I’ve been thinking about short-sighted marketing trends lately, and that got me thinking The Dead.

To make the cliché a little more relevant, we decided to draw up our own Ninth Circle of (Marketing) Hell, except, ours is a cycle, and we’re more than happy to help you out of it.

Even a quick look at our websites reveals that these students are succeeding in spite of us and not because of us. Before I sat down to write this article, I browsed a number of institution’s websites and marketing efforts, and, beyond a few select photos of Hispanic students “having totally normal fun like they always do out on the quad” with a group of equally-diverse-and-totally-not-selected-by-the-school’s-marketing-team-students, I found little or nothing that actually spoke to this large, important part of our higher ed community. 

Most of us aren’t part-time IT geniuses, but here’s the good news: You can successfully implement a CRM without being a tech whiz. Implementation is a process.  

This is a framework for creating an effective campus visit program. It’s short for a reason – it’s just a starting point, a set of fundamentals that help you to measure the creativity and effectiveness of the campus visit process. Start here and build from there. Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression!

For many colleges and universities, the old message – that college is a time of exploration and self-reflection – is no longer an economic reality for students. Simply getting a bachelor’s degree will not exclude students from the workforce’s hurdle, even in great times. It’s important that you are talking substantively about how your university differs or excels in areas that supplement the classroom experience.

Some brick-and-mortar stores are winning the fight to capture buyer's attention, and universities can, too. Here are a few strategies retailers have adopted to recapture engagement of consumers. 

You see, it’s not enough to be clever. You have to be good. If you’re in the higher ed marketing game, that means you have to understand your target audience better than anyone else at the university. It means you have to take a collaborative role in the entire funnel, from prospect awareness right down to the phone call an admissions counselor has with that student.