Enrollment Managers: 3 Recommendations for Building an Influencer Marketing Campaign

According to the Digital Marketing Institute, half of consumers depend on influencer recommendations, and 40 percent have made a purchase after seeing a product on social media. 

Students, like consumers, are looking for authentic reviews of what it’s like to attend a particular institution, and they're searching for current student accounts to learn more. In response, more higher education institutions are enlisting their students to be social media ambassadors. As a graduate student completing Northwestern University's Master of Science in Higher Education Administration and Policy and an admissions and financial aid professional, I have found two pieces of content that provide great insight into influencer marketing campaigns in higher education.  

In her Chronicle of Higher Education article “Colleges Find a Low-Cost Marketing Tool: Social-Media Influencers” author Grace Elletson highlights how influencer marketing campaigns are being used by a few dozen institutions around the country. She highlights an influencer-produced video series from the University of Central Florida, as one example, with student ambassadors providing advice to prospective students on the campus' best study spots and how to best transition to college. Elletson discusses how some campuses are leveraging their students' current social media following - a key player behind the "Campus Knights" video series is Sonali Prabhu, a student who entered UCF with 10,000 YouTube subscribers to her channel.

Photo by Rowen Smith on unsplash.com

Megan Rolfs recently launched the second iteration of #YourRedbirdLife, a social media influencer campaign, at Illinois State University. She discusses the challenges of launching the program, how students are compensated and the results of her program in Episode #100 of HelixEducation’s “Enrollment Growth University: Higher Education” podcast. As the director of marketing and communications for the student affairs division at Illinois State, Megan leverages influencers to spread the news of her division on campus. While some colleges offer swag or special perks as compensation for student influencers, Illinois State pays students for five hours a week. The school also requires students to produce a report on their social media activity and to sign an agreement outlining their expected social media conduct.

For higher education institutions considering launching their own influencer marketing campaigns, I would suggest three recommendations.

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•       Address Your Gaps - When choosing a diverse group of influencers, consider which audiences you’re not currently reaching, and strategically choose students who help you address those gaps.
•           Set Expectations - Now that you have your influencing team in place, clearly communicate what you expect of them, and compensate them to maintain their buy-in.
•           Let Authenticity Reign - Give your influencers guidelines, but lean into your students’ authentic voices.

If you’re thinking of taking the plunge and starting your own influencer marketing campaign, keep these three recommendations in mind to better structure your program.

Melissa Sersland is the associate director of graduate admissions and financial aid at Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree in journalism from Northwestern. She is also completing a master's in Higher Education Administration and Policy from Northwestern. Melissa enjoys leveraging her journalism background to help higher education institutions more effectively communicate and engage their audiences.   

Product Managers: 3 Key Concepts to Keep in Mind While Prioritising Your Feature Backlog

Regardless of whether you're a junior, mid-level, or senior executive Product Manager, prioritising your feature backlog will play a significant role in how you perform. Prioritising features will give you clarity on how your product will look as time passes, as well as ensures that what you produce will be of the highest quality it can be. Fortunately or unfortunately however, prioritisation can be done in a multitude of ways, and there isn't a "one size fits all" solution. It's great practice to evaluate a number of techniques, and choose what works for you, your company, and your product.

Tomer London, the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Gusto gives us a framework to do just that in his article Comparing Apples and Oranges: A New Prioritization Framework for Product Managers. The cloud-based payroll and HR company knows what it takes to get a high-quality product out the door, and place a large amount of importance in how they prioritize. London talks about how it's often easy to compare features that are similar in nature to one another -- apples to apples -- but more notably, gives us a framework to compare features greatly differing in characteristics -- what he calls apples to oranges. Using frameworks like the impact matrix, he shows us how we can make better informed decisions for our users.

Image from Chron

Jeff Betts, former Product Manager at Google, also endorses using frameworks in feature prioritisation, and places a large amount of importance on measuring impact. He talks about giving users the chance to voice how much of an impact a feature would make, and mentions how building that - as well as potential costs -- in as factors in the framework you use is key. Betts also talks about OKRs -- objectives and key results -- and stresses the point that as Product Managers, it's important to define what success means early on, and measure your product against it as your project gathers steam. The factors you include in your framework will play a defining role in what your product will look like.

Based on these articles, it's clear that there are a few actions you should adopt:

1. Use the matrix: Gusto’s customer impact vs. expectations matrix is a great tool to judge your next feature against, as is Jeff Bett's cost vs impact framework. Think about what structures help you in evaluating your feature or product -- it could be the difference between a successful offering and a confused one.

2. Think numbers: Numbers give you an objective measure of success. Wherever possible, quantifying measures important to your product will give you a greater sense of clarity.

3. Visualize success: Think of what your successful product looks like, and make sure your team does as well. One key responsibility of a Product Manager is to maintain the vision of a product, and motivate his team members to uphold it.

The next time you're confused about what features to throw into your product mix, think frameworks and metrics, as well as what your ideal product looks like.

Author: Tav Agarwal is a senior at Northwestern University studying Economics, Computer Science, and Marketing. Tav is passionate about how technology can have a positive impact on society, and spends his time looking up cool new products. Follow Tav on Twitter, or connect with him on Linkedin to learn more!  

Baseball Marketers: 3 Strategies for Combatting the Attendance Deficit

As a marketer in professional baseball, you would agree that one of the most important parts of a team’s success is their fan base.  You would also agree that the supposedly shrinking fanbase is one of the most persistent trends in baseball coverage today.  As both an avid sports fan and an undergraduate marketing and communications student at Northwestern University, I’ve found two articles that analyze the attendance problem and offer suggestions to help keep fans engaged, in and out of the ballpark.

Evan Drellich’s ‘How interested are you right now?’ Attendance, changing fandom and the health of Major League Baseball for The Athletic discusses mainly the trends that contribute to falling attendance.  Through interviews with commissioner Rob Manfred and social psychologist Rich Luker, Drellich susses out that the fall in attendance is not really an interest problem, but a free-time and location problem.  According to Luker’s Sports Poll, in 2019, 60% of MLB fans live out-of-market of their team.  Contrary to the popular narrative, interest in baseball is actually increasing, especially with technologies like MLB’s At-Bat App and online streaming service, MLB.tv, that offer those out-of-market fans access to their team’s content anytime and anywhere.  For that remaining 40% of fans who live within visiting distance of their favorite team, Drellich reports that technology still plays an important part.  Maybe you’ve heard outcry about the length of game?  Manfred says that may actually be an advantage – as long as teams take good advantage of the down time.  “Our game is the ideal second-screen experience,” Manfred said.

Credit: Brace Hemmelgarn

In their article Baseball Saw a Million More Empty Seats. Does It Matter? for the New York Times, Danielle Allentuck and Kevin Drapper take on another huge factor affecting those in-market fans: ticket prices.  From nose-bleeds to box seats, people simply have less time to invest in attending professional athletics, especially when those athletics occur over the steep 81 home games each MLB club hosts every summer.  Season ticket sales account for a huge block of every team’s ticket revenue, but Allentuck and Drapper say that the system needs to adapt alongside its patrons’ busy schedules.  They champion ballpark access packages that offer young fans with young-fan incomes an affordable way to take in as much of their home team as they want.  Though they may not pull in substantial income off the bat, they build up something Allentuck and Drapper argue is more important: team loyalty.  On the other end of the spectrum, they also take on the issue of corporate boxes.  Similarly to their entry-level counterparts, the traditional executive owners of corporate boxes fall too short on time to spare three hours approximately every other night for four months, and are deciding in increasing numbers to cut ties with those premium suites.  Still, luxury sports experiences haven’t lost their appeal for recruiting, entertaining, and schmoozing.  According to Allentuck and Drapper, clubs need to figure out how to meet fans where they’re at.

Based on both of these articles and my experience, I have come up with three best practices for adapting marketing efforts to a changing fandom:

1.     Integrate the Experience – for fans in and out of the ballpark, use digital platforms to enhance the experience of watching live baseball.

2.     Activate Your Fans – use accessible ticket bundles to meet young fans where they (and their incomes) are at and lock in team loyalty for years to come.

3.     Adapt Premium Packages – keep corporate deals rolling against the time-crunch by marketing luxury experiences in smaller doses.

So the next time you’re faced with the prospect of an empty ballpark, remember these recommendations to bridge the interest/attendance gap and lock in your fanbase for years to come.

About the Author

Shealyn Abbott is a fourth-year student at Northwestern University, preparing to graduate this spring with her Bachelor of Arts in communication studies and English literature and a certificate in IMC.  She’s spent the last four years marketing student theatre to the greater Evanston, IL, area and currently serves as the Vice President of Public Relations for Northwestern’s Panhellenic Association.  In her free time, Shealyn advocates for the Oxford comma and the designated hitter and counts down the days until Opening Day.

Follow her on Twitter and connect with her on LinkedIn!

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Luxury Marketers: 3 Recommendations to Better Promote Your Luxury Brand in China

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Experiential marketing has become the new way for luxury brands to stay relevant in China. Younger consumers are buying fewer products and purchasing more experiences. They desire a true connection with luxury brands, and this type of connection is usually established through authentic experience. As a luxury marketer, learning and adopting new trends and marketing techniques can help your brand stand out and be successful.

Jenny Chua’s article, Chinese Millennials are Rewriting the Future of Luxury Brand Experience discusses experiential marketing through the lens of young Chinese consumers and she highlights the fact that they belong to a generation that expresses and shares their lifestyle on social platform. As a result, luxury brands are leveraging social media to maximize their online network to create an unparalleled online experience for consumers.

Image of FF Reloaded, a Fendi experiential marketing campaign from Vogue

Now that we know what luxury brands are doing online, it is also important to remember that offline experience is equally important in today’s landscape. Sienna Pan’s article Chinese Buyers Crave a New SalesPitch: ‘Experiential Luxury’  focuses more on the “in the moment” experience that brands create for consumers. She uses the Italian luxury brand Fendi as an example to illustrate how one successful experiential marketing can positively impact a brand.

Action Recommendations:

·        Create Constant Engagement – Constantly engage with consumers to build long-lasting relationships.

·        Build Omnichannel Experience – Experience should be fun, interactive and omnichannel, meaning that you want to provide the consumer with a unified and seamless buying experience and hit all the customer touchpoints.

·        Break the Boundaries – Unconventional approaches often create a higher impact on your target market which makes your experience unforgettable.

Consider these recommendations when you are planning the next marketing campaign for your brand.

Michelle Huang

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I am a current senior at Northwestern University studying Communications, French and Integrated Marketing. I have a passion for fashion, and I am always on the lookout for the newest industry trends. Connect with me on Linkedin.