Blog
Forget the Fold. Embrace the Scroll.
Back in the olden days of the Internet—the mid 1990s—the average user did not know how to scroll down a web page to access additional content, but times have changed. Almost 20 years later, users are now extremely familiar with scrolling, so much so that in 2011, Apple removed the scrollbar from their operating system,…
The Fall of Guest Blogging: Dispelling the Myth
On Monday, Matt Cutts (the head of Google’s Webspam team) took a page out of Richard Sherman’s book when he took to his religiously followed blog and in a video forcefully slammed guest blogging, declaring: “Ultimately, this is why we can’t have nice things in the SEO space: a trend starts out as authentic. Then…
3 Myths for Brands Shifting Toward Digital Marketing
For a long time, digital marketing was seen as a purely complementary service, often playing second fiddle to traditional marketing and advertising. Among top brands, a digitally focused agency-of-record was nearly unheard of. And, through the early 2000s, it made sense. It doesn’t now. Today, with people consuming more digital content than traditional, digital marketing…
What a Centuries-Old Boarding School Can Teach You about Education Marketing
Founded by Henry VI, Eton College—England’s 574-year-old boarding school where George Orwell and Princes William and Henry once attended—is embracing technology. How do your efforts stack up? At Eton College, uniformed boys between 13 and 18 years of age walk the school grounds much the same way as others have for almost 600 years. At…
3 Tips for Leveraging the Application in Higher Education Marketing
The Application as a Marketing Strategy to Attract Students Higher education marketing tends to rely on generic, cookie-cutter brochures and mailings to attract students. Take, for example, the application. The college application is one of the most valuable tools available in higher education marketing — and one of the least frequently leveraged. Use the application…
Direct Mail & Digital Marketing: Do You Have a Balanced Strategy?
The Titanic was supposedly unsinkable and so, for a time, were American catalog companies — brands as enshrined in the mythology of American business as capitalism itself. Montgomery Ward, Sears, JC Penney: pioneering companies such as these were instrumental in shaping modern consumers’ expectations for selection, convenience and service. And today, while the golden age…
Dispelling the Top 3 Website Accessibility Myths
Web accessibility—recommendations outlining the best ways to design and build a website for people with disabilities—have been around since the late ‘90s. In 2001, Section 508 went into effect, creating accessibility standards for government, education and nonprofit websites. But it’s only now that web accessibility is gaining traction in the business world. Unfortunately, many myths…
Reaching Your Target User: Step 1 Admitting the Truth
“I do not always realize that I am not my target user.” There I said it. But to cut myself some slack, I think this self-delusion also affects even the smartest and most strategically minded among us. Maybe you, too. So, what’s the issue here? Simply put, we like to fool ourselves into thinking that…
Facebook Trumps Yahoo as No. 2 Digital Ad Seller
Facebook is the No. 2 digital ad seller in the U.S.—what can we credit Facebook’s success? Mobile. Market forecasters predicted Facebook would finish third behind Google and Yahoo in the digital ad-seller foot race. But the social media giant managed an upset, of sorts, topping Yahoo as the No. 2 digital ad seller in the…
Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger: Google & Rap Genius
Since its inception, Google has been fighting an ongoing war against spam. Spam sites, not to be confused with everyone’s favorite canned pork shoulder, attempt to game search engine algorithms through techniques like paid linking schemes, hidden text and keyword stuffing. Practices such as these are bad for search engines because they can dilute the…
CRM Retargeting in Higher Education Marketing
In higher education marketing, successful enrollment campaigns follow the most basic rule of relationship marketing: there’s no substitute for personal contact. Beyond “The Big Three” (Cost, Financial Aid, and Academic Reputation), Noel-Levitz’s comprehensive 2012 study reveals “Personalized Attention Prior to Enrollment” as the leading factor to enrollment among four-year private first-year students. Despite this, the…
Your Lazy Sunday Reading: Cutting-Edge Web Design
Looking for some light reading this Sunday morning? How about some articles on web design. Sunday morning used to mean a cup of hot chocolate and the Detroit Free Press Sunday comics pages sprawled out on the living room floor. Now it typically means a cup of coffee on the couch and my iPad on…