Presentation by Kyle James on inbound marketing techniques for schools and universities.

1. Inbound School Marketing
Kyle James - @KyleJames
Inbound Marketing Consultant Manager
HubSpot

2. Why I Can Help
What I Do…

3. Marketing Has Changed
1950 - 2000 2000 - 2050

4. Outbound Marketing

5. Outbound Marketing is Broken
800-555-1234
Annoying
Salesperson

6. Inbound Marketing
Blog SEO Social Media
All These Channels Matter

7. Inbound Marketing Process
Process Tools
• Publish • Content Mgmt
• Optimize Get Found • Blogging
• Promote • Social Media
• SEO
• Target • Offers / CTAs
• Capture Convert • Landing Pages
• Nurture • Emails
• Lead Intel
• Test • Analytics
• Analyze Measure
• Repeat

8. What is the Purpose of your Website?
If a tree falls in a forest and no
one is around to hear it, does it
make a sound?
8

9. Can People Search Your Site?
If people can’t find it,
does it matter?
9

10. What is Important?
What is
Important?
10

11. Possible Important Items
Admission Specific General Goals
• Apply to College • Sign up for eConnect
• Schedule a Campus Visit updates
• Request Info • Watch Videos
• Download the Viewbook • Subscribe to RSS
• Take a Virtual Tour • Become Facebook Fan,
Member of a Group
• Join Linked In
• Read Blogs
11

12. Five Areas We Will Focus
Five Areas To Discuss
1. Conversions
2. SEO
3. Blogging
4. Social Media
5. General Analytics
12

13. First Focus
The Conversion
Process
13

14. How Do You Convert?
• Conversions require
Landing Pages
• A Landing Page is a
Page with a Form on it.

15. What We Want to Measure
• Give Us Money!
• But How?
• Alumni Donations
• Applicants
• Schedule a Visit
• Download Catalog
• Get on Mailing List

16. Landing Page Best Practices

17. Three Steps of a Landing Page
1. The Call to Action
2. The Landing Page
3. The Follow-Up

18. The Call to Action
• Are your offers compelling?
• Call to action best practices
• Create urgency
• Include an image
• Contrasting colors
• Be specific/inspirational

19. The Landing Page

20. The Landing Page
• Keep it simple
• Little to no navigation or other links
• People scan, don’t read
• Bullet points
• Pictures
• Bold copy
• Five second rule
• Make it instantly obvious what they will get
• Shorter the form the higher the conversion rate
• Possible alternative call to actions

21. The Follow-Up
• Thank you page
• Auto response email
• Additional channels to connect
• Opportunities for further engagement
• Lead Nurturing
• Email Marketing
• Phone Calls

22. Thank You Page Examples

23. Second Focus
Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)
23

24. What SEO is NOT

25. SEO is Usability and Accessibility

26. Search Engine Crawlers are Blind
Yahoo Microsoft
Google

27. By the Numbers (on one site)
• 30% of traffic is delivered by Search
Engines
• 82% of that traffic is delivered by
Google
• On a large college website w/
1,000,000 visits per month that
is 300,000 visitors

28. Search Engine Optimization
3,000 searches per second
• Publish more content
• Optimize your content
• Promote your content

29. Optimized?
Are you optimized
to get that traffic?

30. It All Starts With Keywords
• “It’s NOT about what you want or
what you call it, it is about what
people are actually looking for.”
• “Nobody cares about your products
(except you)” – David Meerman Scott

31. Long Tail Keywords
• Internet Marketing Software Solution
• Internet Marketing Software Tools
• Internet Marketing Software
• Internet Marketing Tools
• Internet Marketing

32. Two Parts of SEO
On-Page Off-Page

33. On-Page Optimization
Page
Title
URL
Meta
Description
Meta Headers
Keywords

34. Page Title
• Describe The Page Page
Title
• Include Keywords
• 70 Character Limit

35. URL
• Describe The Page
URL
• Include Keywords
• A Dynamic URL is hard to understand
• What are the following two pages
about?
• http://tomahawktake.com/2009/04/11/game-no-5-recap-braves-5-
nationals-3/
• http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090411&content_id=422
5972&vkey=recap&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

36. Headers
• Semantic Markup
Headers
• Include Keywords
• Describe sections of the Page

37. Semantic Markup is Like A Word Doc

38. Meta Description & Keywords
Meta
• Unique for Each Page Keywords
• Only Viewable in Source
• Meta Description limit 150 characters
• Meta Keyword limit 10 keywords max Meta
Description

39. Off-Page Optimization

40. Your Site Is Trusted!
Site Authority

41. Off-Page Optimization
1. Inbound Links
2. Site Authority
3. Anchor Text

42. Anchor Text Count!

43. Remember it’s Not About Us
What are those
buildings called?

44. What are people looking for?

45. Getting Ranked

46. Search Call To Actions
Page Title
Meta Description
Page Title and Meta Description are all you get in
search results. Make sure that they count.

47. Inbound Links
• Content Creation Strategy
• “If You Build It, They Will Come”

48. Third Focus
Content Creation
Blogging
48

49. Publish Content Worth Sharing

50. Blogging Best Practices
• Educational and informative not sales
focused
• Tell your story
• Personal and stories from people in
the field
• So much more than just text (videos,
pictures, etc)

51. Student Blogs
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/campus_life/studentblogs

52. Faculty Blogs
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/

53. Staff Blogs
http://fuse.ithaca.edu/staffblogs/

54. Alumni Blogs
http://csaa.byu.edu/alumni-blogs

55. President’s Blogs
http://blog.southcollegetn.edu/

56. Driving Traffic Back
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/

57. Long Tail Ranking
• The more content the more terms that
you can rank
• People search for lots of random
things
• Your Homepage is no longer the only
entrance to your website

58. Fourth Focus
Social Media
Relationship
58

59. Introduction to Social Media
• You have to be creating value on your
website before entering social media
• Once you are blogging the lines
between social media fade away

60. Own Your Presence
• If nothing else own the account for
your school
• Prevent Squatters and it’s a land grab

61. Protect Against Squatters

62. Check Your Accounts
http://checkusernames.com/

63. Focus On Big Three
• If nothing else you should have:
1. Facebook Fan Page
a) Class Groups
b) Alumni Groups
2. LinkedIn Alumni Network
3. Twitter School Account (News Feed)
a) Admission Account
b) Mascot Account – Sports
http://checkusernames.com/

64. Facebook School Fan Page
http://www.facebook.com/GeorgetownCollege

65. LinkedIn Alumni Network
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1156

66. Twitter – Minimum RSS Syndication
http://twitter.com/waynestate

67. Fifth Focus
General Analytics
67

68. Avoid Paralysis by Analysis
• Don’t measure everything.
• Simple is better than complicated.
• Focus on 3-5 metrics.

69. Track Reach
69

70. Traffic

71. Inquiries

72. Students

73. …By Channel or Source
Visitors Leads Sales
SEO
Social
Media

74. Inbound Marketing Book
Learn about:
Get Found
Convert
Analyze

75. What Inbound Marketing is NOT

76. Inbound Marketing Process
Process Tools
• Publish • Content Mgmt
• Optimize Get Found • Blogging
• Promote • Social Media
• SEO
• Target • Offers / CTAs
• Capture Convert • Landing Pages
• Nurture • Emails
• Lead Intel
• Test • Analytics
• Analyze Measure
• Repeat

77. HubSpot Makes Inbound Marketing Easier
77

78. Questions?
Resources:
Blog on Internet Marketing for
Higher Ed:
http://doteduguru.com
Live demonstration of HubSpot:
http://www.hubspot.com/live-
hubspot-webinar-and-demo
Try HubSpot for free:
http://www.hubspot.com/trial
More resources:
http://www.hubspot.com/
education-institutions