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Institutions Need Audits, But What Should Be Audited?
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Enrollify_ThePivot_Audio_Episode8_UsingSummerforStrategicPlanning_Version1
[00:00:00] Jaime Gleason: Spending that's happened in the last five years. It's like unreal. And I think the problem that I see with it is exactly what you said. It's like this massive increase in spending and zero increase in accountability. We just think that's the solution is like just spend more and hopefully it'll like lead to more.
[00:00:22] Have you ever wondered if there is a different, maybe even a better way to tackle an enrollment or marketing issue? Are there processes or practices in your institution that you wonder why does this exist and why has no one bothered to disrupt it?
[00:00:37] Tony Fraga: Or what about a hot new enrollment marketing trend?
[00:00:41] That you've been asked to jump on, but you're not really sure how to do it the right way, or even if it's worth doing at all,
[00:00:49] Jaime Gleason: believe me, we get it. I'm Jamie Gleason, a 20 year veteran of higher ed, who has worked both inside and outside the institution and on [00:01:00] the vendor side of enrollment
[00:01:01] Shane Kehl: marketing. And I'm Tony
[00:01:02] Tony Fraga: Fraga, an 18 year recovering higher ed marketer.
[00:01:05] Who has seen just about every enrollment marketing model in the industry, and we've teamed up to launch the Pivot podcast to take an issue, a hurdle, or an outdated process, and suggest ways to pivot into a new direction or launch into a better process. Us as much as possible. We'll use actual examples, but we'll try to keep all the takeaways as fresh as possible.
[00:01:31] You'll
[00:01:31] Jaime Gleason: laugh, heck you might even cry, but we promise this is a podcast that you won't want to miss. The Pivot is proud to be a part of the Enroll five Podcast network, and you can subscribe to this podcast@enrollfify.org or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:53] Shane Kehl: Alrighty. Episode eight of the Pivot. Last episode, we chatted a bunch about building a [00:02:00] 12 month enrollment marketing game plan, very high level, kind of bucketing things into four core groups and how we would allocate.
[00:02:06] That was a good one time. That was a good one. Energy effort, budget into that. Um, was a good one. What was a good one? And so it's probably then fairly easy to listen to that and be like, cool. That was a lot. Yeah. Uh, now what do I do? Like I have my plan. Where do I can't move all five things forward at the same time?
[00:02:26] Where do I start? And I think the, the common thing that when we went through the pivot of you have to adjust your time. Mm-hmm. I slashed a bunch of the time that you all could allocate to certain things nobody even thought about. Mm-hmm. Or mentioned touching the time that was dedicated to the audit.
[00:02:41] And so I think that's a good place to start. And obviously we've all also mentioned how that's Yep. Kind of the beginning of the snowball rolling down the hill is, is the audit you, you need that to determine where best to focus your time and energy for the biggest return on whatever it may be. And that will look different for the different components of your marketing, your [00:03:00] admissions process, whatever the things you are are auditing.
[00:03:03] And so we'd love to think about. Um, the audit way more specifically, and let's kind of maybe pivot off of, you don't have the opportunity to audit all of the things. Let's say you can outsource two audits, um, and then internally you have to do one with you and your team. What two things. So you're picking from the smorgasboard of stuff.
[00:03:29] What two things do you decide to outsource to a vendor, um, that they will then audit for you? And then what thing do you regroup with your internal team to kind of audit,
[00:03:39] Jaime Gleason: determine? So I immediately go to, I don't know that I've ever really met too many people who work in higher ed who feel like they have a real handle on seo.
[00:03:52] I feel like SEO is one that's a pretty easy, like let's get an outside perspective from. [00:04:00] A vendor when it comes to seo, because I just don't think, I, I think a lot of people in higher ed who are practitioners are just kind of afraid of it. They don't know all the, the, the angles of it. You know, they don't know whether or not they, they should be looking for technical things on their website, which then there's like, oh, is that our job?
[00:04:16] Or is it the webmaster's job? Or blah, blah, blah. Like all these kind of things. It's like my gut says that one is an easy one in my head to go to a vendor just cuz I feel like they have. They're specialists in SEO a lot of times.
[00:04:32] Tony Fraga: I agree with you on that one. I, I, I think. Seo, you
[00:04:36] Jaime Gleason: gotta, you said that make you don't wanna agree with me.
[00:04:38] Like you most likely are not gonna agree with me. On the other points,
[00:04:43] Tony Fraga: we shall see. I have some that I'm a little bullish on these days. Yeah, I'm a, I'm about to get on my soapbox, but I will just open a can on us. I love what you said about seo and I would encourage people, if you are gonna audit your seo, make sure you're auditing both the technical side and the content side.
[00:04:59] It's just [00:05:00] on a call. Recently, you know, had a conversation with someone who said, yep, we've got this great organic search partner. They're doing all of our seo. And 90% of what they were doing was all technical seo. And it's great. They're telling us how to restructure website. They're eliminating all these dead pages.
[00:05:15] They're, um, updating metatags and and alt text descriptions. They're working on page load speed time, all good things, all good things. Are they also analyzing your keyworded rankings, where you're ranking, where your next opportunities are, helping you develop the topic clusters, like there's a whole content side of seo, which is you can just tweak your website a lot and that will produce results, but you also have to do the other side of seo.
[00:05:41] There's back links, there's all these other aspects. Just make sure when you're doing that with a vendor, They're well versed in all aspects of seo. Um, but any audit I'd be happy with, I'd be happy with any outside audit. I agree with you. Most higher ed folks really don't ha have the in-house skillset to really
[00:05:59] Shane Kehl: audit their [00:06:00] seo.
[00:06:00] Jaime Gleason: Yeah, I, I'm sure there, I'm sure some institutions out there do have like e experts who are there, but whether or not they have the time. And then I think the other part is like, um, Yeah, I, I would, yeah, I, I, I'm, I'm definitely a believer in that one. Sorry Shane, I cut you
[00:06:15] Shane Kehl: off. I think it's a good clarifying point what content SEO is.
[00:06:19] I think when people think content seo, they automatically think, they think about, uh, maybe the core of content long form pages and blog posts, right? Where content SEO can is just words on the page, your headers, your descriptive copy of your programs, things like that. You're using acronyms. Like, spell those words out.
[00:06:39] You'll get more value from it. Those types of things. That's still content seo. Just because if you're thinking, I don't have any eBooks, I, I don't need content seo, that's the wrong way to think about it. Content is not put together and packaged. I. Premium resources always it, it is just the stuff that lives on your website that are the words, um, different from the backend [00:07:00] words that are the, you know, the meta descriptions and those types of things that, um, you're talking about from the technical.
[00:07:04] So I think that's a good clarifying point so that people don't immediately Yeah.
[00:07:07] Jaime Gleason: Even the pages on your website, your website pages have concept that needs to be, would be.
[00:07:12] Shane Kehl: Yep, for sure. Right.
[00:07:14] Tony Fraga: The simple example is, Right. Adding to the copy, like the copy editing, the crafting of the words, um, on the page and where they are.
[00:07:28] Things that will get those words to be read by bots and or increase. Lead towards a better user's experience so they stay on the page longer. That's all the benefits of like content seo, whereas like you could have the exact same words, not change them at all, but they're not the right header attacks.
[00:07:50] And if you just change the header tag from not being a header tag at all to being H two, and you make the three subsection headers H two [00:08:00] consistently, that's a technical thing with, if you didn't change the words at all and just made that technical change, you would be moving your SEO forward in optimizing it.
[00:08:09] So one is more technical is, you know, is more of the. The, the kind of more backend things I like to think about. Yeah. But the, these circles overlap a little bit. They definitely overlap. I totally understand where it's confusing. But yeah, if you're thinking about you need a writer and someone who's like a content person who can help you put more words or rewrite the words
[00:08:28] Better than you're in content SEO land.
[00:08:34] Zach Busekrus: Alrighty, we're gonna play a game, guys. Okay. So first and foremost, get a pen, get a paper, pull out your notes, app on your phone, whatever it might be. Okay. Got it. Great. Alright. What keyword does your website currently rank for? Take a couple seconds, right? 1, 2, 3, 4. I give you a few, not just a couple.
[00:08:53] What doesn't it rank for that you think it should rank for? Okay. 1, 2, 3, 4. Now, what [00:09:00] are a few keyword opportunities that you could be winning on if you just simply tweaked some of your existing website? Copy. Got it. Okay. How'd you do? Ooh. Not so hot. Not sure what you can, what you're currently ranking for or not sure what you could be ranking for.
[00:09:16] Well, that's okay because our friends at DD Agency want to help you answer all of these questions. DD Agency is a higher ed specific marketing technology agency, but it's conducted countless SEO audits for colleges and universities across the country. In these audits, they detail where you currently rank.
[00:09:32] What you could be ranking for, exactly how copies should be tweaked on website pages and so much more. If this sounds like something that you could benefit from, give the guys a DEI agency a ping and be sure to mention that enroll I sent you to claim a 10% discount on any of their s e O offerings. So head on over to enroll fify.org/dda seo.
[00:09:56] That's DDA as in DD Agency seo. Or simply follow the [00:10:00] link in the show notes below that will guarantee you get a 10% discount off of your audit. All right, head on over to enroll fify.org/dd SEO o or simply Google DEI Agency find DEI agency's website and be sure to mention that you heard about them through enroll I when you request your audit.
[00:10:17] All right, folks, back to the show.
[00:10:20] Shane Kehl: And I think a big thing there too is, and what's hard and why. I think agreeing with you both of that's the perfect one to outsource to a vendor is. Everybody is searching this way. That's why this term has 5,000 monthly searches and the thing you have has 30, it doesn't matter.
[00:10:36] In the student's mind, those are the same. They don't know the difference between the two. You might, but they don't explain to them why they're different on this PA boom. Now you have both.
[00:10:44] Jaime Gleason: And I think the interesting part about that, and when we can leave this topic in a second, but I feel like the interesting part about that is that sometimes, and again, this is the value of having a vendor, do it as a vendor can come in and say, To the faculty, to whomever, this is how you need to talk [00:11:00] about it, because this is what people are typing into the search bar, not the way you've been talking about it.
[00:11:04] And sometimes internally that just can't be done. You can't have that convers, you know, like, it's like, no, the faculty are gonna like rule, rule the marketing department down because like, that's not how we talk about it. When a vendor comes in, they can kind of take that bullet for you and help, help you like move that needle in order to increase your playback.
[00:11:22] Every, everyone wins. Everyone wins in that situation. Yeah.
[00:11:25] Shane Kehl: We've had clients come to us and say, Hey, can you say this in front of this group? Can you send me an email that says these things so I can forward it to other people? Cuz if I say it, they won't listen, they don't care. But if you say it as an SEO expert, they have no, they'll be like, okay, fine.
[00:11:39] Right. And it's like, well, it's same, same words but from a different mouth. It, it carries different weight. I'm gonna give a
[00:11:45] Tony Fraga: shout out. To Becky Hood from the Southern Methodist University School, Simmons School of Education and Human Development. I was on a delightful call with her. She's the assistant dean of the Simmons [00:12:00] School, and she said, this is, this is one of those rare things that breaks what we, Noah just said.
[00:12:05] She, we were reading the pages together, looking at her website and she goes, you know, I think the words we're using to describe ourselves there. Sometimes we just use these words that we think are right, but those are not the right words. We don't even use the word teacher anywhere there. And she was reading this paragraph that uses this like word with educators in it, but it was not, it was for teachers and the word teachers was nowhere in the paragraph for this program.
[00:12:30] And she was totally, she goes, Our word. She was calling out that they were fluffy and they were not the words that their audience uses and identifies as themself. Shout out to Becky Hood of SM SMU Simmons School. She nailed it. Totally. Right. I was like Florida, I had nothing. I was like, Bravo. Yes, I have, I rest my case like nothing more to add to this like, She nailed it.
[00:12:55] Jaime Gleason: She, she mic dropped. Actually, she's Zoom. Mic dropped on that one and like, I'm out of [00:13:00] here. That's right.
[00:13:02] Tony Fraga: All right. I got another one. I got another one though. So cuz you, that was a good one. This one could be vendor or not. So I think this one is a vendor one. Okay. It
[00:13:10] Shane Kehl: it is, but I can't wait to hear what you're gonna say.
[00:13:13] Jaime Gleason: It's a
[00:13:13] Tony Fraga: twist. So I do with a twist. I think most schools are already have a vendor partner. Handling their digital advertising, their paid pay per click digital advertising, predominantly display in search ads. So I would say the majority of our listeners work at an institution. Mm-hmm. Where some outside vendors already doing that.
[00:13:36] So this is where this is an an audit. I think they need to go and do a deeper audit of their digital ads and ask very specific questions. To understand true attribution of specific ad campaigns.
[00:13:55] Jaime Gleason: Cut through the click throughs and the impressions? Yeah,
[00:13:58] Tony Fraga: I think so. [00:14:00] Whether we, I think if that's money spent, so the vendor can do a deeper audit, fine.
[00:14:05] That's the outside vendor, have them do it. But a lot of you, or if it's money spent with a different vendor to audit the digital ads, which I know would be controversial, but you can do that. Or if it's not money, money spent, it's already included in the services they get, but it's work you've gotta do to ask the questions, to get the answers.
[00:14:28] There is a massive, massive lack of understanding that marketing communications professionals at institutions or enrollment managers at institutions have. Of how the digital ads are actually doing impacting inquiries, applicants and enrolled students. They're limited to too much vanity metrics and there's way too much money being wasted on ad campaigns that should not be going there, and no one's asking the right questions or the reports they're getting.
[00:14:59] [00:15:00] Yeah, they stick. They are so lacking and it's, it's a crime and it's totally not sustainable and we need to hold ad campaigns. To like how they're impacting the bottom. They have to be attributed.
[00:15:13] Shane Kehl: I think that's the bigger problem. If I was an institution and I think I, we were in the same boat of, I was kind of getting, you know, vanity metrics, even decent conversion metrics.
[00:15:24] But again, numbers, I think my, I would want an outside consultant to say, what are my options as far as how detailed of a report could I get? Not necessarily with this vendor, not necessarily with. The current software that I have, but what, what is like the pinnacle of being able to report from ad click to enrolled student?
[00:15:45] How much can I get and how do I get that? And then I'll pair down what I think is feasible for our institution. Because I think the, the monitoring of the ads is great, but again, if it's like, but if you still have none of that reporting, it doesn't matter. Great. Go tweak the ads, go do [00:16:00] these. You get the audit, they make all these changes, but you still have this lack of insight where it's like you didn't get anymore.
[00:16:05] Information you didn't get any further in progressing it, but if you got some sense of like, okay, I could actually, I could, I should be able to ask this vendor, give me these five metrics and they should be able to report on that. And if they can't, that's a problem with the vendor. That's not a problem with your Facebook ads.
[00:16:20] And so instead you need to move to this platform, do this thing, whatever it might be to get a better sense. Cause I think maybe that's where a lot of schools have Yeah, the struggle. There are certainly digital ad vendors that.
[00:16:33] Jaime Gleason: Yeah. Well that's, I think the problem with that, and I'm pushing back a little bit on this idea, like I, I, first of all, I'm not pushing back on the bigger idea that everyone needs to be asking those questions.
[00:16:43] The problem is they need to be asking those questions last year, because once you figure out that your vendor doesn't even have the information that you need and you have to hire a new one, then you have to wait another year to get the information that you need to find out. Right? So, Maybe the takeaway is you [00:17:00] need to ask those questions right now, the questions that Tony mentioned earlier, and make sure that like you're holding people accountable.
[00:17:06] The, I mean, it's remarkable the number of, like the increases in digital ads spending that's happened in the last five years. It's like, it's insane. Unreal. It's like in the very competitive. Yeah, and, and I think the problem that, that I see with it is like, Is exactly what you said. It's like this massive increase in spending and zero increase in accountability.
[00:17:30] Like, yeah, we just think that's the solution is like, just spend more and hopefully it'll like lead to more. It's like, no, that's not exactly how it always happens, so we have to be asking the, those questions.
[00:17:42] Tony Fraga: Yeah, and my, my reasoning for investing in this is not a witch hunt. It's not, I'm not, I know I sound a little negative about.
[00:17:49] Certain vendors and, and, and how they're kind of running away with institutions monies without having anything accountable. But I actually want people in higher ed to be more educated and understand what it takes to do [00:18:00] digital advertising. Cuz I think they don't get it. They don't understand. There's a lot of experimentation.
[00:18:04] Some ad campaigns produce no leads. And you need to do that and run it with that audience in order to know that that audience needs to be tweaked or isn't gonna work. There's not like a magic ball where you already know the ad campaigns that are gonna do it. An ad campaign has multiple ad sets in it.
[00:18:20] Indeed, most of the ad platforms say they're all algorithm based and bot base, where the, the ad platform is controlling the words and the images for you. Like you're not, man, we're not manually putting up a billboard here anymore. It's like, You're giving, entering data into a machine, an AI that's going to variate all these parameters based on what is producing the best results.
[00:18:43] And then you're constantly tweaking. So, Higher ed folks need to get used to seeing things and not freak out at their vendors that why did that ad campaign not produce results? It's like, well, that was part of the process to get you this one that did produce a hundred leads, but we had to experiment for a couple weeks and tweak [00:19:00] budgets and audiences until it nailed it.
[00:19:01] Right. And if you don't let it run it's course, you don't get the data from the system. Like it's just how it works. I'm not asking higher ed folks to be ad experts. Right. I am trying to increase the conversation so that smarter decisions can be made about. Let's that idea that you just said, Jamie, that like, if we just buy more, it'll work better.
[00:19:22] I think the way out of that is educated through deeper reports. Oh yeah. A hundred percent the audit. And so it's like, for this program or this school or this college or this audience, for that to be effective, the price point is here and we would need to invest this much. We're not willing to do that, and that school's not a higher priority as this other one.
[00:19:44] Then you make a better decision and everyone knows, and that way the people at that school aren't freaking out at you saying, why aren't I seeing ads for my school? We did an audit and we did the research and we found out that in order to get an applicant it would take $180,000 [00:20:00] to really get, you know, 10 applicants for your program, and that's gonna suck up 90% of the total available budget for all the schools and programs.
[00:20:08] Therefore, we we're investing in other areas. I think that's, that's the truth of it. And those are the kinds of conversations that just aren't really happening. And it's hard to see that when you get a report that just says, we got you bazillion million impressions, this many visits to your webpage and these many people click to the, uh, the app start button on your slate application page.
[00:20:32] And so we know that this worked. That's just not enough. You gotta break that down.
[00:20:37] Jaime Gleason: I'm like torn on this one because can't have you guys agree on that. The reality is like if you're running an admissions office, most, most likely, like your digital ads are like probably represent one of the bigger spends that you have in the given, you know, fiscal year.
[00:20:51] So in that regard, I definitely agree with what Tony's saying. Mm-hmm. But there's this other part of me like that says, having someone look at your [00:21:00] website as a user, outside user perspective and understand the UX of that. Is really important, but I'm just gonna put a caveat on that and say you might be able to accomplish some of that if you don't control the website.
[00:21:15] Maybe that's your web team that has to do that audit and maybe they have the option to do that. So like share the wealth of the auditing. I definitely think that there's this, yeah, kind of a routine problem where, you know, within higher ed where. Like, we just get used to it. We get used to the site, we get used to the way it like rolls and the calls to action, all that.
[00:21:35] And it's like, oh yeah, it's good enough. And sometimes like just good enough is not, you know, adequate to, you know, beat that, that competing school that's like offering a little bit more financial aid or something like that. We've gotta get that right on the money. So, uh, it's just so hard because it's like an, it's.
[00:21:55] It's not a direct outlay of money, but it represents revenue that you're not [00:22:00] getting if the experience on the web is really bad.
[00:22:03] Tony Fraga: So what about auditing other things? What about com flows?
[00:22:06] Jaime Gleason: Yeah, that's the one that I would do internally. That's the one I think you could do internally. And it's like, that's one where I, I love like, you know, again, kind of hearkening back to my director of admissions days like, Getting the team in a room thinking through like, Hey, what are the conversations that we're having?
[00:22:22] What are the things that like land really well? Where are we not representing this experience, like in our, in our written word? And like making sure that all of that kind of is, is somehow in a com flow or somehow represented in different comp flows to different stages of the cycle. I think that one can be done internally and I think actually that one can be done.
[00:22:42] Internally very well. If you have a capable team and a team that's really kind of exercised and like verbalizing conversations and pain points that they're hearing from students and pride points that they want to talk about for the institution. So I would, I would definitely kind of move that one toward the [00:23:00] internal side.
[00:23:00] Shane Kehl: I would do website, internal com, flow external, cause I think it's easier. So for website internal, I think you could use something like a hot jar, for example, which is a. Website tracking tool that allows you to see scroll percentage. The heat map allows you to see where their mouse is hovering on all these pages.
[00:23:18] And then I think, yeah, you can basically, you and your team can get in a room, but all right, they're only scrolling. 40% of the way down this page, which means they're missing all this information. What's actually core, what I think it'll help with is what is actually core that we want people to see? And you're dealing with limited space, right?
[00:23:33] You can't, if you're even, don't say nobody. Nobody is dumb enough to think, let me just put. 600 word paragraph in there with nothing
[00:23:44] Jaime Gleason: else. Is that the challenge to find that website space, find that
[00:23:46] Shane Kehl: website or anything? I'm just cram it as many words. Yeah, that's true. I'm sure it exists and now I'm gonna get attacked.
[00:23:52] But I think it'll force you to kind of think through like what are our really, like our power phrases are, are things that we really want to have people when they land on this page, [00:24:00] they're trying to find X, let's present that to them as clear as possible with a clear call to action. Cuz no one's getting to the bottom of the page to then go click to schedule a call because.
[00:24:09] They found the information they needed, they didn't even actually know that was an option yet. They either clicked somewhere else on your website or they left. If they left, that's not a terrible thing. That might mean they got the information they wanted if they come back or if they clicked to another page, where did they go?
[00:24:22] Maybe they're trying to find additional information that wasn't clear and obvious on the page they thought it would be on. And so you can kind of restructure internally and you're, you're playing with a puzzle at that point with your team. That I think is a really good exercise, cuz you'll know your website better than a vendor will.
[00:24:36] Because they'll look at it at a high level, but they don't know all of the pages. They don't know where all the things, I mean, the websites are massive, every little thing. Some schools also have a subpage for every possible imaginable thing, and so maybe tackling that one internally. And then from a com flow standpoint, having a vendor more look at it, not necessarily, not necessarily for messaging, but more for [00:25:00] structure and flow of, there are some, I mean, When enrolled, I did their big a hundred RFI report and some, just as I mentioned, the 600 word paragraph, they're putting that in an email.
[00:25:12] It's just terrible. And I think they would think. Let me rewrite that 600 word paragraph and use 600 different words there. Now it's better for
[00:25:22] Tony Fraga: our listeners who don't know. Just just to catch people up. Enro, I did a secret shopper experiment and tested over a hundred RFI forms and analyzed the emails in particular.
[00:25:35] That they, that they experienced our research team experience after they were all business schools. Um, it was very revealing and there's a really, really cool whole presentation on this. Yeah,
[00:25:48] Shane Kehl: yeah. We should link to that. I think it actually helps with some of your email stuff later too, of here's the catchy stuff on the website.
[00:25:54] How can we have an email that compliments that, mimics that a little bit, compliments it, rather than a vendor coming in [00:26:00] and saying, Add a button here, add an image here, add a thing here. Right? And it's like, okay, great, but how valuable was that? And you are not any smarter after reading that. And you're not any more aware of how to, how to maybe utilize the information.
[00:26:14] You know? The
[00:26:14] Jaime Gleason: other thing that I also would maybe put is the preface to making this decision that I probably should have done at the beginning, but now that I've thought about it a little bit more, it's too late. You can't back back. I, I would actually use my regular, like my weekly enrollment report to figure out like where.
[00:26:30] Are, what's the conversion area that has the biggest problem? And use that to help me figure out like, okay, if I'm looking at, you know, like this section, like this is the area I wanna audit this, like that would help me determine like, where am I gonna put my energy? You
[00:26:46] Shane Kehl: know? So that brings up an interesting question.
[00:26:49] Okay. Yeah.
[00:26:53] Tony Fraga: Two things. I wonder if what, how you guys think about doing an [00:27:00] outsourcing to a, a vendor, a consultant, your enrollment report, your diagnostics. Like, because I immediately, I'm thinking, oh yeah, Jamie, Jamie, the, the VP of enrollment, he's got his weekly enrollment report, and you got your pulse on the numbers.
[00:27:17] But here, I, I wonder, there's a part of me that's second guessing this and saying maybe that's the thing that should be an outsourced audit because we're too close to it. In higher ed, the workers in higher ed. You're too close to it, Jamie, and you need a different perspective. I think on like when we get diagnostics and we say, look here, here's the questions we ask.
[00:27:37] I'll just be super transparent. We wanna know. I wanna know like, okay, from top to the bottom, I want to know top of the funnel traffic. How many, how many visits are they getting? And then I want to know like total submissions, like how many total people are they getting to convert on any sort of form. And then out of those, how many are actually more [00:28:00] serious and actually inquiring any sort of rmi rfi.
[00:28:03] Then I wanna get down to. People starting apps, then I wanna get down to people completing apps. Then I want to get down to admitted students and then deposits and enrolled. And when you get the truth of that, you start to analyze some things and see things differently. Because I feel like the Jamie's out there, like you in this analogy, you're too, too close to it where you, there's certain, uh, transition points there that you just accept as standard as default.
[00:28:31] Like, oh, it'll always be that way.
[00:28:33] Shane Kehl: You're always looking at your own year over year data and going, oh, we improve. Like, oh, we improved from 6% to 7%. Great. And it's like, well, average is 12, so not great. Like there's low hanging fruit there that you're thinking even if you're doing better than you were the previous year, doesn't mean that's where it should be or could be.
[00:28:51] And with some minor adjustments, you could potentially almost double, you know the results you're getting from a thing. Um, but you feel like it's improvement and so you kind of settle into [00:29:00] this routine just like, well, it's going well, things are going well. They can't, it's not worth spending more time there because it is an improvement.
[00:29:07] Um, when actually that could be an area that's has huge growth. You know why most? Yeah. Tell me I'm
[00:29:12] Jaime Gleason: missing something. You know why I think most people don't do that? Tony, though bad news? It is bad news is because their entire tech stack is built up of disparate pieces that don't talk to each other, and thus the understanding of overall influence and sourcing and all this measurement.
[00:29:29] It's like such a quagmire that you can't spend. Yeah, 30% or 15% of your budget to do it because it's like you actually need someone to be involved
[00:29:38] Tony Fraga: in. But I, I wonder if that's why they do understand the outside consultant to come in and say, yeah, okay. That's fine. I'll put it together for you. You, I just, I'm, I'm not saying it's not me.
[00:29:46] Get me, and so like, I don't care if Jamie, you have to go to Shane, the chief information officer to get access to the Google Analytics, just to get. The traffic within 12 months. Okay? And then you have to [00:30:00] go to the enrollment manager or the admissions team to do the application numbers. But you need to go to someone else to get the, you gotta go to the agency to get the digital, the digital lead conversions, cuz nobody knows how many leads the digital ad agency got cuz they're just reporting it themselves.
[00:30:16] But the consultant brings together those disparate numbers and says, Hey Jamie, this is truth. This is your actual conversion rates from top funnel. Fool all the way down to the bottom. Did you know this? Like, so for every 1000 visitors to your website, you get this many increase or this many applicants or this many students.
[00:30:39] Like we, we need to tie top ratios to bottom ratios, like, And, and get it a sense of like, for every X dollars we spend or every, every this many hits we get of this or this many likes, we likely end up getting this many converted these. And so if we want more, it's, we have to work [00:31:00] backwards up the math.
[00:31:02] Shane Kehl: But I think the, the value the vendor provides, right? Because you could make a sheet and say, fill this out, and they have to go fill it out. They can get access to those, those percentages. Theoretically on their own if they had the sheet right. Uh, I think the vendor is the pressure to do it, first of all, which is super important.
[00:31:20] But the vendor can also provide you with a level of, this is good, this is bad. You can definitely improve here, here are recommendations to improve the, the gap between those two things that I think we've seen a hu we a hundred schools fill this out. We have all the data, now we can help you versus you just thinking again in terms of year over year or just, oh great.
[00:31:40] I know my numbers. Now, how do I know what's good and what's bad? Like I think that's the tricky
[00:31:45] Jaime Gleason: part. The, the only scary part about that scenario for me is I know there are vendors in the space that will do this. But I feel like sometimes their approach is so cookie cutter. Yeah, that's fair. It's like, that's fair.
[00:31:59] Do I really want, I [00:32:00] mean like, don't get me wrong, like it's so, and I feel like that's how some of the big ones have like made their mark in the indie industry. It's like the, the juggernauts. Yeah. I won't mention them, but like the big ones that are out there. Yeah, the juggernauts. You know, there's three or four that are out there and they just like, oh yeah, well this is what you're gonna get and we're gonna take that info.
[00:32:18] And we're going to, we're gonna use your data, bad data in, bad data out. We're going to feed this back to you in the form that we use. We're gonna slap our solution on top of it and say, you know, try to make a sales pitch. And it's like, I mean, at the end of the day, I think so many institutions fall prey to that.
[00:32:36] It makes me sad, but at the same time, there's like hopefully something good that comes out of it. Um, yeah, I don't know. That's, that's
[00:32:44] Shane Kehl: my theme. I think that's the important, and one of the things scenario we were talking about before is the questions to ask a vendor prior. Yeah. Um, and I think that's one of the important things of like, I want to know X, Y, and Z.
[00:32:59] Will your report tell [00:33:00] me that? Or I wanna see this, will I be able to see that? Yeah. Um, and I think those are the types of things that if you don't have a good understanding of what you're gonna get, why are you, you're buying it with this like pipe dream. And then what you get is, I'd say the
[00:33:13] Tony Fraga: same thing to your email console audit chain.
[00:33:15] Because if you are saying you think they should outsource that, which I think that's different. And I could get behind that. I think they need to be asking specific things. Hey, vendor, will you be able to tell me which subject line and preview text combinations are generating the best outta my emails? I also want you to analyze all of my email metrics, the open rates and click rates and gimme a report on those and tell me which emails are the worst.
[00:33:38] I also want you to analyze the messaging and tell me which ones do you think have weak messaging and strong messaging. Mm-hmm. And then I also want you to analyze style and format of for friction. Like that specific things you go tell the vendor, pay them $10,000. Right. They analyze your entire email, conf flows.
[00:33:56] If they say, cool, I can give you all that, I would [00:34:00] totally spend that money. Yeah. I think that's money well
[00:34:01] Shane Kehl: spent. Yeah. Or us to see, to see a sample. Yeah. Of what it may look like. Like I think any vendor should be able to produce some level. Again, if it's a massive report that's completely custom, that's a little bit harder, but.
[00:34:14] Here's a rough, you know, version of, let's go back to the SEO audit for example. Here's what a rough SEO audit looks like and the things that you can expect to get from it and, and the tangible next steps in action items that we're giving you versus, okay, here's the report, and you look at it and you're like, well, I could go get this from Google by myself, like, you didn't do anything for me other than enter my URL into a thing, click a button and then send me the pdf.
[00:34:36] F.
[00:34:37] Jaime Gleason: It's kind of like they'll going to the mechanic and saying, I've got this problem. Right. You know what I mean? And like, and, and I'd say I do this. Like I've done this before and it hasn't been the problem. So I, I'm telling my mechanic to fix something that I think is the problem, when really that's not the problem at all.
[00:34:52] So I think there's, there's some of this where it's like the, the institution themselves has to understand like, What do I need to [00:35:00] know? What do like, and so sometimes I think oftentimes, like you hire, you hire a vendor or consultant because you're like, I need to be like more understanding. I need to have a, a deeper level of understanding that they can provide.
[00:35:14] Whereas I think the, the, the paradox and what we're kind of shaping here is that we're gonna be asking questions. W and in some way that like us asking those questions is really kind of us saying, here's our problem.
[00:35:28] Tony Fraga: So the simple pivot to that is just ask, just tell me what it's gonna, what am I gonna get?
[00:35:34] Hey, mechanic, what am I if I give you my car and you do the 128 point inspection, you just gimme a sense of what it's gonna look like. Because if of that 128 point inspection, 100 of those things are like, you need to, uh, refill your windshield washer fluid. I don't want that. That's bull crap, you know? And it's like, so I think takeaway folks, they don't, you don't have to know.
[00:35:56] But the pivot is before you outsource for any of these audits that we've [00:36:00] said to outsource, just ask the, the vendor, the consultant, Hey, can you just gimme an example of what I'm gonna get when you do this audit? Just so our expectations are clear on, and if you see something and they're like, yeah, it'll look like this and it'll rep report tell you these things, and that's what you want, then you spend your money smarter.
[00:36:17] I think that's fair.
[00:36:19] Jaime Gleason: You just have to understand your pain points too. Like you have to really understand what am I trying to solve for? And that's where it's like, okay, I, I'm trying to solve for this. I see that they're gonna provide this, that solves for part of it, or most of it. It's like, okay, that's
[00:36:32] Shane Kehl: a green light.
[00:36:33] And I think with the, the, the mindset of what am I gonna get, type of thing, you can pretty easily determine what can we do internally versus what then, right. S you go to an SEO company, Hey, do this audit for me. Great. There are all these things now that you need to do, right? Yeah. They're not gonna come back to you and say, yeah, everything's amazing.
[00:36:52] Yeah, you're crushing it. Good job. You wouldn't have been there in the first place if that was the case, right? And so there's gonna be stuff to do. Are you gonna do that? Yeah. Can your team do it? If your [00:37:00] team can't do it, this other agency company can do it for you. But there maybe there are things that you can do.
[00:37:06] Hey, we'll tackle the content edits, cuz those are a little bit easy. Let's go change. In some words, we have someone on our team that's a content manager that can then go do those things. But we can't really do,
[00:37:17] Tony Fraga: yeah, you gotta go into your CMS technical and
[00:37:19] Shane Kehl: make those teams. We don't want to go to Yeah.
[00:37:21] The IT team and, and ask them, it'll get put in their queue. It'll take three months. We want to get this done this month so we can knock it off our list. Can you do those things? And I think that's where you have a good, good sense of what you can prioritize internally versus externally and pay for, um, rather than, it's either gonna be all us or all the vendor and I, both of those options seem a little, little scary if I'm at an institution.
[00:37:41] That's fair. Um, I think that's the other value of asking. Yeah. What you're gonna get. All right. Last thing was what you do internally. I already picked,
[00:37:51] Tony Fraga: we already said that. We covered it. We covered it. What was yours? I
[00:37:55] Shane Kehl: said
[00:37:55] Jaime Gleason: that email. What was yours? I didn't
[00:37:57] Tony Fraga: email mine. Well, I kind of piggybacked off your guys.
[00:37:59] It was either gonna [00:38:00] I, mine was gonna be the email com flow audit. I thought that was internal, but then I got thrown off by your wrench. You threw in there and I, you convinced me. You converted me, Shane.
[00:38:08] Jaime Gleason: I know. I think the funny takeaway of this whole thing is like we all said, Yeah, we, some of us would do these internally and some said Do do my externally.
[00:38:16] So any, sorry, listeners, you're kind of left with, like who do you like
[00:38:19] Shane Kehl: most when left?
[00:38:22] Jaime Gleason: Yeah. Hopefully the road that we chose to get there is helpful to think. I will
[00:38:26] Shane Kehl: preface that on the youngest and probably thus the most innovative, just.
[00:38:30] Tony Fraga: Based on that, man. Wow. Shots fired. All right. Episode nine. I already know what it's gonna be about.
[00:38:38] It's gonna be a slug fest. We're gonna put Shane on the seat. Should you, Amy and I are gonna totally, you have to pivot off of what we come up with.
[00:38:46] Shane Kehl: Smart guy. Uh, unfortunately I'm the host and we will not be doing that. There's the cutting edge and there's the
[00:38:53] Tony Fraga: bleeding edge. Bleeding edge.
[00:38:56] Shane Kehl: Yeah. Episode, episode nine will be about back in the [00:39:00] eighties when you guys were in school, what were things like?
[00:39:03] Um, oh yeah. Alrighty. So last week we talked about, Tony, you were in the middle of prepping for a NA gap presentation around working with a new dean and what that looks like with maybe some more legacy people under this new dean and, and how maybe that relationship can and should work. Jamie, you were working with.
[00:39:24] The DD agency account team on kind of prepping people for renewals, making sure that we're still doing what works and what we we do best, but also being able to build in some room to innovate and test. Um, so curious. Mm-hmm. You know, looking forward at the next couple weeks, even months, maybe thinking as people move into.
[00:39:46] Their new fiscal year. What's, what's a big focus Yeah. And priority for you all, either internally for the DD agency team to be prepped to lead our clients well, or, um, for you all to lead, lead our clients [00:40:00] well, um, in order to kind of, again, keep, keep the momentum of, you know, a lot of the new strategies, innovations that may have been put into place.
[00:40:11] Jaime Gleason: So I'm gonna go out on a limb here. And I'm gonna say, you know, you said it, you, you basically said over the next couple months. So really what we're looking at here is we have a summer coming up, right? We have a time where historically in the education system, especially in the pre-digital education system, if we wanna harken back to the eighties, which was earlier referenced, there used to be this like breath, this like chasm where it's like, okay, we get to kind of like.
[00:40:40] Slow down. And I think that there's an important like balance that we need to continue to, like, strive toward. And, and I think that one of the things that I really like as, as my kids, you know, I have two teenage kids and one who's a tween, um, that like they have a pretty busy schedule through the summer and [00:41:00] there's like this real wrestling match of like being able to take downtime.
[00:41:05] And I think that there's a part where getting our downtime, getting, giving your team your downtime, like what the things that they need to recharge and get ready for the next season. I think that's important. I know it's not like, it doesn't always mean, you know, several days in a row out of the office, but what's it mean to like encourage your team to like, Be thinking, you know, about different things, learning different things over the summer, listening to podcasts or webinars or, you know, getting them to conferences or stuff like that.
[00:41:35] I think I, I wanna be in that space where I like, where I'm like making an allowance for like that sort of space. Uh, and I would, you know, and likewise I think encouraging our clients to like, just to take that beat. So that's, that's not work related necessarily, but kind of is.
[00:41:53] Tony Fraga: The time put into strategic planning, having a reset.
[00:41:57] Yeah. Pausing and doing it. All this stuff. Actually, we just [00:42:00] talked about this episode. To be honest, this can all be done in one half day session. True. Or a full day session. I think the value of taking the shift of the fiscal year or the summer, whatever it is. Yeah. Summer's generally just the best time for it.
[00:42:14] Strategic planning, pausing and pulling up and looking up. And saying how did things go? What did audit it together? It doesn't have to be professional. If you have no money, outsource any audits to any vendor, fine. Just do a meeting, do strategic planning, but look at the past, take stock of where your numbers are now, at the current moment and plan for the future.
[00:42:35] Like the value of that? Yeah. The schools that do that, the teams that do that win. In the next re recruitment cycle, the teams that don't do it and just kind of rinse, repeat, or just run right into it and don't set up enough time to do that. And I tell us our own team, this is like what we say internally, guys, you have to do this.
[00:42:53] I don't even care if the client's ready to do it, like we have to do it ourselves. Mm-hmm. Pull up, think intentionally. [00:43:00] Yeah. That's what I think about when I think about summer. It's always strategic planning. It's worth its weight and gold.
[00:43:05] Shane Kehl: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you all for listening to episode eight of The Pivot to You again in two
[00:43:11] Tony Fraga: weeks.
[00:43:23] Hey
[00:43:24] Zach Busekrus: all Zack here from Enroll fi. If you like this podcast, chances are you'll like other enroll FI shows too. Our podcast network is growing by the month, and we've got a plethora of marketing admissions and higher ed technology shows that are jam-packed with stories, ideas, and frameworks that are all designed to empower you to become a better higher ed professional.
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About the Episode
The what's what...
There are so many channels and tactics that higher ed marketing and admissions teams use in order to generate more traffic, leads, inquiries, applicants, and so on. But what should an outside party audit? What should that audit produce for you? We break it all down on this week’s episode of The Pivot!
This episode is brought to you by our friends at DD Agency:
DD Agency is a higher ed-specific marketing technology agency that has conducted countless SEO Audits for colleges and universities across the country.
In these audits, they detail where you currently rank, what you could be ranking for, exactly how copy should be tweaked on website pages, and much more.
If this sounds like something you could benefit from, give those folks a ping and be sure to mention that Enrollify sent you to claim a 10% discount on any of their SEO offerings.
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About the Enrollify Podcast Network
The Pivot is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you’ll like other Enrollify shows too!
Our podcast network is growing by the month and we’ve got a plethora of marketing, admissions, and higher ed technology shows that are jam-packed with stories, ideas, and frameworks all designed to empower you to be a better higher ed professional. Our shows feature a selection of the industry’s best as your hosts. Learn from Jeremy Tiers, Zach Busekrus, Jaime Hunt, Corynn Myers, Jamie Gleason, and many more.
Learn more about The Enrollify Podcast Network at podcasts.enrollify.org. Our shows help higher ed marketers and admissions professionals find their next big idea — come and find yours!
About the Podcast
Tony is the CEO and a marketing strategist at DD — an enrollment marketing technology agency that specializes in implementing inbound, content-based methodologies. He leads a team of fast-paced marketing innovators, who handle everything from content creation to marketing automation, and thrives at the intersection of strategy and technology. Tony speaks regularly at higher education and non-profit marketing conferences on the topics of content marketing, SEO, and the latest trends in digital media.
Shane is the Chief Edutainment Officer for Enrollify. He takes any opportunity to make marketing fun and enjoyable while maintaining a healthy level of helpfulness and data-backed information. When he’s not being sarcastic or irritating Zach, he’s enjoying a sports game or nice brunch – mimosa, hold the OJ. His goal is to make higher ed even more fun and lively by injecting new ideas wherever he can.
Jamie Gleason is the Vice President Of Enrollment Strategy at Direct Development. He brings over 15 years of higher education experience to the team; almost a decade of which was spent on campus(es) and nearly six years was in edtech. A self-proclaimed "farmer + fixer," Enrollment has always provided the perfect challenge for him! He's happiest when mining through spreadsheets, results, and (generally) any type of data!
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The Pivot is a bi-weekly podcast that addresses real-time enrollment marketing challenges and meets them head-on with strategic insights and tactics. Join Tony Fraga, Jamie Gleason, and Shane Kehl to get inspired, build a game plan, and find your next great pivot.
This show is hosted and brought to you by the giant slayers at DD Agency —an enrollment marketing technology agency that helps colleges and universities recruit right-fit students through SEO, content marketing, and marketing automation. Learn more about DD Agency here.
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