More students coming in, but where is the money to handle the students? I was recently sent a link via an online friend in a Twitter direct message that speaks greatly to the hard times hitting us all in one way or another.
This video is an excellent example of the rock side - higher education is losing a lot of funding from the government. Just read the articles like “The Jobless Go Back to School” and “Could CU go ‘private’?” As states go back to look through budgets, schools may end up getting less and less. Donors and alumni may also be giving a little less as they tighten the wallets for the economic wave.
On the hard place side are students. Yes, they may be going back to school, but there is some evidence that it may not be easy for them, either. The two articles above as well as the USA Today article “Students, schools adjust for struggling economy” suggest that families are having a hard time finding money or loans to go back to school. Lenders have stricter loan qualifications (not to mention that people are more in debt than ever, making it even harder to get a loan), federal lenders are cutting the amount of money they are giving out, and family members are losing jobs. So they may not be looking for the big state school, but the local community college first.
As we know well, it seems that when things get tough, the marketing money gets going. But… there is a third problem – the anvil – that is rarely mentioned. Prices for pretty much everything, from paper to ink to energy bills to employee insurance, have gone up, thus decreasing the marketing budget even more.
Productivity may be down, employees may not be happy, and morale may be low due to the economic problems. Based on the blog last month (College Marketing Plans for 2009) about a third of you mentioned you would be laying off staff in the beginning of the year. And you will have to motivate the remaining staff to do more. So how do you as the brand manager keep the ball rolling? Hint, money is not the only motivator.
Again, we look to the small business owners. They constantly have to keep the small group of employees motivated to do more and more and they always have more to give. These ideas are inspired by Inc. and Entrepreneur magazine.
Fun stuff. Everyone likes to blow of steam. Take your staff out of the office for awhile. It doesn’t have to be expensive either. Take a walk around campus with your team, have a potluck lunch at a nearby park, or take advantage of campus offerings like a high ropes course, a game of basketball, a game a kickball.
Feed the soul. Do a departmental retreat to a charity. A local shelter, house building project, or environmental group. Offer your marketing teams services to a local nonprofit for an afternoon. It helps to build teamwork, gets the employees out of the office, and does something for the community.
No two employees are alike. They each live there own lives with there own interests. Note each of their interests and tailor some of your offerings. You may motivate one who you know likes to shop with more spending money, while another you may motivate with time off to spend with their kids.
Re-visit the vision and set goals. Many nowadays are looking for meaningful work, so re-visit the idea and let them know that what they are doing is done for purpose. Set individual and team goals so employees have something to work toward and feel they are growing personally and working toward as a team to accomplish something. Focus on a couple key goals so they are not overwhelmed.
Be ethical and honest. Don’t try to sugar coat issues or do something people frown on. Some believe that we are in this economic recession due to unethical and dishonest practices. They don’t need to feel as if you or others in your team are part of the problem.
Quickly tell of the positives. When a positive is seen or a goal is met, tell the employees right away. Each positive is in move in the right direction. This can also be done on a personal level, by noticing a certain employee’s improvement or great job on a certain project and following it with an appropriate response. Everyone likes getting noticed for a job well done.
New tasks. Cross train employees or give employees new tasks. It is a breath of fresh air and the employee learns something new and they feel they can be trusted to do new responsibilities and expand on their capabilities. You can also make their job bigger. Give employees who are doing well new tasks and responsibilities within their current job. Also enrich them, train them, give them more meaningful responsibilities, etc.
Start to finish. Let your employees work or manage a project from start to finish. Having them start, but not finish makes an employee feel they can’t be trusted or unappreciated. Let them do a project independently, micromanaging makes the employee feel not need and also unappreciated.
Doing more with less is always hard. But it can be done. More ideas can be found at Inc. and Entrepreneur magazine.
We all know about the green movement sweeping the country. Evidence of this movement can be seen with students on college campuses, in the grocery store, at the car dealership, and on your electric bill. But how do higher ed marketers use this to their advantage.
In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:
concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust;
concentrations of substances produced by society;
degradation by physical means and, in that society. . .
people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.
A less scientific description of the Four System Conditions can be found on the Natural Step’s website.
Organizations, like higher education campuses or even higher education departmental units (wink – Marketing and Communications), can see tremendous implications and rewards. The rewards from organizational sustainability can also be a marketers’ jackpot as mentioned in the possible rewards for an organization seen below, according to the Natural Step website.
Product and Service Innovation
Competitive Advantage
Customer and Employee Loyalty and Trust
Increased Shareholder Value
License to operate (the community favors the organizations operations)
Cost savings
And of course, bringing your organization strategically closer towards environmental and social sustainability in an economically sound way
As a supervisor, you may have to deal with overhead costs. You will have more green to squeeze into your marketing budget by going green. Due to the economic client, I will focus on the cost saving and provide some possible ways to save money.
Turn off and unplug anything that won’t be used for a long time. Anything turned off, but left plugged in, like a computer, can still use tiny amounts of energy. Some estimates say you can shave 10% off your energy bill. Perfect for extended breaks, weekends, and overnight.
Edit reports and drafts on the computer instead of printing out tons of paper. Almost all MS Office products come with the tracking changes function.
Change to energy efficient lighting or possibly turn off the lights if the area is well lit and if the area safe to do so (we don’t need anyone cutting of finger tips with the paper cutter).
Check around with other campus departments, they may have surplus promotional items with old logos that can’t be given out to outside stakeholders. Instead of buying pens, ask to use a department’s defunct stash of promotional pens. The pens get used, stay out of the landfill for the time being, save you money, and create a line of communication between departments.
Create innovative Web 2.0 tactics that have been discussed elsewhere in this blog (possibly in place of using traditional print publications).
When you market the sustainability advantages your organization has come up with to your stakeholders, be sure not to take part in greenwashing or you may lose their trust.
In my book, impressions are as important as brand consistency. You can be incredibly disciplined about your brand messaging and look and feel, but if you’re not getting in front of your audiences – known in the ad game as impressions – and with the frequency necessary, you’ll continue to be the “best kept secret” in town.
The great news is that today there are many ways to build a critical mass of impressions – one that can arguably lead to a tipping point in visibility for your brand. And I’m not talking about spending oodles in advertising. Some of the more obvious ways in today’s digital environment are institution fan pages on Facebook and MySpace and a YouTube site. But other simple, yet creative, opportunities continue to emerge, like creating a piece of flair in Facebook like the one below (visit Facebook’s Flair site) …or a brand-inspired FB application (i.e. Oklahoma St. Football Fans or Old Dominion Basketball Fans).
Go bigger yet and ask your stakeholders to express how they feel about the brand. Have a flair design contest. Or go even bigger and have a YouTube contest. A number of institutions have had great success with these tactics like the University of Michigan Flint’s 2008 Superbowl contest and Virginia Tech’s “I’m a Hokie” contest to mention two.
These relatively simple and inexpensive vehicles are great ways to augment shrinking advertising budgets and help you continue to build brand visibility. They have the added advantage of allowing you to directly engage audiences and to tap into the pride and loyalty of your stakeholders to promote the brand.
There is a caveat to these activities. While they cost little in terms of a dollar commitment, they require a commitment of time. Someone has to live and breathe the 2.0 space, identify new opportunities and think of creative ways to use them; monitor and interact with responders; and, most importantly, someone has to actively promote the activities.
To simply create is not enough. You have to initiate the exchange – invite your constituencies to view and comment on your videos, visit your fan pages, accept and pass around flair, etc. And once is not enough. You have to keep tapping people – if they comment, comment back, start a conversation. If they accept a piece of your flair, encourage them to share it with others, etc. Like any relationship, these activities require back and forth communication. However, if you can find the resources to fully commit to these activities – like a willing and savvy student intern in your office who can shepherd these efforts – you will reap the rewards of making great impressions.
Usually, in the online environment, I could mask the address and simply have you click on the word “posts,” and you’d be automatically redirected. However, it gets trickier in emails, for example, where not all email providers allow active links in the body of the email. To be safe, you should always include the full address of the link so a person could cut and paste it into a browser. And, finally, in printed materials, these long addresses can get very unwieldy. However, getting your IT department to change a link name to something prettier every time you want to promote a page can be next to impossible for most and an exercise in patience for others…and frankly, today, you don’t need to. You can do it yourself; and very simply.
There are a host of what are known as alias generators out there that convert long URLs into nice neat short ones. Many of these generators allow you to create a custom name for the URL that will be more message appropriate. The best known is tinyurl.com. Other popular generators include tr.im and bit.ly and there are a number of others as well. Features to look for include URLs that don’t expire and the ability to customize. Some even include tools that allow you to track stats of how many people have clicked the URLs you generate – a useful mechanism to measure response to a specific communication.
Here’s an example of how they work. Using tr.im, I’ve turned the URL I mentioned above into http://tr.im/norecession (go ahead click on it, and it will take you to the blog).
A drawback to using these types of URL trimmers is that your domain name isn’t in the address; however, arguably, if the address gets so long that it’s hard to see where it’s pointing to, your domain name and the user’s patience with typing in the long address from a printed piece (for example) become a moot point anyway. These alias generators aren’t the answer every time, sometimes it’s worth the battle with IT to get the short discrete address, but sometimes they can be the right solution to keeping your communication flow simple and easy for your audiences.
For awhile, it seemed like all you could get was the same as everyone else. But with new technology comes greater opportunity for products and services that are tailored to each of us.
For example, I can go to M&M’s website and order my own unique M&M with my own picture and saying. Now you can really say, I look good enough to eat! You can also personalize it with sayings and company logos.
There are even some fun stuff online that make Pringles and Reese’s web experience more personalized (too bad you can’t order these examples and send them out).
All these food examples are making me hungry.
The opportunities for universities and colleges to allow their audiences to personalize their web experience or advertising materials are limitless. The potential is probably limited by the power of the budget and creativity.
Here are a few examples of personalized higher ed experiences.
If you are a undecided student, you can personalize web viewing materials by taking the “Clarkson Undecided Quiz.”
A couple common sense things to keep in mind while creating the personal experience. The first is make sure to keep the experience in tune with the brand. Don’t make the personalization experience cool just because you can, make sure every personalization option has a purpose. Kind of like the movies, the movies that focus on the cool special effects have some of the weakest plots. So be sure to test the concept and overall look and feel of the experience with several different groups of stakeholders.
Secondly, make it clean, easy to use, and professional. Test its usability and functionality over and over again to make sure everything works properly.
Now it is time for show and tell. Show us your favorite examples of personalized web experiences.
The end of the year has come and gone with celebrations and parties and for some a sigh of relief. Awhile ago I wrote about the 101 Dumbest Moments in Business in 2007 and how it dealt with marketing. This year, in Fortune’s 21 Dumbest Moments in Business 2008, it is mostly about the details within the marketing tactics.
Even the most innocent of comments or actions that haven’t really been discussed can come around to bite you in the you-know-where. So the main lesson is to look beyond the tactic and look at all possible outcomes of the tiniest of details. So here are a few tiny details missed in 2008.
The chief executives of the big three auto makers drive everyone crazy when they individually fly their corporate jets to Washington D.C. to beg Congress for a bailout worth billions of dollars.
After being reamed for taking private jets to Congress to plead their case, the big three decide to drive to their second chance in front of Congress (separately, of course) in their respective company’s fuel-economic vehicles. Embarrassingly Chrysler’s Robert Nardelli decided to drive the company’s soon to be discontinued Chrysler Aspen Hybrid.
In July, Apple releases the new iPhone along with many other applications designed by non-Apple software developers. Most apps are to be available for under $10. One application titled “I am Rich” sneaks past Apple and makes it onto the App Store. “I am Rich” is a $999.99 screen-saver whose sole feature is a glowing red jewel. Apple gets blasted for making the application available for sale and then quietly removing it. Eight people bought it.
Bloomberg News accidentally releases an obit for Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who is still alive. Later in the year on CNN’s iReport, claims were reported that Jobs suffered a heart attack. The report sends Apple’s stock down 10% in just 10 minutes. At his next appearance, Jobs appears in front of a giant screen with the message, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
Another lesson of this post was discussed in Betrayal on Facebook, nip the online falsehoods and frauds as quickly as possible or suffer the consequences. People can say as much as they want about you online, but be sure you get the final and truthful word in.
Again, the lesson of these dumbest moments is to learn from the mistakes of others. None of us want to end up on this list.
Given that in our online poll last month so many of you indicated that you intend to increase expenditures in new media and web development, I’ve compiled a list of 2009 predictions for web design as well as web use that might be useful as you do your planning for those expenditures for the coming year. In addition to the buzzwords you already know like social media, social networking, blogging, twittering, digging, etc. Here are some more to get very well acquainted with as they are becoming the new drivers in the online space – OpenID, Semantic Web, Web apps, cloud computing.
WEB PREDICTIONS FOR 2009 Read Write Web
This blog includes several lists of predictions from RW team members. Here are the top predictions from each:
iTunes adds social networking features; but it’s still a closed development system.
Lifestreams will continue to evolve; From the explosion of the newsfeed-powered Facebook to the experimental polling technology of FriendFeed, 2008 was a big year for the “lifestream” – the technology of aggregating data from all your activities on different social networks around the web. No one summed it up better than Mark Krynsky in his Lifestream Blog post The Year in Lifestreaming for 2008. In 2009, I’ll be watching the parties above, but also MovableType’s Motion, social media ping server Gnip, Strands on the iPhone and Chris Messina and friends’ new working group on Activity Streams.
Twitter announces they have a plan to make money. They do.
VCs jump onto the SAAS bandwagon, but most ventures don’t need the cash.
Digg still won’t be bought.
Google loses goodwill, Yahoo gains.
Twitter will be acquired (probably by Facebook–but multiple suitors will compete for the deal).
Twitter is going to continue to grow and eventually get acquired, while Facebook is going to see further decline.
With the economy continuing to tank, Microsoft will double-down on its Facebook investment, garnering more control of the company – and more access to the data being gathered through Facebook Connect.
Matthew Buckland
Matthew’s top three predications are:
Publishing & e-commerce sites as social networks: All major sites will have social network layers allowing users to connect to each other, facilitating peer recommendation of content and sharing of content. The New York Times is leading the way with their recently launched TimesPeople which does just this. Viral functionality like “Send to a friend/email a friend” will make way for more sophisticated sharing that involve mining email contact lists.
Niche social networks: Expect a raft of niche social networks and exclusive networks to launch. There will be some big launches too: Apple will launch a social network, akin to Facebook, but initially mobile driven from the iPhone. With its scalability issues under control, Twitter will jack up its rather thin offering, with an improved user interface and more social networking features.
Applications continue moving online: 2009 may be a seminal year for this trend. We’ve seen how Google launched Google docs, an online version of Microsoft Word and Excel. It was a direct lunge at Microsoft’s jugular. Microsoft, which is like a dangerous mangy dog, will respond by launching its own online versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint to take Google head-on. Microsoft may go a step further and turn Outlook into an online social network, arguably where email and contacts are headed anyway. Google will strike by announcing an online operating system, Windows, linked to a new GooglePC, a strike at the very heart of Microsoft. We may see activity happening the other way too, with Facebook launching a browser.
Website Magazine
The magazine leads with the following prediction:
A Major Social Media Shift: There will be a noticeable, albeit slight uptick in social media usage (using weblogs and leveraging online networking sites, for instance) due to increased and continued layoffs across all business sectors. Few small enterprises, however, will effectively master social media, despite claims that it’s possible. Genuine creativity and original thought will have their time in the social spotlight, for sure, but those instances will be few and far between and overshadowed by massive social media campaigns initiated by those with the biggest budgets and resources. A serious backlash at communities like Digg and other social media sites might occur as messages from the less connected are drowned out. This may create an opportunity for social micro-networks to establish more active communities or move to where their voices can more clearly be heard. Should things get worse for the economy as a whole, many social sites will attempt – ultimately in vain – to charge their communities for participation. This will lead to major social media shifts, such as more robust niche communities or participants abandoning social networking altogether.
Robin Good
Report from Robin: “… I will analyze for my 2009 predictions which I have divided into two parts. Part 1, the one you are reading now, which is devoted to online publishing, marketing and advertising, video and net television, digital imaging, visual communication and site design, and Part 2, tomorrow, dedicated instead to social networks and social media, identity, future events strategy, learning, education, online collaboration.” Read more from Robin.
Sarah Bray, Creative Director, S. Joy Studios
Smiley Cat Web Design Blog
Smiley Cat “Designer Christian Watson” has the following top predictions about the Web design space. Read the entire blog.
Hand drawn web sites: Hand drawn will continue to remain a popular web design style through much of 2009, but will start to die off later in the year as designers start to see it as being very ‘2008.’
Mobile web design: Mobile web use will still be a small percentage for most web sites. However, it will continue to grow and highly trafficked web sites will be expected to have an ‘iPhone version.’ Web designers who wish to remain on the cutting edge will enable their sites for mobile use by creating streamlined versions for mobile devices, even those these devices will increasingly have fully functional web browsers.
Social media: In 2009 it won’t be enough to simply create a web site for a client. Web designers will need to implement a farther reaching strategy that includes the main social media web sites. For example, creating Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter pages for a customer or product. They will also be required to set up ways to automatically distribute content to and from this network of sites as well.
I love presenting at CASE V. It’s the greatest time of the year to play conference hooky (December) in one of the greatest cities in the world (Chicago). As I took my traditional window-shopping stroll down the Magnificent Mile, shoppers were everywhere. Bustling. Jostling. Buying, just like normal.
Hmmmm, on closer inspection, perhaps not. The crowds were big, but weren’t they a bit thinner than normal? Were there fewer buyers than lookers? Perhaps we all seemed less exuberant.
The recession, at least at this point, is only chewing at the edges of normal, not obliterating it. Unemployment, at 6.7%, is a challenge but not as bleak as in 11 of the last 35 years when rates edged above 7% (1975-77, 80-86, and 92). Sales are down, but so are gas prices and interest, and Amazon had its biggest holiday season in history.
Perhaps the biggest risk we face is the erosion of investor and consumer confidence, which has led to stock market volatility and the declining retail sales, which today drives 70% of the U.S. economy.
The recession is having this same kind effect in higher ed advancement: CASE V attracted 1,400 attendees, the biggest conference in the country, yet still a decline from previous averages between 1,600 and 1,700. And while reception chatter focused on tough economy, the cutbacks we’re seeing are really just belt tightening: travel cutbacks (CASE predicts a 20% decline in 2009 registrations), smaller ad budgets, hiring freezes, and various moves to boost efficiency.
But there wasn’t even a hint of gloom during the panel presentation on Social Networks, e-Marketing, and the University Website, which included yours truly and managers from Ohio State, Michigan-Flint, and Lourdes College. The room was overflowing, and ideas for low-cost tactics were warmly received:
A student contest at the University of Michigan Flint to create a Youtube commercial, with the winning spot aired locally during the Super Bowl
Promoting a “social object” as the basis for Ohio State networking – posting alumni and student snapshots from around the world of how they formed O-H-I-O, cheerleader style, in unique and fun ways/locations
Establishing a highly interactive, personalized Web portal at Lourdes College
So while the downturn may be chewing on the margins by limiting higher ed marketing tactics, it is also motivating super creativity, especially in online marketing!
Posted by Travis 
Posted by Travis 
Posted by Travis 
There are also a few more candy options like personalizing the 
There are even some fun stuff online that make 
