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On this podcast, we’re on a mission – to change and disrupt the way people think about B2B marketing one insightful conversation at a time. Get inspiration from interviews with B2B marketers and industry experts who share their stories, achievements, thoughts on trending topics, and give B2B marketing tips and recommendations. This show is hosted by Christian Klepp, Co-founder of EINBLICK Consulting.
Chris Rapozo 00:00
What I would do: in most schools have student workers, and if not, I would find students, and I would get as quick as possible that we make 10 to 20 pieces of content every single day, and that seems overwhelming and crazy, but it's not. If you have someone that knows social media, that's an easy lift, and then you post it on the four main places where students live right now, which is Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook, and I know you kind of.. there's anyone on there. Yes, the data is very clear. People are still on Facebook, so if you're doing 20 pieces of content and four different platforms, that's 80 chances every single day. You could easily.. any school, even a small school, is going to be averaging from 200 to 1000 views. Now, all of a sudden, you're talking about 100,000 people a day seeing your school.
Christian Klepp 00:45
The higher education space in the US is facing a crisis that has nothing to do with academic quality, with enrollments declining, small colleges closing, and bigger institutions scrambling to fill seats. It begs the question, why is this happening? The answer is invisibility. Colleges and institutions aren't losing because of the quality of education they provide, but because their marketing tactics are outdated and unable to capture the attention of students in a radically different world. So, how can marketers help increase visibility in higher education? Welcome to this episode of The B2B Marketers in the Mission podcast, and I'm your host, Christian Klepp. Today, I'll be talking to Chris Rapozo and Rob Clark, who will be answering this question. Chris is the AVP at Stamats, and Rob runs TTF Media. Both are marketing experts in the higher education sector and authors of the book Close the Attention Gap: How colleges win visibility in the distracted world. Let's dive in. Okay, I'm gonna say Chris Rapozo and Rob Clark. Welcome to the show, Chris. I'm gonna say welcome back, because you know we've had you on before.
Chris Rapozo 01:11
Thanks for having us, Christian. Yes, fun fact, the B2B Marketers on a Mission was the very first podcast I was ever a guest on, so it's good to be there.
Christian Klepp 02:02
Well, I'm honored that you know this was the first show you were on, and Rob, of course, like great to meet you as well. I'm really looking forward to this conversation, gentlemen, because I did, I did take a peek at your book, and I think that a lot of the things that you guys are talking about there are applicable not just to higher education, they're applicable to like many B2B industry verticals, and I'm going to keep the audience in suspense a little while longer, because at this point they're probably going, well, what is it, right? Like, but I'm going to dive right into the first question, so let's go. So both of you, I would say, are on a mission to help teams in the higher education sector to win. Here comes visibility in a distracted world, and again, that is applicable across the board. That's not just higher education, that's applicable in cyber security and professional services. So, for this conversation, I'd like to focus on the following topic, and we're going to definitely unpack it from there. So, it's how to increase visibility in higher education. Now, both of you co-authored a book, and we're going to talk about that a little bit today as well, right? So, the book is called Close the Attention Gap: How Colleges Win Visibility in a Distracted World, and in that book you mentioned I'm going to see if I can quote this accurately. Great schools are disappearing from the consideration set of the very students with thrive there, not because they are failing at education, but because they are failing at attention. So, please explain what you meant by that.
Rob Clark 03:39
You go first, Chris.
Chris Rapozo 03:40
Yes, of course, of course. So the attention you have, it's basically about, you know, let's just imagine a student, Gen Z, traditional age student watching a show, scrolling on their phone, pings are going off left and right, and it's no longer the website is no longer the home base, like it used to be in the past, right? In the past, it was like we built a nice homepage, somebody goes Google's us on search for a particular degree, we hopefully show up on the first page, and people are going to start the discovery there. That's no longer the case. The discovery starts now on social media, whether it's YouTube, whether it's AI search overviews, whether it's on a Reddit subreddit group in the website, which is still important. It's no longer the place where people start to discover a program or a school, but it's where they verify the information that they heard about on social media. So that's basically, if you're not diversifying your marketing mix and being in all these different forums, you will inevitably be outranked by the people who are nimble enough to have short form videos, who are on TikTok, Instagram, maybe even LinkedIn for adult learners and graduate students, and Reddit as well. So, you want to make sure that you don't put your ex into all. One basket, and show up on Google Search, and put, and Google Ads, but diversify there in order to show up and close that attention gap, because people are just all over the place these days when they're searching for a business and offering a school.
Rob Clark 05:16
Yeah, it's so good, it's so good. He's exactly right, and what I - the only thing I would add to that is the way that I see social media is offense and defense, and I feel like a lot of schools and a lot of businesses often are playing defense, and what that looks like is we're going to let people find us where social media, if done well, is offense, you're going to go to where they're at right now, you're going to go to where they spend all of their time right now, and you're going to make sure they know about you. So it's a little bit of instead of waiting back and hoping that you're discovered that you're going to do everything possible to make sure they know who you are.
Christian Klepp 05:57
Yeah. No, that's absolutely fantastic. You know, I couldn't help but think, as both of you were explaining this, like, wouldn't it be overwhelming to be in so many places, though? Because you know, when you mentioned social media, I mean, we don't just have one social media channel, right? Like, there's, as you mentioned, there's this YouTube, there's Instagram, there's there's Facebook. I don't know if people still use Facebook these days, but you know, where do marketers start? I'm gonna say, right, like,
Chris Rapozo 06:29
Yeah, I mean, before you even start posting, I think it's all about audience research, right? You got to know what is your offering, what is your point of view, and where are the people that you're trying to reach, whether they hang out now. If you start going on social media, posting you haven't done it before, and you stretch yourself too thin on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts, and Snapchat, right? You will burn out, because first of all, you're not going to see the results you want at the beginning, so you feel like you're just talking into the void, and nothing's happening, and then usually people give up within a couple of weeks. So, what I would recommend is focus on one channel, become really, really good at that channel, get the traction, get the audience that you think you should reach, and then go on from there.
Christian Klepp 07:16
Great, Rob, anything to add that?
Rob Clark 07:19
Yeah, I think what I would add is a little bit of a mindset, and this is why when Chris first kind of popped up in my feed on LinkedIn, and what I appreciate so much about Chris is that I've never heard him complain, I've never heard him whine about marketing, I've never heard him like this guy is falling because of the enrollment cliff, and so, and I don't want to be careful here, because some of these are great, great people, but there's this mindset for marketers, anytime a new platform or a new feature rolls out, it feels like that they're upset that it's another thing that they have to do, instead of realizing here's another opportunity that I have to tell the world about my product, and especially Chris was exactly right there, that our audience, especially in higher ed, you're looking mostly at the students, and so why wouldn't you be excited to be able to tell the world, and especially the students that you're trying to reach? You can go directly to them and tell them about your school. It just blows my mind. And so there's a little bit of, like, I'm trying to wonder, like, okay, why do marketers feel so overwhelmed? And that's the word that you used, and I think that's appropriate, because I hear that same thing all the time, and you go on LinkedIn, and it's crazy, the amount of kind of this sense of overwhelmed, where it's like more of this opportunity, like you have a chance to tell the world about your product for basically free, and you're kind of upset about it. I just don't, I just don't understand it, and so again, I want to be careful, because I'm not necessarily in their shoes, and I get it that they have a job, and but there is a little bit of seeing it as the opportunity that it is, opposed to just another box to check.
Chris Rapozo 09:04
Yeah, and on piggyback on mindset real quick, I think it's also it depends on the individual that you are, but I've known over the years successful people have a have an ownership mindset instead of an employee mindset, and I heard a story about Michael Jordan when he was at North Carolina, and his coach, he had a conversation with his coach, and he told his coach that he wants to become the best basketball player ever, and during training the coach got on his case, and he needs to work hard, and he's like, I'm putting just as much work as anybody else in it, he said, oh, excuse me, if you want, if you want to put as much work as anybody else, and then you're just going to be mediocre like everybody else. If you want to get better and be the best, you have to do the extra thing. You just have to stop complaining. You just have to start grinding, and you just have to put in the extra rep to become one of the best.
Christian Klepp 09:58
Absolutely, absolutely. Know, I'm with you on that. Like, I try not to complain on social media, either. Right? I feel to a certain degree I find it very draining, and, secondly, it's not - it's not really constructive either. I mean, it's one thing to complain, but then to offer a solution,
Chris Rapozo 10:16
yes,
Christian Klepp 10:17
or to offer an alternative, but if you're just having what a mentor of mine used to call a therapeutic moan,
Chris Rapozo 10:22
yeah,
Christian Klepp 10:23
right. It's not, it's not very helpful, and I think a lot of people tend to be doing that on LinkedIn, and I can't say that I coined this phrase because I heard it from somebody else, but it's performance marketing, get it? Like they're doing it to get to get the attention, right?
Chris Rapozo 10:39
Right, right, right, any great new holes. The old college football coach from Notre Dame, he once said in a commencement speech, he said, 'Don't tell people about your problems. 80% don't care, and the other 20% are happy that you have them.
Christian Klepp 10:55
He's not wrong, he's not wrong, he's not wrong.
Rob Clark 10:59
And to add that I think that literally, when it comes to visibility, whether it's a school or a business like this, this could be, we could just end right now, because this is this is the punchline, right, is that if you, if you want more students, if you want more clients, if you want to sell more widgets, more books, more whatever, then you have to be willing to do more than just checking the box, and so there's a pastor that said this a long time ago, and it stuck with me, says we, if we want to reach the people that no one else is reaching, we have to be willing to do things that no one else is doing, and I think that applies to so much in life, and that Michael Jordan quote is exactly right, Chris, it's like if a school wants to grow when most schools are not growing or shutting down, then you have to be willing to do things that they're not doing. Same, same with businesses, right? If you're happy with the amount of money that you're making right now, great. Then don't do more social media, don't do anything else, just keep with the status quo. Now we know that there is, you're either gaining or you're losing, right? So you're probably going to fall behind, but ultimately I think it's this idea that if we want to be successful, then there's no other way than we have to be visible. We people have to be aware about us and our product and our brand, or they don't even have the chance to purchase us or to use our services. Now we may not be good enough for them, or they may not like our product, but they don't know about it. Then they don't even get to make that choice.
Christian Klepp 12:27
That's it. Okay, I'm going to move us on to the next question. And in our previous conversation, you mentioned something to the effect of institutions just have three seconds to grab a prospective student's attention. Now, short of stating the obvious, that's not a lot of time, right? So, if you could please share an example of a college that you know that successfully made those three seconds count, and the second part of that question, what do you think others can learn from this example?
Chris Rapozo 12:58
I mean, I think that you just put yourself in the shoes of the prospective students, because you're consumer as well. If you scroll on social media, you know exactly how you react to a video that starts out with an introduction or aerial shot that shows a picture of the campus, right? It's just boring if you're in that mindset of wanting to get the quick hit videos with information that will help you either inspire you, entertain you, or give you some information and educate you. I have recently worked with a with an institution, and I helped them write a script about one of their programs where they offer free GRE prep classes to prospective students, and the opening hook was your comeback starts here, and it won't cost you a dime. That's the thing. When you have this, you have the people who may be stuck in a dead-end job, who may think about going to university, but they're thinking about, hey, maybe it's going to cost me too much, and I can't afford it, and your comeback starts here, check it won't cost you a time, you answer two questions within two seconds, that'll hook the audience, and that'll keep them on the video, and then you have to obviously deliver on the on that promise from the hook,
Christian Klepp 14:12
yeah, no, that's a great one, that's a great one, I have to agree, like I don't look at promotional videos for universities nearly as much as you guys do, but the last one I did look at did have that, that classic aerial, aerial drone shot view of the campus, and what have you, right, with the feel-good music,
Chris Rapozo 14:32
yeah, but Rob is a good example from Greenville University, once it's just from the volleyball team, where his son was hidden over the net to talk about that story, because it's one of those things that, that is a, that just stops your attention, because you want to see what's going on there.
Rob Clark 14:50
Yeah. No, the video, and I tell this story together all the time, is that the when we see the aerial shots, the drone shots, the beautiful shots, the per. Perfect lighting, that's definitely telling a story, and schools need to have those videos. Maybe it's for board members, maybe it's for donors. So, yes, that, but plus, what are the videos we're doing for students? Because that's not necessarily going to be the one that's going to stop the student. And so, what we did is that, because those videos that are made a lot of times, they're spending a lot of money, spending a lot of time, a lot of energy. Where we, when I say we, my family brand, like we, we know how to get attention, we know how to get views, and so we can layer that on top. And so we did a video for the school that I was working with, and for, and so we did this video. Basically, the video starts with my seven foot one son standing next to the two shortest volleyball girls, and so, like, right away, when you see that there's, there's something about it just so visually jarring that you have to watch the next two seconds, and then every two seconds it's like, what are we going to do to keep people's attention? Now, people complain about social media blues clues. Now, I know you guys have younger kids, my kids back in the day, that was the jam, right? It was Blue's Clues, but they had it down to literally a science, where okay, now we need a real person, now we need a cartoon, now we need a cartoon with a real person, now we need just cartoons, and so they had a science to keep the kids hooked, so even so, this has been around forever, this is nothing new, it's just a new way to consume it, so trying to wrap all that up. Christian, I think the big idea is that we got to remember that no one school is going to do it perfectly all the time, and this is where we have to be okay when it comes to marketing to realize we're not going to hit a home run every single time. There are going to be some times we strike out, but it's the schools that decide, hey, we're going to keep doing it, we're going to take as many at bats as possible. Those are the schools that's winning, because sometimes, yeah, you strike out, but when you do hit those home runs, it really does matter, and it can lead to really good things for schools or businesses. And so that's who's doing it well, is the people that will continually try to do better and better when it comes to social,
Chris Rapozo 17:01
And it's quantity over quality at the beginning, right? Rob,
Rob Clark 17:04
Yeah, because, because that's a big thing, is that quantity leads to quality, because we think we understand what quality is, but it's a video, and there's another one that, and I had nothing to do with it, but it's a good example, again, at the university, like the soccer team had an account, and they did a fun video, and it didn't even get a ton of views, and maybe got like 5000 views, but there was a student that was five states away that saw that TikTok, and she said, "Oh, I want to be on a team that has fun like that, and so it led to her reaching out to the coach. She ended up going to the school just because of this one TikTok, and so we got to understand, like, we don't get to judge what quality is. It's like, what does the market decide that it is? And so, at the end of the day, when we put out content, some work, some don't, and then sometimes the ones that we don't even think win actually can lead to something really positive.
Christian Klepp 17:58
Absolutely, absolutely, you almost have to treat it like, and I'm going to be very careful about how I phrase this, but you have to kind of treat it like an ongoing experiment, test it out, see if it's working, fail quickly too, if necessary, and then iterate, bam, onto the next one, right?
Chris Rapozo 18:15
Right, that's right, and that's why we wrote the book too, because it's for university leaderships, we want them to understand that it is the experience, right, because they're thinking they bring in a marketer in who's a magician, they have all these expectations, one year later they're out of there because they just can't meet him, right, this is deflating, if you don't leadership buy in.
Christian Klepp 18:36
Well, it's also because of the mindset that they have, right, like they probably never had to do anything remotely resembling marketing, and then they, they're bringing in this marketer, and I'm just working on an assumption here, like, jump in if I'm wrong, then now they bring in this, this, this marketer, and they expect them to perform a miracle.
Rob Clark 18:56
What usually happens, if we're going to be real honest here,
Christian Klepp 18:59
yeah,
Rob Clark 18:59
And this is schools and businesses, they hire a marketing company, and they run mostly paid ads, and so the report, the reports will say we got this many impressions for you, but ultimately, if enrollments not going up, if sales aren't going up, then that's how you need to decide if marketing's working for you or not. Now, there may be, there may be a question to you have to answer, is like, if we're getting in front of a lot of people and nobody's choosing our product, then you may have to go back to the drawing board and say, okay, well, because we know there's, you know, there's companies all the time, you know, Microsoft Zoom, was it Zoom or Zoom, Zoom, or I don't know, do you guys even remember iPod, they, Microsoft had a product that was competing against the iPod, we can't even remember the name, I think it's a Zune Z U N E, actually, guys from North America, so I can say Z U N E, but the reality is, it's like the world knew about it at that time, but it wasn't a product, and so it didn't go anywhere. And so a lot of times we got to understand, do we have a marketing problem or do we actually have a product problem, and so sometimes marketers are just so scared that they can't have that real conversation, and so they just give you reports of saying, okay, look, we're getting in front of a half a million people, we're getting in front of a million people, but ultimately a marketer has to be able to work and say listen, enrollments up or sales are up, or they should get fired. I think, I think, let's be honest, and this is the work that I do. Well, if I can't, if I can't deliver results, then you shouldn't be paying me money.
Christian Klepp 20:36
Absolutely, absolutely. All right, you guys, I mean, we've talked a lot about also grabbing attention, right, especially student attention, but you're also talking about, like, how student attention is fragmented across several platforms and devices. So, what are some of the most common mistakes, and you've mentioned some of them already, but what are some of the most common mistakes that institutions make when trying to reach students in a digital environment, and second part of the question is, How can they be more strategic and concentrate those efforts to generate maximum impact?
Chris Rapozo 21:11
I think the biggest mistake is because there's so much pressure on enrollment that it's too promotional at times, trying to just put out content to get an RI (request for information) filled out, instead of getting into the funnel, right? So don't ask them to marry you on the first date. Don't have the CTA (Call to Action) reach out, submit your application, but maybe follow us on Instagram, learn a little bit more, get them on top of the funnel, so they can make their own opinion about yourself. Another issue I always see is perfection. Right, you can have an iPhone, you can video something, download a teleprompter script if you need something to read off of, but make sure that when you have a creator that you don't hold them to that script, because if it's scripted, the students and the people can read through that right away. If you have an influencer marketing campaign, I know Rob can talk about that a little bit more. How this falls flat most of the time. So, most importantly, polished is good for certain scenarios, but unpolished is real. That's what students are looking for. So, but we talked earlier, quantity over quality, and quality falls that follows quantity. So, just push out a couple of videos, get people comfortable, and then grow from there and get better over time.
Chris Rapozo 22:32
Yeah, so here's what I would do, and I floated it by a school, and it got shut down, but the leaders that shot it down actually don't work there anymore, so anyway, I put this, I put this out there because I think without a doubt this, this would work, is that you've got to document the product that you have, and this is where most schools and businesses, honestly, is they mix it up, is that Chris is right, it's too promotional, buy my thing, you know, do this, do this, but why don't you show what your thing does for them, or what it could do for them, and so if a school were to do this, and this is where most schools operate this way, they have somebody that oversees marketing, they probably have a social media manager or director, or whatever the title might be, they sit in meetings, and then they hire students to create content, not a whole lot of direction, though, again, because they're just checking the box, but if you actually had someone that knew how to create social media at scale, meaning you could create a lot of social media that documents what your school is all about what your school does. You could document who comes from your school, meaning alumni. What are they doing now? That, if you could hire five to 10 student workers, which most schools, even small schools, will hire that, and if done properly, you could be producing and creating, documenting five to 10 pieces of content per day, and I guarantee you that would compete against any school in the nation, no matter how big you are. But too many times, what happens is like it's too outside the norm, but you almost should create almost like a creator academy, and so because half of the students, half of the high school students in America right now, they want to be influencers, they want to be YouTubers, they want to be TikTok stars. Now they probably won't be that. It's hard to break through, but if they learn that skill set, then no matter what job they have, then they're going to be more valuable. And so I even see that with my own kids, right? They get hired to do a job, and then it's like, oh, can you also help us with social media, and so it's just because if you know how to story tell, if you know how to reach people, you're going to be way more valuable. So, I honestly think a school should, and maybe there is a school out there I don't know about that's doing this, you should create a creator program, and you call whatever you want, because you already have communication degrees. You already have business degrees, so you could just package in such a way that you finish with a degree, but really you're teaching them how to create content, how to reach people. Kevin O'Leary, the Shark Tank guy, and I post this probably once a month on LinkedIn. He talks all the time like this is the most important skill to have right now. He used to think that the best degree was engineering, but now it's how do people use content to reach people, and he's talking about how much he pays his people to do that, and it's a lot of money. So, I think of a school where to figure out, okay, this is what students want, and we, this is what we need as a school, and you can combine those together. I think it would be an amazing program. Enrollment would go up, and the awareness of your school would go up. It's just a no-brainer, but it's a little bit outside the box. And most, as we know, most businesses, as much as they talk about innovation, they're, they're really afraid to try anything different.
Christian Klepp 25:56
Oh, yeah, they're risk-averse. I mean, especially in the B2B space, right? Like, they, they always. I keep. I hear it all the time saying, like, you know, we want to do something more creative and innovative, and then you come back with the idea, and they're like, I, you know, what, that's a little bit too creative for me, right? Like, and then they default to the play it safe zone, and going back to what both of you alluded to, play it safe is not going to get you that success that you're looking for, if you're just, you know, it's the, it's the whole, like, what is it, the definition of insanity, right? Like doing the same thing over and over again, and hoping, hoping you'll have a different result, right,
Chris Rapozo 26:32
right, right. But piggyback real quick on what Rob said about the Creator Creator Academy that would fall in line with the unique selling proposition of a school, because a lot of students want career readiness, and a lot of employers are looking for people with experience. So, if you can gain that experience for two years throughout your studies at a school, you make yourself a lot more marketable once you're looking for a job, instead of just coming to the job market with a degree, but no experience.
Christian Klepp 27:03
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, at least from what both of you have been saying in the past couple of minutes, it almost sounds like these institutions are - they, some, they really need to just get out of their own way somehow.
Chris Rapozo 27:15
Yeah, we have always done it this way. Crowd needs to just, you know, accept that things are not like they used to be 20 years ago, and the University of Florida, something really nice, their College of Journalism and Communications, they have something called the agency, where students work at the college, but for real companies, so they do work for real companies, so they get that experience that way as well,
Christian Klepp 27:41
and isn't that great?
Chris Rapozo 27:43
Exactly, a lot of them get hired by those companies.
Christian Klepp 27:48
No, exactly, exactly. All right, we talked about this a little bit, but you know about institutions relying on traditional marketing tactics. So I'm just going to zero in on this one question. What is, if you were to pick, because there's, there's so many things to look at here, right? But what is the one key change that you think every institution should make right now?
Chris Rapozo 28:09
For me, it's the leadership position. When somebody works in social media, usually it's the most junior person getting the job, because they're on social media, and their assumption is, well, if they're on social media, they're probably going to be good at social media, which is not always the case. So, making sure that, like, what Rob said, that Kevin O'Leary hit, he hires professional social media storytellers and pays them a lot of money, sometimes as much as doctors. We have to just switch the mindset that the landscape has shifted, so the web developer who created a beautiful website is still important, but equally important is the person who has a handle on how to push out content that resonates with the audience.
Rob Clark 28:57
Yeah, yeah, and then school specifically, and I do think a lot of businesses fall in the same category. They have to understand that speed is going to be the difference for a lot of them, and so too many schools and too many businesses take way too long to make a decision. They think about it, they run it through board rooms, they debate it, and then usually the moment passes, and I think we're in a world where we have to realize every business speed is going to become even more and more important, and we get this right. I mean, I assume, I assume you guys, you know, watch sports. My guest, you know, Chris from Germany, so I got to assume that you're in soccer or proper football, you know. I'm just an American, so
Christian Klepp 29:44
Football,
Chris Rapozo 29:46
What? And again, I know who the players are, but I assume that what makes a big difference between good players and great players is the speed. Now, there's a lot of other things, but I know in basketball at six six, and I was a really good shoot. Or what made a difference between me playing division three and division one? I just wasn't fast enough, and so I know, like, that's a variable, and I see that in businesses all the time, and especially schools, is like, if they can move quicker, because what's going to happen, nobody knows for sure, right? So, and I think you mentioned this early on, Christian, it's like, how do you fail fast, because if you do that, then you adjust, and eventually you're going to figure out what works, what wins, and so ultimately I think schools have to figure that out, because the world we live in is just getting so fast, and institutions that can't keep up are going to fall, fall behind, they're going to close.
Christian Klepp 30:35
Absolutely, if I can just add on to that, it's, I mean, we can, we can accept the fact that probably, like, institutions are not startups, so it's, you know, they're not going to have this flat hierarchy, but on the other hand, to your point, Rob, is they've, they've got to get out of their own way of, like, you know, this whole decision by committee, and here come these two symptoms that I think you guys have both been exposed to, analysis paralysis and opinionitis, right? That everybody in the boardroom thinks it should be done this way, and because we all voted in favor of this, then then perhaps we should go down that road, because that's that's in the best interest of the institution, without looking at the data, without looking at the research, without looking at the recommendations in the marketer, and then, and then it falls flat, and then they say, Well, why didn't that work, right?
Chris Rapozo 31:29
Got to trust your professionals, right? In the boardroom, it's not like anybody questions the CFO's recommendations, why, why not respect the marketers' recommendations as well, if they're the professionals you hired for that job,
Christian Klepp 31:44
Right? Right, which, which leads me to another follow-up question, and I'm so glad you brought that up, Chris. How do you get people in the boardroom to come.. how do you.. how do you convince them to look at marketing as a more strategic role rather than, okay, well, you know, let's, let's get this one student to post on social media, because they're doing it already, you know, to get them out of that mindset of seeing marketing as a support mechanism and more of a strategic role, where, you know, hopefully, and this has been my aspiration since, since I started out as a marketer, that people will be able to see marketing as, as a role that is just as respected as, like, a CFO (Chief Financial Officer) or CTO (Chief Technology Officer) or a CISO (Chief Information Security Officer), whatever, whatever Csuite you want to drop in there.
Chris Rapozo 32:30
For those individuals on a board, I would think you have to come with proof and data that shows that your efforts positively affect the revenue of the institutions. I think at that level it's all black and white, really.
Chris Rapozo 32:46
Yeah, no, it's the same thing. How did.. how did I get my wife to go on the first date with me? Right, it's like I had to convince her that it was a good idea for her, and then I had to show her. So Chris is exactly right.
Christian Klepp 32:58
It clearly, clearly worked out for you, Rob, right?
Chris Rapozo 33:03
Like Chris is exactly right.
Christian Klepp 33:04
Yeah,
Chris Rapozo 33:05
Too many marketers think that just because they have the title, but, but no, you got, you got to show them, and the evidence is out there, like it's it's a done deal, like we know what works if we just, but it's a little bit harder than simply paying a third party to run ads for us, right, and so if that's what you're doing, then I don't know. It's much harder to argue your case.
Christian Klepp 33:28
Sure, sure. Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, I think it might have been Chris, could have been Rob too, but like when we last talked, you bought up, you brought the topic of like having some practical frameworks for content, social media, and web experience that convert in the higher ed space, and there's a lot of people in the audience that listen to the show that love this kind of stuff. So, here comes the question: if you were given 90 days to implement your marketing initiatives for a university or college, what would you do? So, walk us through the key steps. What would that 90 day plan consist of, and what metrics would you focus on?
Rob Clark 34:09
So, I would.. I just one quick follow-up question, what's.. what's.. what's the goal, Christian? And that's what.. and so I would ask the leadership, what's the goal that you want after 90 days?
Christian Klepp 34:20
Want to fill those seats.
Chris Rapozo 34:22
Okay, yeah. So, honestly, I would say, okay, my job, what I can do is I could bring awareness, and so what I would do in most schools have student workers, and if not, I would find students, and I would get as quick as possible that we make 10 to 20 pieces of content every single day, and that seems overwhelming and crazy, but it's not. If you have someone that knows social media, that's an easy lift. And then you post it on the four main places where students live right now, which is Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook. And I know you kind of.. does anyone on there? Yes, the data is very clear. People are still on Facebook. So, if you're doing 20 pieces of content and four different platforms, that's 80 chances every single day. You could easily, any school, even a small school, is going to be averaging from 200 to 1000 views. Now, all of a sudden, you're talking about 100,000 people a day seeing your school. Now, the back end is okay. Now, our enrollment is, how do we convert that, and so we're going to get some people leaving comments, we're going to get some people clicking on the link, and so there's a little bit of, okay, our enrollment, our admissions counselors. Now, what are they doing now? I had a very short, brief amount of time at a college where I was working at admissions, and we use that, and we simply message DM students through Instagram, and sent them direct videos, and we found that numbers went up drastically, instead of trying to call them on a phone on some, you know, random night from 5o'clock to 7o'clock when no one was answering their phones. So, again, it's just common sense, and I literally had people reach out to me and say, like, can you do that? Like, what do you mean, can you do that? Can you, can you, can you DM ( Direct Message) somebody? This is where students live, so why wouldn't we go to the places where they live, and it makes sense why our numbers went up. So that's what my 90, my 90 day plan would be, is create as much content as possible, because here's what's going to happen in those 90 days, probably within 30 days, you're going to see some content that works really well, so you're gonna see, like, this content never works. Okay. Well, let's try it a few more times. It never works. This series, though, for whatever. When we do this, this crushes, and so, okay, then I would say, let's double down on that. Let's keep doing that. Now, this is organic, meaning it's free. You're not putting money behind it, so you're gonna have a couple pieces of content that do really, really well. Now, I'm going to put money behind that content, and I'm going to push it out there, because I know students are already engaging with it. Now I'm going to put it in front of the people that I know that we want at our school, and then the funnel works, right? And so now we're not just putting, and I've seen, and we've all seen the ads, and they're so bad, let's just not beat around the bush, so many schools have really bad ads, and nobody's looking at them, but because you're putting money behind them, they're getting the impressions. Now, if you have content that students are actually watching and engaging with, leaving comments, liking, sharing, if you put money behind those, then you know that you're going to get in front of the right people, and you're going to get a chance to put them in the funnel, so in 90 days, that's what I would do. Most schools would say that's way too much, and then I would say, okay, well, do you want more butts in the seat or not? And gets back to Chris's, you know, quote with Michael Jordan, it's like, if you want to grow when most schools aren't growing, then what are you going to do different.
Christian Klepp 37:37
Right?
Rob Clark 37:38
All right, and the people within that content should be students most, most of the time. User-generated content creates user-generated trust, and trust is what usually fills up the bottom of the flow with social proof pieces.
Christian Klepp 37:53
Exactly, exactly. I mean, you're talking about like filling that trust gap, right? And building that trust, because I think a lot of the reason why, why there is this invisibility is because there's a, there's a trust factor, right?
Rob Clark 38:04
Yeah, exactly. And you know, you know that your students that you have in your, in your content, they'll be sure they're sharing with their friends and their friends at school.
Christian Klepp 38:13
Absolutely.
Rob Clark 38:14
And probably one of the best marketers right now of our generation, Gary Vaynerchuk, has this has this quote where he says document, don't create, and this I think is really helpful, and schools need to lean into this. Don't think about, oh, I need to be super creative. No documents, what's happening. And so one of the schools that I worked at, one of the most popular videos, was simply we are at a volleyball game, and then the soccer team showed up, which most of those guys are international, and it was, and it was like they were at a soccer match. They're jumping in the bleachers. It was going crazy. It's amazing. I was simply there watching it. I film it, and I posted their socials. It's one of the best performing videos of all time. No editing at all, just eight second clips, but it shows you this is what it looks like. So, we got a volleyball team, we got the soccer team supporting the volleyballs, and it's a smaller college, about 1000 students, but you can really see, and you get an idea of, like, this is what this school is about. People are going to see that, and they're going to be like, 'No, I want to go, I want Ole Miss, I want the 80,000 football stadium, but a lot of students are going to say, 'No, I want that small college where I could sit in with those guys, and I know the same people, because it's a small campus. So that's the idea, if you document and don't create one, it's much easier, and two, you're going to get that trust factor, because you're not trying to spin it and try to make it something that it's not.
Christian Klepp 39:30
That's it, that's it, that's it. Wait until you go to a football match in Germany, the passion sometimes it gets a little bit too passionate,
Chris Rapozo 39:43
yes, yes, they burn the place down sometimes with their fears,
Christian Klepp 39:51
but once again, Chris and Rob, thank you so much for coming on the show, this was such a great conversation, please, quick introduction to yourselves and how. Folks out there can get in touch with you, especially those in the higher ed space.
Chris Rapozo 40:03
My name is Chris Rapozo. They think people can get in touch with me through LinkedIn. Just hook me up, Chris Rapozo. I work for Stamats, a higher marketing agency. We do website redesign, accessibility audits, enrollment marketing, and content marketing creation. I also have a podcast, The Education Marketing Leader, and a book club. If you want to join,
Christian Klepp 40:23
fantastic.
Chris Rapozo 40:24
Yeah, same for me. LinkedIn would be great. Rob Clark, and thisisRobclark.com
Christian Klepp 40:32
Wonderful gentlemen, once again, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for sharing your experience and expertise with the listeners. Take care, stay safe, and talk to you soon.
Chris Rapozo 40:42
Thank you.
Christian Klepp 40:42
All right. Bye for now.