Deciding to save money in the short run on advertising and inquiry development could have a long-lasting effect. And on the flip side, mounting an immediate and massive nurturing / rejuvenation campaign could yield immense rewards.

Let’s take a look at three colleges and attempt to understand their buyer journey, sales staffing and attitude toward inquiries. All of the charts below reflect enrollments during the first quarter of 2020.

College A

This particular college has a robust contact center. They embrace drip marketing and actively nurture their inquiry database. Their population is over 90% male and they use no traditional marketing. Students find this school from the internet both organically and from paid search on Google Ads and Facebook/Instagram. A small portion of their enrollment comes from face to face interactions at career fairs.

Interestingly enough, 45% of the students who started school in 2020 inquired at least 61 days in advance. And 12% of this year’s population inquired more than 4 months ago.

Take-aways: While most institutions would be focusing on the “new inquiries” from the last two months, this school employs multiple touches and continues to connect with and engage inquiries for many months. This takes appropriate staffing levels and a long-term view. But it also results in many more enrollments.

Final thought: A large scale reduction in advertising (like pausing a month) now could be offset slightly from the “lead bank” – but enrollments will lag dramatically over the next 90 days and in fact it will take at least 4 months to regain momentum.

College B

Not unlike College A, this school has a significant portion (35%) of its enrollment coming from inquiries that are more than two months old. However, the absence of a contact center means admissions advisors are tasked with the responsibility for contacting all inquiries – both new, old and VERY old.

This institution is also committed to on-going contact with its inquiry database in the form of email and text messages. Inquiry sources include digital efforts similar to College A — but in addition to digital, College B spends about one third of its budget on traditional channels.

Takeaways: Adding a contact center and actively recycling older inquires could yield substantial success for College B. The “direct response” nature of the traditional inquiries results in a larger number of students who are further down the buying path and who are ready to enroll sooner, but more support could be given to working older inquiries.

Final Thoughts: A large scale reduction in advertising (like pausing a month) now would create disaster for the following two months as enrollments could fall off by 60% in the two months immediately after “going dark.” The absence of a contact center will also translate to fewer enrollments from older inquires and would exacerbate the situation. All told, it will be very challenging to ever regain the ground lost after pausing or greatly reducing lead generation.

College C

This could be a conundrum. How do you manage an extended enrollment funnel when almost 60% of your starts this year have been in your data base for three months to three years? SMH.

The good news: The combined efforts of admissions and marketing are effectively nurturing the database. Deeper insight would reveal this college attracts some high school seniors – but not at significant numbers. However, the behavior of the 29 enrollments (23% of the 2020 YTD starts) who inquired more than six months ago merits additional study. If these are in fact 2019 or 2018 HS grads, a targeted effort to message to this population should be tops on the list.

Takeaways: The gaping hole in the production of enrolls from four to six months needs to be addressed. There may be significant gains to be made by addressing this “dormant but not dead” population. Additional inspection internally may also improve cash flow. Could additional start dates be added to accelerate enrollments? Note: Of the three schools studied, College C has less frequent starts.

Final Thoughts: Pulling back on advertising in the short run is probably least disruptive for this school in the immediate near future, as only 20% of enrollments inquire in the prior month. However, when you roll forward over the next two months and consider the cumulative impact, a large advertising cut in month one could actually reduce enrollment by 60% in month two through four. And that’s downright frightening.

Conclusions: Increased awareness of your new student life cycle can yield opportunities you may be missing. Redacting data and sharing with your peers in non-competitive markets would be an excellent way to spend 30 minutes over a cup of coffee. Finally, cutting ad spend now will hurt more later than you realize.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/understanding-sales-cycle-vince-norton/

The post Understanding the Sales Cycle appeared first on Norton Norris.

If you want to watch this episode in video format, we’ll be available on YouTube, IGTV, Facebook Watch.

Trent: Welcome to the Norton Norris podcast! I am one of your hosts Trent Anderson and I am joined by the “little N,” Mr. Vince Norton

Vince: hey Trent thanks for putting this together today excited to launch this inaugural podcast and share some good stuff with people.

Trent: Absolutely so to that point, this is the inaugural episode of the NortonNorris podcast and what we’re going to be doing is sharing tips, tricks, best practices, we’ll be inviting guests, some of our clients, our colleagues as well as some thought leaders in the; marketing, admissions, training, and mystery shopping space, so we hope you stay tuned!

We’ll be available on YouTube for video, we’ll be available on Facebook for video and text and will be available on Instagram for the same thing and we will also be available on your favorite podcast destinations so if you’re an Apple podcast user, Spotify, podcast one… whatever it is, we will be there for you.

So without further ado, it’s only fitting that our first guest here is Vince and we thought it’d be a good idea to start out with maybe what’s old is new again and that’s not a dig at the fine-looking gentleman across from me right now! It is a question because in working in marketing as you have Vince for, what I don’t want to age you but what’s it been three decades?

Vince: Well could be, could be four decades..

1:35
Trent: could be four decades! Obviously a lot has changed. Social media didn’t exist, and before that the internet wasn’t around. So we had what we call now “traditional media,” TV, radio, print Direct Mail, that sort of thing. Vince can you share with our audience what is the state of traditional media?

Vince: well it’s alive and well to be honest and right to the point because you’ve still got to drive traffic to your digital properties and without some traditional advertising methodologies and some traditional channels to create awareness, I mean how are people going to go and learn about you? Outdoor’s as strong as it’s ever been.

02:16
Trent: oh really that’s interesting

Vince: absolutely I mean it’s so geo-targeted. 40 years ago when I bought my first board, I don’t know if we even knew what geo-targeting was. It still exists today and TV, although the space is fragmented, and you’re gonna want to be on you know regular TV and connected TV both there’s a lot more options but still people count on TV for their news you know you can you can target with it you know you still have Nielsen ratings for your age for your male/female so it’s still a very viable viable approach to creating awareness and driving some direct response people people don’t pay enough attention to creative but you know some things never change.

So I mean constantly have to have to fight that battle and say, “you know it’s not it’s not enough to be on the air but you got to be on the air with solid spots and really really think about your message. I’ve been talking a lot about message lately out on the out of the conference trail and you know it’s just consistently overlooked.

3:34
Trent: sure sure so what I’m hearing you say is media; traditional or digital or new-age or emerging, it’s really all about context. And it’s really all about content. When you talk about message it doesn’t matter what what the platform is or what the channel is, if you have a suboptimal message it doesn’t matter what where you’re placing that media is that right?

03:57
Vince: Sure thing yes I mean the message has to people need to take a step back and think what’s the message I want to get across you know what what are my unique selling propositions you know what are my points of difference in you know in our space I don’t see people taking a step back to think about that.

I was working with a group of admissions people just last Friday and I did a little exercise and we said okay everybody come up to the board and write a USP up on the board and they really struggle with that kind of thing now. They can identify features, but to really really surface what what makes us unique and then stay on point with that message is relatively hard and maybe I’m getting off track here because they don’t know that media but it’s important for our viewers and listeners to understand that being thoughtful about our message and then once you’re thoughtful being consistent trying continuing that same message across multiple channels is key to success.

5:07
Trent: yeah that makes perfect sense! So tell me a little bit about how you can integrate as a business across multiple channels? Obviously we’re talking traditional plus digital. How we marry the two of them how do you keep your message consistent and how do you keep your creative consistent

5:27
Vince: you keep your message consistent by crystallizing your message points yet not trying to be everything to everybody, really distilling it down, and keeping it simple and driving that message across. You almost have to think public relations right, you know before you prep for any speaking engagement know you’ve got your hot seat questions, you’ve got your key talking points so that if the conversation goes one way you can keep coming back say.

05:57
Trent: Vince that’s a good point

06:00
Vince: and like I said earlier we want to see how that ties back into by the media so staying staying on point with your with your key message points is key and then realizing that when you’re going to measure your success attribution is more challenging today than it ever has been because people can get the message from so many different channels and you know ultimately that inquiry, that call-to-action it’s probably going to show up on your website and you knowing the different mechanisms and analytics to look at within your website and knowing that there’s a difference between direct traffic and referral traffic and how your traditional media, how your offline media plays a role in that I think we sort of have to shift change the channel just a little bit, pun intended.

And then there’s attribution. Although it’s harder and harder with traditional media, measurement is key. I can share one way we look at that here in a minute.

07:20
Trent: Yeah please do. Help us unpack that. Help us unpack the traditional media attribution challenge that everyone has.

07:28
Vince: One of the things I’m always intrigued by is time of day and day part analysis as to win the traffic comes to your website and really kind of parsing it out and looking at it and when you buy TV, so back to the old dinosaur era TV. When you buy TV either by spot programming and you say, “I want my spot to run and like one of your favorite shows I know you like the Golden Girls yeah, one of your favorites. So you can buy your rotator and you buy your spots a little bit less expensively, a little cheaper and your spots run say 9a to 4p during your classic daytime coverage or you can zero in and say no you know we really think that we want to get those influencers we want to go on the noon news.

It’s actually strategy we use sometimes. I know probably our students that we’re trying to reach aren’t on the noon news but chances are somebody in their life that’s gonna give them some advice or counsel could be. We might pick that noon news for example and the day part analysis just involves a simple downloading of your inquiries that come in into your CRM. Download those inquiries they typically will have a timestamp on them and look at your inquiries Monday through Friday, primarily look at the time stamp on those inquiries and then maybe graph it out maybe chart it out sort it however you like to slice and dice your data but you can start to see most the time when you do this you can start to see some peaks and some valleys when people are submitting a new inquiry on your website. Now we’ll see sometimes it follows normal day time patterns of get up you get a shower, you go to work, or instead of working you know your other website so much but you know we’ve seen some interesting things we’ve seen some we’ve seen either that tells us that we have shift workers coming home from third shift and consuming some television and then going on and submitting an inquiry job we’ve seen some you know we’ll see a big fall off if we’re working with schools that serve a lot of moms and a lot of non-traditional students well off it you know at three or four o’clock well you say what why did our inquiries drop at three or four o’clock and it’s like well think about the kids came home from school and you’re gonna experience this in just a couple of years Trent, but it’s like all of a sudden the world’s gonna stop right you know you’re gonna have those classic conversations they’re over cookies and a little afternoon snack of what happened at school today and you’re not gonna be submitting the inquiries and working on your information so you see peaks and valleys.

Ironically when we’ve sorted this by market I’ve noticed tentative spikes. It’s interesting because you’re like wait a minute there’s a spike in West Michigan at 11 o’clock in the morning and then I look over and I look at you know southern Kentucky and there’s a there’s a DMA down there and there’s a spike there at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and you start to do a little more digging and you say is there program running at different times during the day because your programming does vary.

We’ve actually been able to discover that specific programming will often out pull broad rotators and I don’t think I’m gonna reveal in this in this podcast what the programming is right watching but if you can really search and discover that there’s a program that my prospects that, my target audience relates better to then then you scrap that broad rotator right and you say let’s do some spot buys and just focus in on some specific programming 12:15 and that’s I mean in some ways that’s the beauty of traditional media right. There’s a day of the week that you like or hate, load up on that day and you could vary by market and that’s that’s when you get to know your audience when you get to know your prospects and their lifestyle habits those are some things that you can be doing and should be doing which I don’t know if it’s you can use your digital media and target quite the same way.

12:52
Trent: right right well bring a couple things you brought up there that that I’d like to unpack too. So the first part of that is utilizing digital to drive better decision making and buying for traditional. Now would the inverse also be true? Can you use traditional and seeing the increase in spikes like you’re talking peaks/valleys to then further drive your digital? I.e. your PPC, Facebook ads, etc.

13:25
Vince: you know Google Analytics a lot better than I do because I’m a dinosaur and you’re not but if you’ve got the timestamp yeah you can see traffic to your site increases or decreases you can see really you can correlate that to your traditional. We have experimented in some of the big markets with increasing our ads increasing what we’re willing to pay for our PPC ads when certain programming is run so you know we can do some bracketing and “bracketing with my hands in the camera here” and increased bids during and immediately after when our TV spots are running for example ask advanced correlation. don’t even know if that answers your question

14:23
Trent: It absolutely answered it. It’s about connecting the dots and making everything work better together is you know mark money yeah yeah and it’s not just about advertising either it’s other are the marketing channel it’s like email text message SMS blasts even when you post on your Facebook page your Instagram page I think all of that data that you can collect on your consumers behavior is going to help you know make your your your targeting and your marketing all that much more refined which again the other thing that I heard you say is when you take that broad-based approach and you’re using a shotgun then you’re you’re hoping that something you’re gonna hit something with your buckshot whereas if you narrow that down with better data about our targeting so on and so forth you’re gonna get much better returns when you actually you know rule number one know thy customer right is that kind of what I’m hearing you say

15:20
Vince: well yeah absolutely rule one. Rule two target or fish where the fish are. there’s some examples where your traditional media isn’t the thing to use trying it has nothing to do with being traditional, but it has everything to do with your ability to target writing. In many cases the designated market area, the DMA, it’s too big. If you’re located you it’s 4:30 let’s say your DMA is a watch, it’s a clock and you know your business is living down at 4:30 but your signal is reaching 10, 11, and 12 and those are never going to drive across town right in so using a big traditional media channel like radio and getting the whole market or TV you probably want to rethink that.

There are other market areas, I mean I lived in York, PA. There’s Harrisburg Lancaster, and it’s horse and buggy land in southeastern Pennsylvania and that market is a triad all sharing the same TV signal. Well, the last I checked there is a Walmart in each of those towns and I didn’t learn this in any specific media buying seminar or anything but I happen to believe that if there’s a Wal-Mart in your town and you’re used to going there you’re probably not gonna go to the next town to go to Walmart. So if you’re in one of those Triad cities and you’re purchasing a traditional TV signal and you’re reaching not only your city but those two other ones you know people from your city will come to your shop restaurants tour school right now in your living center but the one the next town over I’m probably not going to happen in that specific case there’s a natural Geographic boundary culture on a river and you know when people were growing up when the horse and buggy there weren’t very many bridges so people didn’t cross natural geographic boundaries.

I look at that same phenomena that occurs down in Cincinnati. The Cincinnati Airport is actually in Kentucky. So people from Northern Kentucky, even though they’re getting the Cinci signal, they’re not as likely to cross that big river. I can’t explain it, maybe someday I’ll be able to, but it just happens. targeting important in you know understand your customer understand your market in do some of those classic and we talked about traditional media but you know doing so that classic zip code targeting yeah look at look at where your customers come from and you know use that to inform you know what what channels your you’re going to purchase and that may tell you to stay you know you know away from the mass media or it might tell you to go ahead make sense

19:05
Trent: Great stuff, Vince. Only someone who’s been doing this for a couple years would would know the ins and outs of media buying to that extent so that’s that’s greatly appreciated. Now if folks are doing traditional media ie TV or radio, let’s talk about the million dollar question. How is that shifting more towards digital? What are some of those new distribution methods? I’m primarily talking about streaming radio and OTT. What’s your view on on those new kind of the new age of traditional media?

19:44
Vince: Well you know it all depends who you talk to, right? I’m talking to my account exec from my local Fox affiliate they may recognize those new avenues exist but they still may be encouraging the major part of the buy and the tried and true. I’m gonna skip the OTT question for for just a minute and focus just on Pandora and the streaming radio. The wonderful thing that Pandora and Spotify allow you to do is to target by zip code and that’s also happening with your OTT products but targeting by a zip code it is very beneficial and when we’re we’re trying to spread the word in some of those market areas like I just explained, “my business is down at 4:30 and I don’t want that signal reaching you know the whole face of the clock yeah shifting and using Pandora and targeting by a zip code, targeting by age, and targeting by gender is very very attractive to me. I’m a huge fan of streaming radio from that regard. I will say that from an attribution point of view, and I’ve been using Pandora probably for five years now, it’s really it’s rare that you see or you get a report and have that report indicate that Pandora work. So sorry friends from Pandora love you much, but it doesn’t show up.

Now I don’t know whether people consider audio is radio but it doesn’t show up on inquiry attribution models that we use. When we query customers, however, I can tell you that just using drawing a line in the sand and having pre-campaign, during campaign, and post-campaign that I can see spikes. I can see results in if that’s the independent variable, that’s the only thing you changed in the campaign then you better go ding ding ding ding ding this works yeah and give credit to that campaign job. So I do really like the isolating and targeting that you can do and I do think we’re gonna see more of that because our advertising methodologies are only going to get better and better and we’re targeted probably until they’re not and then we’ll just cycle back and say this is so much work.

23:00
Trent: This is great. So for schools or businesses that have never advertised on radio, either traditional radio or streaming radio, how do those providers/publishers give feedback to advertisers and agencies like us? Then how do we give that information back to our clients and say this worked well and this did not? What are some of those key performance indicators?

23:23
Vince: Traditional radio is anybody’s guess all you have is if this if the station subscribes to you know a reading service. Smaller markets are not going to subscribe so you’re either gonna get feel-good, “okay I was in the dentist’s chair and I heard your commercials or you’re gonna get something anecdotal and you really aren’t gonna have much much in a way of measurement at all. I think the majority of websites now are shying away from don’t add another form field on your website and ask them how they heard about us. People are completing your form because you’re making them complete the form but they are just ticking the first thing that’s on the list. So traditional radio gets real hard to measure. On the other hand your streaming will verify and give you an affidavit that your signal did reach X number of people. Normally they’ll over deliver so, they tell me somebody tapped the screen but I don’t believe that. I think that’s somebody that that’s an error, they were trying to answer a call or were doing something else on their phone.

No, I don’t believe the screen taps (clicks) because when you try to correlate the, “hey this many people tap the screen and went to your website” (and by the way, set up a separate landing page so you can really track its analytically) and it’s not gonna correlate. You’re gonna have this number of people that said they tap the screen and you’re gonna have this number way way way down here people that actually did so, I don’t put any stock in that. Again sorry Pandora! And I also I don’t buy desktop Pandora. I’m really only interested in the mobile traffic. And again the attribution models get harder and harder I would really strongly suggest that people try one thing at a time. It’s like your little boy’s plate when he starts eating food out of it when you got the baby jar, you’re putting in those divider dishes, and so on. Do the same thing with your media, don’t mix it all together. Anytime we’re gonna start a new initiative whether it’s outdoor or it’s TV whether, or it’s radio we’re gonna start a new initiative right.

We’re going to let it run a while and give it to mature or to sharpen and then we’ll take a look at pre-campaign, during campaign, post-campaign, and there should be some nice residual from that campaign. When you’re looking at results you get a look at total results, even your word of mouth kind of things because you know the proper mix and media, you know people are going to be getting those messages from all different sources and they’re going to be little separate. I can’t remember it all if I you know where where I heard it where I saw it but you know you know I should if it’s working as the sum of everything I don’t you know visit visit that place of business

27:18
Trent: That’s great! So in addition to some of these streaming services, one of the channels that I’m super bullish on for clients is podcasts. We saw Spotify make a huge play in buying Anchor as well as a couple other podcast creation studios. Spotify recognizes that radio is one thing, and that’s basically all streaming services like Pandora and Spotify. But the long form or sometimes short form podcasts have become wildly popular, so there’s a huge amount of demand. Whether you’re riding the train on your way into the city or wherever you work or you’re riding in your car on your way to work, Americans today want to be entertained and they want to be informed. If you have a blend of the two (infotainment) you create a hundred million dollar podcast experience like Joe Roganhas for example.

Now if you want to advertise on Joe Rogan I think you’re gonna be paying you know upwards of 6 figures per spot but what I think is really important to understand as an advertiser or publisher is that you can get very detailed about who you are viewership is, and I think even more so than what traditional radio can provide. Vince you’ve already done a great job of explaining how there are holes in the boat so to speak in terms of attribution. But the podcasts, the digital platforms they’re built on, have the same sort of metrics that Google and Facebook have. So keep in mind you’re going to develop a really clear picture about who your audience is. Then because it’s still kind of the Wild Wild West of advertising practices on podcasts, prices are a lot lower than they would be on a CBS or ESPN morning TV show, but with the same viewership. So I highly recommend at least taking a look at podcasts specifically in your target market or target demographic.

29:38
Vince: Do you see trends in users and subscribers age-wise? My son apparently these days when he’s driving to see me in Michigan he’d rather listen to a podcast or his favorite rapper which, I’m like ” u-turn no chance to the rapper.” He’s 29 so does it (subscribership) tail off at some point and as you approach dinosaur status, not adapting that technology? Or what ‘s the sweet spot for podcast listener demos?

30:14
Trent: It’s gonna depend on the actual podcast and what kind of content they churn out. So let’s just use Joe Rogan as an example. His demo is 18 to 34 about 99% male. Then there’s the Serial podcast, I’m sure most of you’ve heard of it. That’s basically kind of like a murder mystery in the palm of your hand or in your ear pods. That show ends up skewing more towards you to 55 because again it’s almost like listening to a book on tape but it’s fresh content produced almost on a regular basis. Serial had 100 million downloads. I think you’ve seen this too with more of the traditional media players like sports radio. They’re taking their on-air segments and then they package them up they tie them up with a bow and then they shoot that out as a podcast as well because they recognize that, yes, podcasts are trending to the younger side but there is that on-demand quality that we understand from TV. And that’s so important because the ability for users to do things on their own time is huge. And it’s no it’s no secret employees are overworked and overstressed so they’ll hit download on their way out on the company Wi-Fi and guess what they’re firing that podcast up on their way home. Obviously it’s going to depend on the content and the podcast itself but it’s it’s representative across the board. So again I think there’s application for podcast advertising for almost any business or school or senior living community.

32:38
Trent: Great. What are 3 key takeaways that people should walk away from today? The first thing is nailing your message, that’s probably first and foremost. What would be the second it’s going to be targeting

32:58
Vince: yeah and targeting geographically, targeting age, targeting income and more. I guess another little nugget, when you target you also can’t be fooled by the numbers. There’s programming that we don’t buy that skews very well if you just bought by some of the rating points alone and you were looking at daytime TV you may end up buying programming that you know produces a lot of people in your age range but socioeconomically is not a match. So when you target, look at all the information; look at geography, look at age, look at socioeconomic, but really really pay attention to targeting. One of my favorite targeting stories is when I was in a retail store in New Buffalo, Michigan (which is technically in the Chicagoland DMA) and I heard an ad for a community college, in fact the community college that I pay my taxes to, that was 50 miles away. So this community college was buying ads not on local cable TV and just giving their zone or not on the tiny little radio station with with the very weak signal they were buying radio ads on one of the most popular Chicago radio stations that was reaching all of Chicago land and it was reaching from Waukegan to Naperville and Aurora all the way it down and around a New Buffalo. I thought wow those are my tax dollars at work

35:09
Trent: what’s a third takeaway?

35:15
Vince: consistency consistency yeah if you if you can’t be unique be consistent.

35:24
Trent: awesome well Vince thank you so much for your time today! This will be the first of many conversations. We’ll get the next one cued up for a really fun OTT discussion and we thank you guys for tuning in! If you guys have any questions please reach out to Vince on LinkedIn or via email. We’ll see a lot of content posted over the long haul here, so thanks for taking this ride with us and we hope to see you again!

The post How to Integrate Traditional & Digital Marketing appeared first on Norton Norris.

However, Google comes up with plenty of updates throughout the year – including updates to some of the major core algorithms – to improve quality and search experience.

It is essential to pay attention to all these search engine algorithm updates that may affect your website’s ranking and visibility, such as Google Core updates, page speed updates, Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird.

Google Core Update for June 2019

Google doesn’t always give a heads up when it’s time to roll out a new core update, but this time they did. To determine whether your site was affected by the algorithm updates that impact how search results are ranked and listed, take a look at your web analytics and search console performance reports. If you’ve noticed a change in your site’s online rank or performance, Google suggests improving your site with better content, which could cause your rankings to rise in time.

Google Diversity Update

Different from the core update, the diversity “update” is actually a change—not an algorithm—that will reduce multiple site listings in search results to no more than two pages from the same site. Called the Site Diversity Change, it won’t affect all search results—at least not those Google considers to be relevant. In that case, some search results may show more than one result the web page is deemed important to the user entering the search phrase: the user intent when searching.

Mobile-First Indexing Update

The July 1, 2019, update will use “mobile-first” indexing as the default for all new websites. What this means is that if your site is not mobile-compatible, you may not rank as well as other responsive mobile-friendly websites. Also, it will affect your overall website ranking performance because of your perceived poorer user experience. If your site is older and hasn’t yet moved to a mobile format, you will still use desktop-first indexing until your site has been upgraded to include a mobile format. Google will still monitor and evaluate your web pages until they’re ready for the new indexing, and they will notify you via Search Console of their readiness. Although the new indexing doesn’t affect ranking per se, being mobile-friendly does affect ranking.

New Mobile SERP

When you do a search on a mobile device, you’ll notice a large video box at the top of the search results with two thumbnail videos below. The desktop version shows three videos in a row, all of comparable size. The difference is that the mobile SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) makes one video more prominent than the others.

Countless Updates to Improve Quality and Search Experience

Last year alone, Google made 3,200 changes to its search systems. It’s unknown how many of the approximately nine changes per day concerned core ranking versus changing the search box’s pixel location or font size, but they did involve search. Each one resulted in some type of improvement based on identified issues.

What You Should Do Following a Google Update

If you have good searchable content and follow the guidelines that apply—and are relevant—to your target audience, you’re off to a good start. You can also use this time to boost web traffic—especially if the updates have caused a drop in online visibility. If you’re not already using video to optimize your online presence, consider it a viable link-building strategy. Your website is 50 times more likely to get a first-page ranking if you include online video. It can improve your rank by:

• Increasing click-through rates because video is more likely to attract attention than text
• Lowering bounce rates because people spend 88 percent more time on your site if it includes video
• Generating 1,200 percent more shares than text and images combined

Why You Should Track the Google Updates

Not every update is significant to every company, and some go unnoticed altogether. However, many have dramatically impacted SEO and, ultimately, the ROI (return on investment) on a company’s website. Since your SEO strategy is your plan to drive traffic to your website, the context of the updates could positively or negatively impact your:

• Online visibility and ranking
• Organic traffic search
• Conversions
• ROI
• Company revenue

Depending on how your company is affected by Google’s thousands of annual changes to its algorithm, you might think your site is being punished—or, hopefully, rewarded for excellent content and a positive user experience. To know for sure whether you’ve been negatively impacted with a drop in traffic flow:

• Follow the proper sources, such as Google’s Official Webmaster Central Blog
• Audit your website
• Contact an expert if you’ve been penalized, but do it only after you’ve excluded other reasons for the penalty
• Create a strategy for recovery and follow it exactly
• Continue to create good SEO content

Contact Norton Norris, Inc. in Chicago for the marketing and training solutions your organization needs to succeed.

The post What Google Updates Mean to Your Organization and SEO Strategy appeared first on Norton Norris.

We live in an impatient world. That’s not much of a surprise to anyone. As technology and new possibilities for data mining continue to advance at a dizzying pace, so too do our expectations in terms of achieving results from those advances.

Such is the case with search engine optimization (SEO).

The ability to improve your website’s position in organic web search rankings by effectively aligning page content with well-planned metadata is obviously very appealing to schools of all types and sizes. Ultimately, this is what SEO is all about—increasing traffic to your website.

Unfortunately for many schools, they don’t put the necessary resources into SEO. Whether they simply lack the resources, think they lack the resources and allocate funds to other areas, or don’t believe in the power of SEO, these schools are missing out on a huge opportunity to impact their enrollment and bottom line.

To an extent, it’s understandable that some may not trust SEO to the point where they throw money into it. It can be a very confusing world, and its emergence over the past decade hasn’t come without having to battle misperceptions that it’s more snake oil potion than effective strategic tool. Thankfully, that misperception has for the most part gone away.

But for our purposes here and now, the focus will be on those schools that do invest in SEO.

As mentioned earlier, we don’t have a lot of patience these days. We expect results instantly, whether it’s a web page loading, an app installing, a video playing, or pretty much anything else related to technology.

It’s no different with SEO. And this can be a bad thing. Because one of the most important things to understand when it comes to SEO and the results it can deliver is this—it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Expecting instant results immediately after optimizing your website’s pages is a waste of energy and just not very realistic. When you go into your SEO initiative with the perspective that results are best measured month-over-month and year-over-year, your expectations will be in the right place.

Case in point—the SEO results from one of our clients between the years 2017 and 2018.

The analytics from this client’s SEO performance offer a powerful glimpse into what’s possible when you take a strategic approach and understand that there needs to be a premium on patience. Consider these results comparing the website’s performance in October 2018 with the performance in October 2017.

• Organic traffic increased 12 percent
• Organic three-month total increased 15 percent
• Organic leads increased 25 percent
• Dollar value of organic traffic increased 10 percent
• Total keywords in top 50 places rose by 414

Additionally, the average session duration on the website increased by more than 30 seconds; and the site’s bounce rate, which measures the number of visitors who leave the website quickly rather than viewing multiple pages, decreased more than 20 percent.

And if you look at how the website performed in October 2018 compared to the campaign’s start in June 2017, the results are even more impressive.

• Organic traffic increased 55 percent
• Organic three-month total increased 60 percent
• Organic leads increased 72 percent
• Dollar value of organic traffic increased 51 percent
• Total keywords in top 50 places rose by 723

Just as interesting is the fact that the website’s well-executed SEO campaign outperformed Google AdWords when it came to lead generation.

In August 2018, SEO generated 351 leads to AdWords’ 274, in September SEO generated 407 compared to AdWords’ 250, and in October SEO generated 374 to AdWords’ 370.

Clearly, there’s a lot to be gleaned from these results. First and foremost, year-over-year it shows that the website’s SEO campaign performed very well. Organic traffic on the website rose substantially, and organic leads improved year-over-year and month-over-month. Exhibiting this kind of growth is critical, because converting traffic into leads is a tough thing to do.

The three-month organic totals demonstrate strong growth every month, a clear indication that the SEO initiative was headed in the right direction. The decreased bounce rate shows that the organic traffic being generated is much more interested and engaged, spending more time on the site navigating through multiple pages. This also is indicated by the solid increases in both the average session duration, as well as the average pages visited per session.

Further, the increased number of keywords shows that the website is getting improved position in SERP for a broader range of keywords, making the site more competitive with the websites of other schools.

So, what’s it all mean?

Consider what may have happened if this client expected these kind of results from its SEO campaign in just the first few months. They may have erroneously deemed the effort a failure, abandoned any future commitment to SEO for their website, and walked away from long-term results that have been highly impressive.

Fortunately, they didn’t. They chose to be the turtle instead of the hare, and understood the importance of treating the campaign as a marathon, not a sprint.

That’s a valuable lesson. And it’s one we impress on schools across the country every day. We have more than 20 years of experience leading the way in providing admissions and marketing solutions to colleges and universities that deliver results.

If you’re ready to learn more about how SEO can take your website to new levels and provide a considerable boost to your school’s bottom line, contact one of our seasoned experts today.

The post Be the Turtle, Not the Hare appeared first on Norton Norris.

We all know this is one of the great mysteries of the universe. For years different strategies have emerged, disappeared, and emerged again. It seems like every month there’s a new tactic or algorithm that’s the next surefire way to conquer Google and break from the blur when it comes to search.

And of course, it never really does. Or does it?

The simple truth is that there is no magic bullet when it comes to improving your search ranking. But one sure thing you can do is stay up-to-date and make sure your content is optimized to the best of its abilities, based on what we do know those characters out in Menlo Park are up to.

One of the ways to do this is to use schema markup in the metadata used to boost your site’s search engine optimization. So here is some handy information that will outline what exactly schema markup is, how it can help, what it’s used for, why it’s so special, and more.

Let us help you get the results you are looking for.

Results that inform. Results that inspire. Results that impact your bottom line. Get in touch.

What is Schema Markup?

Schema markup is a form of microdata that gives context to metadata that previously wasn’t there. For each page of your website, there should be metadata code entered, which usually includes a meta title and meta description, that is used to connect that web page to searches being conducted on search engines like Google and Bing.

With schema markup added, it gives context to search engines and allows them to interpret how closely related your page is to a search that’s being conducted—effectively improving the quality of those search results.

Will Schema Markup Be Helpful in Improving Your Ranking?

As per usual, answering this one can be very tricky. What we do know is that using schema markup doesn’t hurt your ranking, and it isn’t a terribly complex process to get involved with.

Also, the rich snippets that result from using schema markup is something that can and has had a direct positive result on click-through rates. And according to Moz.com, which conducted some internal research of its own on the issue, schema can contribute to your site’s rankings.

What is Schema Markup Used For?

Simply put, schema markup helps search engines understand and have a clearer picture of what information exists on any given website or web page during a search. This, in turn, can improve the quality of the results a search engine delivers to someone using it to conduct a search.

It can be really easy to drown yourself in all of the tech-speak involved with understanding schema markup and the purpose it serves, but in the end it’s all about giving web users higher-quality search results to their queries.

How Do Search Engines Look at Schema?

Using schema markup makes it possible for search engines to classify the most important parts of your content. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo actually all came together and created a standard microdata library that is used to recognize and interpret various parts of the content on your pages. That’s what schema is.

So essentially, schema tells search engines not just what your content says, but also what it means. As a result, the rich snippets that are created by having schema markup on your pages produce a much more valuable search result for web users.

What Makes Schema Markup So Special?

Anything you can do to put more eyes on your website or particular web pages on your site is a good thing. And enhancing web users’ ability to find information that is more closely linked to the exact search their conducting is also a good thing.

Whether it’s finding videos, events, old acquaintances, a specific business or company, or things like specialized services and/or products, schema markup can have a positive impact.

What’s the Difference Between Normal HTML and Schema Markup?

Schema markup represents an addition to your existing HTML data. With this addition, search engines return more relevant results, and since users gain a clearer picture of what content they’ll find on your site, it also means that you can benefit from increased click-throughs.

What Types of Schema Markup Are There?

The big search engines recognize three types of schema markup formats:

• JSON-LD
• Microdata
• RDFa

To date, JSON-LD is the most widely used. But the others do have advantages as well. Microdata can be found on such sites as eBay. And RDFa is an extension to HTML5 used to markup metadata within web pages.

How Do You Implement Schema Markup?

There are a few different methods to use when implementing schema markup. The simplest, especially if your site is built on WordPress, is using a plugin. You can download a plugin, for instance, the Schema Creator plugin from Raven, or use the “add plugin” function on your WordPress dashboard.

Other ways to implement are using Google schema generator, or you can skip using the tool altogether and edit manually and validate using Google schema validator.

So there’s a quick overview.

The best first step if you’re considering schema markup is to find a proven expert in the field and get a consultation. There’s a lot to consider, and it’s always best to make the most informed decision possible.

That’s where we come in. At Norton Norris, our SEO experts help institutions find effective ways to utilize the tools for improving their search results, including schema markup. Contact us today so we can get moving on putting together your strategy for success.

The post Giving Context to Google Search – The importance of schema markup to boost your SEO appeared first on Norton Norris.

In similar fashion, Veterans Education Success has published a lengthy report in an effort to help veterans “understand misleading websites and lead generators.”

I wonder if 2000+ Leads Con attendees in New York last week even know what goes on?

Even more recently, an article published at Inside Higher Ed examined the increasing use of “secret shoppers” to review the performance and practices of third-party lead vendors. At Norton Norris, we’ve been a national leader in providing mystery shopping and assessment services to schools across the country for more than 20 years.

And, how do I know the real truth? Good question. I own and operate a mystery shopping firm – and we shop lead vendors. I bet that after reading this blog you’ll want to shop your vendors, or you may just want to stop using lead vendors altogether.

Why Pay Per Lead (PPLs)?

For the uninformed reader, here’s how it works: Lead vendors sell inquiries to schools on a pay-for-performance model. Over the past several years many schools abandoned their traditional advertising (TV, radio, outdoor) and moved to the lead-vendor diet. Although contact rates are low – normally under 50 percent – and the conversions from inquiry to new student are abysmally low and average just 2 or 3 percent at most institutions, the attractive feature of scalability and paying only for what you get hooked many schools. At first it was just another tool in the marketing toolbox. But then the savvy operators discovered that coupling a call center with pay per leads (PPLs) would yield predictable numbers that could be “modeled” and the race was on. Once they perfected the model they could add more PPLs to the mix, increase call center staffing and grow enrollments – especially in the online learning environment. It was magic. But many enrollment managers never knew what was really happening. And they still don’t.

How it works for a prospective student

From the student’s perspective, using an education matching system could seem like a good idea. I mean, if you aren’t sure where you want to attend but you know you want to pursue additional training, then browsing the web and finding a solution that matches you to schools – or lets you pick from a few select schools might make sense. And that’s how many of these services work – or are supposed to work.

The prospective student often begins their inquiry journey by simply entering their zip code in response to the offer to “find schools in your area.” The less scrupulous vendors may be trolling with a scholarship or sweepstakes offer – but we’ll talk about that later. After entering their zip code and/or address, the prospective student is taken through a few questions:

• What level of degree or training are you looking for (certificate/diploma, associate degree, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree)?
• When would you like to begin education/training (immediately, 1 to 3 months, 4 to 6 months, etc.)?
• What is your highest level of previous education?

The slick sites always insert some sort of teaser along the way… “just 2 more questions and we’ll match you with schools that meet your needs.”

• What areas are you interested in (health/medical, business, criminal justice, information technology, graphic arts, welding, etc.,)?
• How would you like to study (online or on ground)?

And then “poof!” after hitting submit, the website reveals schools that are a match. It sounds logical and makes sense. Or does it? You see, the search engine driving the selection of schools isn’t a search engine at all. The website isn’t selecting from the universe of schools at all. Instead it’s serving up suggestions of schools that have contracted for leads. So the listing isn’t inclusive. It’s limited to a short list of institutions that have agreed to buy inquiries. But how would the student know that? They wouldn’t. And that’s just one problem with this product line.

But there is one more wrinkle. It sounds innocent enough too, and even well intentioned. After the student selects a school from the list to learn more about and hits “submit”, the next screen  is typically something to the effect of: “Vince, students who research and inquire to more than one school make better and more informed decisions. We’ve also matched you with these schools in your area or that offer online instruction. You may also get information from them by clicking “yes” below.”

And then it happens. The poor prospective student’s phone implodes under the duress of multiple and incessant calls. Under the scenario outlined above, the lead has now been sold to multiple schools. And they all have the same intention: Call immediately and get this student in for a campus visit – or, if it’s an online school, get them on a phone interview ASAP and get them committed to completing an application.

How the Enrollment Managers and Marketing Managers at Colleges See the Process

Unfortunately, many schools that are buying leads from lead vendors are naïve and uninformed as to how the inquiries are really being generated. Because the inquiry comes in via a form that is emailed to the school or posted into their CRM, the school officials believe that the inquiry was submitted by the student, like the scenario described above. Sometimes this is true, as prospective students complete the process explained earlier. But sadly, over half of the inquiries that schools are buying don’t come from a student completing a form. Nope. The inquiries come from a call center.

Here’s how: The lead aggregators contract with downstream affiliates to generate leads. These affiliates buy data that resemble potential students based on socio-economic factors. Then the data goes into an auto dialer at a call center, and when the potential prospect answers, they are talking with a call center agent. The pitch can vary, but often it centers around a training opportunity, a job opportunity, or financial aid to go to school. If a positive response is received, the call center agent – not the student – completes the form and hits submit. 

As a side note, if you are a college administrator and considering buying leads from a vendor, ask the vendor for costs and counts based on your programs of study for exclusive, non-call center leads. The response you get could be interesting and range from “we don’t do exclusive leads” to “let me check and get back with you” – but I know the cost per lead will increase.

Okay, back to the real story – what happens when we shop lead vendors. These results are based on a sample size of 100 shops spread across 20 vendors. The school we shopped offered online courses, so the geography was unlimited. The degree level was associate degree.

Problem 1: 40 percent of the lead vendor inquiries submitted were never delivered to the school.

Ouch. Think about the student’s perspective on this. They took time to research schools, found a program and school they were interested in, completed a form, hit submit, got a message back that the school would contact them – and then radio silence. No call back. No email from the school. Nothing.

How could this happen? Well, that’s easy…. If a lead vendor has reached their cap, and the school didn’t have budget for any more leads, then the lead would either go into a black hole, or worse yet – be sold to another school. Both of these options are terrible, but they continue month after month, in our shopping.

Problem 2: 10 percent of the lead vendor inquiries were told that school X wasn’t accepting inquiries.

Wow. What would you think if you were the student? Worse yet, if you are in charge of enrollment or marketing at a school – your lead vendor has just told a prospect that you basically aren’t enrolling. Really? Wait; it gets better.

Problem 3: 10 percent of “your” lead vendor inquiries were referred to another school.

Unbelievable. As an enrollment or marketing manager, I would be furious. And it continues. Each month we inquire about school X – only to be directed via the computer and even by call center reps, that we could inquire to school Y. To me, it’s worse than #2 above – it’s one thing to say a school isn’t taking inquiries, but it’s worse to blatantly direct them to a competitor. Not good. NOTE THAT BOTH SCHOOLS OFFERED THE SAME PROGRAM. And, it gets worse. One of our inquiries specifically made for school “X” was contacted by the lead vendor’s call center and then warm transferred to school “Y.”

Problem 4: Immediate re-sale of data

15 percent of our inquiries immediately got a call from another party other than the school they submitted their information too. How ironic, right? You request information from school “A” and kaboom – you immediately get calls from school “B” or from an-unrelated entity like “Rewards Redemption.” I got a call from XXX-XXX-1234, which was from Julie at Rewards Redemption. The recording stated that I recently was on one of their affiliated websites and I had won a $100 voucher that could be used at popular stores like Walmart, etc.

Final Thoughts and Recommendations

• Shop your lead vendors to keep them honest.
• If lead vendors must be part of your mix, manage them diligently.
• Track the number of voice to voice calls you have with the inquiries from each vendor – remember, if you never talk to the prospect you can’t invalidate them or begin the recruitment process.
• Consider asking your lead vendor for exclusive, non-call center leads.
• Ask your lead vendor to explain and detail how many inquiries come from:
  • Student-generated from submissions
  • Call centers
  • Warm transfers

Finally, consider going to a marketing mix that uses traditional media to drive traffic to your digital properties. A well-balanced advertising mix will fuel your organic website inquiries and your PPC inquiries. Changing the mix of leads will result in driving up contact rates, with a smaller staff. Ultimately you’ll increase enrollments and reduce cost.

More details on : Our Admission Training Program

About Vince Norton
Managing Partner, Norton|Norris, Inc.

Since 1979, Vince Norton has worked in higher education administration, marketing, admissions, and enrollment management, for both not-for-profit and proprietary institutions. His 35-plus years of experience include 19 years in admissions, marketing, and administration at non-profit colleges, and three years with for-profit colleges. For the last 16 years, he has served as Managing Partner of Norton|Norris, Inc. Vince is regarded as an expert on college marketing and mystery shopping and has delivered presentations on this topic for numerous associations.

The post Bad News – Beware of Buying Education Leads from Vendors appeared first on Norton Norris.

Your business may already have a website and a certain degree of social media presence. But how do you know if it’s working the best it can? With Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), of course. But which one? Therein lies the problem. There are a great many, perhaps too many, metrics you can use to track the progress of your SEO efforts. So which way is the best way?

To figure that out the most effective way to monitor your SEO’s performance, you first need to take a few different questions into account:

• Do you value SEO based on the keyword (KW) positions?
  • How do you determine the value of those KWs?
  • Is it based on what you would pay for it to be a PPC ad?
  • Would you even necessarily be paying that much for the PPC ad? Do PPC Ads necessarily even bring in the same audience as organic?
• Do you value it based on how much organic traffic is coming to the website in total?
  • How do you determine if that organic traffic is relevant traffic?
  • What good is a million website views if you end up with the same amount of conversions as 1,000 targeted views?
• Do you value it based on the number of conversions you see coming in as organic traffic?
  • Can you be certain that conversion came from your SEO efforts or did they stem from other marketing efforts?

To help answer some of these questions, we’ll provide some insight on SEO that might help you view your website and the value of SEO.

When you first launch your website it’s often like starting a business out in the middle of nowhere. The only people visiting your business are the people who are going out of their way to find it, either by typing your website URL in a browser or searching for the exact name of your business in hopes of finding it.

SEO is building paths and roads for people to easily pass by your business.

You begin to increase your search engine visibility by ranking for different keywords. As you build these keywords, you’re adding paths for people to start seeing your business. The more keywords you rank for, the more paths and roads there will be for people to take to find your business.

It is important to keep in mind that not all keywords are equal; some paths will be frequently traveled, while others will bring in only a few a visitors each month.

The other thing to keep in mind is that not all visitors are equal. Some have no interest in buying what you’re selling. Some are lost – not quite sure what they’re exactly searching for. Some visitors, however, know exactly what they’re looking for and they fully intend to spend money on your product or service.

Sometimes web surfers come across your website even if they were searching for something not quite related to your business. The lesser-used paths (the ones that bring in a few visitors to your site every month) result in unexpected visitors. This is precisely why you want to avoid writing off less popular keywords. They are what brought the added traffic to your site, which can lead to higher sales.

Implementing the right SEO efforts may result in thousands of paths leading to or near your business. With the right tactics you’ll not only have these paths in place but the right types of travelers: travelers who are interested in what you’re selling.

How do you determine those leads are coming in strictly through SEO efforts and not other forms of advertising? People could be searching for your site after hearing about it through referrals, TV ads, radio, or even a billboard. Obviously, SEO isn’t your only medium of advertising. Those other forms of advertising are also effective. If they weren’t, you wouldn’t be shelling out the money for them.

But how exactly do you calculate the value of SEO? As a marketing agency, determining the value of SEO is a conversation we have frequently.

There are far too many constantly changing variables to determine an exact dollar amount. Google, for example, utilizes more than 200 different ranking factors in their search engine algorithms. Instead, think of your website as a brick-and-mortar store, with SEO buildings roads for travelers to discover your business on the web.

While you’re building your roads, it’s still important to monitor your KW Positions and overall organic traffic as indicators of your SEO success.

It’s also worth noting that SEO applies not only to web searches using engines like Google but to social media and online stores as well. Users on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter can search for content using keywords, hashtags (which also contain keywords) and specific names of businesses.

The number of social media users, both personal and business accounts, will only continue to increase, making social media platforms worth your time as far as SEO is concerned. Social media may not yield the number of conversions as your blog or website, but it does help generate sales. All sales are good sales, especially when most social media platforms are free to use.

Online shopping is more popular than ever, as people are more likely to make purchases through online businesses than to go to a physical store. With this fact in mind, it’s important for you to value your website as much as, if not more than, your physical location.

In both of these situations, it’s important to hone in on keywords to help potential customers find you. What’s one way for you to create the optimal online search presence for your business? If you don’t know much about the intricacies of SEO, there are plenty of skilled professionals who do. These knowledgeable individuals are SEO specialists.   

Having a good SEO specialist on your team can shape the world for your business. They will help place you as the first stop any relevant visitor will see. They’ll do this by compiling a list of keywords that will be put to use on your web pages, optimize them to most relevant pages and link support to ensure your website rises to the top of the SERP list. An expert SEO specialist can prove to be invaluable to the success of your business.

As businesses become increasingly digitized, SEO will continue to be one of the biggest factors in the success of your company’s digital marketing mix. No matter how you decide to use SEO to enhance your business’s digital marketing, it will undoubtedly improve your web traffic if implemented and measured in ways that are best for your business. Increased traffic can easily translate into higher conversion rates and ultimately a stronger bottom line for your business.

The post Why SEO Needs to be Part of the Digital Marketing Mix appeared first on Norton Norris.

Since making a good in-person first impression is so crucial to success, let us offer a few ideas on improving the look and feel of your campus(es), to ensure that prospects don’t take one look and go running to your local competitors.

Let’s start off with campus “do’s”

Let’s start with the basics:

1. Do keep the campus grounds clean!.
   • Take a note from Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, and strive to “be show ready” at all times. When you go to a Disney Park, one of the first things you notice is the things you don’t see. Thousands of people visit and tromp through the parks each day, and yet you don’t see wrappers, gum, or spilled popcorn or drinks anywhere! And if you do, we bet you’ll see a custodian — or another cast member — swooping in quickly and going out of his or her way to clean it up. At the Disney Parks and Resorts, all of the employees help to keep the place clean and ready for the customers (which they kindly call “guests”). They know that keeping the park “show ready” is a job for everyone, no matter what role he or she is playing. Take similar pride in your campus. If the grounds and building aren’t taken care of, prospective students will notice — and current students, staff and faculty will stop caring as well.
2. Do protect and promote your current logo.
   • Over time, many schools change their logos and taglines. Ensure that all of your campuses are using the correct logo on all materials, wall art, etc. Nothing looks more unprofessional than inconsistent use of a current brand campaign or logo among campus locations.
3. Do promote your graduates’ success stories.
   • At the end of the day, the prospective student is concerned about one thing: Finding a good job. Consider having your creative marketing agency produce signage featuring graduate testimonials. Hang these in the admissions office and around campus, showcasing the success your graduates have had in the job field.
4. Do prepare a list of the employers who have hired your graduates.
   • Sounds simple, right? Well, maybe not. How do you protect the list? And how do you massage the introduction to reference that the following employers have hired graduates from the college — without crossing the line and implying ease of employment. Tricky? Yes, but it can be done!
5. Do arm yourself with industry materials and articles.
   • Third-party industry resources are powerful. Start by gathering articles — recent content that supports the demand for workers in the field for which your organization provides education/training. Or look for research that explains why the field is growing. With a little secondary research, you can reinforce the value of the educational investment your prospect is considering making.
6. Do produce an effective lobby video.
   • We know you try to maximize efficiency and minimize wait times for appointments, but in spite of your best efforts, people will still wind up waiting from time to time. Why not educate them while they wait? Videos are a great way to splice in entertaining education pieces, facts about your school and culture, and information about all the services you offer your students. Lobby videos make it possible to say all the things about your school that a TV commercial simply doesn’t allow time for.
7. Do ensure that your staff are friendly and informed.
   • We can’t underscore the importance of this enough! There is nothing worse than being greeted by a grump. Make sure you have energetic, professional people at your front desk to welcome prospective students into the campus. Ensure that those staff members are well informed and always ready to put the prospective student/customer first. Better yet, train your front desk personnel to be engaging. Ideally, they’ll be able to go beyond simply welcoming the student, and start to build a lasting rapport right there in the lobby.
8. Do ensure that your staff look professional.
   • Your campus isn’t the only thing you need to keep looking sharp. It’s just as important that your staff and faculty look professional and put together. That way, they’re not only more approachable, but will be respected, as well.

We’ve talked about the campus “do’s” — now, let’s talk about the “don’ts.”

1. Don’t tape collateral and other marketing materials to the windows or walls.
   • This is not elementary school! Designate a place for these items, so walls aren’t cluttered. Consider wall decals to discourage campus staff from hanging unapproved items.
2. Don’t close blinds that block appealing views of classrooms, facilities, or equipment.
   • These are selling points! For example: A prospective medical student will love seeing the laboratories at a campus and the equipment they may be working with. Market with what you have. A good class or laboratory might be a great selling point.
3. Don’t ignore building maintenance issues.
   • Torn carpet, lights that don’t work, dirty walls, etc., are not invisible to prospective students. If you see something dingy or deteriorated, speak up! Bring problems to the attention of a campus president to determine whether the problem can be fixed. And encourage every staff member to do the same. If the staff and faculty take pride in the school, so will the students — and prospective students will take notice!

We know this may sound like a lot to keep track of. But here’s a recommendation: Just as you create a style guide for marketers to use in maintaining and building your brand, create a campus merchandise style guide to share with the campuses. This handy tool will guide them through the dos and don’ts of maintaining the proper “look and feel” of their campuses — including what current branded materials and collateral should be up on the walls and what should come down. The guide should include everything from approved wall paint colors, carpet, wall collateral and brochures to which logo and marketing materials should and which should not be used. Then, when you visit a campus, walk through with a campus director/president and point out both what the campus is doing well and what changes should be made based upon the approved materials in the guide.

Remember: A brand is more than just a logo, tagline, website or TV commercial. A brand is the emotional and psychological relationship we have with our audience. Through the power of a strong brand, we can elicit thoughts, emotions, and other responses from those people associated with your school. Branding includes the interactions we have with students, parents, visitors, and the public at large. Campus merchandising and experience are extensions of the brand. Standardized signage and displays are designed to highlight and reinforce a school’s experience to prospective and current students, faculty and staff. With a little luck, a good combination of traditional marketing efforts and dedication to care at the campus level will lead to one thing: A new enrollment.

The post 11 Easy Ways to Improve Your Campus Appearance appeared first on Norton Norris.

Confused? Don’t worry, we are here to help! In this post, we will lay out our list of the “Do’s and Don’ts” for lead attribution and ideas to keep in mind as you build out a solid reporting plan for your marketing outcomes.

The Do’s:

• Decide what data you would like to collect in reports and make sure those data points align with leadership on how they make decisions.
• Agree on a data model: Are you attributing leads at the first touch, last touch or multi-touch entry stages? We at Norton Norris tend to recommend multi-touch attribution. It’s important to ask a prospect how they heard of your school. In many cases, it took that person being hit with the brand several times before they made the decision to inquire.
• Connect all data (if possible) in a single attribution database. Reporting can quickly turn out to be cumbersome if you have to pull data from multiple entities.
• Define duplicate leads. Is it within 30 days? When is a duplicate lead a new lead?
• Develop definitions. Think like an accountant who is developing a chart of accounts and creating rules around the classification of expenses. Then apply the same principles to inquiry attribution.
• Train staff on the above. Remove the ambiguity and the natural tendency for staff to categorize the same source differently. What’s the difference between an organic web inquiry, a Google search and an internet lead? Make sure those are well-stated.
• Refine lead categories. Many schools have too many lead categories. Streamline to main buckets such as TV, web, PPC, outdoor, print, etc., or decide how you plan to handle subsets and deactivate old channels that are not being used.
• Measure “pre” and “post” as you launch campaigns. What happened to overall lead flow when you added Pandora? Did it increase? Decrease? Stay the same?
• Decide how to count leads from campus events, fairs and community events. Will they all be lumped into personally developed lead categories?
• TEST! Again, all of this is not 100 percent science. So test and tweak to fit your school and business goals best.
• Separate Personally Developed Inquiries and Referrals. These are entirely different inquiry sources that are too often lumped together.
• Track voice-to-voice conversations – especially if you are using lead vendors to any extent. Knowing which vendors send leads that you can actually talk to is an important (and un-tracked) metric at many schools.
• Consider tracking numbers. Use discrete and dedicated numbers on your digital and print properties to determine effectiveness.

The Don’ts:

• Don’t forget engagement. It’s easy to always look at conversions, but don’t forget the importance of brand awareness via clicks, views, out-of-home views, engagement on social media, etc.
• Don’t confuse inquiry method with source. An organic web lead is the method the consumer used to request information. It’s not necessarily the original source. As an example, they may have seen a TV commercial then performed a search online.
• Don’t cut a test too short. Look at a longer term. Some initiatives will take longer to yield results. We’ve seen dismal results in the first three to four weeks of adding TV – only to witness impressive wins in weeks five and six. Ninety days is a good minimum test period to start with.
• Don’t lump personally developed leads and referrals into one bucket!
• Don’t just look at your test and overall marketing strategy in week-over-week views. Compare month-over-month and year-over-year.
• Don’t ignore how seasonality impacts inquiry volume and reporting. In the higher education industry, there are always trends around holidays: Back to School, New Year, summer, etc.
• Don’t forget that budget fluctuations impact reporting as well. There are direct implications to inquiry volume when budgets are cut.
• Don’t ignore duplicate inquiries. Do you know the increase in propensity to enroll when a prospect inquires more than once? Of course, duplicates sometimes occur with just programming errors, but oftentimes the prospect has been doing their research on multiple sites and they are anxious to get in touch! Set out to learn this metric. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Properly attributing lead sources to conversions is critical to understanding which components of marketing programs are the most effective. But we know that this process can be difficult and frustrating, particularly when our students don’t convert on their first visit. Just remember to focus not only on the sources for visits that convert, but take note of which traffic sources expose people to your site and assist in building awareness that eventually leads to conversion. Make sure all of your staff and key decision-makers are well-trained and on the same page with how you are classifying a lead and what data is being captured. That is crucial to define how the company is going to move forward.

The main message is: Attributing sources to inquiries is not a matter of tracking only. This analysis is deeper and requires a lot more understanding and interpretation of consumer behavior. And although it can seem too demanding or complicated, dedicating some time to it can result in more conversions and better results.

Interested in seeing some of our favorite inquiry attribution reports? Email Vince@NortonNorris.com or call 312-262-7420. We’re always happy to talk marketing and inquiry attribution.

Written By: Vince Norton and Lindsay Barnett

The post Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Inquiry Attribution appeared first on Norton Norris.

Attribution has become a combination of exact data and opinion or judgment. However, to effectively compete in today’s education marketplace, colleges and universities must improve marketing strategies and measurement to help target specific audiences, and then understand what efforts offer areas of improvement or what sources to continue that are actually providing conversions.  To make matters even tougher, marketing budgets for many institutions continue to decline, or remain constrained, so the importance of understanding what’s working (or not) has become even more important for marketing teams in reaching business goals.  So, why is reporting on marketing benchmarks so challenging?

Prospective students have countless ways to do their research on a school. They no longer have to see a commercial on TV and call the only school they happen to see an advertisement for.  They can search online; a friend or family member may recommend a school; or they may read reviews on social media, hear something on the radio or Pandora, or see a sign along the road.  The clutter is everywhere, but if a prospect has education on their mind, and your brand stands out, they will do their research.  And, that research may or may not come in through the source where they originally encountered the brand. With mobile usage continually on the rise, prospects have information at their fingertips 24/7.  So, they may be watching TV, or see an ad for a school, then check it out on their phone in a search or on social media.  They may hear a commercial on Pandora that asks them to click a banner for more information, but at that time, they can’t click on the banner, so they remember the name and perform a Google search later.  The multitude of touchpoints make it very difficult to gauge the original source for a lead.  Most institutions rely on “last-click attribution.”  This method of lead tracking gives credit for converting the lead to the most recent channel used, but not always the best, because that attribution doesn’t recognize all the points that user had before converting. And what do you do when students inquire more than once?  Capture both sources?  Stay with the original?  Or use the last?  That’s a good question to ask your marketing director – since probably 20% of prospects inquire more than once, AND the students who inquire a second time are much more likely to enroll.

Years ago, a colleague at another institution recommended asking students at orientation or the first day of class how they heard about or became aware of the school. His point was that capturing source at the time of inquiry was detrimental to the sales process and also meaningless.  He believed that asking/surveying later in the process yielded more accurate results as to the foundational source for motivating students to choose an institution.  We are not aware of any schools that utilize this approach, but as marketing professionals, we believe this approach has merit, and to this day, encourage clients to ask this question once students are on campus.

Another challenge marketers often forget when analyzing reporting is all of the external factors that may impact accurately attributing leads, including the human factor. Attribution does not take into account seasonality, the economy, and in our industry, government regulations. Touchpoints such as open houses, career fairs, etc. are also not well accounted for, and often lumped into a referral lead source bucket.

Speaking of personally developed inquiries and referrals, do you have one category for these? Or two?  We continue to encounter schools that lump these together.  For starters, separate these categories.  On the human side of things, many smaller schools don’t have the marketing automation tools in place to accurately and automatically track inquiry sources.  Instead, they rely on busy front-desk staff to capture the source and record it in the database.  The results are often inconsistent and unreliable.  Worse yet, we’ve encountered many schools that create multiple categories that essentially mean the same thing.  Here’s an example:  A few years back we started working with a school and asked for a lead report by source.  The source fields in CampusVue included Internet, website, Google, organic web, and web form.  And guess what?  There was no training or any guide for admissions on how to classify inquiries.

Admission Training for inquiries may be one answer. Here’s another story. A couple years back we were copied on the call-in log every week for a school. Upon receipt we’d look at the source as captured by the front desk.  After introducing outdoor in the market, we were criticized by the corporate office.  Corporate claimed we didn’t generate any inquiries from outdoor.  We knew better, but how could we refute their data.  Frustrated, we listened to some recorded calls.  Bingo.  Our frustrations were confirmed when we heard multiple greetings from a cheery front desk employee who always asked before transferring a call, “How did you hear about us?  TV or Internet?” and then she would transfer the call.

Let’s dig a little more on the absence of automation. Again, in smaller schools, we observe inquiries being emailed to the school and then manually entered into a Student Information System (SIS) or Customer Relationship Management system (CRM).  In addition to increased possibility of error, “someone” at the school is receiving the lead information and deciding what bucket to attribute it to.  And just because you have a pick list on your web form for prospective students to select how they heard about the school, that doesn’t necessarily mean that field is passed through to the person on the other end at the school who is entering the lead into the school’s database.  When is the last time you looked at the email that is passed? Or asked how staff decides what category to use?

So, what should an institution do to analyze all marketing mediums to ensure goals are met? Digital marketing can help create baselines for your school’s marketing efforts, find out where your leads originate, and refine your ads to improve lead conversions. Of course, traditional marketing efforts provide a challenge as the world becomes more digital savvy.  But, you can monitor increased visits to digital properties when new traditional media launches in a market.  Chances are, if there is an uptick in digital traffic when, for example, a new TV spot rolls out, you can probably attribute the positive lift to TV.  The idea is that someone may have seen the new commercial, did research on their own, and then inquired via a digital source.

Here’s another suggestion. Run a list of all possible sources that are set up in your database.  Then compare it to how your leads come in and what advertising channels you are using.  Most schools have created too many sources.  In their effort to track a specific campaign, they created a unique source.  But three years later, that source is still active in the system and can be used to attribute an inquiry.  After you are done scratching your head and asking, “How long has it been since we advertised in the Thrifty Nickel shopper?” you may want to eliminate some sources.  It’s one way to improve attribution.

At the end of the day, there are many attribution approaches around, from basic to sophisticated, but the limitations still remain, and the marketing landscape continues to evolve. Not only do higher education marketers have more tools to balance than ever before, but consumers also have more ways to take in information. Next month, we’ll present guidelines for improving your inquiry attribution.

Written By: Vince Norton and Lindsay Barnett

The post 6 Challenges of Inquiry Attribution appeared first on Norton Norris.