The Pillars of Inbound Marketing for Higher Education: Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, and Google Analytics

1. The Pillars of Successful
Inbound Marketing
Analytics, SEO, &
Social Media Done Right
Kyle James
@KyleJames
CEO @nuCloud

2. What is the
purpose of our
website?

3. Marketing Has Changed
1950 - 2000 2000 - 2050

4. Outbound Marketing

5. Outbound Marketing is Broken
800-555-1234
Annoying
Salesperson

6. Inbound Marketing
Blog SEO Social Media

7. Inbound Marketing
Blog SEO Social Media
Analytics

8. Marketing Process

9. STRATEGIZE
Devise a strategy or strategies

10. What are our
goals?

11. What is
Important?

12. Follow the money!

13. • Give Us Money!
• But How?
• Alumni Donations
• Applicants
• Schedule a Visit
• Download Catalog
• Get on Mailing List

14. Business Funnels
Marketing Funnel Sales Funnel

15. At most schools 50%+ of annual
revenue comes through tuition

16. Recruitment Funnel
Awareness
Visit Website
Learn about School
Convert/Engage
Request Info
Visit Campus
Commit
Apply
Attend

17. ROI Analysis
Build a Business Case

18. Establishing ROI
If we can work backwards from the
value of a student we can establish the
value of an Interactive Campus Map.
*All numbers are created as examples

19. Let’s Do Some Math
• Average Years = 3
• Cost Per Year = $20,000
• Average Yearly Discount = $10,000
• Student Value = 3 * ($20,000 - $10,000)
• So a Student is worth
$30,000!

20. Let’s Do Some Math
• Student Value = $30,000
• Conversion Rate in Applicant = 20%
• App Value = $30,000 * .2
• So an Applicant is worth
$6,000!

21. Value Of Campus Tour?

22. Let’s Do Some Math
• Application Value = $6,000
• Conversion Rate of Visits to Applicant =
20%
• Value of Visit = $6,000 * .2
• So Each Student Visit is Worth
$1,200!

23. Let’s Do Some Math
• Visit Value = $1,200
• Conversion of Map to Visit = 5%
• Value of a Map View = $1,200 * .05
• So Each Map View is Worth
$60!

24. Do You Think 1,000
People Would View
Your Map In A Month?

25. Then Having A Map
Is Worth $60,000!
Per Month!

26. You can now justify this project

27. ROI Spreadsheet
http://bit.ly/map-roi

28. You can use this same process
to decide the value of
doing any web project

29. Possible Important Items
Admission Specific General Goals
• Apply to College • Sign up for eConnect
• Schedule a Campus updates
Visit • Watch Videos
• Request Info • Subscribe to RSS
• Download the • Become Facebook
Viewbook Fan, Member of a
• Take a Virtual Tour Group
• Join Linked In
• Read Blogs
29

30. EXECUTE
To carry out; accomplish

31. Be
Social
Content Strategy
Blogging
Article Writing
Calls to Action On-Page SEO
Landing Pages Keyword Research
Site Architecture Measurement
Ability to Edit Site Analytics Installed

32. Be
Social
Content Strategy
Blogging
Article Writing
Calls to Action On-Page SEO
Landing Pages Keyword Research
Site Architecture Measurement
Ability to Edit Site Analytics Installed

33. The Foundation

34. Be
Social
Content Strategy
Blogging
Article Writing
Calls to Action On-Page SEO
Landing Pages Keyword Research
Site Architecture Measurement
Ability to Edit Site Analytics Installed

35. The Conversion Process
• If we aren’t getting people to convert on our
traffic then what does a thousand or a million
visitors to our site matter?
35

36. How Do You Convert?
• Conversions require
Landing Pages
• A Landing Page is a Page
with a Form on it.

37. Three Steps of a Conversion Process
1. The Call to Action
2. The Landing Page
3. The Follow-Up

38. The Call to Action
• Are your offers compelling?
• Call to action best practices
– Create urgency
– Include an image
– Contrasting colors
– Be specific/inspirational

39. The Landing Page

40. The Landing Page
• Keep it simple
– Little to no navigation or other links
• People scan, don’t read
– Bullet points
– Pictures
– Bold copy
– Five second rule
• Make it instantly obvious what they will get
• Shorter the form the higher the conversion rate
• Possible alternative call to actions

41. The Follow-Up
• Thank you page
• Auto response email
• Additional channels to connect
• Opportunities for further engagement
– Lead Nurturing
– Email Marketing
– Phone Calls

42. Thank You Page Examples

43. Be
Social
Content Strategy
Blogging
Article Writing
Calls to Action On-Page SEO
Landing Pages Keyword Research
Site Architecture Measurement
Ability to Edit Site Analytics Installed

44. If people can’t find it, does it matter?

45. Search Engine Optimization
Over 3 billion searches per day
• Publish more content
• Optimize your content
• Promote your content

46. What SEO is NOT

47. SEO is Usability and Accessibility

48. Search Engine Crawlers are Blind
Yahoo Microsoft
Google

49. By the Numbers (on one site)
• 30% of traffic is delivered by Search
Engines
• 82% of that traffic is delivered by Google
• On a large college website w/ 1,000,000
visits per month that
is 300,000 visitors

50. It All Starts With Keywords
• “It’s NOT about what you want or what you
call it, it is about what people are actually
looking for.”
• “Nobody cares about your products
(except you)” – David Meerman Scott

51. Long Tail Keywords
• Computer Science Degree South Carolina
• Computer Science Program South Carolina
• Computer Science Degree
• Computer Science Major
• Computer Science

52. Two Parts of SEO
On-Page Off-Page

53. On-Page Optimization
Page
Title
URL
Meta
Description
Meta Headers
Keywords

54. Page Title
Page
• Describe The Page Title
• Include Keywords
• 70 Character Limit

55. The URL
• Describe The Page URL
• Include Keywords
• A Dynamic URL is hard to understand
• What are the following two pages about?
• http://tomahawktake.com/2009/04/11/game-no-5-recap-braves-5-
nationals-3/
• http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090411&content_id=422
5972&vkey=recap&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

56. Headers
• Semantic Markup
Headers
• Include Keywords
• Describe sections of the Page

57. Semantic Markup is Like A Word Doc

58. Meta Description & Keywords
Meta
• Unique for Each Page Keywords
• Only Viewable in Source
• Meta Description limit 150 characters
• Meta Keyword limit 10 keywords max Meta
Description

59. Off-Page Optimization
We’ve all heard Content is King,
so Links must be the Queen?

60. Your Site Is Trusted!

61. Remember it’s Not About Us
What are those
buildings called?

62. What are people looking for?

63. Getting Ranked

64. Search Call To Actions
Page Title
Meta Description
Page Title and Meta Description are all you get in search
results. Make sure that they count.

65. Be
Social
Content Strategy
Blogging
Article Writing
Calls to Action On-Page SEO
Landing Pages Keyword Research
Site Architecture Measurement
Ability to Edit Site Analytics Installed

66. Publish Content Worth Sharing

67. Blogging Best Practices
• Tell your story
• Educational and informative not sales
focused
• Personal and stories from people in the
field
• So much more than just text (videos,
pictures, etc)

68. Student Blogs
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/campus_life/studentblogs

69. Faculty Blogs
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/

70. Staff Blogs
http://fuse.ithaca.edu/staffblogs/

71. Alumni Blogs
http://alumni.blogs.wvu.edu/

72. President’s Blogs
http://www.usm.edu/president/blog/

73. Don’t Forget To Convert

74. Be
Social
Content Strategy
Blogging
Article Writing
Calls to Action On-Page SEO
Landing Pages Keyword Research
Site Architecture Measurement
Ability to Edit Site Analytics Installed

75. Always Share Your Content

76. Always Be Ready To Give

77. Make Your Content
Easy To Share

78. Don’t Forget Your Purpose
Tie Social Media To ROI

79. Analyze
Discover or reveal (something) through examination

80. If a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound?

81. Avoid Paralysis by Analysis
• Are we accomplishing our goals?
• Don’t try and measure everything
• Focus on a few (3-5) metrics instead of
everything

82. Does More Visitors Matter?

83. Does More Time On Site Matter?

84. Is More Pages/Visit A Good Thing?

85. Traffic Increase Without Increasing
Conversions Is Wasted Work

86. Conversions Matter!
It doesn’t matter if you get a
thousand visitors a month or a
million if none of them are
actually converting into
applicants/students or donors!

87. Be
Social
Content Strategy
Blogging
Article Writing
Calls to Action On-Page SEO
Landing Pages Keyword Research
Site Architecture Measurement
Ability to Edit Site Analytics Installed

88. Inbound Marketing is NOT
A Sprint…

89. Questions?
Converge Consulting Kyle James
@ConvergeOrg @KyleJames
ann@convergeconsulting.com kyle@nucloud.com