Stephanie Geyer (University of Montana) on Building a Bite-Sized Higher Ed Brand That Sticks

On today’s episode of the Illumination by Modern Campus podcast, podcast host Shauna Cox was joined by Stephanie Geyer to discuss the re-imagination of a digital presence and dive into the shift towards a digital ecosystem and experimentation in higher ed marketing. 

Transcript

Shauna Cox (00:02):Stephanie, welcome back to the Illumination Podcast.

Stephanie Geyer (00:05):Thank you, Shauna. I'm so happy to be here.

Shauna Cox (00:08):And we are of course here to talk about re-imagining an institution's digital presence. I think it's so critical in today's era, and I want to kick off our conversation and first ask you, how is the shift to a mobile first visually driven digital culture influencing how institutions present their brand to their prospective students?

Stephanie Geyer (00:31):Great question and a great challenge and opportunity for us in our brand work and our recruitment marketing strategy. So bite-sized brand is the answer in my mind to draw people in. So of course it all depends on the market that you're trying to reach with your brand messages. And I am pretty dogmatically myopically focused on student recruitment. That's just been the nature of my marketing career in higher ed for a few years. So from that lens, I would say thinking about top of funnel awareness, building bite size, you've got to be, as my friend Ken Hopkins at Arizona State says, light Titan Bright. And you've got to grab 'em and say, Hey, look at this over here. And begin to introduce more concepts, more constructs in the context of who they are, what they're looking for. I think social media plays a bigger role than ever in that kind of brand introduction play.

(01:45):And then you've got a little bit further down in the funnel. You've got inquiries and people who maybe have started in the application and they may still be wobbling around or their parents are getting involved, their families are playing a role, and you have to widen the circle and have more conversations. And so that's a real opportunity to do more value proposition work than you can at the very top where you're just like, Hey, A, we exist, and B, we might be a good fit for you, is the general gist of drawing eyeballs. But in that conversion stage from inquiry to applicant or complete application, you've got to go a little bit deeper but not too deep because they're still wobbling around. Again, there's that word to sort out what's really important to them. And especially if we're talking about first gen families, this particular stage can be really fraught.

(02:50):And so your brand, your positioning still has to move kind of quickly and energetically. And that's where again, I think social comes in that you can launch campaigns that kind of bring your brand back in front of them, dipping in and out. I was just talking with somebody yesterday about engagement rates in social and disappointment that we sometimes have over that, but I think we need to get over making that the only thing that we care about because think about your own engagement in social, it's more about scrolling, taking things in, following something that you see, oh, I'd like to make sure I always see this when this provider puts something up. But it's tricky. We want the metrics. We want to know that the person is thinking positively about us enough to want to do the next thing. But I do think with the myopic focus that we have on our computers in our pocket, that is a place and the dynamics and the measurements systems, the KPIs, I think they're still evolving in that way.

(04:16):When we get down to the bottom of the funnel yield season, which is where we are now, welcome to yield season. And for those of you who have a May one deposit go with God, hope it goes well, we are too. No deposit. But certainly this time of year we're looking at every metric and the storytelling and the brand positioning and the engagement is really different. And when I talk with some of our younger team members about this funnel stage, I think about when we are making big decisions, maybe it's about wallpaper or buying a house or choosing your future alma mater, we really have to lean in on fit, fit man. If you don't get fit, you have some bigger problems at the end of the first semester when things aren't maybe going the way that you'd hoped. So their fit is a longer form story to tell, but in the vernacular of the current generation to which I do not belong, the vibes, you got to get the vibes.

(05:36):And you can do that in really fast way, again through social or some dynamic content, some personalized, personalized content on your website. Of course, your email campaigns, and I mean even print can deliver some vibes. I was just looking at a beautiful campus visit piece that one of our new designers put together for the team. And man, it's like the most rich dessert I've ever had, and I've had a lot of desserts. It's just the vibes are really, really thick with that. And I'm so pleased because the University of Montana in Missoula just has so much going for it, and it's an amazing spot. And for the students that do well there, it's a transformational place.

Shauna Cox (06:34):And I think the efforts behind the marketing and trying to meet students where they are, they're easier said than done. And I know you said you may not be part of the newer generation, but you certainly are putting in the efforts to understand them, which I think is really important. And I want to get down to the tangible things that our audience can take with them from this. So what strategies are you seeing institutions, whether it's yourselves or someone around you adopting to make their digital experiences feel more intuitive, personalized and responsive across various devices?

Stephanie Geyer (07:11):I think for us right now, the underlying focus is the concept of a digital ecosystem. And so not relying so heavily or specifically on one particular channel or resource, but making sure that one thing leads to another, leads to another. So that before the user knows that they've spent, maybe they had five minutes to look at something and now they're 15 or 20 or 30 minutes in and they've crossed a number of different platforms. And we do that on both of our domains using a variety of personalization capabilities and functionalities. So I think anticipating that desire, that capability, that the utility of being efficient by driving people seamlessly across different platforms

Stephanie Geyer (08:45):In that digital ecosystem is where I'm seeing traction. It's also giving us advanced KPIs so that we can understand performance and maybe there's a weak link in there somewhere. We just need to tune something up a little bit or adjust content. Of course, on top of that, you've got the storytelling and back to the brand and who you are and what you are, man, you've got to have that buttoned up. We launched a new brand two years ago, two and a half years ago, time flies. And so we're at a stage where we are looking at brand extension opportunities and where do we go visually with new things? And I think that what we're doing in that work is going to really revitalize some of these channels that I'm talking about.

Shauna Cox (09:39):And I want to deep dive into something you mentioned. You talked about that linear deep hole and how it's shifting more to different experiences across different platforms and devices and things like that. So I think when you get to the root of it, higher ed, it's storytelling. So how can marketing leaders kind of balance institutional storytelling with that user-centric design to engage a generation that expects things immediately and have visual clarity among a bunch of different other demands that they have?

Stephanie Geyer (10:14):Yeah, I think it's keeping an eye on the fundamentals. It always comes back to it. And for me, the fundamentals are understanding and answering the key questions or removing the key barriers that prospective students and families experience in the act of selecting an institution or electing to stay with an institution. So making sure that initially you're getting into the cost value proposition, outcomes, messaging in a broad spectrum, getting them into scholarship calculators, scholarship resources, applications, all of those things. Super important. The hardest work in higher ed marketing is product, and that's our academic programs. And so we work really hard to develop very strong, engaging, multifaceted academic program pages. And now the work is kind of knitting them into all of the avenues that we have to push and pull. So we're using squiz for program finder, and that's been a great asset because we can curate these kind of expected or unexpected collections of our program.

(11:34):If you were to dig into the code of our program finder, you'd see we have 550, 550. That's just bananas. But we have got to care and love and feed. And so looking for ways to do that in an economy is going to pay off because the user wants to understand A, do you have my program or do you have some kind of array of programs that I'm going to figure it out and it'll be in there somewhere, B over here somewhere. And is there value in that? And that connects that question about product, academic program, and cost. The value proposition is in alumni engagement and performance and where they are in their careers. And so that's the next big hill that my team is climbing by integrating knowledge panels and information from Stepping Blocks, which is yet another tool. You have to be really facile and collaborative and kind of sharky use all of these things.

Shauna Cox (12:56):And I want to expand on the idea of the mountains that you're climbing, because oftentimes institutions want to keep up with everything. It's always easier said than done. And especially in today's environment, many times people can be more reactionary than taking those careful steps. So what are some of the key missteps institutions should avoid to their best ability when modernizing their digital presence? For today's perspective, students?

Stephanie Geyer (13:29):Yeah, I think it's leaning too heavily or too lightly on email. Shauna, my gosh, how many years have we been arguing about email? Email there? You know what, it's a thing. And some people do open their emails and some people don't. It has to be a foundational element and you have to pay attention to it, but you have to do these other things. So don't go into some kind of black hole of arguing anymore about email, accept it, get it done, keep an eye on it, keep it moving, try other things. So experimentation is one of my most favorite things to do, and I think leaning too heavily into a single platform. Again, I've named so many here and there are so many more in this digital ecosystem that I'm talking about for the University of Montana, but there is no one savior. There is no one platform or vendor who can do absolutely everything that you need to do, and you should just hand all of your resources over to them, invest in your team to really understand and work with the KPIs that come out of these resources as well as those that you manifest yourselves.

(15:01):Social is another great example. Of course you could do some outsourcing with social, but really that's a proof point in terms of your content strategy and how things are going in terms of your market consuming your content and getting it a thumbs up or not.

Shauna Cox (15:21):Absolutely. And this next question that I have for you, we're going to look broader. It's going to vary across institutions, but in your view, what does a future ready higher ed digital brand look and feel like? And how can schools start moving towards that direction?

Stephanie Geyer (15:42):I hope it looks like us. I mean, I will say without a bit of shame that I think that we are one of the leading institutions in the country going after everything that we can that makes sense for us and our markets and our budgets and our team size. But we love new opportunity. We love to experiment. And so I think digital brands that are effective are like sharks. They're always swimming. They're always looking into new corners and saying, oh, what's that thing? And what if we combine this thing with this thing? I don't think that we're taking a lot that comes off of anyone's shelf and using it as expected where we're coming up with new connection opportunities and new utilizations and trying to break things. I think you just have to develop and sustain a brand. You have to not clutch at your pearls too often when you try something that maybe feels a little off brand or is just new territory, you've got to go and be brave.

(16:56):And to that end, I think researching and testing is super smart too. So I think you just have to be brave, have a little bit of chutzpah, and ask for what you want and see if you can't get some partnership to make it happen. It's a tough time. We don't need to go into all the reasons why it's hard and scary to work in higher ed right now. And I think more than ever, we have got to be brave and open and collaborative and sharing.

(18:06):I'm in charge of some stuff for one flagship institution in the state of Montana, but I will talk to anybody and help. And so I think that those things are what we need to have. And I guess that's all attitude as opposed to, oh, you've got to have this piece of tech and a team that looks this big and does this much and has this much money. I think those things matter. I think it's a spirit of collaboration and communication and having clear direction. Where are you going? What are the kinds of students that you're going for that you can make anything?

Shauna Cox (18:46):Absolutely. I love this spirit of collaboration. I am a lot more fresh in higher ed. I've been here for just over five years or so. But in that short amount of time, I mean the world, let alone higher ed has gone through so much, but I'm really seeing the shift towards collaboration and sharing ideas. There's competition, but it's a healthy competition and it's not so focused on, these are my students, don't touch them. Hey, what are you doing? Here's what we're doing. Let's bounce ideas off each other. A lot more partnerships between institutions. It's so great, and I just hope we continue to keep going that way. And you were talking about testing things, and I love that as well, because just because you implement something doesn't mean it's perfect. Doesn't mean it's going to work in the next year or the next five years for your students because students are changing so often.

(19:36):And one thing that always sticks in my head that I heard from another higher ed leader is if you're going to fail, fail fast and move on and improve and keep failing, but do it quickly because you need to be onto the next thing. So try not to have any fear of failing, and if you do, just keep going. So I love that. I love the spirit. So all the questions that I have for you, but before I let you go, we of course need a restaurant recommendation for this higher Ed podcast, your course based in Missoula, Montana. If someone's coming to town, where do they need to go?

Stephanie Geyer (20:12):Yeah, so Missoula is an excellent food and music town, so if you are coming to Missoula, A let me know, but B, look at the concert schedule. You want to hit the Wilma or the Kettle House. And there are a bunch of great venues in town, live music all the time. Some of my favorite performers make Missoula a must go to place. And so we benefit from that greatly. But I was just there. So I still live in Colorado. I run up to Missoula about once a month, maybe a little more, maybe a little less in February. But it's all good. Guild. You got to go to Guild. It's GILD. It's on Higgins and it's right across the bridge from campus. And the taco game there is strong who does not want a good taco place in their back pocket. And so I had dinner there, I think it was like a week ago today, and I had the fish taco, which is my top favorite. And then these new potatoes that they have on the menu, which are to dive for, go find those.

Shauna Cox (21:25):Amazing. Awesome. Well now we have a taco place if we go there. So Stephanie, thank you so much for the recommendations. Also the music one. I love that thrown in there and for the great chat that we had. I appreciate you sharing your insights.

Stephanie Geyer (21:38):It's my pleasure, Shauna. Thank you.