Your Higher Education Marketing Newsletter… July 2017

Canada Day and July Fourth celebrations are behind us. Time now to follow the Tour de France, get ready for Bastille Day, and fine tune marketing plans to achieve 2017 enrollment goals.

Registration for eduWeb Digital Summit in Boston in August continues. Include my Monday morning workshop, Top Task Content and Design: Strategy for Website Success and stay Thursday for the Virtual Reality and Higher Education Symposium.

Mark your calendar for the 2017 AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education: November 12-15 in Atlanta. Add my updated 4th generation Digital Marketing Strategy Sunday tutorial to your schedule.

Join 436 members of our Top Tasks: Higher Education Website Content group on LinkedIn. If you work at a college or university, request membership now.

What do future students visiting your website like and dislike? Get answers in 5 days on 13 important quality points with our Customer Carewords visitor survey.

Join 7,450+ followers on Twitter at twitter.com/HighEdMarketing for my daily marketing updates.

And now here are your marketing news and notes for July.
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Cartoon of the Month: 8 Types of Annoying (Online) Ads

Why is adblocking software as popular as it is? These 8 online advertising examples from Tom Fishburne will shed light on the most hated formats. Adjust your marketing plans after you visit.
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675 Private Sector Colleges: Net Revenue Per Student and More

How does your private sector college or university fair in the effort to gain maximum net revenue per student? Jon Boeckenstedt at DePaul University has worked his data analysis magic to bring us a new, interactive analysis of 675 tuition discounting and net revenue levels.

Visit “The Discount Dilemma” and see discount rates, average net revenue per student, endowment per student, and percent of freshmen with Pell Grants. Sort by state, type of institution.
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Executive Compensation: Private and Public Sectors

The Chronicle of Higher Education offers the chance to view presidential compensation levels, starting with 2015-16 and going back as far as 2009-2010.

Michael Crow at Arizona State lead the public sector at $1.55 million while Jack Varsalona at Wilmington University was listed first on the private side at $5.44 million.

Search for others by personal or college name.
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Rating Colleges: 14 Questions for Alumni

Can you imagine a higher education rating system based on the answers alumni give to 14 questions?

Alumni might be asked to rank their school from 1 to 5, starting with “You received a high-quality education” and ending with “How helpful has the reputation of the college been to you so far in your career?”

Scan the complete list developed at the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy.
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Coalition for Better Ads: Graphic Display of Ads Google Will Block

Google in a few months will start using a default ad blocker to kill ads that do not meet the standards of the Coalition for Better Ads. If you include online advertising in your marketing mix, check the graphic images of 4 desktop and 8 mobile ad types deemed unworthy by the Coalition.

Pop-up ads are evil in both formats. Scan the others that Google will block.
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Artificial Intelligence: Exploring a Possible New Marketing Frontier

Regular readers will know my skepticism about the impulse to chase shiny new objects. That said, it is not too early to begin exploring what Artificial Intelligence might bring to marketing in the not-so-distant future.

Start with a 6-minute video from the Rocket Fuel agency and continue on to 6 additional articles on various AI applications. Keep your skepticism at hand and visit the AdWeek article.
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Web Marketing Survey: 4th Annual Terminal Four Questions

Complete the survey to receive a copy of the results. Questions are included about social media preferences, CMS use, web management, international recruitment, and more. Start the survey here.
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Recruiting Online Students: 2017 Learning House Research Report

The first thing I noted in this report: The primary choice factor, price, did not differ from the top task research we did for an online university about 5 years ago. That is a powerful incentive to give cost and affordability content prominent website placement if you do not do that now.

The 2017 report also notes that online students are considering more schools than in the past, that they are more aware of competency-based credit (73 percent), and that many suffer some type of buyer’s remorse (59 percent).

View an infographic and download a copy of the full report.
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Website Design: Be Wary of “Surprise and Delight” Goals

The experience people have on your website measured by their ability to complete the tasks that brought them to the site is the primary factor in marketing success. Gerry McGovern sends that advice for “the best digital marketers.”
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Chatbots: 8 Possibilities Include Higher Education

Are you thinking about how your marketing efforts might gain if your website could talk to potential students? Read through the 8 examples included in “Make Your Webpages Talk, with Chatbots. Two are specific to higher education: “Get students interested in courses” and “Make students feel unique.”

People will soon expect websites to respond to voice search. Is chatbot conversation far behind? Yes, this is in infant stage now. And that might be the perfect time to start tracking progress.
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Most Popular Topic in June Newsletter: 11 Champions of Top Task Website Design

See how 11 colleges and university adopt a top task approach from 4 home pages to admissions, study abroad, library, academic catalog sites and more.
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Be a marketing champion on your campus.

Bob Johnson, Ph.D.
President
Bob Johnson Consulting, LLC
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Bob Johnson Consulting, LLC

Increase your marketing success with one or more of these services. Contact me for details at bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com

Top Task Website Design Research with Gerry McGovern
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