1. Brand
   Have one, or build one. At least have a brand for your product, if not your company. A brand is not a logo or a business card. A website is not a brand either, but these tools should reflect your brand and strategy. A successful brand provides a platform for all communications and allows customers to more easily relate to the personality of the offering. Not having a brand could lead to confusing and inefficient communications and loss of customers.
2. Business/marketing plan
   I find myself often saying that a website is a reflection of your business plan. If you don’t have a business plan, your website will take longer and be more expensive to create. The business plan doesn’t need to be elaborate, but know where you’re going and how you plan to get there. Most importantly, know the relationship of how you expect to serve your customers and how their engagement will help your business.
3. Audience Research
   If you’re asking customers to care about you, you need to care about them first. Invest the time and money on research to really understand their wants and needs, how they approach your vertical and type of offering, how they use technology, and their lifestyles. Have a fundamental and real (not suspected) understanding of your key audiences; this can often be produced by developing persona research.
4. User Experience Design
   Users and their experiences are the foundation of a website. Websites are for users, not your business. Just because you, your boss or CMO uses a tablet doesn’t mean that your customers do (See #3). Save time and money designing experiences for how your customers will consume content, make decisions and purchases (or convert). Don’t design content exclusively for your business’s needs either.  Design workflows, content strategy, and user interfaces to help your audience with their needs.  Your business will ultimately be better served with this approach.
5. Social Media
   If your website is your voice, social media is your customer’s voice. Care enough to engage them where they are.  And you don’t have to be everywhere they are all at once; we all have to make decisions about capacity. Research will help here too.  Your customers may only “live” online at niche social media microblogs. Don’t waste time and resources on Facebook and Twitter if your customers aren’t there. Also, some social platforms provide efficient tools for customer relationship building with real-time feedback. And, you can use them for traditional business activities like a help-desk, among a multitude of other business and marketing needs.
6. Mobile
   Responsive design is one way to provide a mobile experience of your website. But no matter how you deploy for mobile, the reality is that your customers are there—for every category and industry. It’s suspected that there will soon be a larger smartphone audience than PC audience, so you may want to consider building for mobile first.
7. Content Strategy
   Content should be appropriate for the channel, user-centric (time, place, workflow, call-to-action), and be on brand. Content must support users in achieving workflow goals, and continually building engagement and brand affinity.
8. Measure and Optimize
   Digital marketing is not “set it and forget it”. To really ensure your marketing effectiveness, measure your customers and tactical effectiveness. There are plenty of free tools for measuring traffic on your website, or measuring share of voice in social media. Determine a set of key performance indicators by channel or tactic, and track your results. Don’t forget that qualitative research is just as important as quantitative. Periodically ask your customers, literally, about their needs and the effectiveness of your marketing. Set aside budget and resources to continually refine your approach in meeting their needs, as well as the content and planning of your communications.
9. All that glitters…
   Be aware of new technologies, but don’t chase them. Chase customers, not shiny new tools. Again, start with your business plan and customers; find out who and where they are, and what technology they use – then deploy the right mix of strategies and tactics, some of which might be new tech and some that might be more established.

Even outside of our session at AMA, the time spent in New Orleans with our panelists gave us significant understanding into the factors that affect their search. During these conversations, we learned there are a few ways institutions communicate with prospective students that don’t resonate with them. Here are three general communications pitfalls that could stop our panelists from choosing your school.

• Acknowledge how far prospective students have already come. While our panelists acknowledge that college offers them the opportunity to mature, they already feel they’ve grown significantly by recognizing the seriousness of college and navigating the application process. As one student noted, “One of the biggest surprises [has been] how much you learn about yourself while trying to pick a college.” These findings suggest that an effective way to communicate with prospective students may be to not only recognize the development they’ll gain in college, but to also acknowledge the personal growth they’ve already experienced as a result of their college search process.
• Remember to recognize the role students play in their own happiness and success. As our panelists grow and learn throughout their college search, many are aware that their happiness in college rests on their own shoulders. Our panelists increasingly note  that success in college is their own responsibilit. As a result, some are convinced they can succeed anywhere, and that there may not be just one perfect school for them. As one panelist noted, “I can learn, I can meet new people, and I can study abroad at any college. All colleges give you the same basic tools, but it is up to the individual to take advantage of them.”  An institution may not want to emphasize itself as the sole creator of happiness and success for its students; instead, speaking to the active role students have in their own achievements may be more appealing.
• Don’t rely on scripted, disingenuous communications. Our panelists can easily spot overly scripted videos or pamphlets, and they are instantly turned off by communications that feel inauthentic. They prefer candid communications; for example, one panelist noted: “Prospective students love to see truth. We don’t want to hear over and over how great your engineering program is because there are a lot to choose from… I would love to see [a student] sitting in his nice dorm, if it’s nice, telling the ups and the downs of the school. I would love to see a natural conversation.”

— Samantha Hacker, Research Associate

Learn more about Lipman Hearne’s Research & Planning practice as well as our higher education expertise at the Lipman Hearne website.

So I’m going to weigh in, first posting my bona fides;

— I have worked with a number of higher ed institutions that have successfully launched a new institutional identity (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Northern Arizona University, Ohio University, University of Miami, University of Sydney, University of Texas at Arlington).

— I am a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

— My opinion of the new identity was solicited (randomly, I’m sure) in an online survey before the logo was launched.

— I grew up a surfer (the relevance of this will become apparent later—trust me).

When the new identity was launched, Fastcodesign applauded its ability to bring “surfer charm” to the University’s identity.  Let’s compare associations:

University vs. Surfing

Great research—Waiting for the outside set

First-class education—Adding “cowabunga” to the popular lexicon

Community service—No bogarting

Economic development—$1 tacos

Hope for the future—Hope that the landlord doesn’t up the rent

The uproar has been out of scale to the identity mark itself, perhaps because the University launched the new identity with an introductory video that showed them physically sweeping aside the seal in preference for the new streamlined mark. This approach really riled the masses: just sweep away the old mark that’s on my diploma and drop in its place a symbol that will look about as relevant in ten years as Justin Bieber’s haircut. In fairness, the University did conduct research with alumni that must have shown a positive response—as I said earlier, I was one of the alumni asked, and provided a negative assessment.  In addition, the University seemed to have overlooked constituency-building conversations internally that would have 1) let them know that they had big trouble with the direction they were heading, and 2) allowed them to build a case for inclusiveness, generate internal enthusiasm, identify spokespeople, and the like.  With these factors in play, it’s no surprise that the petition to withdraw the new mark gained more than 50,000 signatures before the University officially retired it.

Unfortunately, it appears the University also overlooked a key factor while scheduling the launch of the new logo:  the possibility that it may stir up a hornet’s nest of controversy in the middle of the most important month in the annual fund season.  Donors and prospects—who typically have a soft spot in their hearts for student callers—are now more likely to pose pointed, nasty, and belligerent questions in regards to how the University is spending its money.

We believe that an identity transition should be done with the Hippocratic oath in mind: “first, do no harm.”  This requires an acknowledgement that the identity has elements that are going to be seen as sacred or untouchable to many people, and demands that you go about the process methodically and openly.  Or your great new solution will be effluvia.

A successful identity launch starts with a definition of intent: What do we want the new identity to do? What characteristics or attributes do we want it to communicate?

After that there are a lot of questions about usage: In what environments will the identity be used? How will the mark relate to the institutional name?  How will the mark relate to other institutional symbols (the seal, the athletic identity, etc.)

Then there is the question of givens: What, if anything, from the old identity must be kept? What are the criteria by which a successful identity will be judged?

And, finally, the question of stakeholders: Whose input do we need to gather as the process moves forward? How do we accommodate and adapt to that input?

From there, the ideal path is to generate a creative brief, share that creative brief with key decision-makers and stakeholder representatives, revise it based on their input, and begin to develop a “spectrum” of possible solutions, including an examination of all symbols, icons, or visual cues that are associated with the institution.

Following the all-encompassing work of actually designing the identity, institutions must develop a strategic plan for roll-out of the new mark. There are the obvious changes to stationery, directional signage, and recruitment materials, but there are less obvious changes that prove to be a challenge. This is where a well thought out public relations plan comes into play. Are there internal champions who will assist in introducing the new identity internally? What is the appropriate time to launch the new identity publicly? How will the University respond if there is backlash?

Yes, the University of California “ate the big one”—to borrow some surfer slang.  But there are lessons for the rest of us in their wipeout: a new identity—like any rebranding project—requires robust research, flexible strategy, consensus building, stakeholder evangelism, and a public launch plan.  It’s very possible that UC worked through many of these stages, and it’s definitely true that the mark itself does not deserve the level of criticism it received, but it’s hard to believe that a true consensus-building process was followed, else why has nobody spoken up in defense of California casual?

-Rob Moore, CEO

Learn more about Lipman Hearne’s Creative Services practice as well as our higher education expertise at the Lipman Hearne website.

To dig into this topic, along with a host of other subjects, Lipman Hearne gathered together a panel of 20 high school juniors and began to follow them through their college search and decision-making process. The panel—comprised of a diverse group of Chicagoland high school students from various backgrounds—has allowed us to gain insights into their journey in real time.

Last month, we talked to our panelists about social media and the role it plays in their search. What follows is a sneak peak into what we heard.

To learn more from our panelists, join us at next month’s AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education in New Orleans where we’ll lead an advanced marketing session, IN THEIR OWN WORDS: High School Seniors Talk About Their College Search Process – A Live Focus Group.

Key insights into social media activities and the college search:

•Engaging with an institution through social media. Panelists are less willing to engage with institutions by way of social media. They see their relationship with a college or university as professional and formal, so many don’t like the idea of interacting directly with a college or university via social media because they consider their personal pages as their private space. Some panelists also believe colleges and universities don’t “belong” in social media because it’s too casual.

• Evaluating what they’ve already heard from an institution. Of our panelists who use social media as a college search tool, the majority are using the tweets, posts, and other content as a way to assess the accuracy of the messages they’ve already received about a college or university. Having solidified their consideration set, social media becomes an important means of assessing the fit of various schools during senior year.

• Connecting with peers. Panelists are most eager to connect with peers by way of social media. Since social media is most often used to assess fit, the majority of panelists reported connecting with friends and other students close to their age on social media because they feel they can better relate to those individuals and their experiences. Thus, our panelists may be influenced more by the information they see on their peers’ pages versus what they see on a college’s official social media page.

• Seeking a glimpse of reality. Our panelists are most interested in using social media to see pictures or stories that give a realistic depiction of everyday campus life. Current college students are important in offering a “real” perspective that high school students seek. As one panelist noted, “I would be interested in connecting with current students on Facebook, so that I could get a ‘friendly, honest’ view point about the college.”

• Interacting with a college through social channels. Students are more likely to engage with colleges and universities via social media when they initiate the contact with the institution on their terms. But they aren’t likely to make the first move until after they’ve been accepted or enrolled at an institution.

• Responding to relevant content. In short, for our panelists, it’s “all about me.” Panelists who follow universities on social media did so because those institutions created content and images centered around themselves and their interests. For example, some panelists follow colleges because they are fans of that school’s sports teams, while others search on Facebook to judge a school by its football games and Greek life. Conversely, panelists were turned off by content demonstrating that they don’t belong. Noted one student, “I don’t like… all the inside jokes or events which I obviously don’t understand.”

— Samantha Hacker, Research Associate

Learn more about Lipman Hearne’s Research & Planning practice as well as our higher education expertise at the Lipman Hearne website.

In the age of Instagram, Facebook promoted posts and Pinterest, the social media landscape has changed a great deal in a very short time. I arrived at the conference eager to discuss and absorb the latest social media initiatives from higher education social media professionals working on the front lines. On the roster were Patrick Powers (Director, Digital Marketing and Communication; Webster University), Jason Simon (Director, Marketing and Communication Services; University of California System), Keith Hannon (Assistant Director, Social Media; Cornell University), Kate Brodock (Executive Director of Digital and Social Media; Syracuse University), and Tim Jones (Executive Creative Director; North Carolina State University).

A consistent theme of the conference seemed to be staffing, documentation, and infrastructure: issues of social media policy, setting procedures for social media content and crisis management, and hiring, developing, and educating qualified staff. This is a natural evolution for higher ed social media, as most colleges have some kind of social media presence established. Many of the “trailblazers” in this field have moved on to director-level appointments and are now charged with scaling things up. In addition, social media policies and staffing discussions have become a best practice for many corporate brands and large non-profits, so the discussion is inevitable. At this point, the discussion of various platforms and tactics has been pushed to its limit. There is not always a clear-cut answer to the eternal question of, “what’s next in social media,” and while the discussion of strategy, planning, and policy is usually the least exciting, it is absolutely the most necessary.

The conference breakout sessions were separated into two tracks that focused on enrollment management and alumni relations. Coming from a fundraising and advancement background, I wanted to immerse myself in social media geared towards enrollment and the prospective student. A real standout on day one was Patrick Powers’ comprehensive presentation on social media analytics. Analytics and measurement can be an overwhelming topic for practitioners; it’s hard to know where to start, what to measure, and where to end when presented with reams of data. His tips for analytics reporting success

-make data easy to read/understand (charts, graphs, visuals)
-monitor and highlight trends, not just individual numbers
-offer recommendations, don’t just report data with no insight
-explain causation, tell a story with your data.

Check out Kate Brodock’s Storify recap of Powers’ presentation here:
http://storify.com/just_kate/social-media-analytics-presentation-notes-from-ais

Jason Simon cited the University of California system as a case study in his presentations on how to effectively manage crises and develop an internal social media policy. He laid out roadmaps for developing an internal strategy, constantly reminding attendees that “policy is an iterative process” that shouldn’t be bound or defined by the platform or tool being used.

I stayed for the post conference session with Kate Brodock, who talked about her social media team of 11 undergraduate student workers at Syracuse, called #44social. A cross between marketing, advocacy, and student resources, the #44socialteam serves as the social media ambassadors for the Syracuse community. She noted that her students come from various backgrounds and majors, not just marketing, communications, or technology. She sees the role as more than just a student work position; rather, it is a leadership opportunity.

I was very happy to see the evolution of higher ed social media as a profession. There’s no shortage of conversation around creative social media tactics and campaigns in higher ed, but to see the conversation elevate to its logical next step is a great sign. I’m sure we’ll continue to see the profession evolve to include even more best-practices in higher ed social media strategy.

— Keidra Chaney, Social Media Strategist

Learn more about Lipman Hearne’s approach to digital services by visiting our website.

First, be cautious of firms or individuals who have made their reputations and fortunes solely in corporate PR. Colleges and universities operate under profoundly different rules and norms than corporations. Unlike most companies, colleges and universities do not operate under command-and-control models of employer-employee relations. Free speech and academic freedom are integral to colleges and universities, and efforts to obfuscate information are destined to fail. Tenure, for example, is an inconvenient obstacle to campus executives who would rather suppress information than share it because executives can’t fire the campus gadfly. Also, public institutions operate under sunshine and other right-to-know laws that ensure that embarrassing emails and illicit tweets will eventually see the light of day. These norms don’t prevail in most corporations, so the playbook for a corporate PR expert is a lot different than the one that guides those who are comfortable operating on a college campus.

Second, using overtly business-oriented language and principals is a sure-fire way to raise the collective hackles of a campus community. A college or university is a shared enterprise, with many programs and endeavors that are inquiry rather than profit-based (i.e., their return-on-investment is intellectual, not financial). Falling back on corporate-speak to justify a decision – however well-intentioned – is never a good strategy on a university campus. Campus leaders are well aware of the disruptions roiling their world; they don’t need PR people or corporate executives to remind them.

Third, alumni, faculty, and students have a different relationship to their university than do customers to a product or service they use. For many of these folks, their relationship to their school is one of the most salient, emotionally resonant relationships in their lives. Any communications that is seen as inauthentic or diversionary will inevitably backfire.

U Va undoubtedly hired communications pros who had experienced great success in their careers helping manage corporate clients through difficult crises. But, as the Board of U Va came to understand, knowing the peculiarities and values of university communities is crucial to guiding them in times of trouble.

— Rodney Ferguson, Principal

Learn more about Lipman Hearne’s approach to public affairs by visiting our website.

This is an especially sad day for me. For all its limitations, The Huntsville Times was my primary window to the larger world when I was a kid. I was an avid newspaper reader. I read each section of The Times every day, without fail. So dependent was I that my mother reminds me how I would call the paperboy “a communist” when he failed to deliver the paper on time. The Times was where I learned about the circumstances and causes of the hostage crisis in Iran. It helped teach me the difference between Republicans and Democrats.  It delivered the box scores from the previous day’s Atlanta Braves game, let me scan the obituaries for the last word about my grandparent’s friends that I knew from my childhood, and gave me a glimpse of a  world far beyond my living room.

And then there was the incomparable Mike Royko. It’s not an exaggeration to say the he, more than anyone, was responsible for my decision to pursue journalism as my profession. His columns, about people in a city that I had never visited (corrected now, as I’m writing this column from an office overlooking Lake Michigan in his beloved Chicago), were my regular glimpse into the foibles of humanity. Several times a week, Royko wrote about his fictional rogue’s gallery, a Greek chorus commenting on life’s failures and follies, crooks and cronies, yet conveying a universal appeal that transcended the confines of his hometown. Royko’s Slats Grobnik was my “Voice of the People,” speaking truth, however inelegantly, to power. Royko could smell a phony a mile away and wrote with a power and grace that conveyed his old-fashioned values – life is tough, and often unfair, and bad people often got more than they deserve. But in the end, goodness would, if not triumph, at least live to fight another day.

I’m afraid that the habit of reading Royko resulted in part from the ritual of seeing his column appear without fail in my local newspaper. I’m just not sure that Slats Grobnik is possible in an ipad world.

But of course, life goes on, as does journalism. Something called al.com has replaced the daily newspaper, and there are, I’m told, 220 good, enterprising reporters, editors and photographers scouring the state of Alabama looking for news that’s fit to pixelize. Sure, they’ll still print the paper three days a week (guesses as to how long that lasts). And yes, there are far more sources about the world in the digital realm, just keystrokes away, for a curious kid somewhere to peruse. The world is probably better off for the endless variety and volume of information available on the web.

Just don’t spill coffee on your ipad – it’s a lot more expensive to replace than your daily newspaper.

— Rodney Ferguson, Principal

- Median debt for the 2/3 of college students who borrow to finance their education is only $12,800.[i]  Half of all indebted college graduates owe less than $12,500; ninety percent owe less than $50,000.[ii] Median debt for the 2/3 of college students who borrow to finance their education is only $12,800.[iii]  Half of all indebted college graduates owe less than $12,500; ninety percent owe less than $50,000.[iv]

-For people under 25, those with a high school diploma or less face an unemployment rate of more than 31%, while those with a baccalaureate degree or greater have an unemployment rate of just over 9%.[v]

- For those over 25, the margin narrows but the gap remains.  People who never finished high school have an unemployment rate of 12%; high school graduates rate is nearly 9%; those with some college are at 6.6%; and those with a baccalaureate degree or greater are just over 4%.[vi] See the pattern?

- In terms of lifetime earnings, high school graduates earn about $1.2 million, bachelor’s degree holders earn an additional $900,000 to an average $2.1 million, and people with a master’s degree $2.5 million.[vii]

- “With an annual rate of return of 15.2 percent, college has outpaced just about every other general investment category, including gold, corporate bonds, U.S. government debt, and hot company stocks.”[viii]

- Over the next decade, employment for people with college degrees is forecast to grow twice as fast as the overall job market.[ix]

- 62% of jobs will require college education by 2018, and more than half of those will require at least a bachelor’s degree.[x]

Having done our homework, it’s clear that we need to stop arguing about whether it’s worth it and focus our attention on figuring out how to make it work better.

— Robert Moore, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer

Learn more about Lipman Hearne’s approach to philanthropic marketing by visiting our website.

One recent finding from Eduventures shows that student callers are more effective in generating gifts from alumni than other solicitation means. But by any metric, even these most-effective methods fall far short.  Just examine data on solicitation response from Council to Aid for Education’s Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) survey for the past 20+ years:

Except in private liberal arts colleges, solicitation effectiveness has decreased by one-third to one-half. Through good times and bad; inflation, stagflation, recession; boom and bust cycles; greatest generation to boomers to Xers to millenials—the numbers just keep going down. And we’ve been hearing many of the same excuses for decades, generally summed up on one dismissive phrase: “We don’t have a culture of philanthropy.” One critique would suggest that an institution that has been saying for twenty or more years that they don’t have a culture of philanthropy is doing something seriously wrong: in those twenty years, there’s been time to inculcate such a culture. There have surely been plentiful opportunities to introduce students (pre-alumni) to the “culture of philanthropy”—enlist them in the future of the institution, demonstrate for them how philanthropy has contributed to their experience, reinforce the kind of empathic relationships that would make them lifelong advocates and supporters.

Our analysis is different. We believe that there are three reasons that most annual funds show such unimpressive response—indeed, are on a slow decline towards oblivion:

1. They are boring.

2. They are cookie-cutter (see #1), usually featuring a letter from a department chair, dean, CEO, or volunteer and an email reiteration of that letter, often dressed up with photos—sometimes followed by a student or other caller reading from a script.

3. They are easy to ignore (see #1 and #2).

This is in part because in many institutions the annual fund has been traditionally seen as the entry point for newby fundraisers—a training ground in which talented people are groomed for “bigger and better” roles as major and principle gift officers. But there is a fundamental truth about institutional finances that development operations need to take into account: all money is not alike. That’s right: all dollars aren’t worth the same—some are far more valuable and valued than others. If you doubt this, walk into the office of your institutional CEO with the following proposition: “I can get you $5 million dollars either into our endowment, into our capital fund, or as unrestricted operational support. Which would you prefer?” In this time of financial constraints, we’d be shocked—shocked!—if the CEO didn’t opt for unrestricted operational funds. And that’s what an annual fund, properly marketed, provides: unrestricted dollars that go straight to the bottom line.

It’s time to get smart and serious about new approaches, since the old ones are leaving far too many institutions without the operational flexibility they require.

— Robert Moore, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer

Learn more about Lipman Hearne’s approach to philanthropic marketing by visiting our website.

Recently, Education Sector, an independent education policy think tank, held a panel discussion about the Common Core State Standards. The Standards will lead to new K–12 academic standards and assessments for the 2014 school year.

The education world and some policymakers know about the changes but not enough people outside of these arenas are up-to-speed. That lack of knowledge and the need for better communication and messaging were all part of the discussion that included Robin Steans, Executive Director at Advance Illinois; Joel Vargas, Vice President at Jobs for the Future; and Michael Cohen, President at Achieve.

The panel members agreed that policymakers can’t wait for more money to arrive in order to reform schools and get ready for 2014—there is just no more money coming down the line. Tom Luna, Superintendent of Public Instruction at Idaho State Department of Education, pointed out that last year 30 states passed education reform bills and were able to make changes even without extra dollars.

In terms of current resources, Allan Odden, professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, stated that right now half of all federal block grant dollars intended for teacher observation and tutoring don’t end up going to those programs in the states. He believes something needs to be done to ensure dollars are flowing were they are meant to go.

Back-to-school 2014 will bring about some of the biggest changes in education since No Child Left Behind, at least in the 46 states and the District of Columbia as they have all adopted the new Standards. The clock is ticking.

— Adam Shapiro, Vice President

Learn more about Lipman Hearne’s approach to education advocacy by visiting our website.