The Minute

4 Lessons from Davids Who Slayed Goliaths this Year

Written by The Enrollify Team | 12/30/19 12:23 PM

4 LESSONS FROM DAVIDS WHO SLAYED GOLIATH THIS YEAR: Across almost every industry, small brands have been disrupting the giants. Google interviewed some of these disruptors to uncover what these brands were doing to run marketing campaigns that challenged the Goliaths. Among the common tactics, these were the top four: build connections with the right customers, solve a problem, and make that your marketing cornerstone, test, verify, and adjust in real time, and master the art of paid and organic social media.

Why you should care: Whether it be limited budget, stiff competition for a specific program, or unsettling higher education trends, we’ve all got our challenges to overcome. Enrollment marketers who continuously push the envelope with innovative A/B testing, creative ways to express program value, and paid advertising mastery are putting pressure on Goliaths and will continue to do so in 2020.

GOOGLE PODCAST INDEXING STARTING TO SURFACE: In May of 2019, podcasts distributed on the Google Podcasts platform began to surface on Google’s new, unique “Podcast” search results tier. To get your podcast to rank in this new tier, you’ll need to publish lots of episodes, keep episodes relatively short, ensure your podcast uses quality audio, align the podcast’s title with common search queries, and feature popular guests on the podcast, according to HubSpot.

Why you should care: Many higher education institutions put out a regular podcast series as the popularity of podcasts with older Gen-Zers and Millennials soars. Now that Google is indexing and ranking podcasts in search results, look to utilize HubSpot's tactics to design a podcast that can get genuine SEO traffic. Optimize your podcast for SEO and watch listener counts grow.

MARKETERS NEED TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MILLENNIALS VS GEN Z: Commonalities between Gen Zers and Millennials are that they’re both highly connected to the internet and technology. But HubSpot sums up their differences pretty well with this example: “While my sister, born in 2001, is always posting on her Finsta and TikTok profiles, I'm still sharing early-2000s memes on Facebook. And, while she's just starting college, I'm budgeting to pay off my student loans.” While seemingly subtle, these differences need to be considered in day-to-day marketing efforts.

Why you should care: Key differences between Gen Z and Millenials have implications for today’s enrollment marketers. For example, Gen Z-ers love to use video to learn about products, spending hours of online time on their mobile phones. What does that mean? Be sure to leverage short-form video formatting and mobile-optimized content in your campaigns. Millennials find housing out of financial reach and have mainly focused on paying high costs of tuition. So, inform millennials about how your program can make their lives easier or how it can solve their day-to-day problems at work.

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