Thankfully, you don’t have to be part of a billion-dollar company to have an outstanding brand. But you will need a brand champion who can guide your organization through these three areas.
Brand Strategy
A brand champion will help create a brand strategy and then advocate ongoing implementation and effectiveness. There’s more to brand strategy than a new logo or even a redesigned website (though we love both of those initiatives). Developing a great brand will involve strategy around your core values and messaging. It may mean changes to your signature academic programs. Or pushing for increased funding for market research. Or working to update aging facilities.
Asking hard questions such as, “Has enrollment stalled?” or “What happened in the latest capital campaign?” requires sensitivity and care. A brand champion’s role includes listening to different points of view, envisioning where the brand could go, mapping out the strategy, and then seeing it to completion.
A brand champion will create a clear understanding of an organization’s brand, both internally and externally. Telling your institution’s story is never a one-and-done effort. Each organization has compelling qualities important to you and to the marketplace so it’s critical to constantly maintain that overarching message everywhere (think social media, website, email marketing, etc.).
A brand champion develops confidence in the reputation and integrity of your organization and uses all necessary communication tools to get that message out to your current students, faculty, and staff—and to your community stakeholders and potential students.
But your brand is only successful if people buy into it.
Brand Community
A brand champion will help build community around your brand. What is the use of having a brand that doesn’t resonate with your key audiences? Once your brand strategy is in place, your brand champion will be its greatest advocate. Establishing a brand that students, staff, faculty, leadership, and other stakeholders can identify with and support requires thoughtful, reliable, and ongoing work.
Stamats has well over 30 years of experience in brand strategy, working with 30+ Fortune 500 clients in 20+ industries, with education and healthcare at the top of the list. We continue to serve as brand champions for numerous organizations, working to enhance or revitalize a client’s brand and support their overall marketing strategy.
In 2018, we worked with one of the top HBCUs in the country—North Carolina A&T State—to help them gain new insights while rethinking their brand. Gaining input from senior leadership, deans, students, and others, their brand identity was recreated and then translated into powerful messaging and visual treatments. Aggies Do! was born.
More recently, we’ve partnered with Pima Community College in Tucson to overcome multiple challenges, such as identity damage that resulted in declining enrollment. We proposed a new brand communication plan. After in-depth market research, a refreshed logo, and a revitalized brand promise, their new brand identity was launched via a multi-channel campaign. And the results are as we expected—early enrollment figures support their new story and erase outdated perceptions.
The values of any great brand champion must include perseverance, integrity, and empathy. The work can be hard and extensive. Convincing various key audiences to switch from what they’ve always done to something new takes extraordinary communication skills, honesty, and an understanding of different perspectives.
If you want to discuss how we can help you champion your brand, email us to start a conversation.
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During the early 2000s, the company faced several significant events that defined its durability. From strategic acquisitions and product launches to natural disasters and economic downturns, Stamats not only survived but thrived in the face of adversity.
Expanding to New Markets
Stamats has always been known for its expertise in higher education marketing, but the company also has deep roots in the business-to-business (B2B) publishing industry.
Between 2003-2013, the company made significant investments to expand its reach in the B2B publishing world. The Meetings publication brand was well on its long-term strategy to provide national coverage in the hospitality and group meetings market. So, the company continued to explore growth opportunities and acquired the Interiors and Sources publication and launched Architech, targeting audiences specifically in commercial real estate and interior design. This acquisition was a strategic move to further diversify revenue streams and expand into a vertical market.
Weathering the Storms
In the middle of the decade, the company was hit hard by two devastating events. In June of 2008, the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, overflowed its banks and caused extensive damage throughout the city. Stamats’ offices were located in the heart of downtown, and the flood caused significant damage to the building and its contents. The company was able to relocate its operations temporarily to a satellite campus of Upper Iowa University and continue to provide high-quality services to its clients.
“We almost didn’t skip a beat,” said Stamats President and CEO Peter Stamats. “I think that’s a real testament to our staff’s resilience and personal persistence.”
Economic Challenges
As Cedar Rapids was still reeling from the impact of the flood, the global financial crisis of 2008 hit, triggering a recession that stacked onto the company’s current challenges. This economic downturn had a significant impact on the marketing industry, as many companies were forced to cut back on their marketing budgets. Stamats was not immune to these effects and had to make difficult decisions to weather the storm. Despite these challenges, the company was able to stay afloat thanks to its diversified revenue streams and strong relationships with its clients.
“The Great Recession hit in October 2008, but really didn’t impact us until the fiscal years 2009 and 2010. It kind of had a hangover effect,” said Stamats. “We actually had one of our banner years in terms of sales in 2008. Because we were doing well up to that point in time. And it was a testament to our staff that they were able to continue delivering on all of our business lines, at the same time that we had no building in Cedar Rapids to work out of.”
Despite these challenges toward the end of the decade, Stamats persevered and emerged stronger. The company’s investment in the B2B market allowed it to diversify its revenue streams and weather the storms of the flood and the Great Recession. This diversification set Stamats up well for the next decade with strong buyer/seller events and audience management capabilities.
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Traditional print outreach and advertising were declining, and the world was shifting to new and emerging digital communication technology. Not only were the communication platforms shifting, but now jobs and responsibilities had to morph.
Stamats looked for new methods to better serve colleges and universities. In an effort to stay ahead of the curve, we underwent a significant digital transformation.
In 2014, Stamats acquired the established brand strategy company, The Thorburn Group. To this day, we continue to bring creative, customized, and thoughtful strategies to each client we serve.
“We went from being a print-centric company with a lot of the products and offerings in the markets that we served to becoming digitally centric,” said Stamats President and CEO, Peter Stamats. “We found ourselves transitioning our staff and retooling.”
Stamats has found ways and opportunities to expand its reach to help connect more companies to their audiences. We launched Audativ, the audience management services, and tools to help other publishers, as well as branching out into the healthcare industry.
Staying Nimble Through the Unknown
Towards the end of the decade, Stamats had to navigate a different kind of transformation—one that no one saw coming and disrupted the whole world and how we operate. COVID-19.
But working in disparate teams was not new news for us; Stamats was well-versed in the remote, results-focused working style. The president himself had been working remotely for years before the pandemic. “The pandemic proved to all of us that we can work remotely. And that we kind of like it,” said Stamats.
Trends and technology will continue to change, but you can expect Stamats to hold true to its founding values of providing high-quality, creative services to our customers for the next 100 years.
The document, “Decoding Decisions: Making Sense of the Messy Middle,” describes how the marketing funnel we’ve all become accustomed to may be considered outdated. After living with this newer interpretation and putting it to work for over two years across several client verticals, we couldn’t agree more. It’s time for a new model.
Marketing Funnel or Sieve?
One of the most common visualizations in marketing or sales is the marketing funnel, it attempts to provide a framework around a consumer’s decision process.
The model of a funnel has been used in sales and marketing for ages. Unfortunately, when models aren’t kept up to date, they can lose their relevance. The funnel model was a useful illustration when consumers didn’t have many resources for information. In today’s internet-fueled world, the model of a funnel is an oversimplified representation of what has become a more complex decision process.
In higher education marketing, relying on the traditional marketing funnel model runs the risk of skewing our marketing strategies, tactics, and messages. For one thing, the model can encourage us to focus too much effort on the pointed end, convinced that this represents the moment of decision. Often, we refer to prospects who leave the process mid-funnel as “unqualified.” And we watch as our dashboards tell us that 80% or more of the prospects we’ve nurtured leak out like water through a sieve.
The fact is, the most important decisions are made in the middle of the journey; it’s commitment that’s made at the pointed end. Further, for most prospects, the path to a decision isn’t linear. They don’t move from start to finish in an orderly fashion. There is a lot of back-and-forth movement where the answer to one question simply leads to more questions.
Speaking of questions, here’s one that might help bring most current-state marketing into focus: What is the best platform, tactic, or media to use at the top of the funnel to advertise a Business Admin degree? And before you answer, this is a trick question.
A specific brand, product, service, or solution is never at the top of a funnel. At the top of the funnel sits a far more basic question. For higher education, that question is some form of “Do I need or want to continue going to school?” Deciding on degree paths and schools is a mid-funnel activity that comes several steps after this top-of-funnel question is answered.
Generally, degree decisions and school choices fall into the middle of the funnel, along with other important questions on financial aid and housing. These are questions being asked by people who have already qualified themselves by answering “Yes” to the top-of-funnel question. But this doesn’t mean they’re ready to commit to anything. There are many more decision points ahead, and a mountain of questions yet to be answered. All this activity takes place before the prospect is anywhere close to committing.
For higher education, guiding people through the middle of the funnel is more like unraveling a ball of string—knots, frays, and all!
Welcome to the Messy Middle
The “Messy Middle” illustration started as a scribble much like this on a Post-it note. It illustrates that most consumer decisions don’t follow a clear and defined path. There is a lot of non-linear activity between the time a consumer is triggered and realizes they have a need, and the moment they consider the brands that might solve their need.
Depending on how long you’ve been in marketing, realigning your thoughts on how to use and discuss the consumer’s decision process might be a paradigm shift. Think about it as a series of questions the consumer might have at each stage of consideration:
What is it? At the top of the traditional funnel, the consumer doesn’t have a specific brand in mind. It’s much more basic—the why, not the who or what. Answering this question is the trigger moment.
What about it? The “Messy Middle” is where exploration and evaluation occur. Brand enters as a consideration in this middle part of the funnel.
I want it—how do I get it? The bottom of the funnel is the direct-action part. Consumers make decisions based what they learned in the middle, plus on the points of difference between brands and their perceived features, benefits, and value.
All this activity occurs against a background of Brand Exposure and Brand Experience. Brand exposure is the constant drumbeat of your brand promotion—your generalized ‘Why Us!’ message. Brand experience happens in many ways. Community outreach and engagement are strong experience builders, but during the consumer’s decision process, the experience they have with your brand while exploring and evaluating is even more important.
For this discussion, the brand experience is online and content-based; it grows out of the interaction the prospect has with your answers (content), coupled with their assessment of your answer’s value to their needs. Your brand probably uses many channels beyond digital, but the experience is still content-based.
The consumer is constantly gathering new input and deciding whether it’s important for their situation. As new questions arise in their mind, the consumer’s attention moves back and forth between exploration and evaluation.
Acknowledging this behavior leads us away from our old funnel model and moves us toward something very different. A model that is more representative and better aligned with how today’s consumers make decisions.
After rethinking our model of the consumer decision process, we can begin to assess how our site content and our marketing influence decisions in the Messy Middle, all with an eye toward enhancing the prospect’s brand experience. For most institutions, this is a part of the decision path that is often underserved if not outright neglected. One indication of potential neglect is the low percentage of higher education websites with blogs or blog-like content.
There are many ways to reach prospects in the middle and answer their questions, but a blog is the simplest and most straightforward option. Prospective students will seek answers to many questions before they feel comfortable deciding. Providing answers to as many of those questions as possible puts your brand experience top of mind during the time when real decisions are being made.
Where should you start tackling the Messy Middle? There might be a lot to do in realigning a marketing plan, but it all hinges on having answers for the middle part of the journey. We suggest starting there, using the personas you’ve developed over time to help root your team firmly in the prospect’s shoes.
Action Plan
Brainstorm Session #1: Create a list of the messy middle questions your prospects are likely to ask; the more questions, the better.
Google the questions on your list, and study the results to learn:
Who consistently provides answers?
The quality of the answers
Which questions caused ads to be served?
Rate the brainstormed question list:
Rate by assumed importance to the prospect’s decisions.
Even the middle has levels; are some questions likely to be asked earlier than others?
Assess the quality of the answers found on your own site:
Identify gaps in program content.
Create a content development plan to correct.
Brainstorm Session #2: Start a second list of blog articles that answer the questions on your first list.
Multiple articles may be required per question, which is great for SEO.
Arrange the articles in a hierarchy from broad at the top to most specific at the bottom.
Sketch out a rough draft of a content calendar.
For which questions does your site already provide unique solutions?
Use display ads to drive traffic to the relevant pages.
Determine which of the questions might indicate the prospect is close to deciding:
Use this short list to plan bottom-of-funnel advertising.
Sense of urgency: Any question the prospect asks has the potential to produce the last answer they need before they are ready to commit.
Every blog article needs to have an “Apply Now” button on it; ideally, soon after the first paragraph and again at the bottom of the article.
Don’t be shy with your call to action. You have their attention. Tell them what to do next and make it easy for them to follow through.
Advertising in the Messy Middle
Create display ads that promote answers to specific questions, then make sure that the landing page keeps that promise!
Display ads can support your brand while targeting specific questions.
Avoid generic copy: “Business Classes from Memorial College.”
Paraphrase your highest-rated questions in ad headlines.
“An Affordable Business Degree? Yes! Memorial College” or
“Learn How 2 Years Today Pays Off Tomorrow – Memorial College Business A.A.”
A word on applications, registrations, and other marketing goals. Campaigns that target the messy middle won’t have high conversion rates because the ads are engaging with people who aren’t yet ready to commit. The most effective tactics will be from display—banner ads, video ads, and even audio. Search ads can drive traffic mid-funnel, but they won’t convert at a high rate, and they are more costly per click.
Instead, use search ads to capitalize on what the advertiser learns from the messy middle. Borrow hot topics from the middle to capture the attention of prospects who are at the low end of the funnel and ready to commit.
Which are the hottest questions?
Is there an answer unique to your brand?
For example, if the most frequent questions are about speed to degree and how to manage school while working, search ads can use both themes in headlines to attract prospects ready to commit.
“Only 2 Years to Higher Income”
“Your Schedule, Your Degree”
Takeaways
The model of a marketing funnel, though still somewhat useful, isn’t the best visual for how today’s prospects make decisions.
Prospects spend more time today in the middle area between discovery and commitment. They bob back and forth between digital and non-digital resources as they gather information to make decisions.
In the digital space, content answers questions.
The institution that provides great answers to more of the prospect’s questions can win the messy middle, enhancing the prospect’s experience with the brand.
Target ads to specific questions. Send traffic to content that has answers.
Use search ads only for the end of the decision path when the prospect is deciding between their remaining options.
If affordable, backfill with digital brand message tactics to grow the brand exposure part of the equation.
If you would like to discuss the possibility of a more cohesive and thought-out marketing program, Stamats can help you navigate through the Messy Middle. Our strategic approach to marketing recognizes that any plan must be a living document, flexible and nimble, ready to meet the prospect where they are in their journey. Email us at [email protected] and reference Messy Middle to start the discussion.
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With all that riding on your digital presence, you might sometimes wonder, “What has my website done for me lately?” And to answer that question—to get the stories worth sharing from your site—you probably turn to Google Analytics, the site performance platform used by more than 86% of all websites.
Answering Questions Using Google Analytics
Analytics is often regarded as the source of truth for websites, the measure of how effectively the site engages with both known visitors and its newest prospects. Yet Analytics does more than just count site visits and pageviews. Analytics details visitor behaviors:
How did visitors find the site?
What pages did they see and in what order?
Where did they linger or where did we lose them?
Are there behavior commonalities among successful visitors?
In other words, Analytics data tells stories about people. The website doesn’t have a 40% bounce rate—four out of 10 visitors didn’t find the content they visited helpful. The website didn’t have 45,000 pageviews yesterday—visitors accessed 45,000 pieces of content.
Websites don’t “do” anything—people do things on websites. When we look to Analytics for answers, we are seeing the behaviors of people as they engage with the site. Using Analytics in this light, we can answer more complex questions, such as, “Does my site enable visitors to do what they need to do, or are there gaps, speed bumps, and blockers that get in the way?”
Is This Just Wordplay?
Not really. In our experience, analysts who phrase observations based on “what the site did” are trying to solve issues from a site-first perspective. They may point to a selection of landing pages as the reason for the high bounce rate, and they might even suggest why the headline or the first paragraph should be improved. Valid and useful observations but limited in scope.
On the other hand, analysts who phrase observations based on what people did on the site tend to look at issues and opportunities from an experience-first point of view. Yes, visitors bounced off these pages at a higher-than-normal rate. Why? What questions did they have that the page didn’t answer? From this perspective, the content itself is questioned before we start to assess how it is presented.
Let’s be clear—both approaches to analysis are valid. Sometimes the question is about the site and not the visitors. However, experience-first analysis answers more complex questions and tends to be more outcomes-focused.
Same Purpose, Different Commitment
Data can tell a story, but it’s much more useful if the story has context. As we’ve suggested, a website’s context is provided by its visitors who come to the site for a variety of reasons. While some visitors might want to accomplish the same goal, most are likely spread across many stages of the decision path.
The goal-driven visitors that we need to engage with most are easily lost in the sea of data generated by the total volume of traffic to the site. The power and value of Analytics shine through when we filter or segment the data so that we can focus on the visitors we want to help, guide, or influence. Among all the site’s visitors, these groups are our target audiences.
Segmentation Provides Actionable Insights
We can segment the data in Analytics so that all the built-in reports focus solely on a target audience. Once we do this, analysis shifts from broad and general to focused and specific. For example, from a very basic question, such as, “What is the most viewed page on the site?” to specifics: “What is the most viewed page of our target audience?”
Notice how the question shifted from site performance to people-centric performance. With that shift, we gain our first insight into our target audience—we are on our way toward learning what content on the site the target audience finds the most useful.
By first defining and focusing on audience segments across the site, we take a step away from little-a ‘analytics’ and begin to shift toward Big-A ‘Analytics.’ It’s the difference between the task of opening an analytics platform and reading the prepared charts versus the discipline of Analytics, which actively asks questions of the data, always pushing to find an answer for the next “Why?”
As Analytics collects more data, we begin to see patterns that can help us forecast what visitor behaviors to expect—and what content or features we need to provide to best serve them. This is where forecasting enters the picture, and instead of only asking “Why?” we take the next step and start asking “Why not?”
Analytics helps us identify opportunities and actively assists us as we turn forecasts into A/B tests.
Big-A Analytics Data Forecasting
Some patterns are obvious. A consumer goods e-commerce site might look back across several years of site performance and notice a large spike in activity between mid-November and the end of December. Odds are that the next holiday season will report similar behavior.
A healthcare site might have a consistent spike from late December through February (cold and flu season), while a site dedicated to higher education could see several peaks through the year, with each hitting right before class registration deadlines.
You can use Analytics to help spot these macro trends and validate with data what you assume or know in your gut. But that’s just the tip of the forecasting iceberg. By segmenting the data to focus on the site’s important audiences, we begin to see the collection of micro-trends that contribute to the whole.
Higher education sites tend to see a massive spike on the last day of open registration; it happens every time a new term is about to start. Taking Analytics data apart, audience segment by segment, we begin to spot micro-trends. For example, both current and new students wait until the last minute to register, and this bit of information becomes the seed where forecasting becomes action.
See? You Knew that Would Happen.
After some internal discussion, the team concludes that it seems reasonable that new students—uncertain and often intimidated by the commitment—might put registration off until the last minute.
But what about current students? Why would they wait until the last minute; is there something beyond procrastination holding them back? Maybe.
Is the online registration process too difficult to navigate, causing resistance and encouraging delay?
Has the institution fallen short in its retention initiatives?
Would a change in internal marketing motivate current students to register sooner?
One segment of online registrants has several questions to answer, and each suggests an action to be taken. With the added benefit that if the solution spreads the registration activity more evenly across the calendar, the Admissions office will be delighted.
So, you can use historic trends found using Analytics to create marketing plans well in advance of an event—a data-driven communications plan that encourages both prospective and current students to act today rather than waiting until the last minute. Perhaps you could start by testing a text message campaign or email plan with gentle reminders about important dates and helpful instructions on how to apply or register.
Data-driven decisions based on Analytics have a higher success rate than decisions made without the insights provided. And this leads to the next data challenge, making sure that the people who need the data have it.
Data Accessibility
I once heard this flash of the obvious: “If data isn’t made available to the people who need it, it’s not worth the time and effort invested in collecting it.” At the time, that statement seemed a self-evident truth. Why put a lot of time and money into creating systems to collect information if it’s then kept behind lock and key?
However, 20 or 30 years later, I’ve learned that sometimes what seems obvious is often overlooked. I have seen so many instances where decisions were made without adequate information, even though the required data existed—it just hadn’t been shared.
This isn’t to say that the doors of the data warehouse should be thrown wide open in a free-for-all. First, nobody wants a drink from that firehose; there is such a thing as too much information. Second, access to gigabytes of undifferentiated information is neither efficient nor truly helpful. The best solution is to share curated information—data presented in a format tailored for the individual or group who uses it.
This Is Where Dashboards Make a Lot of Sense
Dashboard platforms offer a way to provide access to data in a format that, by design, is approachable for non-analysts. Dashboards can be as simple as a few graphs or as complex as a 20-page monster with hundreds of charts and scorecards.
This points toward the number one issue with dashboards: The magnitude of possible configurations often leads to bloated dashboards nobody winds up using.
Creating useful dashboards requires a data distribution plan based on what the users need to know to make decisions relevant to their position. This is not easy; creating dashboards can require equal parts informed decision-making and outright negotiations.
The most important guideline in building dashboards is to try very hard not to include information the user can’t impact or that they don’t need to make decisions. For example, the CMO doesn’t need information on cost-per-click. CPC data is too granular. Instead, most CMOs have concerns with a different focus. “I gave the marketing department $20,000 this month to develop new students. What did that $20k get us?” Flooding the CMOs’ dashboard with granular data like cost-per-click may make them wonder what you’re trying to cover up! Simply put, don’t take the “dash” out of “dashboard.”
So, we’ve discussed the basics. What’s next? Thankfully this isn’t a red pill / blue pill, Matrix-level point of decision. The commitment you should make is to do more with better Analytics data. Find a way to make data come alive in the minds of your org’s stakeholders. Empower them to make better decisions with less stress, lead them toward data-driven growth. Who doesn’t want that?
From data plans to dashboards, KPIs and analysis to monthly reporting, Stamats can serve as your data-storytelling, website Analytics partner. We can provide a ton of help in bridging your data gaps. Get a FREE GA4 Action Plan today.
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How many untrained people have traipsed through it
The power struggles over content ownership
Photos without alt tags
It’s likely that your content is a mess. The good news? You’re not alone.
The classic book on the subject, by Lisa Welchman, is called Managing Chaos for a reason. Most organizations start out governing their content ad hoc. Systems develop organically, the web advances, people move on, and suddenly, one day you have a mess.
The mess is causing everyday headaches for your team and costing your organization in SEO results and conversions. While the mess is part of the process, you can move through to a better way.
Clean it up in 2023. Everyone should take up the first two resolutions. Then, add at least one of the bonus tips for a solid action plan.
1. Own Your Governance
A simple and essential resolution: admit that you’re already governing content, whether you know it or not. If you’re governing by accident, it’s costing you—in headaches, SEO fails, and conversions.
What do we mean by governing web content? We mean decisions:
What to publish
When to review
What to archive or move to the intranet
What standards published content must meet
How to get it done
If you have a public-facing website, you’ve made these decisions, whether you thought of it as governance or not; 2023 is the year to own it. Say it out loud, “This is how we govern content.”
We don’t mean stand on top of it and look around with pride. We mean map and measure it. If you have a mess, it helps to put some handles on it so you can get a grip in 2023. (If you don’t have a mess—woohoo! Congrats and move along; the rest of us have work to do.)
What kind of governance mess do you have?
In our practice, we see three types of snarled governance. The type usually arises around the flow of content through its ecosystem. Since one of the governing metaphors of content is that it is “like water,” match your mess to one of these bodies of water:
Sprawling, shallow sea = large pool of untrained content contributors
Long, narrow mountain lake = small central pool of trained content contributors
Sluggish river system = a network of content contributors in multiple offices
What problems does a wide, shallow sea cause?
The wide shallow sea causes the most problems. We see websites that don’t rank in organic searches, even in specialty areas, because the site fails basic SEO across its many pages. Each city-state on the site pursues its own strategy (what is the job of the website?), so user journeys break, and conversions never happen. Untrained contributors are the most likely to break accessibility, too, which leaves the institution vulnerable.
The mountain lake is great, right?
When you have a small, central team handling all content, your biggest challenges arise from the team’s overwhelming workload. Small teams manage by making all content evergreen (“I won’t have to touch that again for five years!”), over-relying on PDFs (which bring SEO, mobile UX, and accessibility challenges), and plastering the same primary conversion CTAs everywhere (failing to build a conversion journey).
Why is the content river sluggish?
Your medium-sized network of trained contributors can develop bottlenecks around individuals (the administrator who never gets around to reviewing content updates) or processes (a dozen workflows for publishing but none for archiving). Since each tributary is its own small team, any of them might fall prey to the small team challenges (over-evergreening, over-PDF-ing & over-CTA-ing). Finally, if training or reviewing standards fall away, this content ecosystem can quickly evolve into the wide, shallow sea.
Put your problems into words
It’s important to articulate the consequences of your special mess. This will vary from institution to institution. Here are some examples:
“We publish great content but never archive. Our site’s SEO value has fallen, and our users complain about outdated content.”
“Our site confuses users. They end up calling someone to figure out how to proceed. That ties up office staff and may cost conversions.”
“Contributors don’t optimize images or add alt tags. Our site is slow, is getting dinged by search engines, and I expect a formal complaint about accessibility every day.”
“We spend lots of money on digital ads, but once someone leaves the campaign landing page, they become lost and never convert.”
Need help identifying and articulating what’s going on in your content eco-system? Our high-level governance audit will bring you clarity on the question—email us to schedule a conversation.
Based on your mess-assessment, pick one of the three remaining options as the core of your 2023 Governance Action Plan.
Bonus Option 1: Train & Standardize
You end up with a sprawling, shallow sea when you allow anyone with a voice in the institution to own and govern their own part of the website in their own way. To maintain a wide-input website well, you need your contributors to know and follow:
Training is the first step, and standardizing is the tricky one. If the chair of department X thinks the readability or accessibility standards “dumb down” the content, the chair will flout them.
Taming the wide, shallow sea requires central leadership to take a stand for clear content governance (standards). The institution president is the ideal leader to frame this as a drive to maintain individual department rights while meeting the institution’s strategic goals. Some institutions may find a provost or other leader more effective with its contributor pool.
You might choose to “harmonize” more than standardize if you have a divided group contributing. Establish minimum thresholds as well as shared goals or horizons. Ask us about Writing for the Web trainings.
Bonus Option 2: Connect & COPE
That narrow, mountain lake looks pretty, but its waters may be stagnant and unhealthy. For a website with a small, central team to thrive, you need to make sure the team has fresh input and well-regulated output:
Input: Find out what stakeholders need the site to do (interviews, focus groups, seasonal chats, etc.).
Input: Gather data on the user experience (focus groups, tree testing, heatmapping).
Input: Have the team review each other’s areas to learn and share.
Shift: Internal-facing content could move to an intranet for other teams to maintain.
Output: Revise key user journey pages as a set, especially key journeys that cross your team’s silos. For example, a prospective student’s journey from academic program to campus life to admission.
Output: Leverage your CMS to create more shared content blocks. Then the block on the honors program can have monthly updates that propagate across the site. (Breaking the blandness of evergreen everywhere without adding to the work overwhelm.)
That network of smart contributors across campus worked well once—at least in theory. For a website supported by a river of content makers to stay healthy, the river needs to flow in predictable and regular ways:
Set up and enforce workflows in your CMS
Collect data on how long your content takes to flow through the system
Set alerts for content that has not been updated recently or that takes too long to flow through reviewers
Create automated rules to unpublish aging content
Create automated rules to move aging revisions on to the next level reviewer
Consider a CMS Workflow Audit & Consult to make the most of the tools you already have. Contact us today.
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While phrases such as “cancer patient” and “talk to your doctor” might seem innocuous, both can bear negative connotations. Describing the patient as their disease or assuming that they are already involved with the health system can upset or even alienate those who need your care most.
The words we choose could be the deciding factor for someone to get care with you, choose a competitor, or avoid care altogether. And, as the use of AI-assisted content creation grows, brands must infuse their messaging with human emotions to connect with people and stand out from other organizations.
It takes empathy and keen content skill to achieve the balance of helpful and relevant information with emotional sensitivity. We asked six healthcare content experts to share how they approach creating and reviewing person-focused content.
“We shouldn’t assume what people know or don’t know.” –
Robbie Schneider, Social Media Manager Franciscan Health
When people visit our sites, we usually don’t know their circumstances—they could be newly diagnosed or seeking care for the first time.
For example, we have a large community of Burmese refugees in our city who are learning to navigate a new country, language, and healthcare system. We cannot assume they know how to find care and services.
The healthcare system is highly complex, even for those of us who work in that world. So, we intentionally select words that make it easier for patients to choose us and trust us with their care.
Robbie’s self-editing tip: “Make sure your work has a conversational feel by including more inviting phrasing. For example, swap some instances of ‘Schedule an appointment with your doctor’ with a warmer phrase like, ‘When you are ready to talk with a doctor, schedule an appointment.’ Look at your analytics to see whether these subtle changes make a difference in page engagement or conversions.”
“Choose directive, empathetic content.” – Lewis Clark, Jr., VP of Marketing, Media, and Public Relations, Deborah Heart and Lung Center
Healthcare is very digital, from telemedicine to advanced EMRs. But sometimes the experience falls apart when the “digital front door” meets reality. The “easy, streamlined scheduling process” you quipped about on your specialized care page might require a referral, pre-authorization, and a host of lab tests before you can see a specialist. When a person or their loved one is sick, that’s anything but easy and streamlined.
You can provide a more realistic content experience by dropping the buzzwords. Choose direct, empathetic phrasing—give visitors that “here’s what to do, and we’ve got your back” feeling.
To do that, you must first understand your audience’s concerns and questions. You can ask them directly through in-person touchpoints or via chatbot, email, phone, or mail survey. And you can glean some information from Google Trends, Moz, and other search tools.
Tailor your content to provide answers and reassurance—without too much fluff. While including accolades and data points is important, providing solid answers in your content should be the priority. Balance the urgency in your messaging with the person’s current desire—or crisis.
Lewis’s self-editing tip: “Ask someone from a different team to review your content. If they don’t understand or can’t determine the next step, take it back to the drawing board. I follow the Rule of Three: I like to get three sets of eyes on my work before I call it final because each reviewer brings a new perspective.”
“Seek alternatives for ‘battle’ language.”– Meredith Vehar, Creative Director, Communications Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah
We encourage our writers to use person-first language to underscore that the disease is not the focus—the person is. For example, rather than writing about a breast cancer patient, share the story of a woman with breast cancer.
“Battle” language is another type of phrasing we coach our teams to avoid—terms like “fighting” or “losing the battle with” cancer. When there is a winner, there is a loser, which may cast unfair negativity on those who die and simplify the multifaceted experiences of those who live.
When I was in graduate school, I studied how patients identify with battle language. As part of the project, I asked patients how they specifically felt about the term “cancer survivor.” Some said the word “survivor” made them feel empowered, like they were winning. However, many said the term implies that dealing with cancer is done. They felt like they will always live with cancer, even if they are deemed cancer-free. Cancer, side effects, and treatments can profoundly change a person’s life.
My sister died of metastatic breast cancer at 46. She called managing the disease “a dance.” It was something that happened to her, and something present in her life that she lived with for many years. She did not see herself as a valiant cancer warrior battling against her own body—she was a person with cancer who also had a beautiful, fulfilling life.
Meredith’s self-editing tip: “Search your content for terms that carry a win/lose connotation. Instead of using those words, describe the true fears, pains, and suffering, as well as the triumphs, joys, and successes that center around the person’s lived experience. ”
“Build rapport through storytelling.” – Lindsey Leesmann, MBA, Donor Relations Manager The University of Kansas Health System
Healthcare is something everyone experiences—it’s not just a need to fill. But it can be really scary to seek and get much-needed care. So, one of the most important jobs of a healthcare content creator is to make getting care less intimidating by building rapport through storytelling.
For example, we don’t say “Trust us!” in our content. Making such a direct please is a red flag to your audience—they should be able to trust inherently, and your stories should include supporting details that help them understand why you deserve their trust.
As an advancement content creator, I follow this methodology in my fundraising reports. Our stories don’t focus just on the science—we go behind the scenes of our patients’ and clinicians’ lives, telling the stories of where they were and where they are today.
Sometimes these stories are joyful; others are devastating. But both types illustrate real, emotional reasons for why it’s important to support the research and who will benefit from the donors’ generosity.
Lindsey’s self-editing tip: “Grammar check in Google Docs is my best friend. I search through every piece I write to find a passive voice, which often points to content that is not patient-centric. It helps me spot phrasing like, ‘The injection is given in the arm’ so I can change it to active voice, like, ‘You will get an injection in your arm.’”
“At the end of the day, content provides experiences.” – Tatiana Dietz, Executive Marketing Consultant, Prisma Health
My background is in hospitality, which served as a bridge to my consumer experience strategy role at Prisma Health. Many hospitals are very focused on the patient experience—we are working to focus also on the consumer experience and understanding what that means for the organization.
While all patients are consumers, not all consumers are currently our patients. And these people require different messaging based on their current and potential needs. Marketers group these messaging points into personas to inform the strategies for how we design content, images, and messaging.
At the end of the day, content provides experiences—that hopefully create feelings of trust, safety, and positivity. We are a healthcare institution; providing timely, informed, and approachable health information is our goal. And if they choose to come to us for their vaccinations, diagnostic exams, or treatment, we’re thrilled to take care of them.
Tatiana’s self-editing tip: “Whether you’re writing a blog or designing a billboard, ask yourself this simple question: ‘Have you considered the consumer with this?’ If you haven’t homed in on the appropriate reading level, text-to-graphics ratio, and calls-to-action for your audience, your message won’t resonate with your audience—it might alienate them instead.”
“Meet people where they are.” – Morgan Smith, Manager, Health Care for the Homeless at Hennepin County Public Health Department
My team serves an unhoused population that deals with a range of concerns, from addiction to food insecurity and unmanaged chronic illness. That means our communication efforts must do double duty—growing relationships from rocky ground and connecting people with much-needed care.
That’s not so easy when many patients don’t have phones, let alone computers. We’ve found that going back to the basics of forming relationships—talking with people, listening, acknowledging their needs—helps bridge the gap between “What’s your story?” and “Here’s how we can help.”
In partnership with local community agencies, we’ve created welcoming events and offered incentives for getting care like vaccines. Sometimes we create printouts to hand out in the clinic or push to MyChart, which some of our patients use. To build trust, we must clearly express that we care about them as a whole person, and that sharing their story can help us provide meaningful, mindful care.
For example, we can’t simply prescribe medical equipment like a CPAP to someone who lives outside. But if they open up to us, we can find ways to help meet some immediate needs and hopefully connect them with ongoing care over time.
Morgan’s self-editing tip: “What we may think should be a patient’s health priority might not be even close to the top of their list of needs—and pushing opinions is the best way to get nowhere. Our prerogative should not be to tell them what we think they should know. It should be to meet them where they are, hear their story, and listen for ways we can help.”
A few closing thoughts
What we say and how we say it are equally important. The words we choose could be the deciding factor in whether someone gets needed healthcare. Content creation in healthcare requires the empathy and skill to deconstruct common phrases and restate them in a way that puts people first.
Before you finalize your next content story, talk with a healthcare content strategist about how your audience might feel about common statements. Explore how someone who was recently diagnosed, is new to the U.S., or is concerned about a loved one might feel after engaging with your messaging.
Reframing common statements from a place of empathy can make the difference between someone choosing your institution or another center—or going without the care they need.
Decentralized social media: The Twitter meltdown has caused many users to try finding a social space that isn’t managed by a corporation (Mastodon for example).
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) will shift from an experimental practice to one tied directly to the bottom line. Not “Did we improve the conversion rate?” but “Did we make more money?”
Chatbots will be found on more websites as the cost of implementation comes down and the need to establish relationships with visitors increases. Chatbots might be able to play a role in the acquisition of first-party consent.
Augmented reality will continue to emerge as an expected part of the brand experience.
Email will once again become a key outreach platform, though tactics MUST be reimagined. About two-thirds of email opens occur on mobile devices. Make sure your email content works and looks good across devices.
Engagement, experience, and content must improve if tracking people through cookies is no longer an option. Some forecast that influencer marketing might also play a greater role.
SEM, Analytics, and Display Ad Predictions
To one degree or another, all see 2023 as a tough—if not significantly bad—economic year. One outcome, CPCs will increase between 15% and 20% in Q1 as the volume of prospects decline but the count of competitors remains steady.
In Google Performance Max News
Expect Google to automate even more with Performance Max (P-Max) campaigns leading the way:
P-Max levels the playing field, allowing even small advertisers access across all Google properties. This could result in more competition from less skilled advertisers who rely on out-of-the-box automation.
P-Max shifts the digital marketing paradigm. You are no longer driving the car; instead, you’re telling the driver (Google) where to go.
Google will likely add brand controls to P-Max in 2023. Today, to prevent P-Max from cannibalizing branded organic search, you must request brand blocking from your Google rep one P-Max campaign at a time.
Keywords aren’t going away but now they are signals in P-Max, not precise targets. Broad match coupled with Audiences, negative keyword lists, and well-defined goal actions already perform better than phrase or exact match keywords in non-P-Max search campaigns.
In Other News
‘New User’ counts will skyrocket, but that’s a false flag since even first-party cookies now expire sooner. Focus instead on total users and sessions. When possible, create events that would indicate a New User.
Cookie consent: The current best practice is to fire cookie consent agreements no sooner than 5 to 8 seconds after arrival to avoid CLS penalties. A better idea is to wait 30 seconds.
Reason 1: It’s less annoying to the visitor.
Reason 2: Waiting reduces bounce rate.
In 2023, remember that it’s OK to avoid the bleeding edge.
Most tech companies will be spinning out beta tests trying to stabilize performance in what is expected to be a tough economic year.
It’s OK not to be first. Apple didn’t create the first, second, or even the third personal computer. Nor the first MP3 player, or the first smartphone.
AI will dominate MarTech as governance, attribution, and targeting tools buy into machine learning even more. AI platforms will take their first steps into ad creative, both image-based and text.
Search ads that write themselves based on the advertiser’s goals and what the search platform knows about the search user.
Image-based ads instantly generated from host site descriptions and the advertiser’s provided messaging.
Everybody now has access to AI (Dall-E, ChatGPT, etc.), so consumers have already been exposed. The year 2023 is when marketers need to embrace AI features and stop trying to work around or against it. Attribution models will become far less accurate and predictable, even with AI incorporated. Soon, you may need to shift toward internally generated data to determine marketing success.
Creative Matters More in 2023 and Beyond
To maintain similar acquisition in 2023 and beyond, marketers will be forced out of the bottom of the funnel upward. Video content, image content, and ad copy matter more now and will continue to increase in importance as ad targeting becomes less specific (demographic, interest, cookie-based) and more contextual.
Video Trends
Tik-Tok and YouTube Shorts will be the battleground platforms.
Vertical video format will increase in importance exponentially.
Shorts has 2B monthly active users, Tik-Tok 1.2B.
YouTube Shorts are not yet setup for ads, but that could be coming soon. Shorts are forecasted to be the “killer app” in 2023. YouTube Analytics is the secret advantage, far better and more actionable data then Tik-Tok’s backend information.
Colleges and universities across the U.S. have experienced it at some time with email or text messaging. Some of these epic events make the headlines in higher ed articles; you hope yours does not.
What do you do when sender’s remorse strikes after you launch a mass message? First, take a deep breath. You can often recover with some grace by using humor in the situation. Then, find someone to help you—a strategy partner or peer who understands the issue and can help brainstorm how to rectify the situation.
In times like this, our brains can go into flight or fight mode, and our brain’s rational, problem-solving part leaves the room. But at the end of the day, it isn’t the mistake that defines you—it is how you handle making it right.
That’s a big ask, and you’ll likely benefit from having a “buddy” to help put a plan together.
Don’t Do It Alone
Determine the gravity of the situation—some send mistakes are simply not that bad, no matter how awful you feel in the moment.
For instance, if a recruitment email designed for juniors in high school is sent to seniors, the recovery is quick. But let’s say you sent an email notifying a group of students that they are on academic probation – but they really aren’t. Now what?
This happened once to one of my teammates. She came to my office, proverbial tail between her legs. As the story rolled out, I shared my first observation, “Aren’t you glad you didn’t admit them when they should have been denied admission?” My deflated team member felt a little better when she realized it could have been much worse. Then I gave her the next steps: alerting the affected department.
Communicate with the Affected Department
When an unfortunate send occurs, you must tell the departments affected, since incoming messages about the mistake will undoubtedly start right away. In this case, it was the registrar’s office that would see the outcomes.
Students, and potentially parents, will start calling, caught off guard by the message, wondering why they are on academic probation. The registrar’s office will not understand why such a message was sent to the student and will have to backtrack and confirm the academic standing of every student who calls.
By getting in front of the rising wave, the affected office can head off confused and upset students and parents with grace. This also buys you time to start the repair work for the message sent. Involving the affected departments can create an alliance with them. By sharing what has happened and how you plan to repair it, the office can provide some insight and potential solutions.
Providing a transparent approach helps build trust and keeps them on your team. This gives the department the ability to inform the students who call that they will soon get a message regarding the wrong sent message. It may be the hardest thing you have done in a long time. but it will buy you all kinds of trust for future issues.
Follow Up and Be Authentic
Once the department is in the loop, start to craft a follow-up message. Voice and tone are important for this message, as is staying humble and authentic. We all make mistakes and remaining professional is key. Keep to the point. As you do when crafting an effective communication plan, do not split the point or CTA in the message.
Include a contact person in the message who the student can call for clarification. Do not assume the student has opened both emails; they may read your second corrective email and be equally confused. Make sure your buddy or someone in the office reads and proofs your message before sending. Remember, emotions are running high for you; it is better to have someone else who is not as close to the issue read the message before sending.
Maintain a Sense of Humor
Once, when I was sending communications from a spreadsheet, I sent the right message to the right audience. But inadvertently, I shifted rows on my spreadsheet and lined up parents to another student listed. The result provided an email to parents about steps toward their student going to college—for other people’s children.
The message did not directly affect another department (thank goodness), but I needed to correct my mistake. I quickly wrote a second email explaining my error and apologized for adding another child to their household. The responses from parents helped lift my spirits in a rather humbling experience. One dad jokingly replied that he had twins and really didn’t think he needed another child in the house!
When working through what kind of voice to carry for the follow-up, consider the recipients’ feelings after the erroneous message. An incorrect notice about academic probation can create high stress, so humor might not fit well in that corrective email. It is better to keep it simple, apologize, and include an explanation of what the email should have said or was simply sent in error.
Using a sense of humor in messages is not always the best solution. However, don’t rule it out in the beginning, and see if there is a way to weave a bit of lightheartedness into your corrective messaging.
Who Else Needs to Know?
Realizing the wrong message is sent is a humbling experience on its own. Having to share with someone else, let alone your boss, is downright disheartening. Regardless, it is important that they are made aware of the issue.
Determining when is the best time to tell them is better left to your work environment and relationship. Choosing not to tell them will probably not fare well in the end, as it will eventually come up in a meeting and they may be caught off guard. No matter how hard it may seem to confess your error, it is better to be upfront and keep them in the loop about what has developed.
Sharing with your supervisor is an opportunity to come together and collaborate. When you share, come with a plan. Providing solutions and leaving the conversation open for discussion about how to address the issue can lead to natural collaboration. Showing up with a plan also demonstrates your willingness to own the mistake and make it right.
Maintain Professionalism
As much as you may want to throw something, scream, and stomp, it is better to do that at home (or at least away from the Zoom camera!). Stick to developing a plan for the best outcome to remain focused on the right decision at each given moment. Keep the right parties included in your plan and use your resources to address issues that arise. Remember, it isn’t the mistake that defines you. It’s how you handle the mistake that will create partnerships for future missteps.
So, how do you decide what to send, to whom, and when? My experience with dual credit and early college credit students runs the gamut from building workflows to marketing for this special subset. So, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Messaging to dual-enrolled and early college-credit students is unique from all other outreach because they are not really students at your college.
They’re Not Your Students…Yet
Dual-enrolled students have not committed to enrolling with you full-time after graduating high school. So, we can’t treat them like they are in our messaging. For instance, I know of one school that decided to auto-admit all students who came in as either an early college credit or dual credit student. That led to confusing communications. Family members started contacting the institution trying to understand what was happening, as they had never applied to the school. Internally, we had to reverse and alter admission records to “clean up” what we had created. This is not uncommon behavior that institutions continue to practice. A current article from The Wall Street Journal touches on “direct admissions.”
In our customer relationship manager (CRM), we had to create another workflow internally and a complete communication plan for this special group. A special code or attribution for these students is crucial to send clean communication lists. A CRM is helpful for dual credit and early college credit because data points can be set to trigger on each step in the system. Be careful about a student who is considered an active student and an inquiry in the same system, as it can be tricky.
Include Fresh/Soph Parents in Student Messaging
Parents or family members often are deeply involved in helping their dual-enrolled student through the process of registering and paying for credits. It is imperative that communications for this audience are shared with the family as well as the student.
Messages to this audience should be steps-based and centered on how to find information in small bites. Communications to parents and students might include:
Free credit offers which are great for families budgeting for college.
Stepwise instructions to access the college portal.
Special FERPA forms for students to sign that allow parents access to their student account—even for freshman and sophomore students. If you can digitize this process to populate to the student’s record, you are a rockstar.
Recruitment material to start the conversation about attending post-high school. Set it up as introducing the student and family members to the school.
Meet and greet content: In some cases, the student or family has never heard of your school until the opportunity of dual credit was presented to the student in their high school classroom. Share information about how to find your institution and where it is located.
Nurture campaigns fit well for dual-enrolled students, and the quantity of messages is important. Sending messages that are relevant to the student and the stage of where they are in school is the key to keeping them engaged. For instance, sending messages about new dual credit opportunities through your institution may encourage them to keep taking classes with your institution—and may help them along the path to eventually enrolling.
Junior Year is a Dichotomy—Your Messages Should Be, Too
Communication with high school juniors requires a two-pronged approach. Keep including instructions on how to access the portal—some will have started dual credit in previous years but have forgotten their credentials and the login link. Some will be new to the system and need all the steps for the first time.
Many dual credit/early college credit juniors are high achievers and are starting to make plans for where they want to go to college. These students may not have set foot on your campus yet, so this is a great opportunity to invite them for a feature event like Preview Day or a personal tour.
Keep the family members involved with the communications going out to this group. Most likely, these same family members will drive or come along with the student to these events.
Weave these students in with your recruitment communications for juniors. However, the call-to-action (CTA) for seniors should be to apply to your college or university. Include an internal CRM code that allows you to include or exclude this audience in your communication lists. For instance, if this is the group where your school is looking to adopt direct admissions, pull a list to send a special message of congratulations about being admitted.
Consider sending a message highlighting the cost and time savings in submitting transcripts to your school versus another college or university. From my personal experience as the mom of a senior, this is a royal pain! From my experience, the average cost for submitting is about $10. Multiply that by three schools, and the family has spent $30 moving digital transcripts from one school to another. Take this pain point and make it a benefit statement for your school!
A Few Closing Thoughts
Approach communicating with dual-enrolled students as a two-pronged plan:
Provide tactical information about how to log in, register, and contact someone for help.
Send journey-centric recruitment messaging.
While honing your messaging for dual-enrolled students and parents takes time and finesse, the return of doing it right will be worth it. Effective marketing is all about meeting people where they are with the answers they need—and with a few strategic adjustments, you can be that standout resource for high school students considering college.
