When the average person thinks of university life, they probably imagine large, sprawling campuses, students milling to and from class, a giant library filled with musty books, pep squads—the whole shebang.

There is another reality to universities, though, one that most people probably don’t consider, but that is the heartbeat of every major learning institution: the never-ending cycle of admissions that bring fresh tuitions—er, students—to the hallowed halls of learning.

For anyone working in the administrative side of a university or college, they know that the pressure is always on to generate leads and convert prospective students into tuition-paying future alumni. For those that are struggling to come up with new ways to engage these prospects, here are five strategies worth considering:

Of course, I’ve only scratched the subject of a very complicated subject. Consider this article food for thought, but if you are serious about kick starting fresh enrollment initiatives at your university, we at TRAFFIK would love the chance to bring our perspective to the table. Remember: it may only be February now, but the Fall Semester has a way of creeping up on you when your numbers are down!

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Part of the beauty of Facebook is that the experience is different for each user. Users that “gather” friends and connections more actively tend to have a busy and active newsfeed experience, whereas those that focus on a smaller core of key relationships and brands may have a slower-moving feed.

For businesses that rely on Facebook as a tool for building their awareness, this dichotomy can be a source of frustration. Those users that follow a larger amount of friends and acquaintances may miss out on what key influencers are saying about their brand because what is being shared on their wall can get buried quickly or disappear from sight altogether if they aren’t monitoring their feed 24 hours a day. Such is the way of the dynamic newsfeed.

Facebook has recently introduced an ingenious workaround for this dilemma: Sponsored Stories. Under this program, companies can broaden their reach by increasing the visibility of influential newsfeed stories that relate to their brands or campaigns.

They’ve covered all of their bases, too, offering compatibility with many forms of Facebook-related actions, including:

While Sponsored Stories can be an effective marketing tool on its own, the program is optimal as part of an existing campaign that already includes standard Facebook ads. Because effective Facebook ads work to increase the number of actions that users take with your content (for instance, liking, sharing or commenting), Sponsored Stories adds the delicious counterpunch of making those actions visible for longer periods of time on relevant newsfeeds.

Sounds good right? If you’re not sure how Sponsored Stories can be integrated into your current social media marketing campaign, we can help to get you up to speed. Leave a comment below or contact us directly, and let’s set your Facebook presence on overdrive.

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Have you ever heard of the phrase “Good, Fast or Cheap: Pick Two”? In the design world, this is a simple rubric that helps agencies to give clients an idea of what they can expect in terms of turnaround, quality and pricing. To break it down quickly, if they want something that is both “good” and “fast,” it is going to be expensive. If they want “good” and “cheap,” it’s going to take a long time. If they want “fast” and “cheap,” what they are going to get will be of inferior quality.

Now that you’re familiar with the concept, let’s reapply it to a hot topic facing many of today’s digital-savvy businesses: choosing an SEO and SEM vendor.

Over the last year we have seen a tremendous amount of growth in the realm of SEO and SEM with our clients. Normally we take on business in one of two ways: we take over an existing account from another SEO/SEM agency that showed poor results, or we are approached by an interested party and build their program from the ground up. Today, I want to address ways that you can avoid being in the position of paying for poor SEO results, as well as other ways to bypass wasting time, effort and a lot of money (if you’re not 100% up to speed on SEO/SEM and would like to learn more, check out my article about the basics of SEO).

Good: integrity and strategy

We recently took on an account that had an aggressive SEM budget for services with another company. Our predecessor was a nationwide SEO firm that has turnkey solutions. This company reaches out to local businesses through a huge corporate structure. Unfortunately for our new client, they were paying for the services for over four years and had not been receiving reports, communication or performance reviews. The SEM account had been put on autopilot and left to grow old.

Upon our initial audit, we pulled over 500 keywords that were being used in the previous campaigns, and concluded that about a third of them were junk and no longer relevant to the client’s services.

Because the previous vendor was not familiar with the exact details of their ex-client’s services and a did not have a detailed strategy, four years of unmanaged keywords, clicks and wasted traffic added up to approximately $75,000 of spending down the drain.

Every month, TRAFFIK produces reports and recommendations on spending and strategy, and sets mandatory meetings every quarter to align on the goals of your SEM strategy.

Fast: getting the right results, not results right away

When a company promises you top rankings and instant results, you should be skeptical. When things seem too good to be true, they usually are. SEO takes time to generate results, but the long-term payoff can be tremendous. SEM will generate instant data for you to review, but as I outlined above, if you’re not engaged, you loose value in the quality of traffic you generate.

Sometimes businesses outsource their SEO and SEM to companies overseas. As much as I support international business in a global economy, we have to be concerned about a few things:

Cheap: the lowest bidder is low for a reason

When a company signs up for an ongoing SEO/SEM strategy, there is nothing tangible in exchange for the monthly retainer they have just undertaken. If you are like most businesses, chances are that you have shopped for a good vendor, but that you’re probably going to go with the lowest bid.

In the world of SEO, since you’re paying for a service and not a commodity, you get what you pay for. Consider it like an employee you just hired. Do you want a minimum wage worker handling your finances?

With SEO, the lower you go, the more likely you will have poor content, a weak link-building strategy and messy tactics for posting content. Having a partner that can think through your product offerings, services and connect the dots to build real momentum is essential to growing your online presence. Additionally, using a disengaged vendor that uses unethical (or lazy) SEO tactics could potentially lead to decrease in rankings and a penalty from Google.

Now that you’ve heard about the good, the fast and the cheap as it relates to SEO and SEM, it’s time to make your most informed decision yet: pick up the phone and call TRAFFIK. We can continue this conversation and steer you toward a strategic program that produces results you can see at a cost that makes sense for your marketing budget.

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The holidays are over and done with, the ball has dropped on Times Square and the Christmas lights are coming down in neighborhoods all over the country. It’s a brand new year, and smart companies are seizing this blank slate as an opportunity to rethink the way their business communicates with the world around them.

By now, you’ve probably heard for years about the gradual shift away from “push marketing” and the way that social media has upended the way we try to reach our targeted customers. In a recent AdAge article, writers Doug Levy and Bob Garfield have identified our current marketing landscape as “the Relationship Era,” which falls right along the same lines of thinking that we’ve been preaching at TRAFFIK for a while now: establish trust and truly engage with your audience.

How to do it is another ball of wax, but here are a few thoughts to get you rolling.

Embrace Conversation. One of the earliest tenets of social media marketing is truer now than ever before: people are talking about you whether you like it or not. Make 2012 the year that you start listening to the chatter instead of just tuning it out if it isn’t positive. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.

Who Are You? If you can’t say what your business is all about in five words or less, how do you expect your customers to know? Get to the essence of who you are as a company and make that the cornerstone of your communication strategy. Give people something that they understand and that works for them.

Inspire, Don’t Influence. Today’s consumer is surrounded by marketing messages to the point where they may just shut out anything that looks remotely like a pitch. Even something as innocuous as “Follow me on Twitter” sounds fishy. If you give people something to talk about instead of just telling them what you want them to know, big things can happen.

So is 2012 the year that you begin to leave the “old ways” behind? I hope so. Give me a call or hit us back in the comment section below and let’s talk about the ways that we can inspire trust and build a truly engaged, emotional connection with your customers. It’s a new year—anything is possible.

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ROI can be a tricky thing. Here at TRAFFIK, it is the basis of our entire client-services model. We want our partners—who are investing in our expertise—to see the maximum return possible on their marketing expenses.

At face value, it is usually fairly easy to identify where ROI is occurring in a campaign. Lots of click-throughs on a particular e-blast message? We know it’s working there. Not enough QR code scans on a print collateral piece? Maybe we need to make adjustments there.

Sometimes, though, it’s not quite so cut and dry. If the marketing elements of your marketing campaign are not easily trackable, you may have a much harder time putting your finger on why something is not working as well as it could or should be.

So what went wrong? Here are some likely culprits.

Right Message. Wrong Target. If your campaign is bombing, this is probably the first place you should look. Having the perfectly crafted message to communicate your brand, service or product’s benefits is next to useless if you’re talking to the wrong people (why your agency missed your target audience is another relevant question, but we’ll let you ask them why that ball was dropped).

Missing the Mark. The opposite of the above. In this case, your message is either unclear to your audience or is somehow putting them off. Re-examine your campaign vehicles—it may not be too late to fine-tune them in such a way that good ROI is still achievable before the life of the campaign expires. A new, more effective headline on your existing creative can do wonders, for instance.

Out of Date. Out of Touch. Advertising legend David Ogilvy once wrote, “If you are lucky enough to write a good advertisement, repeat it until it stops selling.” Indeed, many of the best and most memorable campaigns you can think of have stayed in use for decades (how long has Nike been telling us to “Just Do It”?). However, that’s not to say that your campaign shouldn’t evolve with the times or even change radically if it’s starting to wear thin. The California Milk Processing Board, for instance, has recently launched a campaign announcing that “Real Milk Comes from Cows,” edging the familiar “Got Milk?” tagline to the margins. Perhaps they were seeing a trend of poor returns and decided, “enough with the milk mustaches!”

Still not sure why your ROI is falling flat? We can help with that. As a full-service advertising agency with a wide range of ROI-illuminating analytics at our disposal, we can make a tangible difference for your marketing dollar in the short and long run. Let’s get your ROI moving in the right direction in 2012.

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Remember that old saying, “you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”? This article preaches the opposite—and is just as easy to understand.

Companies that have great products and services sometimes have a Facebook presence that is more of a ghost town than a thriving community. It’s easy to build a social platform, but using it to generate profit is hard—like trying to force a horse to drink just because the water is there. If you have a great product, they’ll drink—hypothetically speaking, of course.

Let’s also establish another factor: ROI, or return on investment. If you don’t spend money, you wont make money. Because Facebook is free, businesses often believe that creating a page and getting their colleagues to “LIKE” it will lead to converting a huge sale. Where people strike gold is when they invest money into a strategy that will generate interest from someone else’s pool of water and bring people in through viral interest.

Let’s look at an inclusive private jet charter that flies private groups to Vegas from LA and San Diego with hotel, limousine and meals for around $2,000 per person for the weekend. Great deal right? They have a Facebook page—so why is it empty? No one knows about it.

Now, let’s spike the water. We can design an effective turnkey campaign that promotes your private flight service via Facebook LIKEs. Example: 1,000 LIKEs unlocks a 20% discount within a given timeframe. Everyone who LIKED your page within the offer’s window of opportunity (say, 15 days) receives the coupon. Furthermore, we can integrate reposting functionality that broadcasts the promotion to each individual’s wall when they like the deal (this is the viral wave).

You will also have to spend advertising money for people to know about the campaign. For example, let’s spend $5,000 on Facebook advertising for the deal’s 15-day duration and geographically target LA and San Diego users within a 30-mile radius. Putting ads on profiles will generate interest among consumers that fit your demographic. Let them get the exposure to your ads, click on them, land on your campaign and sign up. Wait for the promotion to expire and see how many conversions you get.

In addition to sales and LIKEs, you will gain an email database out of your promotion—which can be just as valuable for future promotions, incidentally—so make sure to schedule two to three follow-up emails before the campaign expires (“This is your last chance,” etc.).

When we come full circle, you can see there is a strategy to bring people to your campaign (ads), a reason for them to engage (the deal) and then an opportunity for them to share with their friends in order to get the deal (must reach 1,000 LIKEs). .

Like the idea? We have plenty. Call us and let’s turn your Facebook page into a profit-generating machine.

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DIGITAL

2011 was a banner year for TRAFFIK in terms of expanding our digital expertise. We rolled out many cutting-edge digital campaigns for our clients, including the launch of our ROI-enhancing TwURL Personalized URL system, fresh and lively interactive sales portals and even a website dedicated to giving Medicare beneficiaries direct comparisons of their plan options. They say the digital frontier is like the Wild West—well, we’re like the marshal, sheriff and deputy all rolled into one.

PRINT ADS

Sometimes a strong visual—tied to a memorable headline—just says it all. We went bold with our print ads in 2011, producing memorable work that cuts through the clutter to communicate our clients’ messaging both effectively and powerfully.

VIDEO

This past year brought us many opportunities to flex our video-making muscles for a variety of projects and clients. Whether we were focusing more on stylish, cinematic storytelling, eye-popping motion graphics, a stirring narrative or all of the above, each clip gave us a chance to bring our unique visual approach into the spotlight while simultaneously producing videos that left a mark on their target audiences.

HIGH IMPACT

Businesses seem to be having a harder and harder time getting the attention of the prospects they’re trying to reach. We’re proud to be recognized as an agency that can knock the door down with jaw-dropping high-impact prestige pieces, and in 2011 we produced some showstoppers for a diverse range of clients from banks to laser eye surgeons.

SOCIAL MEDIA

More and more in 2011, we were able to apply our social media know-how to our clients’ unique needs. We are excited that our social media campaigns and promotions resulted in literally millions of impressions for our clients’ profiles, building brand awareness and boosting their online presence all at the same time.

PRINT COLLATERAL

When it comes to brochures, direct mail, flyers and other print collateral, we tend to figure that most people have seen it all—so we deliver the unexpected. Last year, we let the creativity flow on a wide array of projects that needed to educate, intrigue or simply greet their intended audiences.

PROMOTIONAL

Even while we spent the year dreaming up groundbreaking integrated marketing campaigns, we still managed to produce a megaton of fun, practical, quirky and just plain cool promotional items.

OUTDOOR

When executing a great idea, sometimes we just have to break the rules. Like this year when TRAFFIK brought “outdoor” advertising indoors with a series of “Living Room” installations at various malls across the Southwest. Stick around in 2012 to see what rules we’ll break next.

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So we extend our gratitude and appreciation to them one and all; and furthermore, we hope to be able to bring TRAFFIK’s unique blend of strategic insight and creative to businesses like yours in the coming year. Just imagine what we can accomplish together in 2012 and beyond. We can’t wait.

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So your current marketing strategy isn’t generating quite—or anywhere near—as much ROI as you expected? That happens. But here at TRAFFIK, we have observed that poor performance down the road usually results from not laying the proper groundwork at the beginning.

In fact, it can be downright surprising how often other agencies want to dive right into the fun stuff (the creative, the execution—you know, the expensive stuff) without starting with the fundamentals of the strategy. It’s sort of like eating your dessert before your dinner. It seems like a great idea at first, but it can lead to a miserable stomachache later on—like when your lead sheet looks like a ghost town.

With that in mind, let’s go back to the very beginning and look at the five essential items that your marketing strategy absolutely can’t live without.

We’re asking you a lot of questions here—the final one being, were any of these ideas ever brought up during the planning stages of your latest marketing salvo? If not, it could be a sign of a serious lack of communication and foresight on your agency’s side. At TRAFFIK, we don’t like to play the blame game—we just believe in speaking directly and getting results.

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A powerful digital strategy is at the cornerstone of all of today’s most successful marketing campaigns. To the world at large that can’t see your great collateral or see your witty ads, the internet becomes the only medium that matters, so it’s vital that your agency has the ability to utilize it to the nth degree.

Many businesses tend to settle for an online campaign that just gets the job done because they don’t really understand the importance of digital in the grand scheme of things. In reality, your plan should be killing it. How can we achieve that?

Here are some basic starting points where most companies lag behind the curve. Do any of these items sound like you?

This only touches on a few major areas—there is plenty more territory to explore. At TRAFFIK, we’ve committed to the digital revolution, and want to apply what we’ve learned to your online strategy. Together, we can build a digital plan that yields real ROI.

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