SPEAKER_00
You're listening to the Higher Ed Marketer, the podcast for marketing professionals in higher education. Join us every week as we talk to the industry's greatest minds in student recruitment, donor relations, marketing trends, new technologies, and much more. If you're looking for conversations centered around where marketing in higher ed is going, this podcast is for you.

Let's get into the show.

SPEAKER_03
Welcome to the Higher Ed Marketer podcast. My name is Troy Singer, here with my co-host and good friend, Bart Kaler, where each week we have wonderful conversations with people in the higher ed community, hopefully for the betterment of our listeners within the community. Today we talk to Troy Brown.

He is the Senior Vice President of Admissions, Recruitment, and Marketing for the University of West Los Angeles. And our topic that we talk to him today is about the best practices for marketing to non-traditional students. This school has been doing this for a long time, and Bart, with all of the conversations around non-traditional students that we're hearing, we thought it would be good to have Troy on and share what they've been doing for a long time so institutions that are starting to step into it now could get benefit from it.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think that one thing I really like about the conversation we had with Troy is the fact that he goes in and, as you said, they've been doing it for a while, and they've been doing it for a while with a diversity of communities, of different types of students, adult learners, and non-traditional students. And as we all know, that that's going to be one of the keys of writing this rough seize of the enrollment cliff is you're going to have to kind of get really good at being able to market to non-traditional students as well as some communities that you might not historically have been marketing to. And so I think Troy shares a lot of what they've been doing for years and does so with kind of some expertise and it really gives you some really good nuggets to walk away with.

So a really good conversation here today.

SPEAKER_03
And because of some of the work that he's done over the years, he's also known as the Dean of Diet, which I refer to in our conversation. And that is for diversity, inclusion, equity, and transformation. I wanted to make that clear because I don't think I do within our conversation with him.

And now, without further ado, here's our conversation with Troy Brown. Troy, as we start out every conversation with our guests by asking them to share something that they've learned recently that they would deem fun or interesting. So you are on.

SPEAKER_02
Well, first of all, thanks for having me, guys. Great to be here. So I just became a new parent.

I'm four months into this thing called parenthood. The best thing I've ever done. So it's interesting because I came from the obviously the side of the nonparent.

This is my first child. And the thing that I'm going to tell you is what I think most people probably say, but I'm going to say it with the depths of my soul, which is learn to sleep when your child sleeps. I think that, you know, in the beginning, you know, we all try to continue with our normal lives and we try to get up at, you know, whatever 8 a.

m. and down by 10 p.m. Whatever it might be. And, you know, your child has these five naps of the day and you're kind of like, OK, cool.

I get get my little time without the kid. No, be it go to sleep. I learned the hard way, which is I try to stay awake.

And then at night when the baby was up, I was up as well. So I for the first six weeks of my newborns life, it was tough. And I was a walking zombie and I struggled.

So what I learned the hard way seemingly is sleep when your child sleeps. Obviously, enjoy your child, but get as much rest as you can.

SPEAKER_03
Well, I imagine for half of our audience who haven't gone through being or parenthood yet, they have that advice from you to look forward to. But then half of our audience like, yeah, guy, and that's only the beginning.

SPEAKER_02
And so what I what again, another thing that I've learned is I pick every parent's brain and I just ask for I ask them what you're asking me, which is what piece of advice would you give me? It might work for me. It might not. But I've really learned the hard way again.

Everybody's got a trick up their sleeve that work for them that could work for you. So my little trick that everybody said to me and I'm going to impress upon everybody here is sleep when your baby sleeps.

SPEAKER_03
Thank you, Troy. I am going to pivot to the reason why we're having you on the show, but I love that response. And for everyone who doesn't know, Troy Brown is the Senior Vice President of Admissions, Recruitment and Marketing at the University of West Los Angeles.

And he also serves and I think Bart this is the first time we've had someone that is the dean of this on the podcast. I love it. And he is the dean of diet, which is diversity, inclusion, equity and transformation.

And we are going to talk about best practices for marketing to non-traditional students. If you could, Troy, give us a 30 second intro to the University of West LA and it will give us all the reason why we're going to have this conversation.

SPEAKER_02
Sure, sure. The University of Los Angeles was founded in 1966 as a law school, actually. We are a Wasker credited.

We are a Cowbar credited. We also recently, within the last 10 years, opened our School of Business, which is a which offers a bachelor's in business. It's a bachelor's completion program, as well as our master's in business as well.

So leadership and management. So really excited to be working at the school. I love what we do and I'm proud of these students that we produce.

SPEAKER_03
Thank you, Troy. And the reason why we want to have this conversation with you is I think higher ed as a whole is for good reasons, has to start a pivot of. Marketing and serving students that are now called non-traditional.

And I believe your institution has had a successful track record of marketing and serving these students for a long time and would like to share some of the things that you're doing and the ways that you are serving your right fit students with others. Troy, something that we're hearing all around the higher ed community is certificates and serving populations and serving non-traditional students with certificates. And this is something that you have been doing for a while.

Building pathways to degree completion through certificates. And if you could share with our audience how you are doing that and some of your approaches that you've been doing that with.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that's a great question. It's an interesting sort of program through academics that we've put together. One of and the way it relates to marketing is this.

We have a lot of partnerships with businesses. We are again, our non-traditional student usually is a working the working adult. OK, so we've got partnerships with businesses such as the 99 cent store, Bank of America, the South Central Los Angeles Regional Center.

All of these have working professionals who oftentimes might just want a certificate in their specialty that might fill within their, how do you say, their department, right? So if they work in human resources, if they work in finance. So what we do is we create a certificate, three classes that might fit their department. Again, human resources, finance, whatever it might be.

And then once they take the three classes, you know, they've earned a certificate in whatever it might be. What we then develop is a way to now say, hey, you've already taken these three classes with us, you're only however many classes short of a degree. Why not just continue on with us and finalize that degree? So they're already with us, the employer sees value in the education we offer.

That is why they've partnered with us. We make sure to tailor the education and use examples of how it might fit within their current job, their current department, how they can use the next day at work. And then from there, we hope that being they trust in us as a brand and the market that we've done, and we show it outwardly, the outwardly things that we show in marketing become inwardly apparent through the education.

And so they decide to finish whatever degree, whether it be the bachelor's completion or the master's degree with us.

SPEAKER_01
I love that approach because I think that what it does is it underscores that flexibility that adult students want to see sometimes. As you said, they're all working their juggling life. They're juggling the parenthood.

They're juggling their jobs and they need the education to kind of get to the next stepping stone, but so many of them, the idea of signing up for a bachelor's degree or completing their bachelor's degree is not in the card. It's not in the cards. And so the idea that says, Hey, I can get a certificate.

It's three credits or whatever it might be. It's achievable. Well, when you do that, all of a sudden they've just, okay, I'm proud.

I've got that. I achieved that. I didn't think I could, but I did look at that.

But the idea that you guys are not only saying congratulations to your certificate, you're actually saying now you can stack on top of the work that you've done. So it's not like it's not just a disposable certificate, not that certificates are, but I think in a lot of ways, sometimes people think, well, I either have to choose a certificate, I have to choose an associates or I have to choose a bachelor's. The idea of being able to stack those on top of each other, I think it's incredibly attractive.

SPEAKER_02
They see a value add. Oftentimes, unfortunately in education, especially I think with the non-traditional student, they've gotten by and been okay without it. Right? They have their job.

They're out. They found a lifestyle that they're comfortable with now. Again, the marketing comes in where we have to show them the benefits of our products, right? The benefit of, and oftentimes.

Education as a product is hard to find, which is something we can talk about as well, but nonetheless, we want to show that this product, this education is a value add to help your lifestyle and to help increase the benefit that your employer sees in you, which is why they're obviously going to partner with us to be able to offer that to the employee themselves. At a discounted rate, by the way. So it's really a win-win.

SPEAKER_01
And I like that because like you said, you're checking the boxes of you've got the flexibility, you've got the employer buy-in, you've got a lot of, you've got the, you know, probably the flexibility of delivery, whether it's online or hybrid or different things like that. Let me ask you about this because this is one thing that I've heard a lot of people that they forget. I really believe that students, so many schools get all wrapped up and especially for non-traditional like, who are our biggest competitors? You know, is it this school? Is it this online school? Is it this for-profit school? But at the end of the day, I find that a lot of times non-traditional students, the adult student, the biggest competitor is just life.

It's their life and their situation. Is that what you guys find?

SPEAKER_02
You know, it's funny we're talking about this because this is something where actually I'm actually in the headspace of trying to re-change within my department. And to be honest with you, it's not easy, right? I think the reason it's not easy for me is because we are what I call the ambulance chaser type of university. That is not us.

Okay, that is not our brand. It never will be. And so, and so my team is not going to be the ones to overly stock potential students, prospective students.

However, at the same time, I do find that the biggest barrier to entry is life. Right? That is the biggest barrier to entry. And so how do you walk the line of, again, ambulance chasing and encouragement? Right? And sometimes I think, you know, the encouragement needs to be multiple times in the week.

They need to see the value. And one thing I just want to make clear while we're talking is the non-traditional student in my eyes as the school that we are is anybody. Okay? Because we all have life.

Whether you are the fresh out of college student who's looking to complete their bachelor's and we're a little bit better suited for you financially, then we're for you. We are for you. We do fit this in or you are the employee who's a mother or father of three and you work a nine to five.

And so you want the better after hours. We fit everybody. So I just wanted to make that clear that that's the way that we approach it.

The non-traditional students is anybody who really just lives life and they might have circumstances, be it financing, be it timing, like you said, flexibility in their schedule that might need to step outside of the normal student who goes to school from eight to three.

SPEAKER_01
And I like the word that you use too. And I just want to highlight that for audience, use the word that our admissions team really encourages them, whether they're reaching out three or four times a week to encourage them. I like that because I think that's another thing that I've noticed with adult students and non-traditional is that many times the confidence of, Hey, it's been 10 years since I've been in a classroom.

And the last time I was in a classroom was, you know, I did that first year of college and it just wasn't for me. They're scared to death. And I think the idea of helping over, you know, overcome that is as hard as overcoming some of the financial obstacles or anything else of just being able to do that.

So talk to me about that. How does your team kind of?

SPEAKER_02
It's so funny you say that. So we do what's called lunch and learn. So we'll go into, let's say the 99, let's say Slark, we're going to South Central Los Angeles Regional Center and I'll be the speaker.

We'll provide them lunch because they've taken time out of their work day, right? And, you know, we'll be speaking to 20 to 50 people, staff members. And everyone's, oh, this is amazing. You know, Slark has put in money for them to be able to do it.

So everybody's encouraged and everybody sees the benefit. And then I always get the one, there's about three or four people stay around and talk to me. And they'll say, you know, I'm scared, Troy.

I haven't been to school since 2000, you know? And I said, I get it. I totally get it. And where we try to really meet students where there are, because that's what I think what we have to do nowadays is giving students the ability to what I call it and my president might not like this, but to try before you buy.

I am okay. I am okay saying, Hey, you know what? Come sit in the classroom. Come test it out.

If you don't like it, if it's not for you, that's okay. You know, we'll still be, if I still see you in the streets, we'll still be friends. Because, you know, I believe again at UWA, we are really focused on helping people achieve their goals.

So our brand is one of hand-holding to and through graduation. And that's what we're going to, we're only going to be able to do that by saying, Hey, you know what? Try us. And going back to circling back now to the beginning of our conversation, the certificate, they've gotten into our system.

They see who we are. They see that they can achieve it. And then they believe in themselves.

SPEAKER_01
That's great. That's great. Well, I'm going to pivot a little bit.

And you kind of, we talked about going back to the conversation. There was something that you mentioned a couple of minutes ago that I wanted to kind of pull back out when you talked about product. So, I mean, we often talked about the four P's of marketing.

Product, price, promotion, place. I think a lot of times we talk about maybe promotion on the higher ed marketer because marketing tends to be promotional and a lot of it's like, what are the tactics we can do that? And sometimes higher ed marketers or admissions professionals, they don't rest, it's necessarily have as much say on maybe the price of the product. But tell me how you guys are kind of approaching that because you've kind of indicated on two separate, you know, comments here about your product.

And you've also talked about affordability. Tell me a little bit about your role in that and how that plays out and how you guys are doing that.

SPEAKER_02
So, great question. And I love these conversations because you can be candid. And so candidly, when I started this coming with the marketing degree, you come out with all your guns blazing and you try to all, you know, do all of the biggest and best marketing schemes you can think of.

And then a kind of, you know, in my kind of gains and maturity. And I sit down and have a conversation with my president and my deans. And I learned that no matter the scheme, the sales promotion, whatever I put together at the end of the day, when the student sits in the seat, all of these must line up and it ends with the product.

Okay. So the end, to be honest, the circle of life in marketing, they're only going to talk to other people about what we're doing if our product is good. So my marketing schemes will be for not, no matter how great they are and no matter the taglines and the, you know, the great swag that I give out.

If our product is not of value and is not quality and is not hold up to the brand that we're developing, it doesn't hold its weight. And so for me, I actually have a great relationship with my deans where I can say, Hey guys, we've really got to uphold our standards. And to be honest with you, let me be very frank about this.

Not all students are for you to be late because we are going to uphold our standards. We are, we've got to ask accreditation that we take very seriously again, the same accreditation as Stanford UCLA. We are going to uphold that product at the very highest it is going to be.

And so we don't cut corners. We are serious about our academics. We want to produce the best people because those best people in the industry are going to show how good our product is, which is going to help my marketing on the back end.

So again, the circle of life of marketing, it all goes around to making sure that everything is in alignment and our brand speaks for itself, which is the product itself.

SPEAKER_01
I like what you just said there that, and I want to make sure that a lot of marketers hear this and because I think this is important and I'm getting ready to I'm finishing up a book that I'm writing on chasing mission fit. And I think that the schools who understand that their product isn't for everybody, that they understand we know who we're going after. We know the students that are going to succeed at our school.

We know the mission fit students that will come, they'll succeed, they'll graduate and they'll tell other people about it. I love the fact that you've identified those people and said, that's who we're going after and we're not, we're going to let everybody else kind of go to the wayside because we know exactly who we're going after. Is that an accurate way to say kind of your approach to everything? That is.

SPEAKER_02
I at the same time, I want to be the answer is yes. Let me the answer is yes. The answer is yes.

At the same time, I do believe and we have seen that once we get in front of people and once they feel us out, sometimes they change. You know, I've had students from my law school who apply to us and then apply to a different law school, let's say better law school. They get into that better law school.

They're there for a year and then they come back. They say, hey, you know what? I thought I needed a better law school, that school where I wasn't as handheld and I wasn't as, you know, I didn't know the Dean's name and I couldn't meet with the vice president, but I actually needed that. I needed a place where, where I felt.

And again, back to mission statement. Our very first line of our mission statement is we are a family. Okay. And students are people first. So we want to treat you like people.

We know that life happens. So where I needed a family. And so there's some students who just, who just want to go and, and our good, great book students and can study by themselves to be honest and are going to get all of these.

That's probably not our student. We'll take them. Our education is the value to them.

But we are, we know that this non-traditional student that we serve is the student who might need a lecture, hand-holding, who might want a little extra attention from professors, who might be seeking a smaller environment and who might enjoy succeeding in that way.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Yeah. And you kind of talked about that smaller environment, that community, those, that, that family feel. I know that one of the things that you do is really try to emphasize on meeting students where they are.

And I know that you've got a lot of different communities there in West LA. So tell me about how does that work? And going back to your Dean of Diet. I mean, how does that fit into the, to the puzzle where you've got, you know, you've got Hispanic communities, you've got Persian and Armenian communities.

Tell, unpack all that for us.

SPEAKER_02
Yeah. It's funny. We asked that because that's the reason that I got the quote unquote title.

Being in my position, I touched the students. And that's honestly why I love the position is I get to be a face for people who want to just speak to somebody. You know, oftentimes you go to these big schools.

I know I went to big one and you didn't really feel heard. All right. You didn't really feel heard or seen.

So for instance, what's going on in Israel right now in Gaza and all that. We all know what's going on. We are going to hold a forum.

I sent out a letter to the students asking their opinion, saying, Hey, saying, we want to be, we want to be there for you. We know that this is tough for some of you at this time, whether you are of the cultural religion or otherwise, but we want to be there for you. And so students responded and then some were just happy that we reached out.

And so I said, Hey, I'd love to be a part of this. And so we want to, we come from a, we are a family that is our mission. And if any family member is feeling some sort of way, we reach out to them.

And we're putting together a forum to where we can just make sure that everybody hears the facts, make sure that everybody's able to say their peace. And that is necessarily, I think the one thing that we understand is that that doesn't mean that somebody's right or wrong, but rather everybody's heard. Right. And so as the Dean of Diet, I want our diversity to be seen, which is all of our students, you know, we are a diverse school. I want everybody to feel included.

Right. The equity and the transformation is one in the same to me where, you know, people can only change if they're equitably treated. And so it takes a lot of work.

It really is not afterthought. It can't be an afterthought. It has to be, it has to be a concurrent thought.

And so, and that goes across the board, but I might, I must add, whether it be our academics, our deans are always, you know, thinking of how do we equitably treat our students to make sure that everybody's done fairly, whether it be in our library services, you know, all of those things that are going to make the student feel and help them reach their goals. So our communities, again, like you spoke of the Hispanics, the Middle Eastern, the African American, Caucasian, everybody should equitably and seen. And so it's really an important of who we are as a brand.

Great.

SPEAKER_01
Great. I think that's good. And I love the intentionality that you're doing in that because I think that's part of success in higher ed marketing is being intentional in whatever we're doing.

So love that.

SPEAKER_03
Troy, with adults juggling work, life and studies in this world today, how important is it for institutions that are doing what you're doing to offer courses and modules and bite size formats?

SPEAKER_02
See, now you're trying to have me give away secrets, right? Of course we are. First of all, great question. And I think that, so let me say this, I don't, I am not academic.

Okay. So I don't see things how the academics do. I am a normal everyday citizen who happens to be good at marketing and enjoy it.

And so the way I see things is this. The normal everyday American has not even American student has so much going on in their life. We can't, most students cannot sit in front of a computer from nine to three, eight to three and just focus on school.

That is not the reality. Okay. Of most students, of most of our students, most students' lives. Whether they're a 18 year old who needs a job to pay for school or, you know, whether they are the 18 year old who takes care of their baby brother when they get home all the way to the adult who takes care of their kids and has a job.

I say all that to say that the average span of an adult learners concentration focus isn't that long. They don't have the long. So you have to provide a product, right? A module, a way for them to learn that best fits there the way that we do as people.

We, I always say we are the microwave generation, at least I am. And now I call it the TikTok generation. TikTok videos are 45 seconds.

Microwave generation, we're 30 seconds. We want a hot and fast and ready. And unfortunately or fortunately, we've got to pivot the way we teach to fit that mold.

Now, as a marketer, I see that the academics are slowly coming to it. So how can we be the first in line to show this new way of teaching? And more importantly, I think make it acceptable. And that's the challenge.

The challenge is how do we make it acceptable in this new environment? Once I crack the code, you can have me back again and I'll put, and I'll give you all the answers on that one.

SPEAKER_01
I think you're right on that. And Troy, I guess I would also ask you to, there's so many changes coming down the pipe. We've talked about, I mean, we've talked with a lot of, a lot of guests about the enrollment cliff and that's going to be a little bit more tightly focused on some of the at-risk, you know, traditional schools, but also just the idea of, you know, AI and all the changes that are coming with that, just the financial squeeze that's coming with cost of rising tuition.

So there's just so many change. And the fact that you guys are already thinking about how to adapt and you're doing some intentionality with that, with, you know, the way that you're organizing the product, the way that you're presenting the product, the way that you're selling the product and putting it into those certificates and stackable tools. Do you really, I mean, I think that you guys are poised in a really good position to be able to weather out some of those storms.

But is that kind of what you're seeing as you look down the future next 18 months or so that there's going to be a lot of challenges that are going to put some headwinds to higher education?

SPEAKER_02
You know, it's so interesting you're saying this because I think I feel sometimes like we all in life can't just catch a break. You know, we all just want to catch a break one day, you know. So COVID happened and the world changed and we all had to, in education, to figure it out.

We all, and we all did. And I think in my environment, which again, I love, it's, I have the ability to, because we all are a smaller university to pivot. We pivot fast.

Okay. When COVID happened, we pivoted. Everybody was able to be home within the week and everybody was back to school.

We've pivoted it fast. Okay. So the trick that I have, and I think that the university has, and again, we have a great senior leadership team is how do we grow, right? How do you grow your, grow your student base, grow your brand, but still feel small? Okay. And so the answer to your question is these next 18 months, we are, we, these next really six to eight months, we're figuring it out.

And we're figuring out how to implement these new products in a, in a way that is going to be attractive to students. I really do believe that we are on the precipice of cracking the code, to be honest with you. I feel it, I feel it's coming.

It's just going to be about making sure that we are poised to sustain the influx we are going to have. I believe putting it out there in the universe is necessary. And at the same time, keeping with our brand that I've in, you know, the universe has spent so long building.

Um, when we believe in this brand and this brand is a small brand, but you want to have business growth. So how do we continue to make you feel like you're at home, but do it in a large environment? So these next 18 months are going to be interesting in the education space. It's really exciting at the same time.

You know, how do you find a space for yourself that you can carve out and make your own, um, and really do it well. So that's what we're looking for.

SPEAKER_01
That's pretty cool. I think that you said it really well, and I'm looking forward to seeing where that goes.

SPEAKER_03
Troy, I'd like to go back to the diversity conversation a little bit more. Diversity is very significant focus or is a significant focus in education today. And we've heard that the University of West LA has made great strides in serving specific communities and love for you to speak to that and to share some of the things that you're doing that others could benefit in doing in their institutions.

SPEAKER_02
Sure. Sure. Sure. More secrets to give away. First and first and foremost, our communities are so important to us.

Okay. Again, partnerships 99 since store, Bank of America, Slark, we have other regional senators, senators who are coming on. And then our cultural communities, whether it be the Middle Eastern community, the Hispanic communities, these communities really are who we are.

They are, they're at the soul of who we are. Okay. And I really mean that. So, um, I think that the word that I like for this podcast is we're intentional.

We are very intentional in making sure that everybody feels seen. Okay. We celebrate everything from Kwanzaa, all the Jewish holidays. We are celebrating them all because we want our community to know that they're accepted.

Okay. I think I want to tell a story really quickly off the cuff. It got me married.

My wife was a student at UW. Okay. My wife. And the reason I noticed my wife is because she was complaining.

She's complaining. She was. And so my job at that time was, you know, I wanted to step up as a senior leader and say, Hey, you feel, you heard, you are heard, right? You're heard.

And so she came to my office. We had, you know, we had a conversation about what was needed by her, by her and walked away on the same side. And I think that's the way, that's the way I and we approach our students is we want them to feel her, whatever group background organization they come from.

We want to sit down with you and make sure you feel heard and seen. And so, for instance, with Slark, we made sure to, when we were doing some of our, our academics say, Hey, what classes. Prit can pertain to your students with 99 sister.

We did the same with Bank of America. We did the same. And so we want to integrate parts of the academics that we have into how they can use them and same with cultures.

We are very understanding. Many of our students actually just did a poll on this being, being part of my, the new deanship job was a lot of our students, their second language is English. Okay. A lot of our students, a large population. So how do we, in a school where a lot of their second language is English? How do we teach to those students and making sure they understand many of the general assumptions that first generation English speakers might understand? So slang, right? So if our students, if our professors are using slang in, in their environment, in their classrooms, making sure that everyone understands, no matter the background, but just making sure that everybody across the board understands.

And that's very important to us. Another thing, and I think that this is overstated or under, excuse me, underseen environment is the parent or as we just say, did the non-traditional worker. So life, when life hits, how does the school transition? And so for our students, for our finals during COVID, we realized, and I did a poll on this, that most of our students had other issues at home.

So they either had kids to take care of, or they had parents to take care of. So imagine a household where you might have a parent and the kid and, and kids to take care of, you don't have time for school, at least not during the normal business hours. So we decided to give our students the 24 hour period to do their final exams, because again, we're learning, we're teaching to make sure you learn not to, not to make sure that you, you know, have a quick regurgitation.

Right. Right. And so, and so again, adapting to who our student is, no matter the walk of life, that's what we aim to do. And that's what we did.

So I'm really proud of what we did.

SPEAKER_01
I think that's great. And I think that it's so exciting to see all that you guys are doing. It's, it's been such a good thing to do that.

So.

SPEAKER_03
Troy, I'd like to end our conversation asking you to give a quick piece of advice. You shared a lot of wisdom and given away your secrets and we appreciate that, but we're going to ask for one more. And that secret would be something that you could offer that someone after hearing it could quickly implement at their institution.

What piece of advice would that be? First, let me say this gentleman, it's been great.

SPEAKER_02
This is, this has been fun. I love talking about this space. It's my life's work and I do it because of these.

I like seeing people reach their goals. The advice that I would give is this. Everybody starts with an idea.

Right. You start with an idea and you run with it as a marketer. My, my advice is going to be to work backwards.

First, get the data to support your idea. So for instance, if I want, I like doing it out of the box things guys. So I believe in using the five senses.

Okay. So if I want to put a candle, a good smelling candle in scent in our lobby, right? You, because guess what? That's one of the sense. That's what's good.

So what I did is I did some research. I said, how does scent play with decision making? And you know what I learned that, that if you want to sell a home, you bake it. You can sell it.

You can sell it. You can sell it. You can sell it.

You can sell it. If you want to sell a home, you bake cookies. So when the buyers come in, they smell the cookies.

And guess what that means? That triggers. This is feels like home. I found a candle.

I found a good smelling candle that, that, that again, executive team. I did some research on it. But again, with the data, I said, okay, now let me try it in the lobby of the school.

And it seems to be okay. I can't tell if it got me any enrollments, but I have had any negative backlash from it. So again, I can't do a one for one.

Nobody's going to say they enrolled because of the smell, nonetheless. But my advice is to work backwards from your goal. First start with the data before implementing your marketing to make sure that it's successful.

Let me ask one, I will add one last thing for you all, actually. Let me add to my advice. My advice is this, you know, we have an amazing faculty.

I didn't bring up my faculty yet and I had to be remiss if I didn't. Our faculty is amazing. And so, especially with the non-traditional world learner who's normally scared, nervous, withdrawn, make sure your faculty, if they're teaching a non-traditional student, are the faculty who want to be there.

All of our faculty want to be here. They really love their students at UWLA. And so I must give them a big thanks because they do a great job with our students.

So yeah, make sure your faculty are engaged as well.

SPEAKER_03
Well, Troy, that reminds me and I want to make sure I give you an opportunity to mention this. I think I heard or read somewhere that your president considers you not a transactional campus, but a relation campus. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right, but please offer that to everyone.

SPEAKER_02
Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, we're not transactional relationships. So basically, you know, a transaction is a quick this for that, which is oftentimes quick, fast and in a hurry.

All right, we want to build relationships, you know, and that is why, you know, I said earlier, I love my job and because for me, I was I my job is the best and the worst. The best because I get to see the students at the beginning and just say, hey, come on in these doors. And I get the worst because unfortunately, the next time I see them is usually at graduation, which is good for them, which is good for them.

But they I'm not in the middle in the meat and potatoes of it, which is where relationships are built. But that's why again, I have to say our faculty do a great job. Our dean does a great job of building these relationships for students where they don't feel alone, right, where the students feel like, hey, you know, it's and this is honest, it's nine o'clock p.

m. and I can text the dean of our school. That's this is the type of people that is it's nine p.

m. It's 10 p.m. and I can email our head of faculty, my professors and they will respond. Again, our faculty, whether it be in my school of business or my school of law, do an amazing job with handholding the student where necessary with pushing the student where necessary.

And most importantly, helping them reach the academic goals when necessary. So I got to tell you our instead of being transactional relational foundation is what the breed of this university is. Love it, Troy.

SPEAKER_03
And thank you so much for that piece of advice and all the wisdom that you've shared. Again, we've been talking to Troy Brown from the University of West Los Angeles. Yes, you can Google him and the school and see some of his content.

But Troy, if you would, please share the preferred way that you would like someone to reach out to you if they had the inclination to do so.

SPEAKER_02
Sure, sure. You know, honestly, I'm an old school soul, although I am on Instagram and LinkedIn. Email me.

You know, I like to get personal email me Troy. So t r o y at u w l a dot edu. I'm always open to making the context of nothing less just to bounce ideas off of each other.

I look forward to hearing from anybody. I really do. I invite it really.

SPEAKER_03
Thank you, Troy. And I have enjoyed listening to you and having this conversation. So again, thank you.

Bart, do you have any final thoughts you would like to share before we close the episode?

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I really like a lot of what Troy talked about. And I really liked just the basics of starting down. It doesn't matter if you're talking to adult students, non-traditional students, traditional students, parents, influencers, whoever it is, everybody just wants to be heard.

And I love how Troy kind of emphasized that throughout the, throughout the conversation of just his, his personal desire to do that and to make sure that people are heard. It takes intentionality to do that. It takes planning.

It takes a community that you're willing to foster and build. And when you do that, you're going to build those communities. You're going to build those opportunities that you're not going to have elsewhere if you just treat everything transactional.

And so I love the intentionality that Troy and his team are doing to allow people to be heard, to be able to build those communities, to be able to, you know, really identify and help those mission fit students to succeed, whether that's through the product design, whether it's through the way that they're stacking those different certificates into degree completion. Really think there's a lot of really good things in here that you can look at and learn from the agility that they do. And so Troy, once again, thanks so much for being on the podcast.

This has been a great pleasure and an honor to have you here. We're grateful for what

SPEAKER_03
you've shared with us, Troy. We're also grateful to our wonderful producer, Rob Conlon, and his team at Westport Studios. The Higher Ed Marketer podcast is sponsored by Kailer Solutions, an education, marketing, and branding agency, and by Ring Digital, providing direct mail for digital, accurately serving ads directly to the handheld and household devices of your inquiries on your direct mail lists.

On behalf of Bart Kailer, I'm Troy Singer. Thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_00
You've been listening to The Higher Ed Marketer. To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast player. The Higher Ed Marketer is a production of Kailer Solutions and Ring Digital in partnership with Westport Studios.

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