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Curiouser and curiouser!
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Like Alice realizing that nothing in Wonderland worked as she expected, so can it be with marketing online programs from a traditional marketing mindset.
The conversation delves into the challenges faced by universities in marketing their online programs, particularly in light of budget cuts and enrollment declines. The discussion highlights the pushback against changes in university structures, the importance of understanding digital marketing, and the evolving role of Online Program Managers (OPMs). The speakers emphasize the need for a student-centric approach in marketing and the complexities involved in transitioning to in-house marketing strategies.
00:00Introduction to Online Education Challenges
03:52Budget Cuts and Institutional Responses
10:21The Shift to In-House Marketing
19:02Understanding Online Marketing Dynamics
24:27Operational Strategies for Online Programs
24:33The Role of OPM Partnerships in University Marketing
30:30Challenges of Program-Specific Marketing
34:18Evaluating the Effectiveness of OPMs
39:28Building Internal Marketing Competence
45:48The Importance of Student-Centric Marketing
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Transcript
Introduction to Online Education Marketing
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Online Education Across the Atlantic. ah We've had a lot of interesting things happening this year so far and we've already talked about we're looking forward to the summer and our conference travel.
00:00:23
Speaker
um And so just a lot of things happening this year, not a boring year. But today, one of the things that we wanted to cover in more depth was this topic around marketing, particularly around online programs and even hybrid programs.
00:00:39
Speaker
Because so much of the OPM market is driven by this situation. Marketing and student recruitment is the center of the OPM market.
00:00:51
Speaker
But we seldom talk about, well, why is that such a core need for nonprofit you know colleges and universities to often get help doing that? And it's not always an OPM partner. There are other organizations.
00:01:05
Speaker
vendors who help that.
Financial Challenges in California Universities
00:01:06
Speaker
So we wanted to talk about the challenge of marketing in a digital world. That might be one way to look at that. um But before we get to that, i just wanted to check in on some ah news items. And, you know, in the U.S., we keep coming up with the same nature of news items. So I'm going to take one that's a little bit different. So it's not all about D.C. federal moves.
00:01:31
Speaker
um Morgan shared this morning on our Slack about Sacramento State University. And the Cal State system, 23 campuses, they're facing a potential budget cut from the state of $375 million. dollars And then that gets apportioned out. I think it's roughly 8% of state support they're looking at getting cut.
00:01:53
Speaker
And this is the same time that the cost of running universities gone up with inflation and pensions and various aspects. And you have the long-term um enrollment declines, particularly with regional public universities.
00:02:10
Speaker
And so there's a lot of, to be honest, a lot of come-to-Jesus moments that are happening at universities. But the thing that's interesting is to me is in the Cal State system, you had Sonoma State University.
00:02:25
Speaker
They saw how big the problem was, particularly with their enrollment, and they came out, they said, we're making some pretty big cuts, including we're getting rid of athletics. Doesn't add value. We're in a crisis. We need to focus on this.
00:02:39
Speaker
They also cut academic programs. They have an experiment they're doing with four or three other regional universities to do a shared services model to see if that'll save money.
00:02:51
Speaker
um And there's a lot of pushback on that, as you can imagine. Chico State University, um I wrote about that as well, where they've verbally acknowledged the problem. But if you look at their strategic plan, it's it's pretty much playing with org charts, and I'm highly skeptical it's going to work.
00:03:09
Speaker
Where Sacramento State comes in is they had the same issue. How do we cut things? And they looked at how do we go, you know, reduce the number of academic units is one of their core plans. They also have ah reduced hiring, etc. But saying if we have fewer dean, one way to look at it, fewer deans and dean's offices, it will be more efficient.
Resistance to University Reforms
00:03:32
Speaker
The news item is they're backtracking off of that plan already because of pushback. So the reason I mentioned this, it's we we know about colleges and universities needing to cut budgets, but at least there you're starting in Northern California, you're starting to get a quorum of there's so much pushback, even the efforts they're doing are getting torpedoed.
00:03:55
Speaker
And I'm not arguing that they had the world's best plans, but it's a little bit, uh, concerning to me that we're not even finding out how they're going to deal with these issues. As you were talking, I was thinking thinking it's less a come-to-Jesus plan than a a Saint Augustine plan, you know, like give me chastity and continence, but not yet.
00:04:13
Speaker
yes Yeah. Ooh, we don't like that idea. yeah I think what you were describing in terms of the pushback kind of, it sort of resonates with one of the stories very close to home for me around Cardiff University because they were kind of firm announced a lot of um um closing of departments and um redundancies. um And yeah, that that's all been kind of,
00:04:40
Speaker
put on hold and there's been a bit of a reprieve because there was such a movement um around that. and And I mean, I don't know how much that chimes to the kind of story that you're relating to, but I think that's going to be the, it feels like universities in general are in similar positions.
00:04:56
Speaker
And then there's all of that kind of pushback. And what do you get in the end? Do you get, do you get anywhere ultimately in in terms tackling problems? so The pushback I'm seeing in these cases are pretty much blanket pushbacks. um I mean, there was the Faculty Association did make an argument of, they actually made the argument saying, you don't actually need to cut any academic programs to continue things. And there were I think there was a misreading the finances, but they're arguing against change. Well, it's just plain as day, they've got to do something.
00:05:32
Speaker
So I would hope that we would have more pushback that would say, hey, going from seven to four academic departments only saves you this much money, but here's the impact on students.
00:05:43
Speaker
This is a better approach, and here's some details behind it. ah You know, an alternative. and So the concern is we're getting a lot of pushback, but some of that pushback doesn't even acknowledge math.
00:05:57
Speaker
and what they have to go through. Yeah, I think that's a key point, isn't it? Because I think ultimately, if the pushback is just about, and which I think it feels a bit more in the Cardiff's case, perhaps, is a pushback is all about figuring out all the different ways that you can put so much pressure on the university that they stop what they're doing.
00:06:18
Speaker
i respect and not necessarily having an alternative plan. you know It's often mentioned over here, oh, the university has X amount of reserves and you chat to finance directors and they say, look, that's not something that we, you know it's not like something we get out the ATM and you know we're sorted you know for the month.
00:06:37
Speaker
um So yeah, I think we'll we'll see. that I think actually that's going to be an interesting trend for me this year. you know The extent to which change, a positive change happens on the back of you know pretty difficult situations will have strikes coming, I'm sure, as well. So that's going to add pressure. You you described it pretty interestingly. How many different pressure points – I'm paraphrasing you. How many different pressure points in order to get these changes to stop?
00:07:05
Speaker
Yeah. Seems to be the nature of it. I mean, no just going on to the Cardiff one was interesting because they even, and they took something that the Vice Chancellor had put in a paper several years ago that, I can't remember the exact example, but he didn't it it didn't reflect her in a very good light.
00:07:23
Speaker
And so, you know, you can talk about that as a specific example, or you can kind of jump up from that and say, look, these this is a this is another ah tactic, you could say, like actually a personal ah assault on the um the on the VC. And it's another ah element of kind of that building pressure on the university. I know of a ah campus here in the US s where that is happening too. It's a a personal base attack because of this fear of change and this desire to not make change even in the face of a very explicit um need to do so.
00:07:59
Speaker
So yeah, it's ah it's a crazy, and i think we'll see more of it. And I wonder how many provosts and presidents in the US will also lose their jobs because of this need for change and the ability inability to take um faculty with them.
00:08:17
Speaker
Part of the problem there is, well, it depends on your point of view. If you're against market consolidation, fewer and fewer choices. And if you would like to support public education, that it's a you know a state good and you need to do it.
00:08:32
Speaker
then it's a bad thing. But this is sort of gets to a structural argument of can public institutions reform themselves in a way to effectively serve students with new economic realities?
00:08:47
Speaker
And this type of pushback, and this type of but We're already giving up on some before we've even tried it. doesn't bode well right now. And I think part of the effect is in the U.S. regional public universities, if this becomes a common trend, even outside of California in the Cal State system, um boy, it makes it even more dire for these schools moving forward, in my opinion.
00:09:14
Speaker
um So you're right. I think it's definitely going to be a story
Traditional vs. Online Marketing
00:09:18
Speaker
moving forward. I think the bigger news here, wait, you called them ATMs? I thought they were called cash points over and ah in the UK.
00:09:26
Speaker
Look, I'm just trying to fit in. Oh. Well, if you're going to fit in, then come to San Diego next April. he's been a It's been a while now. I'm i'm i'm slowly learning the lingo.
00:09:38
Speaker
Well, with that in mind, and that really is going to be a something for us to watch and comment on over time. um With that, let's get to our main topic, which is marketing, which quite often comes down to digital versus traditional marketing.
00:09:53
Speaker
Why is this such a big issue and why can't it be so difficult for traditional schools to deal with? But let me hand it over to Neil. Yeah, it was interesting interesting, just a line that you said just a minute ago around universities being able to reform themselves to serve students' needs.
00:10:14
Speaker
Well, I think there's words to that effect. um yeah And and and i think it's it I think it's interesting because I think this this topic we decided to cover on the back of, um I think it was a news item maybe, Morgan, that you were telling us about.
00:10:27
Speaker
around a university in the US maybe ending an OPM partnership of bringing their marketing in-house. It was the the Drake University and the... but William Patterson University. The William Patterson, both of them were looking at marketing, yes.
00:10:44
Speaker
i i I just wondered, i thought it might be interesting to start because we all kind of recoiled or winced a little bit at the idea. And I just thought interesting to get a sense from each of you. why why did you um Why did you cast doubt on that? And why did you react in the way that you did? Because I think that gets the heart the heart of the heart of the matter really Well, let's recap just real quick. ah i I know this is terrible thought in case there are any people who didn't listen to the the previous episode.
00:11:17
Speaker
But the issue was Drake University in particular, there ah they've been working with an OPM for a decade and they're not going to renew the contract. So basically they're declaring...
00:11:27
Speaker
We're ending our OPM relationship. And they made some public statements about we're giving up too much money and we're doing this in-house. We can handle it. Yeah. You know, like it came from a news item. So I had a slice of information that that could be incomplete. So my apologies to anybody at Drake.
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah. if i if I'm misrepresenting it, but I was sort of concerned that the decision was being driven by budget concerns and that it seemed to be very faculty heavy. So they talked about the head of the department ah being linked on all communication with with students and there to answer questions and things like that.
00:12:09
Speaker
And they were sort of fusing enrollment and recruitment. um And you know it it could potentially be a lot of work and a ah ah pattern of work that most faculty members are not used to doing. So that was sort of what gave me pause there. um As opposed to the William Paterson, they sort of seem to have a different sort of kind of conversation there about um let's, what are the risks?
00:12:33
Speaker
What are the what the potential payoffs? And and let's balance those. I've heard over and over again from many places, part of the challenge is that nobody on campus understands marketing for online students.
00:12:47
Speaker
And so they have to go outside. Well, that gets to why I recoiled, is it just felt very much offhand in nature. Oh, we should be doing it and benefiting from the additional money from it.
00:13:01
Speaker
And yes, it was an article, but it was an article that was pushed by the university. And there was nobody saying, hey, we've completely changed how we do marketing and student recruitment, and we've proven that we know how to reach online students, and we have the infrastructure in place to do things this way. There was nothing of that nature. It was almost, hey, this has to be easy.
00:13:29
Speaker
We'll do it and take the money ourselves. And we've seen it so many different schools that... When you do traditional marketing for a school that has any sort of name, quite often it it's almost a benefit to make things difficult.
00:13:45
Speaker
Students want to come to your school. So we give you a nice glossy brochure. You might get it within a week or two. We'll invite you to campus because we know you'll love our campus when you come visit. And it's got this back and forth, you want to be here,
00:14:02
Speaker
And you're privileged to get this info from us. With online and access-based education, and the two overlap a lot, it's much more based on we need to fit into your life.
00:14:16
Speaker
And we know that you're searching for information on this program Saturday at 11 p.m. And if you don't get information in a matter of minutes or hours,
00:14:26
Speaker
You might move on and go look at another program. So it's all about the prospective student, and it's all about timelines and very digital in
Transitioning to In-House Marketing
00:14:37
Speaker
nature. And they're just fundamentally different mindsets around marketing.
00:14:43
Speaker
And I think you need to prove that you know the difference and that you can handle both. The example that I used was Arizona State University. Yes, they worked with Pearson and they got rid of Pearson.
00:14:54
Speaker
It took, you know, five to 10 years for ASU to build up their own capability set to be able to say, all right, we can now handle this 100% on our own. Took them time and lot of investment.
00:15:08
Speaker
I don't see indications of any of that at Drake. I don't apologize the way Morgan is ahead of time because they planted that article. If they wanted to give people confidence they knew what to do, they should have said so.
00:15:24
Speaker
So I'm a little bit less forgiving. eight Yeah, that follows a trend maybe on the podcast. I don't know. Maybe that's being kind on you, Phil. But um yeah ah yeah i i yeah, I think I think i echo a lot of those thoughts. I mean, i I think if it's kind of presented as a ah financial thing as well, you know, my mind immediately thinks, actually, do you realize how much it costs?
00:15:47
Speaker
to market to an online audience like you said, Phil, that's not like a traditional kind of maybe undergraduate audience that kind of you have to reach in different ways and at different times and do things quite quite differently. um And ah yeah, it's so interesting hearing your guys' perspective on it because this ah this is such a frequent conversation challenge that I feel like I face when I'm working in the university to try to to try to convey the gulf in what they do for undergraduate students and ah that kind of traditional path into university versus versus online, especially if they're kind of moving it into moving into it for the first first time. And we haven't we have a probably another additional layer over here because we have a central admissions service that you know the students go through. And so
00:16:36
Speaker
you know, you you you had to have this kind of other layer over here. I'm interested in in in what you think the kind of nexus is of the kind of crux of the differences. that If you were kind of trying to get that across to someone, you know, what are the kind of the kind of key differences between those two audiences between the kind of marketing strategies? And I'm just wondering,
00:16:58
Speaker
ah how yeah we've we're talking about this kind of dichotomy between how universities operate yeah and outsourcing to someone who's kind of got experience in it. But i just wondered, you know, what what's the step what's the step that universities can make themselves but themselves to go down that route? Because you said, Morgan, you felt like this was going to happen more often. and it if it is a binary choice of insourcing or outsourcing, or is there can universities kind of make the step on in the right direction with it? I don't think it ever is a a binary step because even if you look into places that are famously doing it themselves, you know, ah Southern New Hampshire and Oregon State, they all work with marketing agencies to some extent.
00:17:41
Speaker
So there's always some... marketing agency helping with something, with a campaign or sort of something like that. But I think what Phil said about, in a way, marketing between on-campus and online is sort of upside down, you know, like it turns and inverts it, you know.
00:17:58
Speaker
the The institution is is front and center with on-campus, the person is front and center with online. You know, how are we going to fit around you and and and things? So I think that that that is sort of the core of it.
00:18:11
Speaker
I would add, um well, two things. One already mentioned, you're talking hours, not weeks, or minutes, not days, um in terms of responding and providing answers to questions as people start interacting with the program. And that's that's the biggest one that I hear on a functional level, but it's got a lot of implications behind it. That means, well, how do you organize and who's going to cover the off hours, stuff like that.
00:18:40
Speaker
But you know, one thing we're talking about, and as long as I'm the bad guy in this episode, it's somebody who knows what they're doing. If you, you cannot just take a traditional marketing and student recruitment lead,
00:18:56
Speaker
and have them add to their portfolio online and digital and online programs in particular and hope that's going to work. You better have somebody who already fundamentally understands, like what Morgan said, the upside-down nature, and it's a different approach, different metric. So you better have a leader in there who already gets that for that to happen.
00:19:20
Speaker
I don't think this is something where people can just evolve in their role. And I think that's a really interesting dynamic in organisations because, like, ah this is often what I say to universities who are kind of moving into online for the first time. Sure, you have a marketing team, you have student support, you have learning design, you have the functions, right?
00:19:43
Speaker
but they all need to function differently. and all Or if you're kind of assessing how well they might be set up for online, you kind of have to assess it based on the different the different needs of that that audience. And I think that's one of the real challenging things because I think...
00:20:00
Speaker
you know just thinking of the kind of particular challenges I guess there's a sense in which it do the unit does the university realize the level of investment that it might need to make into to marketing just from one point of view um do do kind of the leaders who are making those decisions kind of appreciate that and appreciate the difference for online but I think then there's the kind of element that if if you're doing marketing in a university and you're kind of head heading that up It's quite difficult to then come in and say, actually, yo you're not quite up to scratch. And I think there is that, you know, for online, that takes a degree of humility, I think, as a person to be able to kind of acknowledge that um as well. And I'm not saying I've seen a lot of instances of that, but I think that's another...
00:20:45
Speaker
added complication um around moving into online that um maybe doesn't get talked about as as much. It would almost be easier if we had a different name, if it wasn't called marketing in particular, if it was called online targeting.
00:21:02
Speaker
I'm just making something up so that from the beginning, we're saying we have this new void we need to fill of a function, online targeting. All right, we know we've done marketing. Well, we need to decide, can we take that group and move them into this completely new role with new expectations and set that up from the beginning, or do we need to outsource?
00:21:23
Speaker
I think part of what we get tripped up at is, no, no, no, marketing's my job. We already do marketing. And so that nomenclature gets in the way. And I'm not suggesting we can change that. I'm just saying a lot of the problem is having a functional name of marketing and then having to convince people many over time that, no, this is different.
00:21:47
Speaker
But ah that that's kept kind of hits on an interesting element. It's the answer that you you know Because ah there's that kind of classic um ah classic kind of choice, I suppose, when you're doing online where you know do you do you focus operationally on kind of bulking out all the of the stuff that you do so that it can support online?
00:22:07
Speaker
Or do you try to kind of do have a
Role of OPMs in Online Marketing
00:22:09
Speaker
separate operation? and i think we've seen both. um And it depends on if you... I mean, we have somebody we've talked to recently where they're pretty much taking the approach of, no, we need to rethink ah this sort of marketing and strategic enrollment management across the university. It's starting with an online perspective, but very quickly they're saying, no, let's look across the university.
00:22:36
Speaker
So we've definitely seen that. ah I've definitely seen, hey let's set up. It's almost the skunkworks idea. We've got to create a separate unit that we can allow it to operate differently and stay away.
00:22:48
Speaker
So I think this one probably depends on the leadership and culture of the university, that you can go either way um as far as which is the better approach.
00:23:00
Speaker
And I was just wondering as well, just to kind of expand on that a little bit, like we talked about, you know, obviously they Morgan, you gave the example that universities are using kind of agencies all the time, but I guess one of the one of the kind of avenues for outsourcing that looms large over this is kind of the OPM partnerships.
00:23:17
Speaker
I personally feel that the marketing and recruitment is the one thing that they do. Well, maybe maybe this is overstating the case slightly, but it's the one thing that they do that is,
00:23:29
Speaker
probably hardest or least within reach for lot of universities. I'm beginning to wonder whether you read my my post about this because there was a nit nifty little chart which showed that 91% of people who are using an OPM, I mean small n, it was a snap poll from Opsia, but 90% of people who who are using an OPM use it for for marketing. So it's like the one very consistent thing um that folks do. I think one of the issues is speed.
00:23:57
Speaker
You know, one of the things that OPMs do is just get something going really quickly. And so there isn't the slower buildup time of what the costs are. Because i I have been doing some research because I am going to write something about this at some point. and I am struck in conversations that I get to be part of, that's how I found the William Patterson thing, was how much places do tend to actually under underestimate how much it's going to cost.
00:24:22
Speaker
I think that's a huge aspect because it gets all traditional marketing more has a functional budget and manage your budget. And, you know, that's It's also hard to measure in traditional, particularly if you get to in the US s school that has a football team, because that really is mark ah quite a bit of that is marketing. Trust me, University of Alabama gets a lot of marketing value from its football team.
00:24:49
Speaker
But with online marketing and recruitment, It's much more of an investment, and that's where you get the surprise at how much it costs. But that also gets into the scale.
00:25:02
Speaker
You have to have a certain scale of programs. to really hit break even. And probably the biggest reason that that's true is because of the cost of marketing to be effective.
00:25:14
Speaker
So you get into this new game of we need to be at least a certain size to be self-sustaining. Yeah, I feel like speed is a really important element of this because there's kind of it's different dimensions. of it There's a kind of speed to lead kind of thing in terms of responding to people and um you know being timely of that kind of thing. But I think there's also elements of speed in terms of but the changes. I mean, there's some of the things I've seen in institutions or heard about in institutions. You've got things like, you know, a really updated CMS that doesn't allow you to, you know, make dynamic changes to a webpage as a part of a kind of marketing tool. I've had, I've had,
00:25:52
Speaker
heard of examples of universities where you know website changes are just by committee. um You hear people still using printed stuff, people just not really doing anything in the digital realm, really.
00:26:06
Speaker
And so... Like there's all of the kind of organization and technology change. And, you know, often, particularly in terms of the technology, there's a long list of things that need to be fixed. What you said, Phil, earlier, there is a you need to know what you're doing.
00:26:23
Speaker
But there's also how good is your infrastructure? You know, there's universities over here still really aren't using a CRM. They're not kind of getting leads and they're not responding to them in that of And those cost money too.
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So I think that you know i think that's a really important calculation for a university.
Program-Centric Marketing Strategies
00:26:44
Speaker
in that, you know, how quickly can you have some of the infrastructure in place that you need to be able to even compete yourself?
00:26:53
Speaker
um And so, yeah, maybe it swings back to kind of what Morgan was saying is it feels very naive to frame bringing marketing in-house as being a kind of a cost saving.
00:27:06
Speaker
like It'd be fascinating with Drake to see if they, what is their CRM deployment? Do they have, and and keep in mind with CRM, it's sort of like the back office system. It's not just that you have one, but it's the configuration. It's very complex.
00:27:22
Speaker
how If they have a CRM, how is it configured? And is it set up in a way that can handle this type of rapid, quick response type of communication with prospective students.
00:27:38
Speaker
um And yeah, you're right. You need to do that first. You can't just say, all right, we're going to do marketing. Now let's figure it out. And I'm not saying Drake has gone that far, but it would be really interesting to see how is their CRM set up? Have they already thought through these issues?
00:27:53
Speaker
One of the other sort of things I think that's a difference between regular marketing and and online marketing is it's much more program specific as well. Like you seldom see, you know, except for little bits of things, political science department advertising their PhD or something like that. Whereas online marketing does tend to be very program specific. And one of the things I've been exploring recently is is looking at ways that central online units cope with um programs going rogue a little bit And one of the things that happens is programs go and they land up bidding against each other internally for the same keywords.
00:28:30
Speaker
you know So it actually is driving up the costs, which is sort of interesting. Is that true in the UK as well? Because it's absolutely true in the US is the fundamental shift to to much more of a program level marketing as opposed to institution level.
00:28:46
Speaker
And it's not a black and white, but that shift its huge is huge. Do you find that in the UK? Yeah, 100%. I mean, you know, I think I did a talk recently and i kind of touched on marketing for online. And one of the examples that I gave to to represent the kind of gulf in the marketing for different things was Instagram's a brilliant example of this because you can see the grid.
00:29:09
Speaker
You can see the grid of all the pictures. And so I just kind of went on to Bristol's grid. And Bristol's got some amazing pictures of Bristol. It's just full of pictures of Bristol. And it's just a a minor example. But you can see...
00:29:21
Speaker
you know the emphasis all of the messaging is around the place and and i'm not saying that they can't market an online degree but that juxtaposes the challenge just perfectly for me because everything is about the place and suddenly nothing is about the place. It's about the program. It's about the curriculum.
00:29:43
Speaker
It's about the online experience. And I think, yeah, that is um that iss definitely true over here. And that is also a challenge because often i was chatting to ah yeah ah a head of marketing recently at university and saying, we only really get into kind of the course and curriculum stuff, you know, right at the kind of end of the funnel kind of thing, really. That's the only time we kind of get into it. And I...
00:30:06
Speaker
I think, um yeah, it's so it's a sort of central challenge, really. I think there's some interesting things going on out there. Like um I've seen things like um there's a small online so specific provider over here that does kind of a taste a week for all of their programs. And so you can kind of enroll on across all of their programs. So there's kind of nice techniques that people are using to to market stuff. But yeah, I think the fact that you are more, you know, you're having to sell a program rather than a place is just one of the biggest the biggest issues. So I was just looking at Grand Canyon University because they're an interesting case because it's a for-profit here in Phoenix where I live.
00:30:50
Speaker
But they... um They have a campus, but then they build up their online that became dominant. But they're taking a lot of the proceeds profit from online and building up their campus.
00:31:02
Speaker
And then looking at that to actually help their online as well. So I was just going to their Instagram to see... What does it look like? One thing I will say that's interesting, and I'll have to go look at Bristol separate, man, this is very student-centric. There's so many pictures of graduates, and it's almost like, look how many people re-graduate.
00:31:25
Speaker
And there's definitely some with campus life and the place, but they're quite interesting how student-centric they are. Maybe we could do that as a spot check of Instagram of different schools and see what we learn from that.
00:31:39
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Look, I'm used to people flicking onto social media when I'm talking, Phil, but I don't think we did happen in podcast. Well, ironically, my family's book club, we just read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Hayden. It was talking about how screen time is screwing things so ah screwing things up. So maybe that was a bad example to do. But you did make me think about it.
00:32:00
Speaker
No, no, no, that's good. That's good. I also, I'm interested as well in a slightly different angle because I think the, I guess the danger in this conversation is, you know, you kind of, we're focusing on all the challenges that universities face and I think that's absolutely the case.
00:32:16
Speaker
But I suppose what we're not doing is saying, well, you know, are the OPMs doing this well is that i'm just interested because there's a danger that we present the alternative as being amazing um and i just i was interested in in that you know ah they evolving improving um you know like because you know for me sometimes i think well there's a playbook and how is that playbook evolving over time Well, I think it's all over the map. you know Certainly they make mistakes. you know They've they've um had some issues.
00:32:52
Speaker
There also is at times a playbook where An OPM will market something aggressively and then really back off after a while.
Innovations and Challenges for OPMs
00:33:01
Speaker
and and And so trying to keep that marketing consistent is is one thing.
00:33:06
Speaker
But they're all over the map. I mean, I know so of some disasters with OPMs, like one program where they spent $300,000 to recruit eight students to a master's program. If I had to generalize, they're good at the speed issue.
00:33:20
Speaker
and oftentimes to their own detriment. So they they in their bones, they know it's it's how quickly can you set up landing pages that give the right information, and how quickly can you say, ooh, that's not working, let's modify it They're very good with that in general.
00:33:38
Speaker
I think they know how to reply back to students very quickly, even if it's Saturday at 11 p.m., But I would note two things where they're not doing it well. One is they got too used to that speed issue and they're annoying.
00:33:54
Speaker
And then people get harassed forever. I mean, I get harassed just when I'm doing web research on either for-profit schools or OPM-supported programs because I think they both have a very similar approach.
00:34:07
Speaker
And so they are not good and realizing ooh, we've gone too far into harassing and pushing and just being annoying and we need to back off. um So that's an ad that can reflect very badly on the institutional brand and there's not an awareness of it. So that's one of, I think, the fundamental weaknesses of OPM marketing in general or their recruitment, trying to follow up with students.
00:34:35
Speaker
Yeah. The other thing, i don't see very creative ah uses of AI yet to figure out, listen, the cost of digital marketing is going up. AdWords are going up. It's an industry. Everybody knows it, not just in ed tech.
00:34:54
Speaker
And it's unsustainable. You can't just keep pumping money to Google or to Facebook or Instagram. There's got to be, to use a bad term from 15 years ago, a bending of the cost curve, a different way to try to solve this.
00:35:09
Speaker
And I think that ah currently OPMs are too much relying on their playbook. and not enough rethinking things, particularly with Gen AI, to say, what could we do to really change how effective we are and how much money flows to advertising versus being more effective in a different way?
00:35:33
Speaker
So I don't think it's, you know, when you say, are they doing well, well, at least they know how to get it done and they know speed, but they have some weaknesses at large, in my opinion. Yeah, they haven't,
00:35:45
Speaker
i I don't think we've seen a lot of real innovation since the early days of 2U, you know, in a way, i would say. um So there's use of AI, but it's about things like writing copy and and things like that. Not a lot of really fundamental shifts.
Building Internal Marketing Capabilities
00:35:59
Speaker
Yeah, and i think I feel like that's why I... I see over here as well that there's a sense of like, I think maybe to kind of take Phil's point, there's that sense of how sustainable this playbook is over time really and the extent to which they invest in this playbook is probably making it harder for them and there's not that, that, um,
00:36:22
Speaker
that innovation and that that change. i mean, it's interesting also to just think about the kind of the differences because ah I worked with the university recently who'd come out of an OPM partnership and was was doing marketing and recruitment in-house. It's just interesting to how they modified certain things, particularly in relation to what you were saying, Phil, around this idea that you know, you you sign you you sign the lead capture form, you know, you've got phone calls, you've got myriad emails.
00:36:53
Speaker
And i think they they'd sort of watered that down a little bit or they kind of modified over time their approaches. And I think that the phone calling thing, I think, I think is an interesting difference between our two nations. I think in general, people in the UK you know, the the kind of, what was it, Southern New Hampshire's kind of seven seconds and they're on our feet. Was it, you know, like, I think that genuinely doesn't land as well in the UK as it might do in the US. Maybe it doesn't even land well in the US.
00:37:25
Speaker
But um I'm interested just to take that example. Do you see um the merit in a university going with an OPM for this kind of stuff or an external marketing agency to actually learn the playbook themselves?
00:37:41
Speaker
Because that's a question that's a question that I get asked across the whole spectrum. How effective is a partnership developing building up the competence internally to then, when that comes to an end, be able to do it yourself. You know, what's your take on that?
00:37:56
Speaker
It certainly can be done. I mean, you know, one argument that it's a good approach is if you don't have a program that's self-sustaining, profitable, well, you don't have something to market in the first place, so you're not going to have the opportunity to shift it in-house.
00:38:11
Speaker
So you need to build up demand, student demand by itself. The other thing is, and I'm not sure if this is – I know that we have some differences and country-wise differences.
00:38:23
Speaker
But here, the schools have to approve everything. And part of the difficulty is even getting them to approve the copy that the partner is going to use.
00:38:35
Speaker
And the fact that you're in a relationship and getting that is just an ongoing basis of, hey, we're going to try this. We're sending this out. Could you guys approve this? Give us markups before we send this out.
00:38:48
Speaker
Schools have the opportunity just to see, oh, wow, this is how often you have to do it. These are the types of questions. Oh, I see how much this is focused on the student and not the brand, per se.
00:39:03
Speaker
So I think there's an opportunity for this to be a good path to move it into an institutional capability that's in-house. um But not many OPMs are set up where they're going to make that easy or part of the critical path. It's not they don't see it as their job is ah pushing the university to learn how to do it in-house. So I think there's an opportunity, but not a push from this. So it takes your own initiative.
00:39:33
Speaker
And are you seeing any, in the US, are you seeing any non-OPM or non-private universities doing online marketing well?
00:39:44
Speaker
Well, people might be, I mean, you might get tired of hearing the same examples all the time, but certainly you ah University of Florida Online went down that path and they've done it. Now, they've done it with a different scale of students from what the legislature originally thought they were gonna get out of UF Online.
00:40:02
Speaker
But they're an example, you know, of where they're doing that. um Arizona State is a classic one. They have a massive operation and they do it themselves. they've that You could argue that they do it as well or better than OPMs at this point.
00:40:18
Speaker
So I almost apologize for using the same examples, but you do see schools that have taken and it over and are doing a really good job. For the past several you perhaps the past year or so, actually I've been, whenever I travel, I try to take pictures of ads for online learning everywhere, including London standing on the side of the road with a bus going by for, for, for an online program.
00:40:46
Speaker
um You know, and and I need to actually collect those together sometime and and map who's working with an OPM and who isn't, you know, in terms of some of those sort of creative kind of things. and I've got a friend helping me as well. and She recently sent me one from an MBA program in Hong Kong airport. so i think certainly places are doing it. I know from some of the Simpson Scarborough surveys that it can be hard to get some of that talent in-house because it's in demand and you know it it did it commands ah
Future of Student-Centric Marketing
00:41:18
Speaker
ah high price. so That is a challenge, is is getting that talent in-house.
00:41:23
Speaker
I know a couple of schools that have worked with, ah there's one consultant in particular that we've worked with in the past, and she specializes in helping schools build up their own online recruitment, marketing or recruitment in-house. um And some schools have definitely succeeded in that. um I think A.T. Stills University is one example of that.
00:41:46
Speaker
But I'll also point out, she She's not an OPM, but I mean, she was brought in to help them come up with that capability. But that those are smaller examples, and it's definitely worked. When the school's already committed to bringing it in-house, and they're willing to invest some in outside resources or in hiring new people or both, yes, you can definitely make that work, but there's got to be a conscious choice.
00:42:16
Speaker
Yeah, and it probably comes circles back to that original discussion of the willingness to change and the ability to understand what that change needs to look like, I think, ultimately. But it's so important for online programmes. I mean, not that it's not important important for on-campus, but you know it it feels like such a big and important area if you're going into online, ultimately.
00:42:43
Speaker
not wanting to, i I was just thinking about this the other day, because I think Dawal Shah, who writes about Coursera lot, he posted about um ah one of the big brands partnering with um the Mumbai Indians, the the cricket team. And, you know, Phil was saying, yeah, you know, like that doesn't necessarily need lead to a flow of students. And just that day, I happened to be listening to Jamie Hunt's podcast on you know on on on marketing.
00:43:08
Speaker
which is one of the ones I consistently listened to. It's, it's, it's pretty good. And she was talking with somebody from Florida International University and they have a ah partnership with Real Madrid. And, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't um giving forth students really. And they had to really consciously shift towards like bringing in alumni to talk about it and and things like that. The partnership itself only goes so far. They got a lot of inbound inquiries, but no conversions.
00:43:35
Speaker
until they they actually really worked at it Yeah, it's a slightly different thing, but I do remember people saying to me in terms of international marketing, look, if your university's near a football team in the Premier League, then you know that helps help something.
00:43:49
Speaker
Yeah. One thing I would, I know we're getting near the end, but I would argue this is really important for schools to figure out their strategy, not just in terms of online programs, but what we're really talking about so much here is student-centric marketing.
00:44:07
Speaker
and access and quite often to non-traditional ah students. So if you want to figure out how to do more of a lifelong learning approach and get multiple touch points with your alumni over time, guess what? You have a natural advantage because you know you're alumni, but I think this is a problem that schools need to figure out even beyond online programs.
00:44:29
Speaker
Yeah, and i think I think for me that that's the... One of the things that you said is such a key aspect is that kind of non-traditional, different you know, ultimately a different audience, you know, a different audience and kind of reaching them in a different way.
00:44:43
Speaker
Well, it's not an easy problem to solve, but ah this is there is an awareness that this is an important thing that schools are traditionally not good at.
00:44:56
Speaker
And it's not as simple as OPM or in-source. It's basically how do you address this new type of marketing And when does it make sense to use partnerships?
00:45:07
Speaker
um So this is good. I think we might at some point, Morgan, I know you've been doing a lot of work on the cost. ah might It might be good to do a follow-up, so to actually talk institutional level cost on advertising and marketing. That might be a good companion piece as well. I'm hoping to spend some of my extensive air air air airplane time over the next couple of weeks pulling some of that together. So i'm looking I'm looking forward to you exhibiting you know online learning marketing kind of posters from you know around the globe as well. you know that That would be interesting.
00:45:44
Speaker
We should follow up on this topic. um I think it's important and I think ah we should on the cost and what the how effective the advertising is. But um it's great seeing you all. And I know that ah Morgan will be off to Northern Europe visiting about five locations before she gets to Norway.
00:46:03
Speaker
um So I will talk to both of you guys after that trip on our next episode.