Marketing & Admissions Strategies 6.25.12 2012 EMBA Council Western Regional Meeting Jon Masciana Sr. Director, Marketing & Communications The Paul Merage School of Business
Agenda What s Your Marketing Mix? Merage School Digital Ads Case Study: What s Working? What s Not? Your Website: It s More Important Than Ever! CXO Audience on LinkedIn
Agenda What s Your Marketing Mix? Merage School Digital Ads Case Study: What s Working? What s Not? Your Website: It s More Important Than Ever! CXO Audience on LinkedIn
Percentage of EMBA Marketing Budget Spent on: Online and Social Media Advertising A. Less than 25% B. Between 25 and 40% C. Between 40 and 60% D. Between 60 and 80% E. More than 80%
Percentage of EMBA Marketing Budget Spent on: Print ads in journals/magazines, TV, radio A. Less than 25% B. Between 25 and 40% C. Between 40 and 60% D. Between 60 and 80% E. More than 80%
In terms of cost per lead (CPL) and conversion to applications, what is the most effective form of advertising for your program? A. LinkedIn B. Google Search PPC C. Print ads (newspapers, magazines) D. Radio E. Television F. Purchased Lists (GMASS, Specialty, etc.) G. Not sure 14% 14% 14% 14% 14% 14% 14% LinkedIn Google Search... Print ads (new... Radio Television Purchased List... Not sure
EMBA Program Marketing Budget Allocation 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% EMBA Western EMBA U.S. Non-EMBA Source: EMBA Council 2011 Membership Program Survey
EMBA Program Marketing Budget Allocation vs. Price of Program 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% $45K-$60K $60-80K $80K+ Source: EMBA Council 2011 Membership Program Survey
Agenda What s Your Marketing Mix? Merage School Digital Ads Case Study: What s Working? What s Not? Your Website: It s More Important Than Ever! CXO Audience on LinkedIn
Online Ads Will Solve Everything Source: Corey Eakin, University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis
How do we improve our website? web marketing? What impact do we want to make with online advertising? Increase awareness of our programs Increase early understanding Increase early inquiries; new prospects in the admissions funnel
Digital Advertising 1.0: The Early Stages What worked? Google Ads: Expensive, but most effective LinkedIn: industry/functional role targeting effective What didn t? Facebook ads: Great targeting, low quality leads High cost: each MBA program advertising separately Manual tracking of leads throughout the admissions funnel
Digital Advertising 2.0: Integration Hired agency (Annodyne) to help us find costsavings opportunities, effectively track leads throughout the admissions funnel Online Marketing Created portal landing page for reputation-based advertising Website, Info Session, Personal Took advantage of LinkedIn improved targeting capabilities Application Streamlined communication and registration process Yield!! Fully integrated with CRM system
Progress of New $10,000 $9,000 $8,000 60 50 Strategy $7,000 $6,000 40 New strategy has led to lower CPL Higher conversion rate Portal page provides highest conversion rate $5,000 $4,000 $3,000 $2,000 $1,000 $0 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun 30 20 10 0 Cost SEM Leads $500.00 $450.00 $400.00 $350.00 $300.00 $250.00 $200.00 $150.00 $100.00 $50.00 5.00% 4.50% 4.00% 3.50% 3.00% 2.50% 2.00% 1.50% 1.00% 0.50% Cost Per Lead Conversion Rate $0.00 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun 0.00%
Google PPC: Conversion Summary Google Conversion Summary: June, 2012 % of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Leads % of SEM Leads: Event Registration % of SEM Leads: Applications (to-date) Yield FTMBA 8% N/A 9%?? FEMBA 23% 42% 9%?? EMBA 20% 40% 11%?? Least expensive Cost per lead HCEMBA 9% 50% 23%?? MSEM 40% N/A N/A??
LinkedIn Direct Ads: Improved Targeting
New LinkedIn Opportunity: Direct Mail & Recommendations
Agenda What s Your Marketing Mix? Merage School Digital Ads Case Study: What s Working? What s Not? Your Website: It s More Important Than Ever! CXO Audience on LinkedIn
How do we improve our website?
Influence of a School s Website Compared with Rankings School website 24% Financial Times BusinessWeek US News & World Report 16% 16% 17% Wall Street Journal 11% Forbes Princeton Review 8% 8% Economist Intelligence Unit 6% Asia Inc. Canadian Business 2% 2% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% Percentage ranked extremely influential Source: GMAC Application Trends Survey, 2012
Your Website: It s Still VERY Important Website re-design or content re-work? Spend the time on areas that make the most difference Analytics, analytics, analytics! Look closely at the words people use to find your website Integrate your PPC campaigns with your analytics Track all those landing pages High bounce rates on key pages may indicate issues It s all about your user Get them to the content that they want in the fewest amount of steps possible SEO: All text is indexed by search engines Make sure graphics have descriptions Minimize usage of Flash Merage School EMBA Website Pageviews Apr-Jun 2012 Home Page 13.1% Admissions 12.9% Program Overview Information Sessions Program Differentiators 8.5% 5.4% 4.8% Cost 4.6% Those 7 pages = 50% of our total page views! Faculty pages 1.4%
Categories of Information Sought on School Website, by Type Source: GMAC Application Trends Survey, 2012
Agenda What s Your Marketing Mix? Merage School Digital Ads Case Study: What s Working? What s Not? Your Website: It s More Important Than Ever! CXO Audience on LinkedIn
LinkedIn: Our Most Important Social Media Platform Other Twitter MySpace LinkedIn Western US 2011 Western US 2010 Western US 2009 Facebook Blogs (new in 2011) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% Source: EMBA Council 2011 Membership Program Survey
LinkedIn CXO Summary LinkedIn captures 1.6M CXOs in the US 24% membership growth y/y 51% visited in the last 30 days CXOs are hungry for information and insights CXOs are consuming 97 pages of content per month Over index on their use of Company Pages + Groups CXOs are not significant users of LinkedIn Jobs Source: LinkedIn
CXOs More Active than Average LinkedIn Visitor % of CXO using CXO index against US population CXO s are heavy users of Company Pages and Groups indicating a high need for information and insight CXO s aren t heavy users of LinkedIn Jobs 20% less than the US average Source: LinkedIn
Questions?
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