That came through to me again yesterday while reviewing 20 pages on a client's website for ways to increase their search engine visibility. While you never want to write for a search engine at the expense of your live visitors, sometimes the two overlap. When that happens, it is time to seize an opportunity.
In this case, the client was using the term "Graduate Programs" and "Undergraduate Programs" as major topic headings on the site. And so I used the free tool available from Wordtracker at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ to run a quick check on alternative terms that might raise the search visibility of those pages and help capture interest from people interested in online degree programs.
Here's what I found:
Check the labels you're using now on pages with content in this area. Check the page title tags and the major headings on the page and your left-hand navigation. If you don't offer doctoral progams online, make a quick switch to "masters" programs from the "graduate" word. If you do offer doctoral programs (almost nobody searches for those, by the way), break up the content so you can use both words.
Make changes like that and you'll please both people and search engines. Can't beat that combination.
]]>Almost nobody in either audience (probably 150 or so combined) reported they had something like this online now.
10 Scholarship and Cost Calculators
That lead me to update the list at http://bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/2007/12/5_online_financial_aid_scholar.html from 7 to 10 schools with online forms that mark a venture into new marketing territory. The new additions are Fleming College in Ontario, Northern Arizona University, and Wilkes University. Links to each of the 10 pages are included.
The Wilkes entry delivers a subtle marketing message that I'd guess in not intended. The form asks only for SAT results, excluding ACT. Does that mean this northeastern Pennsylvania school isn't interested in people from ACT states like Michigan and Ohio and Illinois and more? Not likely, but that's what this form implies.
Noel-Levitz student surveys continue to report that forms like these would be used by a great majority of college-bound high school students if available. But they are not.
A Special Benefit for "Stealth" Applicants
If you're concerned about "stealth" applicants, consider this option to get them to drop the invisibility cloak. Make the scholarship and/or cost calculator only available to people who become an online inquiry. In other words, offer a benefit for the act of revealing identity. Make your website more important to them by providing a service that isn't available anywhere else.
Do people use these?
We had a person from Bradley University in one audience. She verified that use of Bradley's online form has doubled or tripled the number of people getting estimates now over the number that once were forced to provide the information and then wait for a reply by regular mail. Instant gratification. Sometimes it works.
]]>Not quite sure when the ads first started, but sometime in the last week or so I've noticed a new campaign for Capella appearing as banner ads on various websites.
The ad is very simple and doesn't feature any wiggly dancers or fetching women that seem out of place on other group ads for online college and university programs. Other than the name, the ad copy is limited to "Over 30 doctoral specializations, all focused on advancing your career." The call to action is for receipt of a "free university guide."
Follow the quest for a guide and you arrive at http://capellalearning.net/default.aspx?v=unilong
Easy to Scan Degree Offerings
Some points of note about the landing page:
Complete the form and you get a quick thank you with a note that "An enrollment counselor will be contacting you."
There's also a PDF version of what I suspect is the guide (called "Capella Degree Programs") that will come in the mail. What's unusual about this one is that you can actually read it online without having to increase and decrease the size of the image to see the photos and read the print. Nicely done for a PDF. You can move directly from the content page to the major content area of most interest, so you don't have to scroll through each one of the 38 pages in the guide.
Building the Capella University Brand
Although the ad highlights doctoral degrees, the program information outlines everything available from the bachelor's level up. That makes sense, since many people who explore the opportunity may aspire to a doctoral degree without yet having the earlier degrees in place. And for some visitors, it might enhance the Capella brand to associate the bachelors and masters programs with the doctoral offerings.
Test the form for yourself at http://capellalearning.net/default.aspx?v=unilong
]]>Like anything else, these can be done well and not-quite-so well. These 4 examples stand out i my personal web searching among the many that are available.
More examples stand out among my Link of the Week selections at http://www.bobjohnsonconsulting.com/linkoftheweek.html
And of course I'd certainly like to hear of more that you might know about. Send me a note at bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com or leave a comment.
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Surprising so far is the level of interest... 52 people have registered for this one, many more than my workshop last year on search engine marketing. At the start, I'll try to see find out more about what's bringing people to this session.
What's especially timely are recent stories in the press that build on what's covered in my opening slides... the emerging use of smartphones and electronic readers. The business section of the NY Times on Sunday included a feature story on the Readius, a flexible version of an e-reader that's due out late this year or early next year. Yes, you can roll up the electronic page and just about put it into your pocket. That's the plan, at least. See more about it at http://www.readius.com/
And both the Wall Street Journal and USA Today have reviews of the iPhone with 3G. Indeed, the USA Today story features actual faster website access times for 10 different websites. That fast access time is a key ingredient for wider adoption. See the story at http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/edwardbaig/2008-07-08-iphone-3g-review_N.htm
Will print ever be obsolete in student recruitment communication plans? When did the frog in the pot start to notice the water was getting warm?
]]>If you've been wondering about the contribution to marketing effectiveness that analytics can make, then read today's column at http://bcs.targetmarketingmag.com/story/story.php?sid=110810
Denny is joyful today because he finally found the Holy Grail of how to measure the effectiveness of online marketing when he attended a presentation in Philadelphia. Fun to read just to witness the conversion take place. Old dogs can always learn new tricks.
One specific comment from the presenter I hadn't seen before: search engine spyders (or at least Google's) will return to a website every 3 days if they find new content, every 10 days if no new content is found, and eventually will not return at all if no new content is being added.
The first person commenting on Denny's column returned to an important reality that doesn't get enough emphasis: content of a web page counts more than anything else. If your intended audience isn't interested or can't quickly scan the page, web analytics won't save you, but it will tell you that nobody is paying attention.
]]>Up until now, a big part of my answer has also been simple: read the content to yourself and you'll most often know when you are using a word too often to be natural. That's a signal that you are "stuffing" the keywords and your readers are going to find an awkward flow to the content. That said, you can usually use a primary key word in the title tag, in the primary heading, in the first lines of regular text, and again in a subhead without a problem.
But some people want something just a bit more definitive. If that means you, try the free keyword analysis tool at http://www.live-keyword-analysis.com/
You can enter up to three keywords and then paste in the text for your web page. You'll immediately get back the keyword density ratio. You still have to make a human decision on how much is too much but this adds a nice quantitative touch. I'll be including it with other resource pages in future versions of "Writing Right for the Web," starting at Dominican University in August.
Special thanks to Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin for listing this at their fine website. If you haven't visited http://www.yourseoplan.com/ yet, do so soon.
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The article reports that in the online world 75% of buyers experience a lack of information that keeps them from making a purchase "always, most, or some of the time." When that happens most people will move to a competitor who provides the missing information.
High Demand for Website Net Cost Information
That made me flash back to yesterday's (finished!) work on my advance workshop presentation for the ACT Enrollment Planners Meeting next week. According to the 2007 Noel-Levitz survey of college-bound students, 76% would use an online tuition cost calculator "if they could" and 80% would use an online "financial aid estimator" if they could.
But most can't. Less 25% of both private and public institutions provide those services. (The Noel-Levitz survey at www.noellevitz.com/expectations)
Can we conclude that colleges that do offer these services gain an advantage over their competitors who do not? From what I'm hearing about the popularity of those programs from people who have them, I'd not want to be in my competitive set without one.
Little Online Help for Net Cost
Check 7 schools that offer a variety of scholarship and cost calculators at http://bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/2007/12/5_online_financial_aid_scholar.html
What's required for each one? Some are extremely simple, designed to provide a merit scholarship estimate with just a little academic information (Dominican University), some require family income data similar to what's needed for a FAFSA, and some compare net cost over 4 years with lifetime earning potential for various occupations (University of Toledo).
The marketing impact of college and university websites will advance when more schools start to provide information that's in high demand. Until then, a wise few will enjoy their competitive edge.
]]>In searching for relevant material, I returned again to the Noel-Levitz website at www.noellevitz.com to review a 2008 survey report on online recruiting practices and a 2007 report on what students would like to do on college websites if colleges gave them the chance to do it.
More than 50% prefer online information over print
For this presentation, the answer to one question in the 2007 report was most important: 57% of high school students headed for college would prefer to receive information about the college online rather than in print.
That can easily be a glass half-empty or glass half-full result, depending on your point of view.
From my perspective, and in keeping with an overall migration away from traditional print information sources, it means that the resources spent on print communications vs. those spent to build a stronger online effort are seriously out of wack.
Recruitment budgets don't support strong online efforts
Match that 57% answer with another from the 2008 survey: 67% of private colleges and universities reported spending less than $25,000 of their student recruitment budgets for online activities, as did almost 47% of 4-year public institutions.
Recommendation: read through the Noel-Levitz reports with your online budget and your online capability sheet close at hand. How well does your resource allocation match what future students want to do online?
That 57% figure reported above isn't going down anytime soon.
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He did that again in early June with "Writing Style for Print vs. Web," where he repeats the still often ignored advice that people who come to websites are focused on taking specfic actions, with a low tolerance for anything that keeps that from happening.
On college and university websites, the "blockers" often include the following:
In this Alertbox, Nielsen adds another good example of text that works in print but won't work on the web. The print example is "Coping with the Tall Traveler's Curse." To see his recommended change for the web, visit the Alertbox column at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/print-vs-online-content.html
To elevate the presentation of your web content, bring my "Writing Right for the Web" seminar to your campus. Contact me now at bob@bobjohnsonconsulting to schedule a session for September or October.
]]>Check all 39 entries at http://bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/2007/07/15_presidents_who_blog_saint_v.html
Our three new presidents who blog are a mix of old and new:
The continued increase in presidents who blog is exciting. It represents an important leadership commitment to bring a more human element to online communications. While some PR people and lawyers may still get shivers about this, no evil has come from it yet. I'll look forward to posting more new additions as more presidents start to blog.
With just 30 minutes to boarding my flight, that's it for now.
]]>No, the new iPhone by itself doesn't herald the much anticipated break out of mobile marketing on smartphones throughout the land. But it certainly moves things in the right direction, starting with a much lower entry price point of $199. That's a critical change.
Mobile Marketing Barriers
What's been holding back mobile marketing? The price of the phone, the price of the data plan needed to take advantage of the capabilities, and the learning curve for the new capabilities. And, of course, the limited ability of relatively small smartphone screens to display most types of online advertising. The iPhone doesn't remove all those barriers, but it keeps things moving in the right direction.
Change is coming. And the first step is just getting smartphones in the hands of more people. Today, something like 20 percent of people in the U.S. have them. That's not nearly enough for a significant advance in mobile marketing. But that market penetration percent will continue to climb.
Details about the new iPhone capabilities are at http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/edwardbaig/2008-06-09-iphone_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
New Challenge for Google
And for an interesting article on the new challenges facing Google from smartphone expansion, see "Are Google, Yahoo the next dinosaurs" at http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2008-06-09-mobile-search_N.htm
One thing we can count on. Web marketing 5 years from now will be a much different game.
]]>REACh's Scott Pfeiffer and Tim Panfil asked for an ambitious program: cover 8 online communication topics in 2 back-to-back sessions of about 75 minutes each. The major challenge: compress some topics that I cover in 2 to 3 hour sessions into just a few key points to take back home. Since it is easier to let presentations grow than to shrink them, that was an interesting and useful exercise.
To start the day, I asked the people present to vote on which of the 8 topics we were covering were most important to them, the proverbial "if you could only pick one of these, which would it be?" question. These are topics (in the order covered) and the votes for each:
I was a bit surprised and very pleased by the size of the Web Writing vote compared to the others. And just as pleased to see that the "old favorites" of Blogs, Email, Chat Rooms retain strong interest at a time when it is easy to be dazzled by new capabilities at the expense of "traditional" online communication that is still in favor with the people who use college and univesity websites.
3 New On-Campus Web Writing Seminars
"Writing Right for the Web" continues to be a popular presentation. Between now and early August I'll be doing on-campus sessions at Fielding Graduate University, Stonehill College, and Dominican University. And look for another web conference with Academic Impressions in October and a CASE V Annual Conference session in December in Chicago.
Whether you start on-campus or online, improving the quality of your web writing is often the most important thing you can do for stronger engagement with your visitors. Ask me about a session on your campus at bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com
Subscribe to Website Magazine
On a related note, if you have never checked Website Magazine, do that soon. Each issue includes worthy articles on more than one of the topics listed above. The current issue is at www.websitemagazine.com where you can subscribe to either a print or an electronic version. Or both.
That's it for now.
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It would be nice if that were true. But alas, you don't have nearly that long to capture initial attention and get someone to stay on a website page. In my "Writing Right for the Web" workshops, I often say 2 to 5 seconds is the limit. That's from my direct marketing background and it is closer to reality than 30 seconds.
10 Seconds at the Most!
Also waiting for me when I returned was the May issue of Website Magazine. Taking a quick first look, I noticed an article on "The First 10 Seconds." And that's probably a good compromise. Personally, I'd still err on the side of thinking you really have to make an almost instant connection in the time it takes someone to first run their eyes over your page. That scan is very quick indeed.
Subscribe to Website Magazine
A subscription to the print copy of the magazine is free at http://www.websitemagazine.com/ and you can also read the "10 second" article online when you visit even if you don't subscribe.
Highly recommended.
]]>Since I'm always in favor of moving forward, I visited followed the link to http://education.yahoo.net/degrees/articles/featured_8_sure_fire_hires.html and scanned the list of growing employment areas. Pretty standard stuff. Along with the story "reporting" the list comes a plethora of advertising opportunities for colleges and universities of every type. Hundreds of them.
You can sort by the level of degree or the area of study. But if you're interested in a "doctoral" program, don't expect to have only those advanced fields reported back to you. Whoever programmed this thing really does follow the mantra of "just keep throwing things at people until something sticks."
I tried sorting the alpha list for on-campus programs by zip code, using one from Michigan. That did sort things out to the point where the first programs reported were indeed in or near the zip code. But the list kept right on going, reporting non-degree occupational programs in locations as far as 2,000 miles away.
Does advertising like this work? It all depends on ROI. Cost of leads returned and percent who convert to enrollments. But it sure isn't a direct marketer's idea of how to do things.
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