Digital Marketing for Higher Education? Increasingly Complex
Online marketing in higher ed used to be easy. All you needed was a good student worker to post replies on Facebook, show up at a meeting with some vanity metrics, and everybody was happy.
Somewhere along the way things got competitive, administration started asking questions, money got tight. We started mixing terms like ROI and tweet, KPIs and web page.
Suddenly, throwing dollars at awareness campaigns fell out of vogue. Metrics and analytics became the new black.
Measurement and Analytics in Higher Ed: Not Optional
User journeys are much more complicated than they used to be. The lines between channels are easily blurred. A good digital marketer needs to know how to analyze data outside of a particular platform.
It won’t always be easy to combine data from multiple sources to create unique inferences. It will never be sexy because it involves math, but developing an understanding of analytics and statistics can help you get past the GUI.
Even though analytics is really just about finding meaningful patterns in data, most people just look at data and make gut decisions. They avoid the math and miss the truth. If you’re not a math person, you will be sad to know, you can’t go far in analytics without statistics.
Higher Ed Analytics: Where to Start?
Yes it will get complicated, but acquiring solid data analysis skills will put you far above the self proclaimed experts. If it’s been awhile since you saw your college stats book, it’s time to dust it off and learn some real statistics.
- Make sure you know how to formulate a scientific question and a hypothesis. Doing this will help identify your objectives and key performance indicators.
- Determine which of these 3 categories best fits your marketing analysis: reporting the past, analyzing current trends, or predicting the future.
- Learn to use statistical tools such as regression analysis or best fit.
- Maybe learn to use a statistical package like R, or even Excel.
It’s hard to be an expert at every new online marketing trend, and it’s definitely easy to spend too much time on things that don’t have a real impact. Crunching numbers for a sound analysis can make you more efficient and keep your marketing on target.
I can think of no other industry better equipped to prepare solid analytical marketers, than higher ed. We have no excuse for not using good analytical skills. We have access to more learning resources and experts than anybody.
As higher ed online marketing matures, so should we. One of the best ways to grow from being a channel expert to being a marketing expert is to practice the science of marketing analytics.
So, when do you want to start?
Meet the Author: Bryan Fendley
Bryan Fendley is the Director of Campus Web Services and Instructional Technology at University of Arkansas at Monticello. He is also a graduate of 6 Higher Ed Experts’ professional certificate programs in Web Analytics, Advanced Analytics, Predictive Analytics, Social Media Measurement, Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.