SPEAKER_02
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_00
Hello everyone and welcome to the Higher Ed Marketer podcast. Mark Kaler and myself, Troy Singer, are pleased to welcome Shane Baglini from Ulinburg College to the episode today. And what he does exceptionally well is takes us through a A to Z of adult and graduate marketing.

He talks about a few things that he's passionate about. And by the end of the episode, it kind of comes together as a program that someone could follow.

SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it's really amazing. He does a great job of just kind of mapping out what you need to know to do this type of work. And he has had the success and the end can come back it up.

And so, I mean, even from the beginning of how do you even work with the faculty and others in your institution to actually develop the program and know what the name should be, things like that, all the way through to storytelling and differentiation and just some really practical tips about even just how you're doing your keywords and a lot of your digital marketing. So, boy, I feel like this has just been a, it's a little bit of a crash course, but it's really, really well done. And I really like what Shane brought to the table.

SPEAKER_00
Yes. So, not only am I encouraging you to listen to this episode, but get to know Shane, follow Shane through his social media. Now, here's our conversation with Shane Baglini.

Listeners know that Bart and I welcome our guests onto the show by putting them on the spot. And Shane, that's exactly what I'm going to do with you by asking you to share something that you've learned recently that you think would be either fun or interesting for our listeners to know.

SPEAKER_01
Okay. So, actually, you're not putting me on the spot because I did some work pre- this. Wonderful.

So, the three of us were kind of talking about sports as we started recording. So, I think I picked a good one. So, at the time of this recording, we're getting to the last weekend of the Major League Baseball season for anybody listening for reference.

So, for any of the baseball fans out there, I'm a Phillies fan. And Kyle Schwarber leans the majors and strikeouts with 212. What I learned this week is that during the entire decade of the 1990s, Tony Gwynn struck out 188 times total in the decade.

SPEAKER_00
He was a remarkable batter and human being. And I'm not as big of a baseball fan as you are, Shane. But I see his videos now of him instructing college and high school kids on how to make contact with the ball.

And he is still prophetic in his teaching on how to do that.

SPEAKER_01
And a bonus, Tony Gwynn's that I also learned. In his career, he came up to about 169 times with runners on second and third and never struck out once. So, there's my Tony Gwynn facts for you.

SPEAKER_00
Thank you. That's pretty cool. I love that.

He is someone that always gets my attention. He stops the scroll for me. And although I would love to talk baseball with Shane this entire episode, I'm not sure if our listeners would appreciate that.

So I am proud to welcome Shane Baglini from Muellenburg College, the Muellenburg Mules to the higher ed marketer podcast. He is someone that I'm seeing more and more on social media, on panels, on podcasts. And we wanted to have him on the show to talk about a couple of things, including how do we make sure that our schools are inviting marketing to the program development table.

Before we go into that conversation, can you tell us a little bit more about Muellenburg and your work there, Shane?

SPEAKER_01
Sure. Well, first of all, Troy and Bard, thanks for having me on. I'm a big fan of the podcast, so I'm excited to be here.

So Muellenburg is a 175-year-old private liberal arts college in Allentown, Pennsylvania. So for reference, we're about an hour and a half north of Philadelphia, hour and a half west of New York City, depending on traffic. So it could be six hours west of New York City.

Our undergraduate enrollment is about 2,000. Our graduate and continuing studies enrollment, which I'm responsible for, is about 100 to 150 at any given time. So we're relatively small.

And my work at Muellenburg College is as the senior director of marketing and recruitment for the division of graduate and continuing education. So we've got master's programs, graduate certificates, the graduate school launched just a couple of years ago, actually. So we're really new to the space.

And our continuing studies and adult education has been around for over 100 years. So we've got a really deep background in that. I've got a team of three under me that do more than I ever thought was humanly possible for three people.

So if they're listening, I appreciate them as well.

SPEAKER_00
That's great. Shane, as people follow you, which I hope they do after listening to you here on the podcast, if they aren't already familiar with you, you approach higher ed marketing with innovation, not afraid to try to experiment and to investigate. And one of the things that I know that you are passionate about is making sure that, again, marketing has input in the early stages as schools are creating programs and would love for you to guide our conversation or introduce our conversation by giving us some of those opinions.

And of course, after we set the stage, we always will talk about solutions. If you would please.

SPEAKER_01
It's something that I am really feel strongly about the need for marketing to be involved early in terms of launching new programs, but also to be involved regularly in terms of evaluating program portfolios. You know, I think a lot of us in the higher ed marketing space have experienced the situation where you're handed an approved program proposal that's gone through faculty and gone through market research and you're given this document and says, OK, now go enroll students for us. And I think that is probably it's definitely not the best approach.

I think more and more we're seeing that the nuances of some of these programs and our audiences are showing themselves in terms of how we generate interest. Marketing can really inform how people are searching. Our audience is behavior.

We have a, you know, we have an intimate knowledge of our audience. And so even before we get to the proposal and the formality of a program, bringing marketing in to say, you know, how is this program going to go over with our audience based on what you know about them? And that really can inform things like the structure of the program, how much the program costs, the time to complete, how we're offering it. So I think if, you know, I think it is something that is really, really important.

And I think we're going to talk about differentiation a little later, but I think it's a really strong way that you can differentiate yourself on the program level.

SPEAKER_03
So let me let me tease this out a little bit with you, Shane, because I mean, I think most of us on the, you know, our listening, our marketers and we've learned the four Ps of marketing, you know, the product, price, place and promotion. Do you think that part of the issue might be that not everyone on campus understands that marketing is more than just promotion? Let's unpack that a little bit, because I mean, it's not unique to Muhlenberg. It's not unique to a few.

I mean, I saw a couple posts on LinkedIn yesterday about, you know, I want to shout from the top of the mountains that, you know, marketing needs to be have a seat at the table for programs. I mean, so people are talking about this. Why do you think it might not be getting to the point of the people who are actually in charge of putting the programs together?

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I do think it's a little bit of that. I do think it is a lack of understanding about what marketing does on a college campus and at our institutions. If one of those Ps is not where it should be, you're already at a disadvantage.

And in this particular case, that P is the product. We, you know, I know that's a taboo word in higher ed, but we are, we are offering, we are offering a product and it's hard to differentiate, especially, you know, unless you're a giant brand name school, which we are not at Muhlenberg. So it's hard to differentiate and your programs are not competitive from, from, you know, that standpoint, especially when we're talking adult students where things like, you know, residence life and dining and recreation and all of those great college experience aspects are far less important for the adult student.

Right. The program is really what people are deciding on the cost of the program, the happy, how long it's going to take me to complete. I'm a busy person with jobs and kids and life.

So if we're not taking all that into account and we're just developing programs based on, you know, this is a popular field or we need an MBA or, or, you know, things like that. I think we're setting ourselves up to fail, unless we're, you know, unless for these, you know, the giant brand name institutions out there.

SPEAKER_03
Yeah. And I think it's interesting because I mean, if, if I think about the fact that, you know, I think a lot of times it's that, well, if you build it, they'll come. It's the, it's the classic field of dreams type of approach.

But I mean, if I look at those four Ps, I mean, there's a lot of schools that are failing in three of the Ps, just from the fact of the way it's going. I mean, we talk about the product. I mean, you know, is the program really a program that people are looking for? That's a one, the price.

I mean, again, we could go all day about pricing and how that works out too. But that's a big deal as well. And then the place, I think a lot of people get confused.

We're not talking about a location. We're talking about modality too. So to your point, if, if the program is hybrid only, or it's only on campus in the evenings, or it's, if it has a limit on that place aspect, I mean, we could be pulling up to the plate where they throw it to marketing and say, make this work.

And we've already failed on three of the four Ps. There's not much promotion is going to do.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I get a great point. I always, one of my favorite analogies, I forget where I heard this, if I wish I knew so I could give this person a shout out.

It, you're just saying a good soft can save a bad noodle. Yeah, I like that. You know, a million dollar budget, you can only, it can only do so much if your product is not competitive from the standpoint of what your audience is looking for.

When it really comes down to making the decision about going to school or going back to school for an adult or graduate student, what are they looking for? And is our program giving them that? Because if not, they'll find it somewhere else. It's just, that's just how consumers are in 2023. The consumers very savvy to say, I can find this somewhere else at the price.

And, and, you know, all the other aspects I need.

SPEAKER_03
Let's, let's unpack that for a second too, because one of the things I hear from a lot of schools is like, well, you know, 15 years ago, we had people, you know, the parking lot was full every night. You know, people were, you know, we couldn't keep people away or, or they'll say things like, you know, it just worked differently or what's the big deal? As I'm sure you have known that the whole idea of artificial intelligence and especially things like chat GPT are really starting to transform higher ed marketing. I really don't want anyone on this podcast to be left behind.

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I mean, you know, one out of four adults don't have a degree. We should be able to sell this like hotcakes. What's the deal? How is that? I mean, it's that old idea of I have a catcher's been I'm just going to keep letting them come in.

That's changed. And why do you think that's changed and how can we as marketers help communicate that?

SPEAKER_01
Well, a lot of things have changed in 15 years. Right. You think about first of all, the enrollment cliff. We all know about the enrollment cliff that's coming.

You know, the job market in 2023 is very strong. The COVID pandemic did not have the effect that, let's say, something like a recession would typically have on education. And people dollars are being stretched further than ever based on some of the things going on in the economy with interest rates and things of that nature.

I just think, you know, there is people have to decide what to do with their money and their time. And they're going to be really smart about about choosing what fills that time and what they spend their money on. You know, need meeting a degree is one thing.

Offering them something that gives them not only flexibility, but fits into their life is another thing. So, yes, there are one in four adults don't have a don't have a degree. That doesn't mean that what we're offering is automatically of value to them.

Right. You know, somebody asked me the other day about who are our competitors. And of course, I named off the the school in the area.

And we are in a very dense area in terms of graduate adult education. But I also named, you know, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, HubSpot Academy, all these little things that people can piece together to improve their resume, to improve their their career outlook. You know, people are seeking alternatives to higher education more than ever.

And combine that with sort of the attack on the institution of higher at itself and in terms of trust and value and questioning that and that being sort of the political argument or talking point in the moment. I think all those things are coming into play.

SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I like to add on to that list is life. I think a lot of people don't realize that life is probably the biggest competitor, especially for this particular audience. And it's, you know, just getting people to understand that, yes, I can do this.

And yes, it's been 20 years since I've been in a classroom, but I can make this work and I can, you know, flexibility will work. So I think there's a lot of things that work with that as well. But let me get back to kind of your point about, you know, being able to get marketing to the table early.

How is that working at Mullenburg? I mean, just give us some examples of maybe some successes that you guys have seen and how that works and that could be kind of a, you know, an inspiration or aspirational for other other institutions.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah. So so a really good example is we've got a really small portfolio of graduate programs. We're new to the space.

We're going to be growing a lot. One of the programs is a master's in applied analytics and from all the market research that we had from all the different industry trends that we saw, that should have been a really popular program in today's day and age. And we weren't not only were we seeing the enrollments that we expected, but we weren't seeing the interest that we thought we should be based on that program.

So my colleague and I, once I got on campus, we did some some honestly really base level research in terms of Google trends and things like that and quickly found out that people were not searching for the term applied analytics or the other terms that we were, you know, using from an SEO standpoint. And so that's where the interest piece came in. And of course, the interest drives enrollment.

We quickly shifted to not not bidding on those keywords at all and using things like data analytics and business analytics, things that were popular search terms. So we went from zero enrolled in fall of 22 to seven enrolled in fall of 23. That might seem like a small number.

SPEAKER_03
For a school like yours, it's significant.

SPEAKER_01
The cool part about that is we are launching a lot of new programs going forward. We have a graduate certificate in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging that we're thinking about spinning up into a full master's. And before we even went into any sort of market research or impact studies or things like that, my boss, who's our vice president of graduate and continuing education came to us and said, can you do some keyword research on what we should name this program? And we came up with masters in diversity leadership was what would generate the most interest and the most awareness of the program.

SPEAKER_03
I love that idea. And I think that's such a great example of just something simple. That I mean, I know that sometimes academics have a little bit of ego or they've got some, they've got some skin in the game that they want to make sure that that, you know, they want to be able to name it.

But I think that what you just illustrated is a great example of a way to really, you know, strategically for the, for the good of the university do that. So.

SPEAKER_00
Shane, I would like to change the subject to something that I've also heard you talk about and would like for you to share it with our listeners. And that is your passion and opinion on compelling and effective storytelling can drastically affect attracting students to a campus. And would like for you to go into that a little bit more and both where you feel institutions fail, but also where you've seen value of institutions that use storytelling effectively.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, this is, this is a topic that I'm, again, I'm very passionate about. And I would love to see improvement across the industry. And we, as an, as an industry, in terms of higher ed market, have done the comfortable thing for a long time in terms of storytelling.

And what I mean by that is the comfortable thing of we're going to try and showcase every aspect of our campus and our institution so that everybody is happy and we don't get any negative feedback from anybody.

SPEAKER_03
That always works.

SPEAKER_01
And I think very rarely do we focus on who is this video for? We can't answer everybody's question in one, you know, 30 second spot. So, so what stories do we want to tell? And this is where data comes into things. Using data to decide what stories we want to tell.

And, and really standing behind those as marketers and say, we're telling these stories because these are our personas that we built out or this is the audience we're going after. This is the demographic we need to, you know, have seen this video and telling, you know, using that data and then using our creativity, our, our, you know, art and our talent to tell those stories compellingly. And I think I don't see enough of it across higher ed, in my opinion.

You know, others, others may have a different opinion, but, but when I look across the landscape of higher ed, I don't think we as an industry do a really good job of storytelling. You know, we get asked about how do we differentiate ourselves as an institution? And we just talked about our academic offerings are very much the same as many of our competitors. When you, when you really look at it, we're all doing pretty much the same thing in terms of what we're offering.

So I think we differentiate ourselves by, you know, showing prospective students what it's, what it's like to be on our campus. What does it feel like to be at Nuremberg College is a question we ask ourselves all the time in our marketing, because we hear stories about, you know, adult students waiting in the parking lot for an hour because they're, they're hesitant to even come inside for a meeting because they don't know if they can do it. Well, okay.

So if we tell a story about somebody that had those same emotions or that was really nervous or anxious about coming back to school, that's the way we connect with that person. And so deliberately making those choices to say, there's somebody out there experiencing these emotions, and there's no better way to sort of exemplify those emotions than talking to somebody that has been through the same thing. So I think it's really important that we, that we think from that lens of who is this video for and who are we, what message are we trying to send that person?

SPEAKER_03
I think that's great. And I think you're right. There's not a lot of that happening in higher ed.

I mean, there's a, there's a few that I've seen that are the ones that stand out and we can probably all name the ones that we've seen do that. But I do think that's, that's kind of that key part of, of, you know, being empathetic in our marketing. And I love how you talked about that with just how do we want our marketing to make, make people feel and what do we want them to do when they feel that way? And I think that we get so, I think so much of higher ed marketing ends up being transactional where it's like, do this, do that equals this.

And let's show the picture of the people throwing mortarboards into the, into the air graduation, because that's the way higher ed marketing commercials are supposed to end. Uh, it doesn't have to be that way because that's what people end up kind of turning off a lot of times because it's like, I've seen this one before. But I think it's those, it's those ones that kind of hit somebody in the gut to say, I feel that way too.

And, oh, I'm not alone. And, oh, you mean I can do this? And, oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so I love what you're saying there, Shane.

One question I wanted to kind of ask before you got to that thread was you talked about bringing data into this to start doing those stories, to kind of start creating that. And, and a lot of people would be like, well, you just got done telling me about empathetic storytelling. And now you're pulling in data.

That seems, that seems incongruent. I mean, what are we talking about here? So tell me how you guys are practically using data to then be able to do the empathetic marketing.

SPEAKER_01
We have personas built out, which I'm sure most people do. One of the things we do though, in addition to that is, and actually we just started a new project relatively not long ago, we're doing an audit of all of our communications to respect the students. Um, you mentioned being very transactional and marketing.

So we're actually having somebody come in and audit our communications to say, you're too transactional here and not empathetic enough. And we're, so we're really trying to, you know, especially in the adult student realm, we're really trying to say, we understand what this process is like for you. We understand that this is an emotional journey.

And part of the way we decide on what stories to tell is looking at where are people falling off and our communications flows, or, you know, certainly what ads are people, what, what creative are people, you know, interacting with more, um, are people falling off at that first apply now email? Okay. Then we might be a little bit overly aggressive there and, and that might be overwhelming for somebody to get an apply now message and, you know, within three days of submitting a, an inquiry form or something like that. Right. Um, but really, you know, a lot of it honestly is, is intuition in terms of what data is the right data for us to be using. And I think that's where good marketing really comes into play, but also knowing you're knowing the behaviors of your audience and, and knowing the, the, the student decision, what being a life cycle, so to speak, uh, and, and finding ways to, uh, maybe get somebody over that pump of, okay, we, you know, this person, okay, is a working mom with, with kids and things like that.

Let's tell that story. Right. You know, because that is, that's a lot of our student body. And like you said, life, life circumstances, I think telling stories about people overcoming challenges is, is really important because, uh, everybody experiences that, um, you know, think back to going back, going to undergrad for the first time ever, if the most exciting time of your life, but it's also really scary.

You know, you're in a year of 17, 18 year old out on your own for the first time. Um, so, so let's address that in our communications and our, in our storytelling. Um, so I think it's a, it is a combination of art and science.

Um, but if, you know, just telling stories to tell stories and trying to include everything and not using data to decide who our audience is, um, who are, who are our demographics, who's interacting with us. Um, and then telling stories that, that match that data, I think it's really important.

SPEAKER_03
That's great. And before we move on to the next question, Troy, I just wanted to back up and kind of zoom out really far for a lot of our listeners because I know there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast that they're very small schools. They're smaller than what Shane at Moolenburg is.

And I want to just point out to especially all of you that are listening that you might be relating to, you know, being a small school, Shane's doing this as a small school. So what he's telling you and what he's talking about, this isn't something that you need to have, you know, monster budgets and do all these different things. A lot of this is just kind of the blocking and tackling of marketing.

It's the ability to, you know, be intuitive with what you're looking at, you know, being able to have some good personas, being able to be thoughtful in the way you're doing, being able to take some time and, and ask questions and step back rather than, um, as, as our friend, Ethan Braden has said on the podcast before, you really, as marketers need to be the drivers and you need to be able to set the pace for what's going on in your institution rather than being so driven that you don't have time to figure this stuff out. And so that's one thing that I just want to want to encourage everyone that as Shane's talking here, he's talking from a smaller school and a smaller institution. And I mean, he did say only 150 students in the, in the adult and graduate program.

So that so he is kind of marketing to a lot of the same level that a lot of our tiny schools are doing. So sorry to take up too much time with that. But I thought it was important, Shane.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because one of the things I would say is that, uh, sometimes we equate spending more money to better, better storytelling and better finished product. I don't think that's necessarily true. There are, there are so many people out there that are, you know, videographers and things like that and have the equipment that you need at a reasonable price.

Yeah. But the other point I would make is that people, um, are used to being like filmed on their iPhone or, or, you know, in selfie mode on FaceTime. They're not used to coming into a huge set with three cameras, a stylist, you know, makeup artist, lighting everywhere.

Um, I know those things are important, but, you know, scaling back on some of that is okay too, because I remember at my, during my time at the community college level, we, we did a video series where we wanted it to be a very intimate interview. Um, you know, we had students looking directly into the camera to try and connect them and, and, and, you know, kind of creative things like that. But, um, one of the things that I would do differently, not that the finished product was not, was not good.

Um, but every student that came into the interview room, their reaction was the same when they saw the setup. Wow. This is, this is like lights, camera action because we had a whole film crew. We had lighting and there was a, there was a makeup artist there and a, and a hair stylist, um, and, and it, honestly, it took away some of the authenticity right from, from the start.

It was the opposite of disarming somebody. It made them think, ooh, this is going to be, I'm nervous. I've never done this before.

SPEAKER_03
I've got to, I've got to do it right. I've got to say the right thing rather than just saying what they, so I think

SPEAKER_01
that's an important point I would make for, for the folks on a smaller budget. And actually the folks on the larger budget is just, if you want authenticity from students that aren't experienced on camera, maybe think about scaling back your, your camera crews and your, your equipment and things like that. And you might be surprised that at the results and the authenticity you get.

SPEAKER_00
Shane, earlier in our conversation, you talked about differentiation as we were going into the conversation around storytelling, but would like to ask you to go into differentiation a little bit deeper, especially from the perspective of a smaller school that is marketing into what we think as a community, a saturated market and some of the ways that you feel you're effectively differentiating Muellenberg.

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, this is probably one of the more challenging questions to answer as a marketer is how do we differentiate ourselves? And I think it's, it's challenging in a large way because when we work at our institutions, we and our, and our colleagues and other constituents feel very strongly that we are the best thing since sliced bread. We don't often look at the realistic picture of who we are and what we are and what we're trying to do. Muellenberg is an excellent, excellent institution.

You're going to get a wonderful education at Muellenberg. We are not Princeton. We, we are not an Ivy League school and, and that's okay.

So, so while our academic quality is really excellent, we need to be sure that we're, we're differentiating against our competitors and not our aspirations. You know, you look at when I look at our competitors, I often look at what are they putting out there in terms of marketing material and things like that. But I also look at what, what are they offering to students that we're not? And how can I sort of message around other things that if we're not competitive and let's say, let's say we cost more than another school.

Okay. How can I, what's another message I can send that doesn't have to do with cost and that is going to get somebody's mind off of just the cost of something. Keeping perspective is really important when we differentiate.

And I always, I always also think the best way to differentiate when all else fails is our students being able to tell a story about, we just wrapped up a video shoot last week with one of the most incredible people I've ever met. She's a mother of four. She's a 25 year military veteran is she just graduated with her master's degree from Muhlenburg and did all this, you know, just, just an incredibly impressive person.

And to me, that differentiates Muhlenburg beyond any sort of metric I can possibly throw out there in terms of cost or caring faculty or something like that. But somebody watching that video and seeing this person accomplish what she did with all of the life circumstances that she's, she's had, I think is, is one of the most compelling messages I could ever put together as a marketer. So I think perspective and also utilizing, you know, your students lived experiences is really important and differentiating.

SPEAKER_03
I've been teasing the idea of mission fit a lot lately and sometimes people get confused. They think, oh, that's just a faith based school type of term. I think that every school has a mission fit student, a student that is going to be able to excel and succeed at your school because they fit your school because it's, it's the way they think, it's the way they live, it's the, it's the mission that they are.

And I'm going to, I'm going to drop a little bit of a teaser here and forgive me, Troy, I don't think I told you I was going to do this, but I am actually finishing up a book, the title is Chasing Mission Fit. And the whole idea is exactly what you're talking about, Shane, is the idea of how do we make sure that we are figuring out the type of students that are going to succeed. And those are the ones we want to go after.

Those are the ones that we want to be talking to. I really loved your point about the fact that, you know, schools need to understand who they are. I mean, yes, you're not Princeton and nor is, you know, 4,000 other schools, you know, in the United States.

It's, and so how, how are you who you are and how can you find the students that are going to be the ones that are looking for you? I think that's where a lot of marketing goes. And so a lot of what you've talked about is that differentiation. And I love what you're doing with the storytelling and, and, you know, being able to just the video, the way that you're highlighting those students that are succeeding at your school.

What other strategies are you using? I mean, you talked a little bit about video, talked about some of the other things, but what are some other strategies that you're doing to really being able to differentiate yourselves a little bit more in your marketing?

SPEAKER_01
So one of the interesting things that we've been doing is particularly with new programs, but also some existing programs is we've been working with a partner on, I guess it would be called enhanced personas. But with those personas, we're going a little bit deeper than just demographic information. So we're able to look at things like employer, industry, seniority, experience level, and how that fits with our program and our intended student.

And what that gives us not only is really good, good hard data, but it lets us start to build an even deeper audience for these new programs. Some of the characteristics that we're focused on are, like I mentioned, not demographic, they're more sort of behavioral. We've been looking at things like middle management profile for people that want to get to the next level of their organization.

We've been looking at things like low culture profiles where somebody might not be necessarily thrilled with further working and how can we take advantage of that. So we're trying to really get granular in terms of who our programs were intended for and who would benefit the most from our programs and then marketing to not only those people that come back from our data, but building look-alike audiences based on that data so that we know we're not just casting a wide net and hoping there was an extremely limited number of people that are going to go back to school come to us. We're targeting people at a really granular level and we know that our program is a fit for them just based on their characteristics and their profile.

That's great. And so let me ask you this

SPEAKER_03
because I know there's a lot of people out there that are dying to ask this question if they realize it or not. So how do I talk to the board and the leadership when they say, why am I not seeing more

SPEAKER_01
billboards and hearing more radio ads? Yeah, that's I think everybody's been asked that question.

SPEAKER_03
Yeah, because I mean the way we're doing marketing, the way you described it,

SPEAKER_01
they aren't going to see anything. Yeah, and that's I get asked that question all the time. I don't see our ads and my automatic response is good.

You're not supposed to see our ads. I'm happy to show them to you, but if you're seeing my ad on your LinkedIn or Google, search, undo it, then my targeting is off. When they ask the question, why don't I see any billboards? My other response is, first of all, they're really expensive.

So people on a tight budget like myself cannot necessarily afford a 12 month outdoor campaign that would generate some results. One of the things I would suggest to people listening is to make sure you've got the entity URLs or some other form of tracking on those billboards so that you have some backup to say, okay, we put this up for six months and look at here's the metrics. But further, I would say when you're doing a radio ad or something like that or outdoor, yes, I can put a billboard on the interstate here in Bully I Valley and a million people will probably see it in a week or a month.

I'm assuming that those people are, one, they live here and they're not just passing through for work. Two, they have the education level that we need. Three, they're interested in coming back to school.

And four, they're going to remember my ad. So there's just so many variables that make them hard to measure. And certainly results speak for themselves.

Our enrollment is going up because of our digital ad efforts. And we don't do really any out of home other than a couple of things here and there. So results certainly help.

But having those measurements of efforts that you have put out there and shelling, this wasn't necessarily the most successful and here's the budget that went into it. And those kind of things are probably the easiest way to answer that question with leadership. I think billboards are effective in some ways, but really they just make us feel good about where we work and where we went

SPEAKER_03
to school and things like that. Yeah. And I don't have any, I'm not trying to dismiss the fact that that out of home or Omni Channel is not important. I think it is.

I mean, it's extremely important for brand awareness. And I think that for certain schools, that is the wise and correct play.

SPEAKER_00
Shane, as we wind up the episode, is there a last thought or maybe a piece of advice you could offer that could easily and immediately be implemented by a listener? Yeah. My biggest piece of advice

SPEAKER_01
would be to go check your keywords that you're bidding off. Really though, I mean, it's something that anybody can do if you've got access to Google ads or Google trends. And just make sure that you were bidding on the right keywords that people are searching for.

Just because your program is named to what it's named, that does not mean that people are searching for that. So go check your keywords and make sure that they are matching what people are searching, not necessarily what you're calling

SPEAKER_00
your program or how you're messaging it. Thank you, Shane. And you gave a great example earlier in the conversation on the impact that had, and that turned a flailing program into a program that you saw immediate response to once you did that.

Is that correct? That is correct. That is,

SPEAKER_01
that went from generating very little interest to being by far the most leans we get on any program by a large, large percentage. So it really, it took us about a half an hour to figure it out, and it made all the difference in the world. Thank you very much, Shane.

Shane, if someone

SPEAKER_00
does that exercise or had a question about anything else that we've discussed today and would like to reach out to you, how do you prefer to be reached out to? Yeah, so you can find me, I'm on LinkedIn

SPEAKER_01
at Shane Baglini. I am also on Twitter, I refuse to call it X. I want Twitter at Shane underscore Baglini, or you can feel free to shoot me an email at ShaneBagliniatElinberg.

edu.

SPEAKER_00
I have been looking forward to this conversation for quite a while. Thank you for being a guest here on the podcast, and I look forward to getting to know you and further conversations going forward.

SPEAKER_01
Likewise, Troy and Bart. Thanks guys for having me.

SPEAKER_00
It's been our pleasure. Bart, do you have any final thoughts you would like to share before we close

SPEAKER_03
this episode? Yeah, I just want to kind of underscore a couple of things that Shane had talked about. I really liked what he talked about with answering the question of how do we want students to feel when they engage with us, with our marketing. Love that whole conversation that we had in that section, and I think that's something that if you don't take away a lot, I think his tip about the keywords, his tip about storytelling and how to make people feel is a really good one.

And I think that also don't lose sight of the whole idea of really making sure that marketing has a voice at the table when it comes to program development, even to the point of all four of the piece. I mean, program development, pricing, place, and promotion, you as a marketer should at least bring the conversation up to leadership to say, here's why I think this is important. And the higher head marketer podcast was Shane, so that was really important.

So let's do that. And so I think that's something that you need to really kind of take a look at and not be afraid to kind of flex your marketing muscle a little bit to kind of get that seed at the table. So thanks again, Shane.

This has been a great conversation. Likewise. Thanks guys.

SPEAKER_00
We'd also like to express our gratitude to Rob Conlon at Westport Studios, where he does the editing to make us sound wonderful. And some episodes he has to work a little harder than others. The higher head marketer podcast is sponsored by Kailer Solutions, an education market and brand and agency where Bart has these types of conversations with higher ed marketers every day.

And by Ring Digital, providing direct mail for digital by accurately serving ads directly to the devices of each days of the enrollment funnel. On behalf of Bart Kailer, Shane Baglini, and myself, Troy Singer, thank you for joining our conversation.

SPEAKER_02
You've been listening to the higher ed marketer to ensure that you never miss an episode. Subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player. The higher ed marketer is a production of Kailer Solutions and Ring Digital in partnership with Westport Studios.

Views and opinions expressed by guests on the higher ed marketer are their own and may not reflect the views and opinions of their organization. Know someone who is a mover and a shaker in higher ed marketing? Visit www.higheredmarketerpodcast.

com and click on our contact us page. We'd love to have you tell us about them. Until next time.