Sessions were going on, we had some time to kill, and we were trying to impress each other with the people we knew, the great projects we’d just landed, the conferences we’d key-noted, and the vacations we’d just taken.  

During the course of the conversation someone posed a question that caught everyone’s attention: “What do you know now that you wish you knew 20 years ago?” 

7 things we wish we knew about marketing

1. Marketing challenges are really leadership challenges in disguise.

More important than budgets and more important than large staffs, is a senior leader (and team) who are supportive of marketing and are willing to make tough, often very political decisions on marketing goals, messaging, and budgets.  

2. Integration is critical, especially when dollars are limited.

From our perspective, integration has three dimensions:  

• Integration across the 5 As: admissions, advancement, academics, alumni, and athletics.  
• Next, is message integration. In other words, every campus communicator is committed to the same four or five core messages. Fewer important messages repeated more often are much more likely to gain traction. 
• Finally, there is a high level of integration between what you say and what you do. If you stress being student-centered are you, in fact, student centered? Do you ruthlessly root out areas in which you are not student centered?  

3. Marketing plans matter, and written marketing plans matter most.

When plans are not written, almost everything has an ad hoc quality to it. Written plans increase a sense of professionalism, reduce the number of miscues and missed opportunities, and heighten accountability.  

4. Too much emphasis placed on big budgets, and not enough emphasis placed on the need for big ideas. 

The flip side of this idea is that if you don’t have a big budget then you can’t do great marketing.  

A marketing idea or concept that engages the audience will always transcend the size of the marketing budget.  

5. Numerical fluency matters.

This means gathering the research, and using the data. One of the biggest challenges is helping people chart a course when they use intuition and hope as guideposts rather than data.  

6. More emphasis on mROI

When the effectiveness of the marketing strategy is divorced from the cost of those strategies, then marketing will always be viewed as a cost. However, when results are tied to those activities, then marketing is much more likely to be seen as an investment. A small investment that pays off is more likely to lead to a larger investment.  

7. Promotion (one facet of marketing) is not always the answer.

Great promotion will not salvage a tired or ill-conceived program. When you spend precious resources promoting programs that are of little interest, then you waste time, waste money, create false expectations, and undermine your credibility. 

Want to learn more? Schedule a free consultation today.

Many college leaders have never been particularly comfortable with marketing. They view it as a necessary evil. But the fact is, savvy administrators realize that effective marketing is the only tool that can enhance recruiting and fundraising in the near term. And while adding new programs or expanding to a new geography can impact your long term, the formulation and execution of these strategies likely will not impact Fall 2020.

Marketing, especially marketing tied to mROI, however, will.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, mROI stands for “measuring return on investment.” We’re looking at the five ways in which mROI can improve the overall performance of all your marketing efforts and give you greater confidence in the dollars you do spend.

5 Ways mROI Improves Performance

1. Rate of Return

There is the paradigm shift that occurs when leaders begin to understand that it is not the size of spending that matters, but the rate of return. A $300,000 expenditure on a digital campaign seems like a large figure until you determine it generated $600,000 in tuition dollars. When this “ah ha” takes place, marketing becomes viewed less as a cost and more as an investment. In fact, this understanding is the prime motivator behind mROI.

For years, the University of Phoenix’s greatest marketing resource wasn’t the size of its budget, but its recognition that the marketing budget was, in effect, an investment with predictable returns.

2. Investment

Consider the “I,” or investment in mROI. Before you can determine a return, you must have a clear grasp of the size of the overall investment. This is difficult on many campuses because marketing and marketing budgets are distributed across multiple units.

Getting a handle on the total marketing spend, however, will likely reveal conflicting goals, duplication, and missed opportunities. Even if you never calculate a return, looking at your entire spend in toto will very likely result in immediate savings.

3. Measurement

There is the “M,” or measurement in mROI. Measurement takes time and money. In addition, it takes numerical fluency.

The two broad areas of integrated marketing—brand and direct—each feature measurement tools that are continually evolving. Understanding how and when to use these tools will help you make better decisions.

4. Return

We must look at the “R” or return in mROI. Many marketing initiatives are driven more by calendars than clear goals. As a result, when one program is launched, everyone turns their attention to the next program on the schedule. Rather than first considering and then calculating a program’s return, undisciplined marketers are focused on meeting deadlines.

Clarity around goals, or return, is an important component of mROI. Clear goals help you make better choices when you design and launch a campaign. We know, too, that without clear goals, there can never be precise measurement.

5. Research

By its very nature, it makes the case for market research. In almost all cases, the benefits of research far outweigh the costs. Marketers who practice mROI know that research allows you to:

• Test and refine your marketing messaging
• Identify channel preferences
• Finetune your marketing calendar
• Predict response rate

In a separate blog we outlined the handful of research studies that are especially critical today.

If you have additional questions about mROI or would like help addressing the five disciplines outlined in this article, please let me know. Thank you for your interest in better marketing.

With this in mind, here is a simple, six-step process to help you make the best decisions for your students and institution.

1. Prioritize the decisions that need to be made.

The odds are high that you have multiple decisions on your plate. Your first decision, then, is to decide what to decide first. Part of this calculation must include an analysis of the cost of no decision.

As you think about how to prioritize the decisions that are before you, consider what decisions will:

• Have the greatest impact on our people?
• Most quickly stabilize the organization?
• Need to be made now so for greater clarity around decisions that will be made later?

In most cases, it is up to the senior team or cabinet, with input from the board and perhaps a couple of key advisors, to establish and order the list of decisions to be made.

2. Assemble the decision-making teams.

Because different decisions may require different skillsets, you may need more than one decision-making team.

As you assemble your teams, remember that talent, organizational maturity, and political acumen are often more important than titles. Remember, too, to stack your teams with doers and not just thinkers.

3. Equip the team.

An effective decision-making team needs these five things:

i. Absolute clarity around the decision to be made. Precision here will save you time, reduce misguided debate, and increase the likelihood that your decision will be correct.

ii. Access to all relevant external and internal information.

iii. Understanding of the decision-making criteria. They need variables that will be part of the decision-making process, such as:

• Impact on key audiences
• Financial cost/benefits
• Political cost/benefits
• PR cost/benefits
• Impact on future operations
• Risk
• Ease of implementation/scalability/flexibility
• Evaluation mechanism
• Impact on market position

iv. A firm date for when the decision must be made. Higher education has often chosen to let the date for tough decisions float. While that might have been OK in the past, it is not OK now. Events are moving far too quickly, and uncertainty can crush the spirit of your people.

The campus community (students, faculty, staff, alumni) needs the certainty of decisive leadership when so many other things in their lives are so painfully uncertain.

v. Protection from nay-sayers and reluctants. The president and senior leadership team must actively and vocally protect the team from factions who would impede its progress no matter how well intentioned they may be.

4. Develop multiple courses of action.

Better decisions come from better choices. One of the most important responsibilities of the decision-making team is to develop two or three thoughtful courses of action. It is against these plans that the decision criteria (see above) are applied.

Keep in mind, however, that the final choice may be an amalgam of the options that were presented.

5. Decide.

With the decision criteria in hand, make the best choice. Your goal is not a perfect decision, but a good decision made in a timely fashion. Remember, nothing of consequence happens until you decide.

6. Execute, communicate, and evaluate.

• Execute. The time for talking is over. It is time to do. Put together a rough but responsible implementation plan and execute. Chances are, at least some of the people on the decision-making team will be on, or even lead, the execution team.
• Communicate. Your campus community needs to hear that progress is being made. Get the word out.
• Evaluate. Review not only the implementation of the decision, but also the decision-making process that led to the decision. Think carefully about the team and its composition. Who was valuable? What expertise were you lacking? Who didn’t contribute? Fine-tune the process for next time.

Let me close with three reminders.

1. You will never know all you need to know to make the decisions you must make. Don’t get distracted by what you don’t know. Instead, move ahead with what you do.
2. Share incremental progress achievements. Your campus needs to know that progress is being made.
3. Remember that no matter what you decide, someone will be unhappy and vocal. Trust the team. Trust the process. And trust the heart of your campus.

Want to learn more? Schedule a free consultation today.

In my last post, we looked at some near-term tactics that, amidst our pandemic, can help you land the class.

Then we looked at a handful of longer-term initiatives so you can meet the challenges of fall 2020 and beyond.

Today, we’ll look at another critically important topic: revenue replacement. Many colleges are already seeing shortfalls in the millions of dollars because of lost room and board, campus bookstore purchases, and event participation. Of course, this in addition to dollars lost from enrollment reductions.

Consider some of these ideas as you brainstorm revenue solutions going forward:

Support Diversification Efforts

Co-ventures

Opportunities to develop co-ventures are all around, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Consider the case of an engineering lab that, after meeting with healthcare professionals, began using its array of 3-D printers to manufacture face shields.

Another project involves three different colleges collaborating with a major healthcare organization to re-engineer ventilators so they can be manufactured faster and cheaper. While colleges should take care not to profit from the crisis, there is every likelihood that these new relationships can have long-term benefits once the threat passes.

Customized academic programming & training

There’s never been a better time to offer customed virtual training. As leaders, managers, and workers at every level scramble to define the new normal, providing exceptional training can help set your institution apart.

Beyond programming directly related to COVID-19, consider what you can offer in the areas of employee recruiting and training, virtual leadership and management, supply chain security and logistics, and other areas where your resources can give you an edge.

Incubators

Different than a classroom or library, incubators connect students to employers, other collaborators, and investors. In doing so, they provide a community that both nurtures and refines ideas that have marketplace interest.

Incubators attract money from donors, businesses, and legislators. Currently, about one-third of America’s 1,200 or so incubators are on college campuses, could yours be next?

Leverage Existing Resources

Sell intellectual property

Beyond sponsored research, intellectual property (IP) focuses not only sponsored research, but research arising from faculty, staff, and student research and scholarship. It generally falls into two groups—work covered by patent law and work covered by copyright law.

Importantly, when a faculty member conducts research using university resources, the university retains all, or a portion of, ownership. This can not only benefit your bottom line but can drive interest and prestige for your school as well.

License customized content

Because turnaround times are so tight, more and more colleges are buying (which is good) or licensing (which is better) existing curriculum and support materials from other colleges.

Grant writing

One of the most effective ways to generate meaningful revenue is through grant writing. Since many foundations must, by law, give away a portion of their assets each year to protect their tax-exempt status, they are motivated to give!

One Stamats client “hires” retired faculty to write grants. The faculty appreciate the extra income and opportunity to stay engaged. One dean mentioned that in the 10 years after retiring as a former physics professor and working just a couple of hours a week, he has helped generate more than $1 million in grants.

Fundraising

While personal and family portfolios have taken a considerable hit recently, many people also feel more compelled than ever to support their colleges and universities. This is a continuation of a trend that began about a decade ago as families sought to consolidate their giving, supporting fewer entities more robustly.

The key to operationalizing your fundraising efforts to drive success includes two essential aspects. First, realize that donors will be more inclined to support those institutions that are aggressively meeting the challenges ahead. In times of uncertainty, donors respond to bold thinking and action.

Second, because giving can take so many forms (e.g., annual funds, non-campaign donations, planned giving, and others), effective fundraiser organizers must understand both the emotional and sometimes technical (legal, tax) issues that surround giving.

One note: If you need immediate success, focus on your annual fund. It’s typically the easiest avenue to gain traction.

Look for New Opportunities

Seek sponsored research

Sponsored research projects are funded by a federal, state, or private organization or agency. The research itself can be basic, applied, or both. Colleges and universities can charge fees not only for the direct research but can also include an allocation for overhead.

In some instances, institutions also retain a percentage of ownership of any ideas, innovations, products, or services arising from the research.

Beyond the financial benefits, a strong sponsored research program also attracts faculty, students, and media attention to raise your institution’s profile and support your brand.

Income sharing arrangements

Historically, income sharing agreements (ISAs) involved either a college or a business subsidizing a student’s tuition in exchange for a percentage of their income. While these models have a spotty record in the U.S., they have success in other countries and are slowly returning to our shores. As students continue to grapple with college cost and seek to avoid debt, it’s likely ISAs will continue to gain momentum.

Ready to talk about more ways to jumpstart revenue replacement initiatives? Set up a consultation with Stamats today.

While you can’t predict everything, a well-built plan will serve you well. Your goal is to create rapid, centralized responses and avoid inconsistent and unaware messaging.

As COVID-19 unfolded very quickly, I saved ads and emails that didn’t seem appropriate to do my own reflection and crisis review. Now that we are past the phase of “will this happen” to “it is happening,” I’m sharing my reflections for others to use in evaluating their plans.

Immediately

In the early days of a crisis, your first line of defense is to pause your scheduled posts and emails if you are uncertain and not fully confident the message is correct. It’s crucial for your clients’ sake to take inventory of current and planned assets. You don’t want to be mistaken for being “salesy,” offensive, or oblivious to the crisis.

Within the first few days I was presented through sponsored posts or emails with:

• On March 13th, one day after all Iowa high school sports were postponed and club soccer cancelled, I received an email with the headline “Spring soccer camps are filling up fast, register now.”
• Also on March 13th, a colleague shared this image for hot desking (co-working spaces) as physical distancing recommendations were being rolled out.
  

  

• On March 14th, someone commented that this ad for toilet paper showed in their Twitter feed. Such seemingly innocuous messages can agitate an already anxious audience. People worry about their kids’ health and education. They worry about their budgets and how they’ll make due when provisions (like toilet paper) are in short supply.
  
  These foibles are examples of why, no matter your industry, you must scrutinize all scheduled and planned messaging when an unsettling situation begins. Considering starting with these areas for your next messaging review:
• Update the main and affected pages of your site
  • Add a banner message that indicates you are aware of and are working to manage the situation. Make sure it’s client-facing.
  • For example, this message appeared on a hospital website which does not include any personal message or contact information
    
    

    

• Ideally, you’ll know whether this functionality is available before a crisis
• Pause your campaigns (or clients’ campaigns)
  • SEM and paid search
  • Scheduled social posts
  • Email campaigns, especially prescheduled emails
• Review autoresponders or out of office messaging
  • Instant messenger automatic responses
  • Out-of-office messages
  • Centralized voice messenger services

Ensure several people on your team are trained to update content and review outgoing messages. If all the duties fall just to one person or department, your team will get overwhelmed.

In the Following Days

Determine your content messaging needs. This includes internal, client-facing, vendor, and community messaging. Assign key duties to each of these audiences.

Often, teams feel compelled to create an abundance of new content. Sometimes this is necessary. More often, it leads to getting more overwhelmed and frustrated—and taking longer to reach your audiences.

Date Your Content Updates

Content was quickly out of date and what you said a week ago could make you look out-of-touch. Make sure you clearly note the date. Ideally you can edit your first article or previously created content. You can make editor’s notes to reflect updates (Updated Feb. 12; Updated Feb. 22) without losing your SEO ranking.

Evaluate Upcoming Events

In situations where you will face cancellation or postponement of events, it’s OK to say you aren’t sure what will happen next. Audiences appreciate transparency and honesty. Acknowledge the situation and communicate your decision-making process. Make sure your message includes the following:

• Monitoring frequency
• Final decision
• How you will update people
• If appropriate, financial reimbursement information

As the Situation Unfolds

Clients and collaborators need reassurance that you are there for them. That you are watching out for their best interests. That you are a partner in their time of need.

You will be viewed as a voice of reason. And it will be exhausting. But it is important to continue communicating with your team and your audience.

Though everyone will be running at full speed, carve out time to speculate and prepare for potential scenarios:

• If X should happen, how would our clients react?
• What information will we need?
• How will we deliver that information?
• Who will be the point person?
• What measurements will we need to set in motion?
• How can we best support our clients? Will our clients need financial or project adjustments?

Document these ideas—we recommend recording the session—so you have a tentative plan in place should the situation arise.

Impact on Print Schedules

If your printed publication is already being printed, consider adding a cover page or a sticker pointing readers to your website for latest updates.

Reflection

When crises happen, it can feel endless. More often, the pain is temporary. But the lessons should be ongoing.

If you didn’t have one before, you likely now appreciate the idea of assigning a SWAT team for crisis marketing. When COVID-19 broke, Stamats activated our CRAM (Crisis Response Action Marketing) team to cover the pandemic across all our digital properties. The team includes digital strategists, content creators, and data specialists.

This experience allowed us to pinpoint areas of opportunity in our processes. We took time to reflect on the CRAM program through debriefing meetings and analysis of results. In taking those moments throughout the frenzy, we can carry forward our learnings and be even more prepared when the next crisis hits. Both for our own audiences and as strategic partners in support of our clients’ initiatives.

Want to learn more? Schedule a free consultation with Sandra today.

More than a simple distinctive competency, a competitive advantage is an offer that is of clear interest to your most important target audiences. This interest is demonstrated by their willingness to pay tuition rather than rely on discounts.

Importantly, this advantage is also something your competitors won’t, or can’t, replicate.

If you think about it for a second, you will realize that any discussion of competitive advantage is predicated on a shift from institutional centricity (it’s all about us) to audience centricity (the audience has a voice) not only for marketing, but for product development.

The notion comes from the work of Michael Porter* which emphasizes establishing and maintaining a favorable or superior market position; a position that will help guarantee the flow of sufficient resources to your institution.

*His groundbreaking work is Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.

Why it matters

A clear competitive advantage:

• Helps your organization increase certainty
• Allows you to focus resources (time, talent, and treasure) for maximum ROI
• Adds constancy and predictability to your revenue streams
• Helps you achieve organizational momentum
• Reduces unnecessary marketing, recruiting, and fundraising expenditures
  • Helps you become a magnet for talent, brand alliances, and issue-focused investors (donors, foundations)
• Helps you more accurately measure progress

Developing your own source of competitive advantage

Competitive advantage requires that you have:

• A clear sense of your own core competencies
• A clear sense of your true competitors and their core competencies
• A clear sense of who your paying customers are
• A clear sense of what these customers value

Questions about audience interests should be answered with solid primary research and in combination with a comprehensive review of secondary research, particularly information surrounding academic degree trends, employment and job figures, and competitor offerings.

It requires strategic focus. You must have, as an organization, the ability to reduce the resources you spend on those actions which do not clearly enhance your emerging competitive advantage. In other words, eliminate or curtail those activities which consume valuable resources that would be better served supporting your competitive advantage.

A sustainable source of competitive advantage also requires strategic messaging. Ideally, you will build your brand and marketing messages around it. Limit those that distract from that primary message.

As you might suspect, the constant theme of this discussion is focus. Focus on your primary competitors. Focus on your audience needs. Focus your resources. And finally, focus your messaging.

Developing one or more sources of competitive advantage is not overly complex, but it will require research, making some tough decisions, and perseverance. The result, though, is the difference between offering something that simply generates more noise in the marketplace, and something that generates interest and action.

Ready to discuss YOUR competitive advantage? Email us today for a free strategy session.

Like many in the field of marketing, we were inspired by the IT field, which is known for developing effective workflows. So, we decided to try incorporating their Agile methodology—a flexible framework based on delivering small portions of a project within a dedicated time period.

The result? Agile marketing. My team has embraced this framework which fosters the commitment of a team empowered to take ownership of the work. By working this way, we’ve reduced stress with managing projects, achieved faster turnaround times, and improved project results.

How Does Agile Marketing Work?

Like many teams, we were drawn to the Agile framework for its ability to manage the chaos. Team members know at all times what stage a project is in and what needs to be done. Agile marketing increases communication and transparency and helps members work more creatively, autonomously and collaboratively.

Agile teams continuously improve their process by taking a large project and breaking it into smaller tasks with defined expectations to be done within an agreed-upon time frame called a “sprint.”

At the end of each sprint, the team holds an evaluation called a “retrospective” to review and make sure outcomes are as expected. If not, the Agile process provides the flexibility to change course as needed. The framework also measures a backlog of tasks to be done against the team’s speed to help better estimate timelines.

The Agile process allows for fewer opportunities to get stuck because of constant deadlines and feedback. Because you’re building your project in iterative cycles, you’re evaluating results (and the process) along the way.

If you find something isn’t working or information is missing in a small cycle, you can adapt quickly going forward to provide the space for creativity and evolution of ideas.

3 Types of Agile Marketing

Agile is an umbrella term for a wide variety of process approaches. Three of the most popular types of Agile used in marketing are Scrum and Kanban, plus a combination of the two—Scrumban.

 1. Scrum

The Scrum Agile process is based on starting with a high-level roadmap that helps team members go in a direction that accounts for stakeholder preferences yet is flexible enough to adapt when certain items require more time.

Through sprint planning, the road map is divided into smaller tasks to be completed during each sprint Each sprint is generally between one and four weeks. At the end of each sprint, there’s a review process with stakeholders to show them a small piece of the project to double check that the project is on the right path.

Each task has a definition of “done” (more commonly known as “user stories”) which helps to ensure each task is clear to keep team members on task and make it easier to test for accuracy.

A team typically is made up of a:

• Product owner (PO): Holds the vision for the product
• ScrumMaster: Helps the team use Scrum to build the product
• Implementation team: Creates the product

The team determines what they can finish within a sprint and select tasks from within those determined by the PO to be the highest priority. The ScrumMaster ensures the process is followed so the team can work while also managing outside forces (like stakeholder or PO requests).

2. Kanban

The Kanban management style is meant to visually see through a project while limiting work in progress. This is typically achieved through a Kanban board—either digitally or with a whiteboard and sticky notes—where each item is a piece of a larger project that is broken down so it can be moved along through each stage of the project.

A Kanban board your team might use to track a project could look like this:

• Backlog: Project tasks not allocated to a sprint yet. PO “grooms” backlog, ensuring enough information is added and prioritizes items.
• Sprint Backlog: Tasks moved from backlog (priority based) and sized to decide how many they can complete within a sprint.
• In Progress: Tasks a team member moved from backlog and is actively working on.
• Testing/Review: Tasks completed, ready to be reviewed by team member, stakeholders or audience testing.
• Hold: Blocked tasks due to an issue keeping team member from completing them. PO should ensure nothing stays in this column long and eliminate blockers for team.
• Complete: Completed tasks

Implementing a Kanban board is a rewarding way to see what you’ve accomplished and where the project stands. It shows you what you have to focus on right now, what’s coming up, and where tasks stand.

3. Scrumban

This workflow, a combination methodology, includes most of the practices and general framework of Scrum while relying on the principles around Kanban, which sets up the workflow. This is the process my team, and many other marketing teams, have adopted particularly because it transfers well to small teams and processes.

Scrumban empowers teams. They have a say in choosing what tasks to work on. They know what’s expected and what’s important about that part of the project. This can help the team feel more involved and that they have a role in working toward a goal on which they can see progress.

Teams also establish and adhere to a measurable amount of work they can complete in sprints so they don’t get overloaded and so they can focus on the tasks they select.

Agile Empowers Marketing Teams

Agile marketing is a framework that can help us be better marketers. By using this process, we can deliver a better product on time with greater results—without stressing out our already-busy teams.

It’s worked so well for me, that I’ve thrown away my personal “to do” list in favor of this method—and I get nonstop requests from other areas on campus to teach them about this framework.

Ready to think completely differently about how your marketing team approaches projects?

At the Stamats 2020 conference, I’m hosting a discussion about how University of Wisconsin – Stout has benefited from Agile marketing, and how yours can, too.

Guest Contributor

Amy Luethmers
Chief Marketing Officer, University of Wisconsin-Stout

Luethmers has 25+ years of experience developing and implementing marketing and communications initiatives designed to engage a wide variety of audiences, as well as leading highly productive, award-winning creative teams. She earned both her MBA and B.S. in Marketing/Business Communications from the University of Wisconsin – River Falls and is also Agile ScrumMaster (CSM) and Product Owner (CPO) certified through the Scrum Alliance.

Prior to entering the higher education field in 2010, Luethmers began her career in corporate marketing. She later went on to run her own marketing consulting agency for several years where she worked with clients in a wide variety of fields.

In her current role as the Chief Marketing Officer at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, Luethmers serves on the Chancellor’s cabinet and assists with providing overall strategic direction for the university, as well as university-wide marketing and communications strategies.

She leads a cross-campus Integrated Marketing and Communications team, as well the University Marketing team which has successfully switched to operating within an Agile framework over the past two years.

The team’s transition to Agile has vastly improved their ability to prioritize and manage their workload, generate both more autonomy and transparency, and reduce stress while also increasing productivity and the ability to better meet deadlines. The unit’s recent success with Agile has inspired other areas on campus to explore implementing Agile within their own teams as well.

For decades, we’ve worked with organizations that are industry thought-leaders, from facility managers and meeting planners to marketing executives at prestigious colleges and universities. While diverse, these organizations have two things in common:

1. They all have stories to tell
2. They often need guidance and support to deliver return on investment and conversions

In response to these common needs, we are now offering a more lucrative and evergreen strategy to drive business results for clients: content syndication.

Content syndication is a form of content marketing in which our clients speak directly to our robust audiences in digital and print through product- and thought-leadership focused articles, webinars, podcasts, videos and social media posts.

Content Marketing Strategy + Time Savings = ROI

Today’s audiences are looking for product expertise and educational information that will help them grow as professionals. Together with the strategic advertising programs our clients rely on year over year, we empower clients to glean more views and actionable engagements over time than ads alone.

Content syndication is an effective lead generation and revenue-earning strategy. However, it is a lot of work, and we know that many organizations, even when fully staffed, are hard-pressed for time to do more. Our content team alleviates this effort while allowing clients’ to reap the benefits in three distinct ways.

1. We help clients move faster in the digital space

Today’s savvy meeting planners, interior designers and facility managers desire a constant source of information to stay on top of industry news and best practices. We create content to cover trending news, such as a new facilities-relevant amendment for inclusive restroom signage and design, as well as tips for professionals, from professionals.

This content is published on three websites: Meetings Today, Buildings and interiors + sources. The websites and their monthly print editions are accessed by tens of thousands of relevant buyers and industry professionals each year – a substantial leg up for our advertising and content marketing clients.

Clients and PR firms can submit their own content for cost-effective syndication, or let us do the heavy lifting by collaborating with their subject matter experts directly to implement digital best practices and create content based on new services, trending products or industry news. 

2. Repackaging content and trying new trends

Digital moves quickly, and it is also alive; whereas you get one shot to use a print piece, digital content can be edited and updated so it’s always current. Then, that content can be repackaged and syndicated to the right audience at the right time in the lead generation and purchasing cycle. We follow the Create Once, Publish Everywhere model, in which we deconstruct cornerstone content and strategically disseminate it across platforms – webinar content might become syndicated digital articles, a podcast, email content, social media posts or all of these, based on the client’s goals and preferences.

Digital also provides the opportunity for clients to try out new and unique content channels. For example, we ventured into virtual reality and 360 video in 2018, developing processes that led to seamless production and delivery for clients.

3. Being transparent

Transparency is vital in today’s integrated market. In both print and digital, our team helps clients report the facts alongside the opinions of subject matters experts to present client organizations as thought leaders with a firm grasp of important happenings in the industry.

Our writers, strategists and sales teams collaborate to produce content and packages that suit the ever-changing needs of our clients and their potential buyers. Rather than selling ad space alone, we are working toward more strategic partnerships to address client-specific and industry-specific needs with content syndication.

Print ads are not obsolete , as our clients can attest. That said, organizations must continue to look ahead and evolve to the changing needs of their own clients: more relevance, more digital, more thought leadership. For print advertisers, that means moving toward delivery of actionable digital content that resonates with audiences and keeps them coming back for more over the long term.

For example:

• Print subscriber: 1 point
• Webinar attended: 5 points
• Webinar signup: 2 points
• Live event attendee: 10 points
• Opened email in last 1 month: 3 points

A scoring matrix adapts as your marketing focus changes and new products are added. The scoring logic also accounts for aging. It’s great if someone watched a webinar last month; not so great if they watched it 3 years ago.

Why Score Your Audience?

Good scoring becomes an efficient way to identify the most engaged audience members without pulling every product offered and email response data.

Sending an email effort to audience members with a high score is shown to increase the responsiveness of the campaign. High-scoring audience members are typically open to anything that comes from your brand.

If you’re thinking about doing surveys or setting up research panels, knowing high-scorers is a shortcut to targeting the best group for success.

Understanding Low Scores

Analyzing data of low-scoring audience members is helpful, too: Seeing them as a group can help pinpoint gaps and problem areas. Sometimes your low scores are people who don’t fit the target audience. That’s understandable. Likewise, if a large number of people in target titles and industries are not engaging, it may be time to plan more outreach.

The biggest hurdle in scoring is accuracy. In order for a scoring matrix to work, print and digital products need to reside in a database along with email response data. If data exists in multiple silos or platforms, scores only cover a small segment and not across all of your points of engagement.

At SDM, we house all data in a single home, allowing for scoring across print, digital, webinars, and emails.

Ready to Get Started?

Find out how we utilize a full suite of audience/data strategies and experts to help you enhance your customer’s journey, engagement, opportunities and threats, improve efficiency, and gain a competitive advantage. Email Us.

“Going native.” The term conjures up images of walking barefoot on the beach, doing the limbo, or haggling with merchants in a street bazaar. But for enrollment marketing professionals, native advertising offers an exciting, innovative way to reach prospective students.

First, let’s get the terminology down. According to the Native Advertising Institute (NAI), “this is an audience-first discipline that is focused on creating the best possible audience experience by providing relevant and useful content in a format that adds to the reader experience and stays true to the form and function of the media.”

Native ads and Sponsored LinkedIn posts

Think of a LinkedIn sponsored post as a very simple example. Native doesn’t mean paid search (PPC) or inline ads (like a Facebook ad). It must follow the form, feel, and function of its host medium.

Advertorials, sponsored content, and advertiser-funded broadcasts all fall into the category. Best practice is that the publisher clearly marks these ads as “sponsored” or “promoted.” The industry also considers recommendation widgets to be “native.”

So why are native ads important for enrollment professionals? Research shows that millennials are exhibiting greater and greater antipathy toward “intrusive” digital and other advertising and they are responding with their clicks (or lack thereof).

At the same time, millennials have a very high tolerance for native ads. They grew up in a world where they consumed content/news online, and where content was mixed with brand messaging on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Native ads build trust through brand, content, and publication

As trusted digital publishers for this audience continue to thrive (Spotify, Tumblr, Pitchfork, Vice, etc.), their authenticity, audience engagement, and authority can provide a powerful backdrop for your brand story. For native advertising to be effective, however, “all three elements – the brand, content, and publication – need to complement each other.

If one of those elements doesn’t fit, then you lose the trust of the audience and the content becomes nothing more than a clumsy piece of traditional advertising.” (James Morris of MediaCom, blogging for the NAI).

Why kinds of content are most effective in the native environment? According to Adyoulike, a native ad platform provider (Adweek, March 17, 2015), these include list-based articles (“7 Things…”), feature articles, video, and social posts. You’ll note that the content is NOT about the sponsor; the content is relevant to the wants and needs of the target audience.

The right way to create a native ad

Let’s look at a hypothetical case to give you an idea of how this all works. Suppose you have an outstanding graduate program in entrepreneurism, and you’re looking to recruit top candidates.

Traditional marketing might be to run a banner ad on the Wall Street Journal website, or in the “gutter” on LinkedIn. With the native approach, you could place inline piece promoting an article on the “15 Top Personality Characteristics of Budding Entrepreneurs.”

Your brand gets a boost (almost 20% of 18-25 year olds report that native advertising positively affects their view of a brand), you’ve begun to engage your audience, and, if you’ve done this properly, you’ve gained permission to engage in further dialog with a qualified prospect.

Example 1

Take a look at the ad in example 1 for a native ad done well:

This example from VICE shows that the advertiser has selected the right context, and has used the right voice, to create authenticity for its message – a message that offers perceived value to its intended audience.

Example 2

Now look at where it can fall apart. This Facebook example two is pure advertising (and not very good advertising at that), masquerading as a shared post. It screams “inauthentic,” the most disastrous outcome if you’re trying to reach millennials.

As part of a greater strategic content initiative, native advertising can be a powerful tool to build your brand and increase audience engagement. Let’s talk more. Email us today.