Kathleen Cabral, Marketing Director at Leeward Community College, and Susan Lee, Director of Marketing and Communications at the University of Hawaii, Office of the Vice President for Community Colleges, join Interact Communications Founder and CEO, Pam Cox-Otto for a discussion of the future of digital marketing, micro-moments, and other key insights from Interact’s recent partner event at Google’s Mountain View headquarters.
Kathleen Cabral, Marketing Director at Leeward Community College, and Susan Lee, Director of Marketing and Communications at the University of Hawaii, Office of the Vice President for Community Colleges, join Interact Communications Founder and CEO, Pam Cox-Otto for a discussion of the future of digital marketing, micro-moments, and other key insights from Interact’s recent partner event at Google’s Mountain View headquarters.
Marketing for community colleges is tough, but after 20 years of working solely with two year technical and community colleges, we've learned a few things. Now we want to share them with you. Welcome to the Community College Marketing MasterClass Podcast. If you're looking for expert insights from industry experts you've come to the right place, bringing more than three decades of marketing and communications experience, please welcome your host and Interact Communications Founder and CEO, Pam Cox-Otto PhD.
Pam Cox-Otto:It's a good day. This is Pam Cox-Otto and I'm here with two of my favorite people and I'll let them introduce themselves, but let's just say they're from far, far away.
Kathleen Cabral:Right, but the same galaxy, though same one.
Pam Cox-Otto:Same close.
Kathleen Cabral:Hi, this is Kathleen Cabral and I'm from Leeward Community College and the lovely island of Oahu in Hawaii.
Pam Cox-Otto:And...
Susan Lee:And aloha. This is Susan Lee. I'm the marketing director for University of Hawaii Community Colleges and I also come from the lovely the island of Oahu
Pam Cox-Otto:And we got you here in Wisconsin in the middle of winter. I'm kidding. We're in California. We could never get them to Wisconsin in the middle of winter. So we just had a day together. Right.
Kathleen Cabral:We did. It was wonderful.
Pam Cox-Otto:Well. Now that sounds strange. So what, we should were going to have to backtrack on that one a little bit but, So where were we? Come on. Tell us, Susan.
Kathleen Cabral:We were in Mountain View and I'm not Susan, go ahead.
Pam Cox-Otto:Oh yeah, I like it.
Susan Lee:We're in mountain view. We're at the Google headquarters, my land of dreams to come true, I don't know.
Kathleen Cabral:Center of all information. That's what I think of it is.
Pam Cox-Otto:Yeah.
Kathleen Cabral:Or, or Big Dad is big daddy, right?
All:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Pam Cox-Otto:Well, so what we were doing is Interact was working with our partner, Reach Local and we do digital buying and we work with community colleges. And one of the things that we did was we thought that instead of continuing to send you paper about digital advertising and pay per click and all of that, we would bring everybody together to Mountain View to Google and give you a day where you could kind of hear it all from the horse's mouth. Right?
Kathleen Cabral:Right. Exactly.
Susan Lee:Yes. That was awesome.
Pam Cox-Otto:And we also had Google as well as reach local and they were talking to us about all of the kinds of things that you can be doing with digital advertising that many of us are and many of us aren't. True?
Susan Lee:Yes.
Kathleen Cabral:Absolutely.
Pam Cox-Otto:So what's the best thing you heard today?
Kathleen Cabral:Well, you know, I can't say that there's one thing that I could say is best, but what I learned that made the deepest impression on me is that I know that marketing has been changing obviously, and I thought I knew most of what I should be knowing and doing. Today I realize that's absolutely impossible and that a lot of us have one people shops, but we can't do it. We cannot do it alone simply because there are so many parameters and possibilities and options that if you want to use your money effectively, you have to go to people like interact who have to partner with people like ReachLocal because there's simply too much data. When ReachLocal was talking about search and how people in different parts of the country search for colleges near me slightly differently in different parts of the country is when that sold me, I thought I can't read enough and analyze data enough to make as good decisions on my own as I can when I partner.
Susan Lee:Absolutely. I totally agree with Kathleen. It's just talking about keywords, for example. I recall when you folks helped us develop keywords for our outreach, it was incredible. It was a huge spreadsheet full of these words that I would have never thought of using and for us individuals to try to do the work that you do and that Interact does and local reach does, it would be impossible. I totally agree. And today what it did, it really validated the decisions we made in regards to reaching out for the professionals, the experts, to help us address some of these digital needs that we need to start pursuing. I come from a time when traditional advertising was just top notch. I could handle that, but now that it's moving really into the new world of digital, we really do need that expertise and I really appreciate what you shared with us. I mean, I think it's just validated that the decisions we made was correct decisions.
Pam Cox-Otto:Well, first of all, thank you, I appreciate that. But I'll also tell you that one of the things is is that whatever we know now will not be the same next year. I mean,
Susan Lee:I know.
Pam Cox-Otto:That was one of the huge takeaways is that it has to be your main job to stay up with it, which is what it is for us because you're having to deal with the onboarding and retention and graduation rates and things that are unique to colleges. How in the world can you possibly do all of that and then stay up on the ever changing trends of what's going on in community college, keywords and searches and all of those things.
Kathleen Cabral:Exactly. And the fact that Google being enormous, one of the highlights of the day I think is when they were talking about life was really made up of moments and it was a beautiful ad for Google because it was the in search of moments, the life changing moments. And I thought to myself that if you can partner with the right people and Susan and I obviously think we made the perfect choice with you, Pam and your company, then it frees part of our time up so that we can help other people on campus improve those moments that we would be spending time doing, you know, ads and things that just too many things to do and and limited resources. So the data that we were given today and the, the approach of how to interact with students and the student journey being so much longer in that decision making and how many touches we need. To me it's just in order to do a good job for my college, I have to partner. I mean I just have to, and this is said from the point of view from somebody who as Susan knows, thinks I can do everything. I think I can do everything by myself. So this is a big Confession on my part.
Pam Cox-Otto:Well I think you could do many of them. So I'm there with you and one of the things you're talking about and what they said was life isn't made up of weeks and days and hours, minutes and seconds. It's made up of moments and it's the memorable moments where, that moment when you graduated, right? That moment when your family saw you do something that you'd worked hard for, that moment when you saw your baby, that moment when you saw your grandchild, whatever it is. That moment at the very last moment of your life will be one of the last things that sticks. Right?
Susan Lee:Right.
Pam Cox-Otto:Those are moments. And, colleges, we spend a lot of time making sure if there are moments that stick, they're not happy moments. You know, there are things like lines. I remember not being able to find a parking spot. I remember how long the line was. I remember the teacher telling me, you know, you're never going to learn this. You know, I, I sure remember Paper Chase, here's a dime, call your mother, tell her there's doubt you'll ever finish Harvard Law, right? Moments that are not all positive, right?
Kathleen Cabral:Right.
Pam Cox-Otto:And that whole idea that we've got to commit ourselves to make positive moments in a college or they're going to forget us and they're going to go away, right?
Kathleen Cabral:Right. Exactly.
Susan Lee:Exactly.
Kathleen Cabral:That and, it also, I kind of linked that to later in the day and when we're talking about the personas of our audience, because we have such a diverse audience or potential audience. In my mind, I was thinking it'd be interesting to start writing because we're all trying to write personas and do that, be interesting to add, what was that moment in that personas life that made them want to pursue education? Because the, the example they showed was the guy who just had a bad day at work, right?
Susan Lee:Right.
Kathleen Cabral:He decided to start Googling master's degrees or something like that. So, and I kept thinking that'd be interesting because we're not only talking about who they are, but why, what was the moment? And it could be the child, the first child, and they were like, well, I got to step up and get a better job, or whatever it is.
Susan Lee:Yeah. We're always searching for that trigger.
Pam Cox-Otto:Yeah.
Susan Lee:I mean, what is, what's the motivating factor, and I think when we started working with you, Pam, and and Interact is that you shared with us the emotional part of messaging. The way I write copy is more transactional, not so emotional. And I think part of today we talk about the moment when someone makes that decision and I just want to learn more about that and experience more of that and maybe experiment with that.
Pam Cox-Otto:On a future day, in fact, we're here in Palo Alto, there's a researcher here at Stanford called B J Fogg, who does some great research on motivators and triggers about what makes people make decisions, right?
Kathleen Cabral:Yeah.
Pam Cox-Otto:And it's certainly never transactional. No matter how many people tell you that they're making a logical decision, it's never logical. It's all about at that moment something hit you in a way that's either, I can't stand this anymore, or I really want that, or whatever it is, there's an emotional component to it, right? But there are triggers that are associated with it and he's done just an incredible amount of research about what are the triggers to the moment, right? Where you realize I've got to do something different. And that's probably a good podcast thing for another day. We should talk about triggers and, and that, but if you want to look it up, I've got some great articles. I'll happily post on our, on our blog so you can read a couple of them, because this is a major area of research in both digital and web design. Triggers, right?
Kathleen Cabral:Absolutely. And the expectations of people, you hear a lot about, oh, millennials and I think it's people in general now, doesn't matter about the age. Expectations have changed so drastically about people assuming that they're going to go somewhere and find what they need and not have to look for it. So you know that customization that you know people don't shop anymore in stores. Right. And, and they expect, cause I, I can't even remember who was it? A person was talking about youtube or it's just that people expect the predictive now that that was the Google thing, the predictive experience. And so to understand the triggers and the emotional causes behind things is where we as marketing and communication people, we have to understand that.
Pam Cox-Otto:Well, you have to ask yourself, why are they making this choice right now instead of six months ago?
Susan Lee:Right.
Kathleen Cabral:Yeah.
Pam Cox-Otto:You know, why now, what, what, what was it? And I'll tell you, one of the big things is, one of the data points that we got from Google today was it takes a year of searching before, in many cases they're ready to make a choice about coming to college. And most of us live in a world where we do an ad campaign and somebody in a higher office expects us to produce students, you know, within the next month or so, right?
Kathleen Cabral:Exactly.
Pam Cox-Otto:And the whole point is that, this isn't transactional. It's not drop the coin. They'll show up in 20 minutes and they'll be in our classes. It's drop the coin, they start thinking about you and then they think about you some more and then they think about their money and then they think about their kids and then they think about, there's a million parts to this piece and the whole idea that we can not do marketing one year but we'll still get good results. Not True. You have to be up and you have to realize there's a arc that's going to take about a year for people to show up. So your students this year are probably people you recruited last year, right?
Susan Lee:We used to talk about this just a couple of years ago about latent decision making.
Pam Cox-Otto:Yeah.
Susan Lee:And I think this is all about that. I mean that's something that I used to talk to my supervisors, uh, the, the leadership about, okay, we're doing all this work and then we'll, we're doing TV, we're doing all of this. But it was just because we knew that they were going to make a decision. We just didn't know when. So like you said today, we just found out that a good data point was it takes about a year for them to make that college decision.
Pam Cox-Otto:Right.
Susan Lee:Yeah. To pull that trigger and do it.
Kathleen Cabral:Pam, can I tell you a data point that scared me?
Pam Cox-Otto:Sure.
Kathleen Cabral:Okay. So when they were talking about search engine optimization, and I think I'm remembering this correctly, that the majority of people when they are searching for educational opportunities and it was a large number, will really end up going to one of the first three or four that they saw so they could have started the journey a year ago and if you didn't pop up and somehow make yourself known in the top three or four on that page on wherever they were going to seek out information, you might never pop up no matter what you're doing anywhere else. That kind of scared me a little.
Pam Cox-Otto:Well, and it's one of the pieces that we're all beginning to recognize, right? As a reality of our existence is, people will not pick you from the website that you have, but they'll certainly take you off the list from the website. So the first winnowing is, I'm looking for something in nursing or welding or whatever it is, right? I want to transfer, something. I do a search. If you don't pop up in page one or two, in all likelihood, I'll never consider you unless I narrow my choices down and then suddenly you pop up because I needed underwater basket weaving and you happened to have it right?
Susan Lee:Right.
Pam Cox-Otto:Then it might pop up.
Kathleen Cabral:We're very good at that.
Pam Cox-Otto:Well and you know it's, you're an island and of course you would be. That just makes sense. But the whole point here is that if I don't make that first search piece, you're not going to find me. And then the next winnowing part is, let's say I pop up on that first page and I come to your website and you, let me think. There's a technical word. Um, yeah, suck. Uh, you suck.
Kathleen Cabral:Or word takes more than seven seconds.
Pam Cox-Otto:That's right. Or takes more than seven seconds for your pages to load. They've already taken you off the list, right?
Kathleen Cabral:Yeah.
Susan Lee:Those are scary things and it means of all the things we can't allow things to happen is we can't allow the college to let us settle for mediocrity in our online presence.
Kathleen Cabral:Yes, exactly.
Pam Cox-Otto:Just not possible.
Susan Lee:This is one of the things that I got when I walked away from today's session was that I really need to go back and look at my website and reevaluate everything and maybe even just start from scratch and start all over.
Pam Cox-Otto:Well, here's a couple of things. One is I will post, we've got some tools that we have that are, that we share. So I'll send you a list of tools that you can be using. We'll post it on our blog so you can see tools that are either available free or if you want us to do it, let us know and we'll run it using our paid tools and let you look at some of your analytics that are not about how many people are coming, but rather how slow the pages are and how many dead ends you have, and,
Susan Lee:Right. Right.
Pam Cox-Otto:We'd be happy to provide that for you. And if you're listening we'd, well, happily reach out to us and we'll do the same thing for you. But the point is there's many places where you can be mediocre. You know, maybe your parking's not great, maybe the food at your cafeteria is not wonderful, but if your website is not just bad but mediocre, you're cutting your own throat in terms of competition and, and being able to do well. Even if you are on an island.
Kathleen Cabral:A beautiful island.
Pam Cox-Otto:Thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. Time went pretty quickly, right?
Kathleen Cabral:It did. And the day at Google was,
Susan Lee:Awesome.
Kathleen Cabral:The thing I loved about it, it was just all the people that were there. I mean, you work with some great people at great colleges and it was just a nice day. It was just a really nice day in spite of the thousand security cameras everywhere you turned.
Pam Cox-Otto:Although the body cavity search I promised you never really, you know occurred, which I know is a disappointment.
Kathleen Cabral:I know. I was a little, yeah
Pam Cox-Otto:So, so very sorry.
Kathleen Cabral:Yeah.
Pam Cox-Otto:I oversold that part, I guess.
Kathleen Cabral:Maybe next time.
Susan Lee:Yeah, maybe next time. Susan, thanks so much. Thank you.
Pam Cox-Otto:And I got to say. It's our great pleasure to be able to work with all of the community colleges in Hawaii and uh, in the middle of winter. I can't tell you how much we hate having to go to Hawaii.
Susan Lee:Sorry,
Pam Cox-Otto:To visit you guys. It's just sad, really.
Susan Lee:We dragged you across the US, but yeah, we appreciate you coming.
Pam Cox-Otto:Our pleasure. Thanks for joining me.
Kathleen Cabral:Thank you.
Susan Lee:Thank you.
Pam Cox-Otto:And we'll see you next time.
Announcer:Thank you for joining the Community College Marketing MasterClass podcast. For more great tips on how to improve marketing and communications at your two year college, visit interactcom.com, and join us next time as we discuss and share actionable time tested strategies on topics directly related to community college marketing.