Norton Norris https://nortonnorris.com Wed, 11 Oct 2023 05:37:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.7.11 https://nortonnorris.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/cropped-nnfav-32x32.png Norton Norris https://nortonnorris.com 32 32 7 Ways to Increase Community College Enrollment https://nortonnorris.com/7-ways-to-increase-community-college-enrollment/ Mon, 09 Oct 2023 11:36:22 +0000 https://nortonnorris.com/?p=8753 Ever wonder how the big online brands drive enrollment? Read on and discover how to use pages from their playbook and reverse the trend of declining enrollment at Community Colleges. These seven steps are explained in detail in a recorded webinar as well. 7 Ways to Increase Community College Enrollment 1. Develop a Prospecting Mindset — Start by adding an

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Ever wonder how the big online brands drive enrollment? Read on and discover how to use pages from their playbook and reverse the trend of declining enrollment at Community Colleges.

These seven steps are explained in detail in a recorded webinar as well.

7 Ways to Increase Community College Enrollment

1. Develop a Prospecting Mindset —

Start by adding an inquiry form. Sadly, most community colleges start their student journey with an application. This is a huge mistake. Putting an inquiry form on your home page and allowing prospects to request more information by completing a couple of simple steps is a much better start to the new student journey. Not sure how this works? Visit GCU.edu and note the prominent position occupied by “Request Info.” And yes, its highlighted here on and on their home page to draw attention and drive traffic. It’s one of the things their enrollment management team obsesses over.

2. Nurture Your Prospects –

To do this you will have to have a prospect pool. But if you embrace point one above, you will soon be creating a robust prospective student database. That means you now need a communication plan. This plan should include texts, calls and emails. And you should actively invite your prospects to campus events, encourage them to apply, serve up meaningful video content, and more. Remember that many of your prospects will inquire 9 months or a year in advance. So, your communication plan can’t be a one and done. You need to engage your prospects again and again over time.

3. Respond to Your Inquiries and Applicants –

Your private college competition responds immediately to information requests! This could be the most difficult part of an effective enrollment management strategy for a community college to address and you may need to work with an out-sourced contact center to accomplish this step, but it’s worth it. Your private college competition is responding with a personal phone call within minutes when an application or information request is received.

4. Reduce Friction in the Student Journey —

Map your student journey. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to enroll in college. Especially for first generation students. There is a myriad of steps to complete, and these may vary for different types of students (full time first time; one class only; transfer students). We know this BTW from doing mystery shopping for community colleges. Each step in this journey can be a decision point. If the process is too complicated your applicants may just give up. And each step is often a hand-off. With each hand-off “ownership” of new student enrollment can be diluted. Mapping the student journey and quantifying the pain points can draw attention to areas that need streamlining or additional staffing.

5. Understand Your Competition —

You may be dropping that ball while your competition is flourishing. A competitive shop will tell the story and help impact cultural change. Just look at the redacted results below:

6. Help Your Applicants Get Over Barriers to Become a Student –

Don’t neglect students who miss steps in the process. You are probably sitting on a gold mine of hot prospects and applicants who need a nudge. Think about these groups – and create a plan to call them to offer help and encouragement:

  • FASFA senders who never applied
  • Online applicants who didn’t complete the application
  • Financial aid awardees who never accepted their package
  • Applicants who didn’t attend orientation
  • Orientation attendees who haven’t registered for classes

7. Rework the Dropouts and Stop Outs –

Whenever we are engaged to do an enrollment intervention project this is the first pool I dive into. Each semester you have hundreds of students who don’t continue. Embracing “re-admissions” is one of the easiest and fastest ways to increase enrollment.

A complimentary webinar explaining these steps in detail is available for your review. You may request a copy here

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The Real Story Behind the Rising Cost of College https://nortonnorris.com/the-real-story-behind-the-rising-cost-of-college/ Tue, 18 Jul 2023 06:57:48 +0000 https://nortonnorris.com/?p=8731 For years I have wanted to pop into a college freshmen English class and ask: What are you paying this year to attend this university? “The annual NACUBO Tuition Discounting Study, reveals that the estimated average tuition-discount rate for first-time undergraduates at private colleges was 54.5 percent in the 2021-22 academic year. For all undergraduates, the average tuition-discount rate was

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For years I have wanted to pop into a college freshmen English class and ask: What are you paying this year to attend this university?

“The annual NACUBO Tuition Discounting Study, reveals that the estimated average tuition-discount rate for first-time undergraduates at private colleges was 54.5 percent in the 2021-22 academic year. For all undergraduates, the average tuition-discount rate was 49 percent.”

So how would you begin to unpack the inequities that inherently exist with tuition discounting?

For my friends in enrollment management. You know how the discount game works. And you can stop reading. For the general public, I’d like to explain tuition discounting and financial aid leveraging. This topic doesn’t get enough scrutiny in the rising college tuition conversation.

So, What is Tuition Discounting?

College athletics is a great starting point. For the NAIA schools, and the NCAA DII and DIII institutions, student athletes comprise a large percentage of their enrollment. All schools can use their allotted athletic scholarship funds as they please within their appropriate divisional guidelines. Although the athletic division will determine the number of full-ride scholarships by sport, the individual school can decide on an award strategy. This may mean giving less $$ to more students, giving just a few full rides, no full rides, etc.

If you eliminated student athletes, many tier 3 colleges would lose 30% of their enrollment.

So, if you want to use a broad brush, it’s safe to assume that almost every student athlete is getting at least a small scholarship. Translation: Discounted tuition.

Now let’s talk about stacking awards. Here’s an example. Coach Smith has a soccer star she wants badly to recruit. Her scholarship dollars only go so far, and she has decided that she wants to award more athletes and spread her money around. But she really wants Jane Doe and knows she needs to sweeten her deal. So she stops into the admissions office (pretty sure this happened to Dr. Jean Norris when she was VP of Enrollment Management at an NAIA college). The coach pleads her case and grovels for admissions to give Jane a “leadership

award.” It’s a nebulous category and completely discretionary. The admissions director is on the fence and questions the ethics. But then the coach reminds her that she’s always at the open houses and willingly jumps in to help admissions whenever they need a faculty speaker, etc. So the admissions director caves in and now the student athlete has 2 scholarships. Her original athletic award and her new leadership award. That’s stacking.

What about shaping your class? Many colleges put a lot of effort into having the proper mix of students. And have goals around diversity, gender, academic ability, financial need, in-state/out-of-state, and domestic versus international. It’s not unusual to have a sophisticated matrix to guide the awards. Here’s what that might look like:

First generation, non-Caucasian, high academic achievement, female engineering student = $$$$

Caucasian, male, average academic ability, business student = $

International student, no financial need, medium academic ability = 0 (they can pay cash!)

Depending on the complexity of the matrix, you may have 20 or 30 cells. That means 20 or 30 scholarship strategies and awards. This is primarily institutional money and not federal financial aid. I don’t think anyone has ever questioned if it’s an endowed scholarship – which means those monies are on deposit in the college foundation and the college is allowed to
spend the interest.

But what if it’s a reduction in tuition? If you are a student or parent, you really don’t care what the source is. If the college offers to reduce your cost of attendance you are going to say yes.

The Real Problem with Discounting

So cut to the chase: If the average discount rate is 49% then some students are paying full freight, while others are paying nothing. Is it fair? Is it right? Can you even use ethical and higher education in the same sentence?

Not sure how I feel about this whole situation. Students with the ability to pay, and relatively low academic ability will pay full tuition. Students with less ability to pay, and with higher academic ability will be granted some kind of real or manufactured scholarship. As a result, they pay only a portion of published tuition.

Do All Colleges Discount?

No. If the college was accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Career Colleges and Schools (ACCSC) – one of the leading accrediting agencies for vocational schools, they would not be permitted to use a discount strategy at all. Every student would be charged the same. No exceptions.

Here’s a section below of the ACCSC Standards that clearly prohibits the type of discounting in play at traditional college and universities:

ACCSC Accreditation Standards State:

a. Tuition costs and charges, tuition discounts, and all costs incidental to training are:
i. Fully, clearly, and accurately disclosed to the prospective student before enrollment and
Ii. Fairly applied.
b. A tuition discount must be a bona fide reduction in the tuition that would otherwise be charged.
c. A grant or scholarship – as distinct from a tuition discount – must:
i. Be bona fide financial assistance whereby funds are applied toward a qualified student’s costs;
ii. Be issued for recognized and acceptable purposes; and
iii. Include specified criteria that a student must meet in order to be eligible for and receive the grant or scholarship.

As a result, schools like Tulsa Welding School and Lincoln Tech don’t have a discount rate.

The Conclusion

Makes me think the evil for-profits as portrayed by many regulators, legislators (I’m talking to you Dick Durbin) and reporters aren’t so evil after all. In fact, I could argue that for-profit schools are more truthful, transparent, and ethical in their pricing policies than their private, not-for-profit counterparts.

Sources:

https://www.accsc.org/UploadedDocuments/standards%20and%20alerts/ACCSC-Standards-of-Accreditation-and-Bylaws-070122.pdf

https://www.chronicle.com/article/tuition-discount-rates-continued-to-climb-at-private-colleges

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Using Mystery Shopping to Improve CX https://nortonnorris.com/using-mystery-shopping-to-improve-cx/ Wed, 07 Jun 2023 07:29:04 +0000 https://nortonnorris.com/?p=8714 In June 2022, Norton Norris (Nn) launched a comprehensive mystery shopping initiative for a nation-wide group of supplemental education centers. The project was commissioned by the client’s central office to support their franchisee’s efforts to deliver superior customer service while maintaining the highest level of ethics and integrity during their initial program presentation to the student and parent. Customized Mystery

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In June 2022, Norton Norris (Nn) launched a comprehensive mystery shopping initiative for a nation-wide group of supplemental education centers. The project was commissioned by the client’s central office to support their franchisee’s efforts to deliver superior customer service while maintaining the highest level of ethics and integrity during their initial program presentation to the student and parent.

Customized Mystery Shopping Program

Working together with our partner’s leadership group, the Nn team created a shopping form that mapped the path a parent would take when inquiring about enrolling their student in the supplemental education program at one of their centers. This included a myriad of customer service data points (e.g., response time to the inquiry, ability to build rapport, taking a genuine interest in the child) as well as sales-oriented feedback like asking questions to understand the family’s current situation and needs, explain the enrollment steps.

The result was a thorough interview that evaluators would participate in, record the conversation, and then complete 80+ questions. The individual questionnaires were available immediately to central office leadership and the trends were graphed and highlighted via custom dashboards.

Results Revealed Opportunities for Improvement

After 4 months of shopping and the completion of 57 mystery shops, the Nn team tallied initial results and trends, met with client leadership and then paused shopping shortly to allow client to socialize the results with their franchisee’s. Using the results from the first four months of shopping, their trainers called a “safety stop” of sorts and stressed to their 80+ centers
the extreme importance of building rapport, explaining the steps to enroll, and taking a genuine interest in not only the customer/parent, but also the student/client.

Two months after their leadership chose to heighten awareness of this simple but impactful shift, the Nn team pulled results and crafted the comparison chart below. The results underscore what can be gleaned from mystery shopping and how quickly it can be leveraged to improve performance.

Time Period CX Score Steps to Enroll Score % Who Built Rapport
Months 1-4 69 49 39%
Months 5-6 90 73 92%

Want to Learn More and Speak with Nn’s Client Partner? We can Facilitate a Quick Call.

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Community College: Free Doesn’t Work With a Broken Funnel https://nortonnorris.com/community-college-free-doesnt-work-with-a-broken-funnel/ Tue, 02 May 2023 14:05:54 +0000 https://nortonnorris.com/?p=8694 Enrollment managers across the country are fixated with our funnels. Unfortunately, the word hasn’t spread to community colleges. Here’s a quick comparison of private not-for-profit, and private for-profit top of funnel enrollment strategies compared to community colleges. Top of the Funnel For schools, colleges and universities that are enrollment driven, the journey begins with an information request. Some folks call

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Enrollment managers across the country are fixated with our funnels. Unfortunately, the word hasn’t spread to community colleges. Here’s a quick comparison of private not-for-profit, and private for-profit top of funnel enrollment strategies compared to community colleges.

Top of the Funnel

For schools, colleges and universities that are enrollment driven, the journey begins with an information request. Some folks call it an RFI (request for information) or IRF (information request form). Funny side note: I had a friend in the lead generation business 20 years ago who bought a new luxury auto and had a personalized license plate with “IRF.”

This RFI or IRF is prominently featured on landing pages and on the college home page. Sadly, most CC’s don’t embrace landing pages and that topic will consume another page of dialogue. Maybe we’ll tackle that topic next month! Ok back to the RFI. This simple form allows the prospective student to raise their hand and say “Hey, I’m interested in your school. Here’s my name, email, and phone.” It’s this simple form that triggers action from the receiving institution. Action in an understatement.

Upon receipt of that little form, the college or university will probably:

  • Send an auto-email acknowledging the RFI
  • Make a phone call to the prospect
  • Load them into the prospective student database for on-going email communication – some may even collect an address and begin a snail-mail stream
  • Thoughtful communication and messaging are then employed from this point forward to encourage the prospect to “take the next step”
  • Visit the campus
  • Attend an event
  • Complete an application

In summary, this short, simple form is easy and fast for the prospective student to complete, but it initiates a very large effort to serve the student and guide them through the enrollment process.

Enrollment Managers call this “an inquiry” and they are hell-bent on filling the top of their funnel with inquiries.

Need an Example?

Let’s look at Lake Michigan College, the local community college that I support by paying my property taxes. The “promise” of Free Tuition is almost above the fold. But how do you learn more? You can navigate to the admissions page and choose the option to apply. But what if you aren’t ready to apply yet? There’s no other way to start your student journey. And if you do scroll down to the bottom of the home page and select “contact us” you land on a generic form that is designed to serve everyone. There is no option to select a program of interest on this generic contact form, and you are informed that your inquiry will be answered in “two business days.” Sadly, this is not an RFI or IRF.

Now let’s look at a small private non-profit college that offers an accredited medical assistant program in the same city, Ross College. When you visit their site, the first thing you are prompted to do is submit your email address so the College can communicate with you and get you additional information. There is no searching for a form to fill out and no need to navigate to another page of the web site. Now that’s an RFI!

At first glance this may seem relatively insignificant. Wrong. It’s HUGE. Without an active process to collect inquiries, this community college has no prospective student database. No email list of prospects to invite to campus events. No group of student wannabes to nudge along the enrollment path.


Without a prospect database, how do you increase applications? You don’t.

If you don’t increase applications, how do you increase enrollments? You don’t.

Conclusion

Free tuition won’t increase community college enrollment without a plan to build a prospective student database.

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Improve Your Process By Observing Others https://nortonnorris.com/improve-your-process-by-observing-others/ Tue, 04 Apr 2023 10:16:38 +0000 https://nortonnorris.com/?p=8678 It sounds counter-intuitive to think that you can get better with the help of your competition. But think about it. Maybe they are doing something better. In many ways products and services are very similar these days, and at least in my opinion I don’t see a lot of “break-through” differences. So, in the crowded field of look-a-likes improving the

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It sounds counter-intuitive to think that you can get better with the help of your competition. But think about it. Maybe they are doing something better.

In many ways products and services are very similar these days, and at least in my opinion I don’t see a lot of “break-through” differences. So, in the crowded field of look-a-likes improving the customer journey may be a great way to differentiate.

One way to observe the competition is with competitive mystery shopping. I’d recommend a blind experience where the shopper does not know who the client is. It would also be smart to include the client in the data set.

We’re doing much more competitive shopping these days. And surprisingly, its for public institutions. Whether you are delivering local in-person classes or offering on-line instruction across the country you may be surprised what you’ll glean. Here’s a few nuggets from a couple of recent competitive studies.

Make Sure your Online Application is Working.

Sounds basic, but in one study we conducted 33% of the applications we submitted resulted in error messages. I’ve written before about reducing friction in the admissions process and this is a great example – 3 Reasons Why Community College Enrollment is Declining. If your applicants become frustrated with your form, they may just click over and start the process with your competitor.

Rethink the Value of Soft Skills and Creating a Connection.

One unlikely competitor emerged as impressing our evaluators over all other universities in the data set based solely on the student experience. The product was comparable, the price was similar, the delivery model was the same. The difference was the interest the enrollment advisor took in the prospect. And it was notable.

Map the Student Journey from Multiple Entry Points.

Over the years your institution (like one we shopped) may have developed different paths for different populations. A full time, first year student would interface primarily with admissions, a transfer student would be serviced through the registrar’s office, and a student desiring a single class would have an even different entry point and student journey. This creates confusion for students and sets your institution up to deliver a vastly different student experience.

Search for “Best of” Categories in your Competitive Study.

Which school created the best inquiry experience and why? Which school delivered the best program presentation? What school would the evaluator be most likely to enroll in (and why). And of course, the reverse – which school would the evaluator be least likely to enroll in.

Create a Scoring Rubric that Clearly Shows the Winners and Losers.

Although you’ll probably learn more by digging into the details of individual data points, your executive leadership will benefit more from a chart like the one below.

There’s a lot of actionable data to glean from shopping your competition. Don’t wait for them to steal market share. Learn how to improve your deliverable by benchmarking your competitors.

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3 Reasons Why Community College Enrollment is Decreasing https://nortonnorris.com/3-reasons-why-community-college-enrollment-is-decreasing/ Tue, 21 Mar 2023 08:55:26 +0000 https://nortonnorris.com/?p=8654 Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past few years, you are probably very aware of the chronic community college enrollment decline that has prevailed now for years. I find the enrollment demise ironic in the face of several states making a community college more accessible via low or no tuition and the Biden administrations’ call for “free

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Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past few years, you are probably very aware of the chronic community college enrollment decline that has prevailed now for years. I find the enrollment demise ironic in the face of several states making a community college more accessible via low or no tuition and the Biden administrations’ call for “free college” for all.

So why are community colleges suffering? It certainly isn’t a cost or affordability issue.

Is it demographics? We do know that high school enrollments are declining in some states – but if you align the high school numbers with the CC numbers, you’ll have to abandon that hypothesis as the 2-year college enrollment decline is out-pacing the high school graduate population slide.

Well, what’s the reason? And what can Community Colleges do?

Let’s unpack a few reasons impacting enrollment – and look at some simple solutions. For the last two years I’ve worked closely with several community colleges to research their student journey via mystery shopping. Secret shopping is popular with private sector colleges and is very pervasive in the customer service space. Inspecting the admissions process through the
prospective student eyes has fueled some revealing observations in the 2-year public sector space.

Reason #1: Large National Brands are More Student Centric

One of the challenges of shopping community colleges is speaking to a knowledgeable staff member. This is in stark contrast to the large online schools we shop – and that you see advertising for. Not sure what I’m referring to? Do this:

Submit an inquiry for Large National Brand vs. Local Community College

Submit an inquiry by completing a short form on your favorite online educator’s web site.

What happens?

  • You get an autoresponder thanking you for your interest.
  • You get a phone call – RIGHT AWAY – from a knowledgeable staff member who happily walks you through the enrollment process.
Now repeat this inquiry for your local community college (if you can find their inquiry form).

What happens?

  • NOTHING
  • No call for sure
  • Maybe an email. Maybe.
In January of 2023, Norton Norris evaluators submitted 9 applications for admission across 3 different community colleges as part of a benchmark comparison study. Only one of the nine applicants received a call within two weeks of submitting their application for admission.

Reason #2: Large National Brands Have a Recruitment Mindset

Years ago, I would challenge the admissions team at the tuition-driven private, not for profit college where I worked with the
question: “Are you enrolling students or recruiting students?” My question was not always received well – but the point is this…

Recruitment is Active. Enrollment is Passive.

Enrollment officers review applications, screen out the individuals not qualified, and offer admission to a select few. On the flip side recruiters embrace the prospect, are available to answer questions, guide the process and encourage the individual to take the next step.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, the community college admissions teams have morphed into “enrollment officers.” Maybe its organized labor driving a passive approach. Or it could be that leadership worked at selective admissions schools and applied their process to the open-enrollment community college systems. It may be a staffing issue with not enough personnel to offer service. Whatever the underlying reasons are, the result is the same. There’s a glaring difference in mindsets at public 2-year colleges and their big-brother on-line national brands.

Reason #3: Less Friction = More Enrollments

It’s hard to navigate the student journey at a community college. Especially for first-generation college students. The friction is real. Look at what some of our shoppers said in answer to the question, “Based on your experience in the first 30 days after submitting your application, would you recommend this school to a friend?”

“I would not particularly recommend this school because I had a difficult time figuring out the status of my application and what I was supposed to do next. I had to reach out to the school myself to learn that I was missing a prerequisite and needed to take an entrance exam. I applied for the Business program but got accepted to Individual Studies instead, which I also would not have known about if I hadn’t called to speak with an advisor. I wish the school had been more proactive in giving me all this information.”

“Based on my experience with this school in the last few weeks, I would not be likely to recommend it to a friend. The communication from this school was extremely lacking. I was never updated by Admissions as to the status of my application or notified whether or not I had been accepted to the school.”

“I had the most frustrating experience with this school because it was really hard to get in touch with anyone over the phone. I did not receive any concrete response from them regarding my application status, so I reached out to Admissions. During the call, I was told that I needed to wait until the end of the day or the next day to get my application accepted. I tried to contact the school a few more times to get updates, but no one was available in the office.”

The Conclusion – It’s Simply the Service.

It’s clear to me why the large national brands are flourishing compared to their community college colleagues.

Without a recruitment mindset, and lacking a student-centric approach, community college prospects and applicants must manage their own enrollment journey. For a first-time college student that journey can be confusing. And without encouragement and guidance the friction may be overwhelming.

Which means the prospective student and applicant will abandon their journey and look for solutions elsewhere.

If community colleges want to thrive and increase enrollment, they will need to borrow several pages from their private college competition’s playbook. This means developing a contact strategy to communicate personally and in multiple modalities with prospects and applicants. It also necessitates mapping the student journey and eliminating as much friction as possible.

Free college or affordable tuition will never increase enrollment if the student can’t figure out how to enroll, what program is best for them, and what classes to take.

It’s not the cost. It’s the service.

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Understanding the Sales Cycle https://nortonnorris.com/understanding-the-sales-cycle/ Tue, 07 Apr 2020 15:35:34 +0000 https://nortonnorris.com/?p=8418 Now more than ever it’s important for C-suite leadership to understand the buying cycle and how long it takes a qualified inquiry to make it through the sales journey. 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

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Now more than ever it’s important for C-suite leadership to understand the buying cycle and how long it takes a qualified inquiry to make it through the sales journey.

Click Here to Download the PDF

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.

Count-of-Leads

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.

Count-of-Leads-Drip-Campaign-importance

 

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.

College-C-Count-Of-Leads-Marketing-Campaign

 

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/

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How to Integrate Traditional & Digital Marketing https://nortonnorris.com/how-to-integrate-traditional-digital-marketing/ Fri, 06 Sep 2019 19:44:00 +0000 https://nortonnorris.com/?p=8249 Welcome the inaugural episode of the Norton Norris podcast! We’ll be 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 assessment space, so we hope you stay tuned! In today’s episode Trent sits down with Vince Norton to discuss How to Integrate

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Welcome the inaugural episode of the Norton Norris podcast! We’ll be 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 assessment space, so we hope you stay tuned! In today’s episode Trent sits down with Vince Norton to discuss How to Integrate Traditional & Digital Marketing.

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!

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What Google Updates Mean to Your Organization and SEO Strategy https://nortonnorris.com/google-updates-and-seo-strategy/ Tue, 30 Jul 2019 21:49:58 +0000 https://nortonnorris.com/?p=6928 Regardless of your business type, getting top online visibility can be a key part of your SEO strategy. In fact, websites that make it to the first page of Google searches score 36.4 percent of web traffic. The higher your ranking in a Google search, the more organic traffic you’ll realize. However, Google comes up with plenty of updates throughout

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Regardless of your business type, getting top online visibility can be a key part of your SEO strategy. In fact, websites that make it to the first page of Google searches score 36.4 percent of web traffic. The higher your ranking in a Google search, the more organic traffic you’ll realize.

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.

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Doing Damage Control on a Broken Student Loan System https://nortonnorris.com/damage-control-broken-student-loan-system/ Wed, 29 May 2019 18:31:41 +0000 https://nortonnorris.com/?p=6879 Students who graduated from college in 2018 walked away with more than a diploma: 69 percent of them took on an average debt of $29,800. About 14 percent of parents also accrued student debt – to the tune of $35,600 in federal Parent PLUS loans. Well, getting a college degree ensures a good job, right? Not so fast. A report

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Students who graduated from college in 2018 walked away with more than a diploma: 69 percent of them took on an average debt of $29,800. About 14 percent of parents also accrued student debt – to the tune of $35,600 in federal Parent PLUS loans.

Well, getting a college degree ensures a good job, right? Not so fast. A report issued by Burning Glass and the Strada Institute shows that 43 percent of recent graduates are underemployed in their first job out of college. That means their earning potential is lower than expected, which means their ability to reasonably pay back their student loan debt is reduced. But wait – of that 43 percent of graduates, two-thirds find themselves in the same predicament five years after graduation, and more than half are still unemployed after 10 years. Chances are that one of 10 people who find a first job that pays appropriately, will be underemployed after five years.

What’s wrong with this picture? Plenty. How to fix the broken student loan system is a question yet to be answered.

 

The times, they are a changin’

The cost of higher education today is not what it once was. In the 20 years between 1995 and 2015, things changed dramatically. A Yahoo! Finance report shows that student debt has risen faster than income. Income rose only 2.4 percent, but debt skyrocketed 78.1 percent. This tremendous disparity may be contributing to the default rate of borrowers. Researchers at New York’s Federal Reserve Bank discovered that 26 percent of those who completed their education in 2009 with debt defaulted at some point. At least 37 percent of 2009 graduates have been delinquent on repaying their loans. America’s student loan program simply does not work.

In her brief on the broken student loan system, Professor Joni E. Finney of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, states that we have the best 20th century model for financing education. The problem is that this is the 21st century, and the model for public financing of higher education is outdated.

Families are challenged with having to pay costs for education, while struggling with rising costs of living that are greater than their income growth. By 2020, for our economy to remain competitive, it will require that 65 percent of individuals have post-secondary credentials. However, students are coming from more diverse backgrounds and often from families with modest incomes. All they can do is take out more student debt.

 

What to do about an unsustainable higher education finance system

Several plans are being introduced, from “free college for all” to new models that shift the burden from students and their families to more of a shared responsibility with the institutions themselves. Dr. Finney offers suggestions for repairing the failing system:

  • Because many state governments have had to slash their budgets due to structural budget deficits and elevated Medicaid expenses, she suggests that they insulate higher education funding during recessions.
  • Incentivize innovation as an efficient use of public money.
  • Prioritize funding for low-income and first-generation students, and link tuition policy to their families’ income level.

 

ISA vs. IBR vs. Standard Repayment Plan

Another experimental education finance model is an Income Share Agreement (ISA). Tony James, a Blackstone billionaire, came up with the idea that proposes that in exchange for higher education, students agree to pay back a certain percentage of their income for a set number of years. This means that their overall student loan program obligation adjusts with their income. The premise is that it:

  • Incentivizes higher education institutions to keep costs low and quality education high
  • Allows students to choose their career path without a fixed level of repayment
  • Doesn’t accrue interest over time, and there’s no principal
  • Means financial obligations will never exceed a student’s ability to pay

An ISA can be a good option for anyone – even for those who are not as successful as they had hoped to be. It can reduce stress levels because it’s adjusted to income. If a graduate had to take a job as a barista, the repayment is within that salary range. Likewise, if the graduate is not underemployed and earns more, his or her payment is adjusted to income.

An ISA is not the same as an IBR (Income-Based Repayment) plan that is offered by the government. Loan repayment amounts are based on your income, but there are stipulations. As long as you make 20 years’ worth of on-time payments (25 years’ worth if you took out the loan before 2014), any outstanding debt after that time will be forgiven. Payment amounts are recalculated annually, based on 10 percent of your discretionary income for loans taken out after 2014 and 15 percent for loans taken out before that. If your income remains low over 20 or 25 years or you expect your family size to grow, it may be a viable option.

The Standard Repayment Plan is a student loan program that requires a set monthly payment made for 10 years and is based on the amount of student debt incurred. If a student is underemployed, he or she still has to pay the required dollar amount, regardless of income.

 

Where higher education’s responsibility lies

U.S. News & World Report surveyed 300 colleges and universities about their average tuition rates. In 1998, private schools charged an average of $18,000 a year and $43,000 in 2019. Out-of-state tuition rose from $10,000 in 1998 to $26,000 in 2019, and in-state tuition from $3,500 to $11,000.

The bottom line is that higher education isn’t always providing value for education. The price of an education is affecting the economy because young people today are not able to buy homes. Their student debt, in some cases, is their 30-year mortgage. This begs the question: Are colleges more interested in providing an affordable, quality education, or are they more focused on maximizing revenue from tuition and putting together a list of high-profile donors?

Perhaps higher education institutions need to re-evaluate their admission practices. Maybe they should assume some of the debt if a borrower defaults on his or her loan. At the very least, they could help potential students make informed borrowing decisions.

Outstanding student debt stands at $1.4 trillion in the United States. We have a broken student loan system that desperately needs to be fixed. In the meantime, what is the alternative?

 

Skilled trades: in-demand jobs, low-cost training options

Right now, there’s a shortage of skilled trades workers, from CDL drivers to HVAC technicians and welders. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that by 2022, one-third of new jobs will be in construction, healthcare, healthcare support or personal care. Most do not require a four-year college degree. Some fields require as few as three weeks of training – certainly not the four years needed for a bachelor’s degree – and some pay $50,000 to start.

For information about how colleges and universities can exceed their goals through training, marketing, and pre-enrollment advising contact Norton | Norris, Inc.

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