Digital Strategy Blog

Education has been around a long time -- many centuries! For most of those centuries providers of education did little to no marketing of their school because there was no perceived need. People needed education, they had education, end of marketing plan. Ok, ok I realize it wasn't THAT simple. But compared to now it sure does seem like it was an easy scenario. Most schools only competed with other schools in their caliber or other schools in their region. With the dawn of digital marketing, educators now compete with schools across the world, with different delivery mediums, and vocational schools are even now competing with traditional schools. The competition pool extends far beyond other educators though. Now, the competition is simply everyone and everything.

As the world continues to evolve, so does the way that we use technology and websites. Consumers are less reliant on sales people than they've ever been and that's only going to become more and more true in the coming months and years. Consumers are doing their own research. They're making decisions before talking to your business. They're judging your solutions, products, services, etc. before you have the chance to sell them.

In fact, by 2020 it is estimated that 85% of consumers will engage with businesses without ever interacting with another human being [Gartner].

So how do you go about growing your business, increasing sales, and engaging your prospects if they don't actually talk to you?

Enter chatbots.

If you have a website, then chances are you want to be found online with a simple Google search. Or perhaps you have a pay-per-click campaign and you want your ads to be shown over a competitor's. Either way, you'll need to know which keywords to target in order to optimize your organic search results or ad campaign.

When I first heard the term "Smarketing", I automatically thought it meant smart marketing. I zoned out and thought about what smart marketing looked like. It was reaching the right people (your target customer), through the right communications or mediums (social media, email, phone calls, video, etc). Then after I let my mind wander for a minute, I realized what I was thinking about the entire time was actually just good ol' marketing.

If you’re like me, then you've already missed out on spring cleaning. At this point the only logical decision is to let the clutter linger until next spring. However, you likely don’t have the same luxury at work as you do at home, and there's still some spring cleaning to be had. That's exactly why you need to block out some time in your calendar and clean out your CRM.

Now that we’ve established why you need a press kit on your company’s website, we want to share HOW you can build it.

The integral part of a traditional public relations campaign is the media. Yes, you can utilize social and digital aspects in a PR campaign. However, if your goal is to garner earned media you’ll need to make sure media professionals are the target persona in the campaign’s plan. But how do you make your company attractive to those media professionals?

Media professionals have been through the wringer the past few generations with HUGE, life-altering changes to how they do business and attempt to make a profit. In this new digital age, it is more important than ever for marketers to find that competitive edge to make our business stand out amongst the rest. And we need to do that with media as well as with consumers. This means we need to enlist a multi-channel integrated marketing plan that includes several inbound marketing and public relations initiatives in order to meet marketing and lead generation goals and a press kit, though it sounds traditional, can be a highly beneficial part of that plan. Let’s talk about why.

The rise of UX web design has many marketers considering how their website visitors "use" a website and has really shaped the function of websites in recent years. However, with more than 19% of the US population having a disability, considerations for those users' experience on our websites should also be top of mind. There's also a law in place to protect their rights for access and usability of websites.

We have experience with public entities, like universities and charter schools, on the forefront of this website ADA compliance transition. This article is based on what we’ve learned about ADA compliance through those countless web designs, and is intended to help other website owners consider steps needed to comply with ADA regulations and usability.

In 2015 our founder created a blog post about website must haves. In our content review process this year I'm looking over all the previous assets to determine current value and alignment with our content strategy and SMART goals.

So much has changed in digital marketing since 2015. SO I have to tell you, I was SHOCKED at what I found in this article that our fearless leader, founder, and tech guru posted in 2015!