletter and we’ll send more great higher education marketing tips, tricks, and tactics straight to your inbox twice a month! Recent content includes:
Podcast
Crafting Culturally Relevant Stories Using Universal Themes
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Building an Alumni Association from the Ground Up
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Lifestyle Brand Tricks to Excite and Engage Alumni: Part 1
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Lead with Opportunity: Developing an Equitable Framework for Storytelling and Fundraising
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Our Clients Love Us! “The decision to work with Graduate Communications is an easy one. They are experts in their field, committed to success, quick to respond and supremely reliable, and have all the tools you’ll need to be successful. I recommend them without hesitation.” Francisco C. Rodriguez, Ph.D., Chancellor, Los Angeles Community College District “While we hired Graduate Communications as consultants to complete a specific project, they quickly exceeded our expectations, and actually integrated themselves into our campus culture so much that they feel like they are part of our Cerritos College team. I wholeheartedly endorse Graduate Communications.” Dilcie D. Perez, Ed.D., Vice President, Student Services/Assistant Superintendent, Cerritos College “Graduate Communications is diligently working on developing a Return on Investment (ROI) process, where our community colleges and region will be better able to report on the outcomes being achieved at both the quantitative and qualitative levels. Without hesitation, I would highly recommend Graduate Communications to any educational institution looking for more effective ways to engage with prospective students as well as other external and internal audiences.” Jesse Crete, Ed.D., Prior Interim Orange County Director, Los Angeles/Orange County Regional Consortium
Like Podcasts? How About One Devoted to Higher Ed Marketing? Tune into the Higher Education Coffee & Conversation podcast with Cheryl Broom, CEO of Graduate Communications, as she sits down with higher education experts to discuss the latest trends, practices, and challenges in marketing, communications, advancement, and student success. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music! Recent episodes include:
Episode 1
Overcoming the Deficit Perspective in Higher Ed Fundraising with Christina Romero, Executive Director, Santa Ana College Foundation
Episode 20
A Guide to Helping Guided Pathways Take Root with Renee Craig-Marius, Ed.D., Executive VP of Educational Programs at Gavilan College
Episode 22
Navigating the Web of Competing Demands During Site Redesign with Karen Norton, Executive Director of Integrated Marketing & Communications, Bunker Hill Community College
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