Data Driven Content Marketing Strategies in Higher Education
Marketers today have
access to more data on website visitors, e-mail subscribers, leads and social
media fans than ever before. Leveraging this data, in addition to demographic
data, helps to ensure marketers can produce the best content for prospective
customers. That is, when it’s actually examined and used properly.
Many brands are new to
content marketing and use of data, and properly laid out strategies often fall
to the wayside. Harvard Business Review reports an estimated 89% of marketers
make customer related decisions based on factors other than analytics.
It’s imperative to understand how best to execute a data driven content
marketing strategy for the best results in today’s online environment. This is
especially true in the world of higher education marketing.
Today’s prospective
online students are barraged with ads, e-mails, tweets, pop ups and other forms
of marketing from the large array of schools offering degrees. Consumers are
growingly aware of marketing tactics, which requires marketers to be extra
creative. Learning to develop a data driven content marketing strategy will
ultimately aid in being able to deliver the content students are looking for
and improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
What is Data Driven Content Marketing?
Data driven content
marketing utilizes data, statistics, market research, surveys and/or public
data to dictate a content strategy. Producing content based on the backing of
numbers and research is one way to tactically execute the development of
content for maximum results.
The term is also used to
describe the use of data to create content such as Infographics, case studies,
blog posts, video and images. By discovering a unique idea to cover with data,
asking the right questions, or adding the right data sets you’re able to create
data-driven content. For the purposes of this blog post, however, we’ll focus
more on the use of data to drive marketing efforts not data focused content.
Data Points Available for Higher Education Content Marketers
There are many third
party data resources available to you as marketers. In addition, your own site
can serve as a place to gather data too – even if you haven’t started utilizing
a formal content marketing strategy. Here are a few of the data points you
can use in higher education to help start driving your content strategy.
Student Demographic Data
An example of a higher education demographic
study that can be used as a data point for content marketing.
Source: Arizona State University.
As a higher education marketer you’re likely to
have done extensive research on who the prospective students are for your
institution. Each degree program is catered to a different student and having a
handle on who that individual is will of course be important to any marketing
initiatives. Make sure you’re examining this information and using this data to
focus your content marketing efforts to attract that individual. Some third
party resources are provided below that may help you understand students a bit better
as well.
Using your website analytics program such as
Google Analytics, you’re able to see some limited demographic data such as:
language and location. Dive deeply into the location of your visitors and
review possible opportunities to focus content on a specific geo-area as well.
Examine data on your Facebook page as well using Insights. You may find a lot
of valuable information about your current student body or prospects. Insights
helps you see gender, location, and age of your fans on Facebook.
Site
Visitors: Visits, Time of Day, Time Onsite and % Return Visits
Another data source that can provide insight for
content marketing is found on your site with visitor information, time of day,
time on site and % of return visits. Looking at the content that currently
draws in the most visitors, what time of day they access this content, how long
they spend on that content and the type of content that visitors return to are
all important areas to examine. Tailoring your strategies to address areas where
visitors most frequent, return to often or stay on longer are all ways in which
you can use data to support your initiatives. Develop the content that is
already working for your site visitors, spend more of your efforts on those
initiatives than ones that aren’t producing the same results. Analyze the
numbers and get smart about why you’re developing content.
E-mail
Open Rates & Click Through Rates
Do you send out regular e-mails to prospective
students – maybe a newsletter or other marketing materials? Take the time to
examine your e-mail open rates and click throughs on links contained within
your e-mails. Which e-mails get opened most? Which links get clicked on the
most? What insight can you gain from looking at this information?
E-mail subject lines and content contained within
this marketing effort can provide you with insight that can be applied to
future efforts. Examine this data, provide the type of content that performs
well and you’ll be better off when trying to promote using e-mail marketing in
the future.
Examining click through rates within your site,
using Google Webmaster Tools and tracking URLs are also great ways to gather
information on content effectiveness. Figure out why your prospects click on
links, determine any patterns in the reasons why they perform that action and
execute content initiatives that help replicate this pattern.
Third
Party Data
Polling
Have you ever used Google consumer surveys? These
fast, affordable and accurate customer market research surveys allow you to
discover key insights from users across the web. Learn how it works here,
as a potential opportunity to gather data.
Consider also polling your existing e-mail
subscriber base or setting up a poll on your website that visitors can take, helping
answer questions such as: content type they like the most (blog, images, video,
etc…), where they go to find content (trade publications, magazines, blogs,
etc…), and what content helps them understand more about a degree program. The
types of questions you can ask are are endless, just take the time to really
think through the poll and what information you are looking to gather from it.
Gathering
Data
Data.gov is another site with valuable
information providing “public access to high value, machine readable datasets
generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.” Check back to see
if any data is currently available to help you understand your demographic and
changes that take place with those individuals on an annual basis.
Additionally research into demographic data and
marketing strategy is provided below. Have an article that you find useful?
Share with us in the comments below and we’ll add it to this list:
·
Higher Education
Market Research and Strategic Planning, ForwardAnalytics.com
·
Higher Education
Marketing to the Hispanic Student Population,
Scholars.UNH.edu/honors
·
A Comparative
Student Between Non-Traditional and Traditional Students,
TheFreeLibrary.com
MarketingProfs.com
Preparing
Your Site to Measure Content Data
Now that you have a pretty good idea on what data
to measure, you’ll want to dive into preparing your site to gather information
and setting up baselines.
One suggestion is to set up Google Analytics to
understand how prospective students utilize content onsite to gather
information during such a long customer cycle.
Josh Braaten, Sr. Online
Marketing Manager at Rasmussen College, describes how he has worked with Google
Analytics to set up multi-content funnels. This helps him to examine how users
interact with web content on their path to conversion, and he’s able to make
changes based on the path a user takes. This is a worthwhile read for anyone in
higher education looking to gather content data and prove the value as well.
Having the means to gather data is important to
the entire process of data driven content marketing. Ensure that your site is
ready to gather data and use a reputable website analytics program. Test out
the program and make sure code loads properly and is tracking effectively as
well. Write down baselines and examine those monthly, quarterly, semi-annually
and yearly.
An example if a Muti-channel funnel in Google Analytics
Data Driven Content Marketing Best Practices
Lastly, it’s integral for your success to cover some of the
best practices that are important to thoroughly understanding data driven
content marketing. Here are just a few…. Feel free to add your own in the
comments below.
Segment and/or update your subscriber lists – make sure
you have your e-mail marketing lists set up to accommodate promoting niche
e-mail users. It’s pointless to promote niche content to prospective students
who aren’t interested in that degree program, so make sure your e-mail lists
are segmented to accommodate.
Focus on quality over quantity: clean up your lists – have
you de-duped your e-mail subscriber lists lately? How about checking for spam
and validating e-mail addresses? Spend some time every few months ensuring you
have a quality list of e-mail subscribers.
Share data across departments – it’s always wise to
share data that you gather from your research with other departments. Sometimes
data you glean from how content performs on your site can help your PR
department as well as sales or account managers. Imagine if a piece of content
was providing a lot of use for online visitors, don’t you think a sales team or
account management team could provide this content to help sell a student as
well? Ensure you’re sharing data across multiple departments.
Execute using the data you find – certainly it’s one
thing to research and have a lot of useful observations available, but how well
are you actually executing? Make sure your follow through matches your intent
with data driven content marketing.
Don’t make assumptions about your data – an incredible
piece of advice is to really understand the data you’re looking at and avoiding
assumptions with data. Avinash Kaushik has an insightful blog that provides
great digital marketing advice, and one article “Eight Silly Data Myths
Marketing People Believe That Get Them Fired“ is an awesome read. He goes
over several myths with data that you should avoid, and helps you in
understanding some of the basic concepts data should help you observe.
Data driven content marketing is the smart way to execute
content. Use these tips to help you propel your content marketing strategy to
the next level.
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