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Category: Higher Education Marketing

From the Minds of Higher Education Marketing Experts: Highlights From the UPCEA SEO Research Study
Key Insights
- Universities are investing in paid search, which demonstrates they see search as an important part of the prospect’s journey.
- However, SEO does not get this same level of investment.
- SEO is an underleveraged opportunity for schools to increase enrollment.
- SEO is critical in reaching prospective students and the new adult learner.
- Performing SEO at an expert level, backed by a strategy, could improve results.
Search Influence joined forces with the University Professional Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) to release our highly anticipated Higher Education SEO Research Study.

This three-part research study aimed to understand institutional and marketing leaders’ perspectives on search engine optimization (SEO) and evaluate the SEO readiness of professional, continuing, and online education (PCO) units within higher education institutions.

We have now spent a few months discussing the results and understand how our findings could be useful to a variety of professionals — even beyond the scope of higher education. To get some fresh perspectives on our research, I sought the insights of several industry leaders, including Search Influence Co-Founder and CEO Will Scott, Search Influence Co-Founder and COO Angie Scott, Search Influence Director of Account Management, Alison Zeringue, UPCEA Chief Research Officer, Jim Fong, and Co-Founder and CEO of SearchLab, Mark Bealin.

Investment in Paid Search Shows Importance of Search Overall
Alison Zeringue, Search Influence Director of Account Management, Alizon Zeringue

Our Director of Account Management Alison Zeringue noticed the stark contrast in investment between paid advertising campaigns and organic search amongst higher education institutions. Alison has spent the last six years developing her higher education SEO expertise (on top of many years prior in SEO and marketing).

91% of respondents indicate they integrate paid search into their SEO strategy. Anecdotally, almost all higher education institutions we’ve encountered run some type of paid search advertising (usually on Google). With so many universities investing in paid search, we know that they see the value in search overall as part of the prospective student journey.

So, why do 51% of universities indicate that they don’t have a strategic SEO plan?

We attribute the disparity in investment in paid search over SEO to a few things:
1. SEO is harder to understand (but a well-crafted paid search campaign can also be quite complex if you take advantage of all features available).
2. SEO takes continual human effort over time (although paid search needs continual optimization to be most effective).
3. Paid search can be easier to tie to enrollment (but it is possible to do this with SEO too).
4. Paid search results can be more tangible (and if you know what metrics to track and how to report on SEO success, SEO results can be tangible as well).
5. SEO can be seen as something that is part of the ongoing website work and doesn’t need a dedicated investment in budget (but in order to assure you are truly able to compete on Google, a dedicated SEO investment is as critical as your paid search investment).
“Wow, What an Opportunity!”
Mark Bealin, Co-Founder and CEO at SearchLab and Host of Search and Suds Podcast

I recently appeared on Suds and Search, the popular digital marketing podcast hosted by Co-Founder and CEO of marketing agency SearchLab Mark Bealin. As an SEO industry veteran, Mark was blown away by the amount of headroom there is for professional, continuing, and online departments to leverage SEO as a tactic.

The study showed that these institutions don’t take advantage of SEO at the pivotal moment when they need to appeal more to adult learners. Basic SEO strategies and tactics are easily overlookable. Reports aren’t always reliable or understood.

This presents a big opportunity for universities and colleges that recognize the disconnect in their digital strategies.

SEO metric reporting was a significant theme throughout the report and demonstrated leaders aren’t well-informed about SEO metrics.

The data indicates that 62% of higher education institutional leaders want reporting on SEO metrics, but just 31% receive regular updates. This, and other data points in the study, highlight a self-perpetuating pattern:

Institutional leaders don’t hear regular reporting updates about marketing’s SEO efforts and outcomes. Therefore, they don’t push for or support SEO resources, and, consequently, they don’t get SEO results.

Greater Higher Education SEO Expertise Could Improve Results
Angie Scott, Co-Founder and COO at Search Influence

Our Co-Founder and COO Angie Scott, in addition to her financed-focus, heads our HR operations — meaning she’s in tune with the skills and capabilities needed to perform a job well.

Angie found it interesting that institutions graded their SEO capabilities an average of 3.5 on a scale of 1 to 5, where a 1 is not very capable and 5 is extremely capable.

She wondered: Wouldn’t you want something this important performed at an expert level?

What skills are needed to perform higher education SEO effectively?
- Research and analytical abilities
- Technical website development expertise
- Copywriting
- Graphic design
- Public relations/media outreach
- Strategic thinking and creative problem solving
The skills needed to perform SEO well in the higher education industry are not likely to be found in one single individual, or even two. Beyond having the baseline skill set of each, higher education SEO marketing experts must be able to stay up-to-date with trends and work closely with evolving technology to keep their strategies ahead of the curve.

Executing SEO Tactics Without a Strategy Is a Missed Opportunity
Will Scott, Co-Founder and CEO at Search Influence

Co-Founder and CEO Will Scott pointed out that, although many institutions are doing tactics that are part of SEO, they don’t perform them strategically. This means they miss valuable opportunities for the tactics to have the greatest impact on enrollment success.

Others don’t necessarily perform SEO tactics with intention. This was evident in the study from the assessment of 100 websites, in which universities had an average score of 58.6. Less than half (47%) of UPCEA members had a score above 60.

What does it look like to perform SEO strategically in higher education?
1. Targeted keywords per program/degree/certificate page (based on research)
2. Content plan for each offering (pillar pages with cluster content, including related blog posts, videos, and/or graphics)
3. Linkbuilding plan for each targeted program or degree
4. Cadence for monitoring technical site health
5. Identified key performance indicators (KPIs) and reporting plan
Learn more about how to apply these strategies and tactics in the replay of our webinar, UPCEA Higher Education SEO Research Study: How to Impact Your Enrollment.

SEO Is Critical to Reach the New Adult Learner
Jim Fong, Chief Research Officer at UPCEA

Last but not least, let’s summarize the takeaways from UPCEA’s Chief Research Officer Jim Fong. If you are in higher education marketing and haven’t yet heard of or from Jim, you’re in for a treat. He’s a legend and a treasure trove of knowledge and insight for higher education leaders and marketers alike.

Jim has heavily researched and analyzed changing demographics and how that ties into the need for colleges and universities to focus and lean into new offerings for the adult learner. He also speaks to unique challenges in the fact that the new adult learner is much younger than some may picture, can be harder to reach, and, is much savvier than students of the prior generation. The new adult learner spends more time researching educational opportunities in their evaluation process — which includes using search engines to look at their options. (Read more about Jim’s perspective in his blog post, Greeting the Student of the Future on their Terms at the Digital Storefront.)

Jim’s preface to the full higher education research study prescribes four clear actions and observations:
1. PCO units need to abandon legacy and focus more on the new adult learner in the design of their websites.
2. There needs to be more emphasis on search engine optimization, as opposed to locked-in institutional templates and over-design and creativity.
3. Metrics should play a bigger part in the continuous improvement and planning process.
4. Institutions need to have a clear strategy for their websites and how to integrate the needs of the adult learner into the process.
The data is clear — SEO is an underleveraged tactic for universities to boost enrollments.

To me, this is very exciting. While many may think “we’re doing everything already,” this data shows that a lot actually aren’t. And that translates to new ways to reel in even more students that you may not have already explored in your other enrollment marketing efforts.

To view all of the data from the three-part study, download our Higher Education SEO Research Report. There’s also a webinar replay available, which gives you highlights of the study in addition to best practices on how to address the opportunities in our findings.

You can also learn even more about higher education digital advertising and marketing services with Search Influence here.
June 13, 2023
Improving SEO In Higher Education Must Be a Priority: Insights From UPCEA Webinar
Priority: Improving SEO in Higher Education

Search Influence joined the UPCEA team, Jim Fong and Bruce Etter, as they unveiled the highly anticipated UPCEA Higher Education SEO Research Study in a lively and informative webinar.

We’re grateful for the engaged audience, who brought us compelling questions. It was obvious from what they asked that we had some tech-savvy folks attending.

For those who have yet to dive into the study, we’ve got you covered with a summary of the key takeaways:
- Marketing and institutional leaders see SEO as foundational but admit their PCO units lack SEO strategy.
- Institutional leadership often lacks reporting.
- UPCEA members performed poorly in an SEO audit.
In fact, in the SEO readiness audit of 100 random UPCEA member institutions, only 19% had an excelling score.

And to pre-answer a question some may ask, this is an UPCEA metric. Search Influence collaborated on the factors, but the grades came from the research itself.

Why Is SEO Important in Higher Education?

From our discussions with higher ed marketing leaders, individual PCO units spend significant dollars on paid online advertising and next to nothing on SEO.

The ROI of SEO is obvious to anyone paying for paid search. Keywords in search can inform your SEO strategy. If you’re paying for it and you don’t rank #1, that’s an opportunity.

Any department that has in-house web management, social media, or content creation staff has the makings of an SEO team already in place.

In short, SEO is foundational — most know it, and few are doing it.

Higher Education SEO Questions From the Audience

The following questions came directly from the audience in the webinar Q&A section. We clearly had a smart audience and appreciated all the great questions.

Q: Which other tools do you use for keywords?

In the webinar, we talked about how we used Semrush data for part of the SEO audit done by the UPCEA team, hence the “other tools.”

A: One of the best “keyword” tools any organization can use — especially resource-strapped higher ed marketers — is Google Search Console. GSC gives you the ability to see page-by-page and query-by-query where your opportunity is.

It also shows you what Google thinks you’re relevant for already, which can identify a shorter path to execution.

In addition to GSC, at Search Influence, we rely on a few tools depending on the use case:
- Ahrefs – Great overall tool, with an especially good view of page and subdomain level authority
- Semrush – Another great tool overall, with reporting and site auditing capabilities
- Surfer SEO – This one is newer in our toolbox. It’s not a pure “Keyword” tool. It’s actually an optimization tool that can help identify content clusters for building topical authority, as well as auditing and outlining SEO optimization of individual pages.
Q: How do you navigate building backlinks without buying backlinks in a way that Google “disapproves” of?

Google says, “Any links that are intended to manipulate rankings in Google Search results may be considered link spam.”

That doesn’t mean that all “backlinks” are bad. It just means you should look for good links. What is a good backlink? A good backlink is one that is relevant, directional, and on a site likely to drive real users.

Just because you ask for it doesn’t make it bad. It’s about intent.

Some easy opportunities:
- Local citations, such as directory listings
- Other schools within your parent university or college
- Institutions you collaborate with in real life
- Local organizations with which you support or partner
Q: Are internal links counted as backlinks?

No. They’re internal links, which are awesome, too.

There are a bunch of great things about internal links:
- You get to control the anchor text used.
- They can help to reinforce topical authority, e.g.:
  - You have portfolio pages
    
    Which have program pages
    
    Who have individual courses and
    
    Instructors and
    
    Resources and
    
    Etc.
- They’re navigational — in other words, they support the student journey, moving prospects down the funnel toward their eventual application.
Q: Advice on structuring some complete revision of websites? Would you recommend program by program, or another way?

This is a classic “it depends” kind of situation. From a business and organizational perspective, what matters most?

Is it most important to categorize by type, e.g., on-campus, hybrid, certificate, non-degree, etc.?

Or by program, e.g., homeland security, human resources, organizational management, etc.?

Once you make that decision, stick to it, build your silos — but not too deep — and think about reasonable interlinking between them.

Q: From the user side, have you noticed any impact on CTR with truncated title tags?

Not really, but it’s not something we’ve studied.

Q: Any concern with title tags and truncating on Google?

No. In our opinion, this is an opportunity. It’s Google telling you what great looks like. What we’ve seen is that these are most often picked up from some on-site content.

If you find it happening, consider recrafting your title tag and your leading H1 to match. That should give the machine what it wants.

Q: Any advice on how to shift the narrative that SEO is free or should be very low cost and doesn’t need as much investment?

Echoing what I said above:
The ROI of SEO is obvious to anyone paying for paid search. Keywords in search can inform your SEO strategy. If you’re paying for it and you don’t rank #1, that’s an opportunity.

The keyword ranking tool we use just came out with a new “forecasting” feature. It allows you to build a keyword group, assign dollar value and conversion rate, and see the business impact of moving from position X to position Y over time.

We looked at paid search accounts, grabbed keywords we know to convert, and built forecasts. The impact, in many cases, is staggeringly obvious.

Reach out and we can run a limited version for you.

Conclusion

The UPCEA Higher Education SEO Research Study shed light on the critical need for SEO in PCO marketing and beyond. Many, perhaps most, institutions have a lot of room for growth and optimization.

It’s crucial for universities to recognize the value that SEO can bring to their marketing and seize the opportunity to be present for all their prospective students.

The webinar showcased that, while leaders acknowledge SEO as a foundational element, there’s a gap in implementing effective strategies within PCO units. Additionally, the need for improved reporting for institutional decision-making and better SEO performance among UPCEA members was clear.

It’s time for universities to embrace SEO and reap the benefits of higher visibility, engagement, and growth.

We encourage you to join the conversation, share your own experiences, and learn from others. Feel free to comment below to keep the conversation going.

If you’re looking for expert guidance to help you navigate the world of SEO, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Search Influence.

We’re here to support you in optimizing the potential of your organization.

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May 11, 2023
Search Influence and UPCEA Present, “Higher Education SEO Research Study – How to Impact Your Enrollment”
About the Webinar:

Watch the recording here.

Join us for a discussion of the latest findings from UPCEA’s Center for Research and Strategy led by UPCEA Chief Research Officer Jim Fong, Senior Director of Research and Consulting Bruce Etter, and UPCEA Platinum Partner Search Influence.

UPCEA and Search Influence collaborated on a three-part higher education research study to understand institutional and marketing leaders’ perspectives on search engine optimization (SEO) and evaluate the SEO readiness of professional, continuing, and online education (PCO) units.

The research indicates that while higher education marketing leaders and institutional leaders value SEO as a tactic, 51% of respondents said that their unit does not have an established search engine optimization plan or strategy.

The webinar will cover how universities like yours prioritize SEO and how peer websites rank. The data reveals good news: higher education marketers have an underutilized tactic that will make a significant impact on their recruitment ecosystem.

Learning Objectives for the Higher Education Webinar:
- The most significant findings from the research study
- An understanding of the study’s implications on recruitment strategies
- Recommendations for leveraging this critical opportunity to drive more students to your programs
April 25, 2023
Lack of SEO Skills and Strategy Leave Critical Gap in Higher Education Recruitment Funnel, According to Study
Joint study into higher education recruitment strategies indicates foundational marketing tactics are missing the mark in execution.

NEW ORLEANS, April 6, 2023— Research conducted by UPCEA, the leading association for professional, continuing and online (PCO) education, in collaboration with Search Influence, a higher education digital marketing agency, shows that higher education institutions targeting non-traditional students do not reach and recruit prospective students to their full potential. The results of the newly released study reveal that the majority of schools lack search engine optimization (SEO) skills, knowledge, strategy, and effective reporting to leadership.

Research Highlights
- Schools say SEO is important but aren’t executing it strategically.
- Institutional leadership is not informed of SEO performance metrics.
- Most institutions do not have a comprehensive SEO strategy.
The study surveyed 70 UPCEA institutional leaders and 68 marketing leaders to understand higher education institutions’ current SEO marketing practices that target non-traditional students. The study compares answers against best digital marketing practices, specifically SEO, to determine the key findings. In addition to this, the research includes an assessment of the SEO readiness of 100 member institutions.

The study finds a gap between what institutional and marketing leaders believe are best practices for SEO and the actual SEO readiness of their institution, indicating that SEO is an area of opportunity for many schools. According to survey data, although marketing and institutional leaders value SEO as a tactic, 51% of respondents said that their unit does not have an established search engine optimization plan or strategy.

“Innovative marketing practices are important to carry higher education through its current crossroads,” said Jim Fong, Chief Research Officer at UPCEA. “The adult learner is more savvy than previous generations, and institutions need to meet students where they are in order to have a competitive advantage in an evolving and complex economy.”

“The higher education institutions surveyed know SEO is important. And many think they’re doing SEO. This study shows that most lack an outcomes-focused strategy. Even if they did have a strategy, they, themselves, indicate they lack the skills to execute or the reporting structure to hold their teams accountable,” says Will Scott, Search Influence Co-owner and Chief Executive Officer. “Given the dollars they’re spending and the proven returns from search engine optimization, it’s clear that a focus on SEO would have a big impact on schools’ student funnel.”

The study suggests that current SEO strategies are lacking because PCO units do not have the skills, staff, or resources to develop one. A second contributing factor is the lack of leadership awareness of SEO-related metrics that would provide a deeper case for support to inform decisions such as budget, department staffing and employee skill development.

The research was conducted as part of a two-year partnership between Search Influence and UPCEA. This partnership provides UPCEA members with custom Search Influence resources that help improve student recruitment through SEO and paid ads strategies.

The full report can be viewed online: Higher Education SEO Research Study

UPCEA and Search Influence will discuss the significant findings from the research study in a higher education webinar on April 27, 2023.

Additional Resources:
About Search Influence:

Search Influence is a women-owned, ROI-focused, digital marketing agency that helps institutions drive prospects into and through the recruitment funnel with analytics-backed strategies, including search engine optimization and paid digital advertising. Founded in 2006, Search Influence’s core purpose is to optimize potential. Search Influence collaborates with well-regarded institutions both nationally and locally in New Orleans. Search Influence collaborates with well-regarded institutions including Tulane University School of Professional Advancement, University of Maryland School of Public Policy, and Palo Alto University.

About UPCEA:

UPCEA is the leading association for online and professional continuing education. Founded in 1915, UPCEA now serves the leading public and private colleges and universities in North America. The association supports its members with innovative conferences and specialty seminars, research and benchmarking information, professional networking opportunities, and timely publications. Based in Washington, D.C., UPCEA builds greater awareness of the vital link between adult learners and public policy issues.

For Media Inquiries

Search Influence:

Shira Pinsker; Marketing Manager

(504) 208-3900; [email protected]

UPCEA:

Molly Nelson; Vice President of Communications

(202) 659-3130; [email protected]
April 6, 2023
Higher Education Technical SEO to Solve Your Website Woes
Higher Education Technical SEO to Solve Your Website Woes at #UPCEA2023

As higher education institutions continue to evolve, it’s more important than ever to ensure that their websites are up to date and optimized for organic traffic and search engine performance. To accomplish this, universities must be aware of best practices for higher education technical SEO, the implications of changes made to their websites, and the impact of subdomains and OPM microsites.

Buttons above not showing? View Session Slides here. Download higher education SEO research and data here.

At the 2023 UPCEA Annual Conference, Paula French of Search Influence and Alicia Jasmin of Tulane SoPA will share their hard-won knowledge to help you avoid the most costly mistakes.

What is Technical Search Engine Optimization?

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing a website’s structure and internal elements to improve its rank on search engines.

This starts with an SEO audit aimed at fixing technical issues that could be negative ranking factors that commonly hold education websites back from their full potential. Some of these technical SEO issues also make for a bad user experience, such as broken links, duplicate content, and lack of internal links.

What Are the Benefits of Technical SEO?

When implemented correctly, technical SEO can help universities maximize their organic search traffic and improve their visibility on search engines. This helps universities reach their target audiences, including prospective students, more effectively and efficiently.

You know how important it is that your digital strategy and your school website are supportive of student search intent. But all that hard work will be for naught if the search engine crawlers can’t find your great content.

You owe it to yourself to understand the common (technical) issues that many schools – and even some SEO agencies – miss when doing SEO for education websites.
If you are serious about reaching potential students with your education SEO strategies, technical SEO is as important as your content strategy.

What Will You Learn in “The Devil’s in the Details: Using Technical SEO to Solve Your Website Woes?”

Attendees will learn how technical SEO, when part of their digital marketing strategy, will help you:
- keep the search engine crawlers happy
- stay ahead of the constantly updating search algorithms
- most importantly: reach their intended audience: students
Gain insight into how website structure can affect search rankings, the impact of subdomains and microsites, and the steps needed for a successful website migration.

FAQs

Q: What is SEO?

A: SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is the process of optimizing a website’s structure and content to improve its ranking on search engines. As we learned in the Search Influence and UPCEA Higher Ed SEO Research Study it is not a given that your educational institution even has an SEO strategy.

Q: What is the difference between technical SEO and other forms of SEO for higher education?

A: Technical SEO focuses on the elements of a website’s infrastructure and coding that can affect its performance on search engine result pages (SERPs). This includes optimizing the website’s structure, fixing technical issues, and assuring the structure supports the keyword strategy.
Other forms of higher education SEO, such as on page SEO, content optimization and link building, focus on improving the quality and relevance of higher education websites’ content for users.

Q: How does technical SEO benefit universities and search engines?

A: Technical SEO is a critical piece of higher education digital marketing that can help universities maximize their organic search ranking and improve their visibility on search engines, including Google search. This helps universities reach their target audiences, including prospective students, more effectively and efficiently.

Also, technical SEO can help universities ensure their website content is of the highest quality and relevance to the user, making it more likely to be featured on the SERPs.

Q: What will I learn in Alicia and Paula’s technical SEO session?

A: You will gain insight into how website structure can affect search rankings, the impact of subdomains and microsites, and the steps needed for a successful website migration.

Case Study: Higher Ed Microsite Migration SEO

Additionally, you will learn about the latest tools available to gauge your search engine visibility, as well as tips and tricks to ensure your website is up to date and optimized.

Q: Who should attend this session at UPCEA?

A: This session is ideal for higher ed marketers and marketing teams who are looking to understand the technical SEO implications of recommendations for their websites from their education marketing agency.

It is also beneficial for those who wish to learn more about tools, processes, and strategies to make sure their SEO efforts truly optimize their online visibility for organic search traffic.
March 16, 2023
Beat Brand Boredom: Bringing Rebranded Creative to Market Digitally
Key Insights from Higher Ed Branding Project
- There are five key steps to deploy new creative within persistent digital campaigns successfully. Each step is detailed in this case study for our client at Tulane University.
- Set short and long-term goals for how you want the new creative to impact performance. These goals should serve as your guideposts for all adjustments and decision-making.
- Resist the urge to drop your old creative cold turkey, even if you believe it is fatigued. Learn how to do this tactically in your digital ad sets.
- Digital ads provide a great testbed and allow you to learn and iterate.
- “Creative doesn’t have to be beautiful work; it needs to be effective at differentiating …and you will know that by looking at the performance data.”
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Introduction

A branding or creative refresh is hard work. You’ve wrangled the stakeholders and the creative team and worked through the big egos that were likely at the table in the process. Now, you have to figure out marketing deployment, a step often forgotten about when planning the rebranding effort itself.

If you’re already running digital advertising campaigns, it can be daunting to roll out your new brand. You can’t afford downtime in your campaigns — stopping all marketing to update and re-launch.

And, you are concerned about measuring leading indicators of success for the new brand, ideally BEFORE seeing a negative impact on the enrollment pipeline.

In the last year, I led the digital deployment side of our client Tulane School of Professional Advancement’s rebranding effort. In our recent collaborative session at UPCEA MEMS 2022 in New Orleans, I shared a five-step process for bringing your new creative to life in persistent digital marketing campaigns.

Read on for a step-by-step guide to bringing refreshed branding or creative to life and share your feedback in the comments or on social media.

But First, Some Context…

Before the rebranding effort, we had persistent digital campaigns running on Facebook Ads, Google Paid Search, and other display networks, including OTT and CTV advertising. We had more than 250 different graphic creatives in play at the time following the old style. Our client depends on these campaigns to fuel their enrollment pipelines with new contacts and inquiries year-round. We couldn’t afford to have a major dip in performance or for campaigns to come to a halt during a rebrand.

5 Steps to Deploy New Creative in Persistent Digital Campaigns

At a high level, these are the five steps to deploy your new creative successfully. We’ll break down each of these steps in this blog below.
1. START WITH THE RIGHT EXPECTATIONS
2. MAKE A TRANSITION PLAN
3. SET SHORT AND LONG-TERM METRICS-BASED GOALS
4. CHECK AND ADJUST
5. ITERATE ON YOUR NEW CREATIVE
Step 1: Start With the Right Expectations

When implementing new creative into existing campaigns, you need to go into the process with realistic expectations. And, we all know that there are sometimes stakeholders disconnected from marketing who may expect a creative overhaul to produce instant results.

Major adjustments to your campaigns will always make an impact on campaign performance as the digital platforms adjust. Whether you follow a solid plan will determine if that impact is net positive or negative in the long run.

This is because digital advertising platform campaigns have what is called the “learning phase” for new creative. During this time, the delivery system — the machine — still has a lot of data to collect to “learn” about how to best deliver your ad set. So, during that time, performance will be volatile and cost per result will be higher.

You should expect it to take up to three months for your campaign performance to normalize and your campaigns to exit the “learning” phase.

Up front, set expectations with your stakeholders so they DON’T expect instant magic.

Step 2: Make a Transition Plan

Do create a careful transition plan, especially for a major overhaul. I’ve broken this down further into three key components.
- Time it right. We intentionally timed our implementation during a slower period for recruitment. For us, this meant we started the process in January and completed it by EOM February so that the new creative could be fully in place for the Fall recruitment cycle.
- Implement new creative alongside existing ads. Rather than creating all new campaigns in our existing ad platforms, we implemented new ads while they ran alongside the older assets for some time. This allowed the ad platforms to begin serving the new ads, collect performance data, and learn how to deliver those ads to the audience best. In doing so, we were able to mitigate an immediate negative impact and continue to recruit new prospects into the pipeline.
- Pause old creative based on data. Then, we paused the old ads when we saw the new ads were converting at a comparable cost per conversion. Resist the urge to drop your old creative cold turkey, even if you do feel it is fatigued.
Step 3 – Set Short and Long-Term Metrics-Based Goals

Set short and long-term goals for how you want the new creative to impact performance.

We’ve gone over in detail why we cannot expect a huge positive impact on results immediately. These goals should always be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.

You may start with an immediate goal of keeping your cost per conversion within a certain acceptable range of your historical or seasonal average.

Consider what else you have going on that may impact the campaign performance.

Step 4 – Check and Adjust

Once implemented, check your key metrics against your goals. These goals should serve as your guideposts for all adjustments and decision-making.

This chart shows our cost per inquiry (CPI) from digital advertising over time. Here are the highlights:
- The first dot on the slide is our CPI in the first month of the new creative deployment. You’ll notice that it rises from there and spikes at about three months. By this time, our old creative was fully paused, and we believed our campaign performance was beginning to normalize.
- With focused energy on optimizations from that point forward, our CPI began to trend back down, achieving one of our short-term goals.
- Now, for the long term — In June (gold dot), we felt the effects of shifting priorities and a new fiscal year budget. Our budgets actually increased for the first time in a couple of years, and, with some advertising priorities adjusted, we saw the CPI jump up.
- We continuously check and adjust. Since then, we’ve consistently optimized the CPI back down to now nearing our initial cost at the time of new creative implementation.
And, we continue to have a cost per inquiry significantly lower than client-approved benchmarks.

So, what’s the impact?

Tulane SoPA’s Fall 2022 term compared to Fall 2021 had a better yield, with significantly fewer inquiries at the top of the funnel. The creative rebrand was one of several tactics in play to intentionally improve the quality of inquiries over time — so fewer inquiries was actually a GOOD thing!

What this tells us is that, among other factors, we are reaching the right audience with the right message at the right time.

Step 5 – Iterate on Your New Creative

The story doesn’t stop there.

Digital ads provide a great testbed and give you the opportunity to learn and iterate. After your campaigns have normalized and your new creative is fully adopted, review the performance of your key messages or creatives and make adjustments.

Once we saw our results normalize and our branding effort fully implemented, we moved into the next phase. We began to iterate on our creative with bigger, bolder messages that we either wanted to test or that we believed were strong selling points for our audience.

Our tests have been running since the summer, and we’ve already taken away some big learnings!

One Iteration Success Story

Previously, we had not significantly promoted our accelerated master’s program before. At Tulane SoPA, undergraduates can earn a bachelor’s and master’s degree in five years. After running some test creative across several campaigns and placements, we found that our audience is really interested in this.

Once we had a statistically significant volume of conversions, we could see:
- High volume of conversions on this messaging compared to other message tests we tried
- Cost per result was looking great — it was lower than our typical and significantly lower than the benchmark
Now, we are taking additional steps to get this information in front of our undergraduate audience through email drip campaigns, landing pages, ad copy, and more.

This is the step that will perpetuate — until it is necessary to refresh your branding again.

When will that be?

When the data tells you that your messaging is no longer effective for your audience.

Branding evolution is never done. Use data to evaluate and iterate on your brand voice and identity. In a professional development course, Jim Fong said, “Marketing should be strategically and data-driven, not driven by the creative. Creative doesn’t have to be beautiful work, it needs to be effective at differentiating.”

I would append that by adding “…and you will know that by looking at the performance data.”

If you’ve taken the time to create new branding and need help deploying it digitally, contact my talented team at Search Influence for more information
February 6, 2023
Search Influence to Present at the 2022 UPCEA MEMS Conference
At UPCEA’s 31st Annual MEMS Conference, Search Influence’s Director of Account Management Alison Zeringue will co-present “Beat Brand Boredom: Aligning Brand With Student Experience to Reinvigorate Interest in Your School,” alongside Alicia Jasmin, Shiela Flatz, and Nico Rose — higher education marketing experts from the Tulane School of Professional Advancement (Tulane SoPA) and the University of Florida Online.

For over 100 years, UPCEA has been the leading association for the advancement of Professional, Continuing, and Online Education (PCO) for public and private higher ed institutions across North America.

This year’s MEMS: Marketing, Enrollment, and Student Success conference will be held on November 30–December 2 at the Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans. The conference marks the first in-person UPCEA MEMS session since 2019.

Attendees will get an insider glimpse into how to combat today’s higher-ed digital marketing challenges and grow student enrollment with data-driven strategies and proven tactics.

Higher Education Digital Marketing Session Description

Today, prospective students expect a minimum of flexibility, connection, and communication from their school.

With student learning expectations continuing to steepen, the pressure is on digital marketers to adapt their brands and quickly catch up to speed.

In “Beat Brand Boredom: Aligning Brand With Student Experience to Reinvigorate Interest in Your School,” higher education marketing firms and universities will learn how to put the student experience at the forefront of their marketing tactics. When equipped with a student-centric approach, marketers will better connect with prospects in all stages of enrollment to drive digital advertising success.

“Digital advertising success can have a huge impact on your marketing plan, but it can be challenging for marketers to navigate the nuances of advertising technology,” said Search Influence’s Director of Account Management Alison Zeringue. “We’re excited to share our knowledge with the continuing education community so they can benefit from our experience.”

Learn from higher education marketing specialists at Search Influence, the Tulane School of Professional Advancement, and the University of Florida Online to see how you can beat brand fatigue and boost enrollment with updates to your:
- Brand messaging
- Brand positioning
- Media mix
- Visual identities
UPCEA MEMS 2022 Conference Speakers

In the 2022 UPCEA MEMS session, “Beat Brand Boredom: Aligning Brand With Student Experience to Reinvigorate Interest in Your School,” attendees will learn higher education marketing strategies from:
- Alison Zeringue, Director of Account Management, Search Influence
- Alicia Jasmin, Director of Marketing & Communications, Tulane School of Professional Advancement
- Sheila Flatz, Assistant Director, Operations, University of Florida Online
- Nico Rose, Chief Operating Officer and Associate Director, University of Florida Online
  UPCEA and Tulane Partnerships
UPCEA and Tulane Partnerships

In 2022, Search Influence became a Platinum Partner of UPCEA. Through this partnership, Search Influence shares how higher education marketing institutions can optimize, measure, and track their search engine optimization and paid ad strategies to drive more qualified prospects to their marketing channels.
For six years, Search Influence has worked with Tulane SoPA to improve their online visibility and drive quality inquiries, providing services including search engine, paid digital ads and email marketing.

To learn more about Search Influence’s higher education marketing services, visit our website or call (504) 336-3379.
November 28, 2022
UPCEA Publishes Blog Post by Search Influence’s Alison Zeringue
On October 28, 2022, UPCEA (the leading association for professional, continuing, and online education) published the blog post “SEO & Digital Advertising: Jet Fuel for Your Higher Education Marketing Strategy,” by Search Influence Director of Account Management Alison Zeringue.

For over 100 years, UPCEA has served public and private colleges and universities across North America with a focus on:
- Professional and continuing education
- Alternative and non-degree credentials
- Marketing and enrollment management
- And most recently, online leadership and administration
Alison Zeringue’s UPCEA Blog Post

In her blog, Alison discusses how the demographics of Professional, Continuing and Online education units’ students have evolved along with the demand for online education options — creating a new challenge for high ed marketers.

She discusses how expertly crafted SEO and digital advertising can give higher education marketers a leg up in a constantly changing field.

“In my tenure as a marketer, there is a theme that rings true: Search engine optimization (SEO) and digital advertising — both paid search and digital display — work in tandem to deliver consistent, qualified inquiries to fuel your pipeline,” Zeringue said in the post.

UPCEA and Search Influence’s Partnership

In 2022, ROI-focused digital marketing agency Search Influence became a Platinum Partner of UPCEA.

Through this partnership, Search Influence shares how higher education marketing institutions can optimize, measure, and track their search engine optimization and paid ad strategies to drive more qualified prospects to their marketing channels.

Learn More From the Higher Education Marketing Experts at Search Influence

Since 2006, Search Influence has been crafting digital marketing campaigns for higher ed institutions that show proven results.

Contact us today to learn more about our digital marketing services.
November 17, 2022
Search Influence to Present at the 2022 University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) South Region Conference
Search Influence will co-present “The Devil’s in the Details: Using Technical SEO to Solve Your Website Woes” at the 2022 University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) South Region Conference, along with fellow higher education marketing specialist, Alicia Jasmin, the Director of Marketing & Communications for the Tulane School of Professional Advancement (SoPA).

Since 1915, UPCEA has been a leader in the continuing education space, working with private and public universities across North America. Now based in Washington, D.C., UPCEA continues to be the leading association for professional, continuing, and online education.

At the 2022 UPCEA South Region Conference, marketing professionals will get the opportunity to learn about the latest trends in higher education marketing.

Higher Ed Marketing Session Description

According to The Evolllution, the student experience starts with a university’s website — making the need for concise and user-friendly web pages more important than ever before.

Higher education institutions put their search visibility and website traffic at risk when big, and even sometimes nominal, changes are made to their websites.

In Search Influence and Tulane SoPA’s UPCEA session, “The Devil’s in the Details: Using Technical SEO to Solve Your Website Woes,” higher-ed marketers will learn how to avoid costly mistakes that may unknowingly impact search ranking and traffic by gaining an understanding of technical SEO.

“Technical SEO helps Google better process your site,” said Search Influence’s Director of Sales and Marketing Paula French. “We want higher education marketers to understand its importance, so they don’t risk their search rankings and traffic when they make site updates.”

Join Search Influence and the Tulane School of Professional Advancement to learn:
- How website structure can hurt or help rankings
- The impact of subdomains and microsites
- How to pull off a seamless website migration
Higher Education Digital Marketing Speakers

Director of Marketing & Communications for the Tulane School of Professional Advancement (SoPA), Alicia Jasmin

Alicia Jasmin is a native of New Orleans with expertise in higher education, strategic communications, and community relations.

From 2007-2019, Alicia held several roles in the Tulane University Office of Marketing and Communications, where she helped shape the university brand and promote positive university messaging. In her last position at Tulane as the Assistant Director for News, she played a major role in upholding the university’s reputation through the daily management of external university news.

Prior to rejoining Tulane as the Director of Marketing and Communications for the School of Professional Advancement, Alicia led community relations efforts at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the largest cancer center in the United States.

Search Influence Director of Sales & Marketing, Paula French

Paula French has developed strategic digital marketing solutions for clients since 2009 when she joined Search Influence — then a 9-person team.

Paula contributed to the company’s rapid growth by building and training effective account and sales strategists. She has led strategy on SEO & digital marketing projects for hundreds of businesses across the country.

Today, Paula plays online marketing matchmaker by identifying the right marketing solutions to match business goals and help companies in almost any industry optimize their potential, with an emphasis on education, healthcare, and tourism.

Paula speaks about digital marketing in her hometown of New Orleans and on the road, including past panels at MozCon Local in Seattle, Pubcon Las Vegas, and Engage in Portland.
November 1, 2022
5 Higher Education Marketing Challenges Solved by SEO and Paid Digital Advertising
Key Insights
- SEO and paid digital advertising works. And because they are trackable and measurable, we assure you they do.
- Drive more qualified leads with SEO and paid digital advertising, which will help you capture prospects actively looking for your offerings.
- Reach your audience at all stages of the funnel with SEO through broader, career-growth topics in the awareness stage and more specific, branded searches in the decision stage.
- With the flexibility of these tactics, you can quickly adjust your marketing plan when it isn’t working.
Education marketing leaders need reliable strategies to drive results. If you don’t know which strategy to favor to meet your enrollment goals, we are here to let you in on something — SEO and paid digital advertising will make the biggest impact on your marketing plan. And because they are trackable and measurable, we assure you they do. (When we refer to paid digital advertising, we mean paid search and display ads. Throughout the rest of the blog post, I’ll refer to paid digital advertising as paid digital ads.)

While marketing leaders see SEO as important, we at Search Influence don’t believe that they have prioritized it as a key part of their strategy. We also know marketing teams spend a lot of money on paid digital ads but believe they don’t optimize their campaigns to their fullest potential because they don’t look at the data from the right angle.

In this post, we’ll detail how SEO and paid digital ads can solve the top five challenges we hear from education marketing leaders. Overall, you’ll see that SEO and paid digital ads address the number one goal of a successful higher education strategy: qualified inquiries (at an acceptable cost) that turn into students.

#1: How Do I Get More Qualified Inquiries?

Most often, higher education marketing plans have both a quantity and quality issue when it comes to inquiries.
- You don’t have enough new prospects entering the funnel
- You receive a decent number of inquiries but not enough high-quality inquiries
- It seems like you receive high-quality inquiries, but you don’t know how to evaluate their quality
SEO and paid digital ads help you capture prospects actively looking for your degrees, programs, and certifications, which means you’ll receive more qualified inquiries.

A comprehensive SEO strategy improves your rankings, which drives more website traffic and more inquiries. When these prospects inquire, you should expect higher quality leads because they got to your site through a search that indicates they are actively considering a solution and want to learn about your educational offerings. Similarly, paid digital ads fuel qualified inquiries in the same way — by driving website traffic from people actively searching for your programs.

Paid display advertising (i.e., Facebook and LinkedIn advertising) helps you drive more qualified inquiries by targeting the RIGHT audience. Other tactics, such as organic social media, could reach a variety of people. However, when you specifically target your audience through paid digital advertising, the data gives you confidence that your messages reach the right people.

#2: I Know My Audience Is Out There. How Do I Reach Them?

SEO and paid digital ads help you reach your audience in distinct ways.

When people think about SEO, they usually think about reaching audiences that directly search for your programs. Less often, they think about the impact SEO can have at the top of the funnel — when prospects are not yet aware that education may be their answer.

By writing blog posts about more general topics that your audience may be searching, you can be one of the first organizations to reach them and lead them to consider education. For example, higher funnel topics like “Most Popular Programming Languages for a Career in Web Development” or “How to Launch Your Freelancing Career in 3 Steps” can drive traffic from prospective students who are looking for career growth advice but might not yet have considered a degree. Yes — this is SEO!

Although higher education marketers generally include paid digital ads as part of their strategy, we often hear from them that their campaigns don’t drive enough inquiries. This isn’t a problem with paid digital ads as a tactic. This suggests there’s an opportunity to adjust your campaigns, which means testing your target audience and/or fine-tuning the creative messaging.

Campaign adjustments, through both expert human optimization as well as machine learning optimization, help you better reach your audience. For example, a campaign might drive very few inquiries or the wrong types of inquiries because your campaigns target either too narrow or too broad an audience. By making these types of adjustments, paid digital advertising can drive leads at an appropriate cost.

#3: How Do I Drive Prospects Down the Funnel?

Some higher education marketing leaders are surprised to hear that both SEO and paid digital ads can drive prospects down the funnel.

A robust higher education SEO strategy includes a full-funnel approach to content that speaks to prospects in each stage of their decision-making process. Recommended content for each part of the funnel:
- Top of the funnel: Career growth topics
- Middle of the Funnel: Program/degree-specific content
- Bottom of the funnel: Branded search engine optimization, which allows you to capture searches specific to your school/unit and assure that prospects find their answers quickly — and on your website
Branded SEO is often overlooked and is one of my favorite tactics! Branded searches in the decision phase include application deadlines, reviews, tours, and tuition costs.

Paid digital advertising allows you to tweak your creative messaging to fit your prospect’s place in the marketing funnel. With the proper campaign segmentation, you can:
- Drive prospects down the funnel towards a deeper conversion
- Appeal to prospects with different motivators
You can also run multiple ad variations to speak to more people. Over time, you will see which messages work more than others and switch them out.

As you segment your messaging down the funnel, you can create specific messaging you wish your audience knew about. You don’t have to worry about overall/introductory messaging because your audience has already engaged with your institution and knows you. For example, a single ad could focus on:
- A student’s success story
- An alumni career achievement stat
- An award, or special pricing
#4: What Am I Getting for My Budget?

The clear accountability of paid digital ads and SEO is a key reason many have moved the lion’s share of their budget to the digital arena.

SEO and paid digital ads enable you to see the source of the prospect on an inquiry-by-inquiry basis, which means you can track the cost per inquiry and cost per application from each source and overall. Ultimately, this means you can tie ROI back to your campaigns.

These direct metrics enable you to compare your stats to industry benchmarks and to peer organizations which both give you confidence your results stack up and tell you clearly what you get for your budget.

#5: Can I Quickly Adjust My Marketing When My Plan Isn’t Working?

The beauty of SEO and paid digital ads is that you can make adjustments along the way.

With SEO, you can increase your emphasis on optimizations for a given program or degree if the work so far hasn’t been aggressive enough. If one program outperforms the others, you can pivot your time spent to another program.

Contrary to traditional marketing or longer-term media buys that lock you into a specific time frame, with paid digital ads, you can make adjustments after you have specific data. Optimizations can range from creative/messaging updates to changes to where the ads run to who sees the ads.

If a campaign has not met your goals, you can actually turn it off and reinvest that money into a campaign that drives results at an acceptable cost. For example, if you have campaigns on Facebook and paid search, and the paid search campaign drives quality leads, you can reallocate your budget from Facebook to paid search.

Prioritizing SEO and Paid Digital Ads Will Have an Impact on Your Higher Education Marketing Plan

As a digital marketing agency that started out as a search engine optimization agency, it may not be surprising that we have this point of view. Yet, we think it’s worth repeating: Higher education marketing teams know they should prioritize SEO in their marketing plans, but they often don’t.

We also believe that universities that invest heavily in paid digital ads and don’t see expected results have not leveraged data to make the best optimizations.

If you are ready to learn how SEO and paid digital ads can make the biggest impact on your marketing plan, please reach out to the Search Influence team via our contact us form or give us a call at (504) 208-3900.
October 25, 2022