Insights

In 2018, OHO Interactive held the first Higher Education Digital Marketing Bootcamp to help higher ed professionals understand how other colleges and universities structure their marketing departments, prioritize projects, and set budgets. OHO also took note that in their survey, The State of Higher Education Web Teams, communications departments at both large and small colleges and universities wanted to build digital marketing skills in-house.

Building digital marketing capacity in-house is the top skill college and university web teams want according to The State of Higher Education Web Teams survey and the top request we hear from our client partners.

“What scares me the most? The 80 ‘stealth admits’ that could either make or break our year.”

A university president recently confessed this fear to me highlighting the challenge stealth prospects pose for college and university enrollment teams.

“Thanks to mobile, micro-moments can happen anytime, anywhere. In those moments, consumers expect brands to address their needs with real-time relevance.” Google challenges digital marketers to identify these moments for their unique mobile visitors and ensure that these consumers can achieve both their goals and yours.

“We should put our social media accounts on our website!”

That phrase — or some version of it — has been uttered by someone at nearly every college or university at one point or another. But is it always the right move?

At face value, it seems like a great idea. If you’re spending the time and effort to maintain a robust social media presence, why wouldn’t you want to feature that content on your site? When you dig a little deeper, however, there’s a lot to consider.

With over 85% of prospective students ranking the website as the top research tool during a school search, a critical part of any website project is connecting prospects with admissions counselors — by means of request information forms, campus visit forms, and admission microsites.

If you’ve developed a branding platform, whether it was done internally or with a vendor partner, congratulations. You’re ahead of the game by virtue of having defined the DNA of your institutional identity, distinguishing it from peers and competitors alike.

So…now what? As it concerns digital marketing and web content strategy in particular, a branding platform is a tremendous step toward meaningful differentiation, but it does not enable well-intentioned communicators to get rolling right out of the box.

Stakeholders are the people or groups that have a vested interest in the success (or failure) of a project. Typically, a higher education website project is led by the marketing group. With increasing pressure on enrollment, most college or university website redesign projects are focused on reaching prospective students, making the key stakeholders for a website project the admissions groups — undergraduate, graduate, online, and continuing education.

Other stakeholders for higher education website projects typically include:

I’ve worked with higher ed for a long time, and I’ve seen a lot of wonderful things. But few things are more wonderful than a thoughtfully conceived strategic plan.

Sound dull? Hear me out.

An institution’s strategic plan is a roadmap to fulfill its ambition. Ideally, a strategic plan defines a vision for the future of the institution, then lays out highly specific, realistic, and measurable goals aligned to that vision — and a timeframe in which to achieve them.

Now if that’s not the definition of beauty, I don’t know what is.