September, 2021 - Mason Interactive

Are you transitioning from B2B to D2C and joining the eCommerce revolution? Fitting the direct-to-consumer roadmap into your wholesale model seems like an impossible puzzle to solve. You have all the pieces, but putting them together to create a bigger, better picture takes a bit of problem-solving. Owning your consumer while balancing your B2B relationships is possible by refining your message, finding the right partners, and supporting retailers.

Speaking a New Language

Expand your operations team to include customer service and small-order processing. Plan sales and marketing campaigns that reach your audience in their everyday lives. Make space for your customers as they discover, consider, purchase, and return for more.

Understanding your consumer journey helps you determine what message you need to convey and when. First, make consumers aware of your brand’s positioning in the marketplace. What problem are you trying to solve for them? How will they identify with you and become aware of your solutions?

Second, figure out where your buyers are likely to take action. What social media platforms do they use? How much information do they want before making a purchase, and how can you provide that information to them? Lastly, nurturing customer relationships is much different than business relationships. Be prepared to take extra efforts to make repeat business a healthy revenue stream.

It’s worth considering creating a sub-brand within your business, specifically for D2C. Find out which of your products and services make the most sense to market to consumers directly and develop a brand around those solutions.

When it comes to D2C marketing, figure out where your buyers are. For example social media. — The language and content you use to target your target audience will depend on which platform they use.

Find the Right Partners for the D2C Model

Manufacturers, distributors, and other wholesale partnerships were your MVPs for the longest. You likely generated and retained business with a team of account managers. Now it’s time to consider partners in marketing and payment processing specifically for direct-to-consumer/eCommerce.

Get ready to up your marketing and advertising game. If you are tweaking your branding, a creative agency can help you create the perfect look. At the same time, appearance isn’t everything! Use a performance marketing partner focused on data and testing strategies, so your beautiful ads and landing pages produce results. Not sure where to start? Try our free marketing analysis, and we’ll get you on the right path .

Find an electronic payment system that makes it easy for customers to make purchases (#getpaid). Your website may need to be updated or completely redesigned, but ensure your developer integrates an excellent checkout platform. Processing payments from other businesses, usually done by invoicing, is much different than taking payments from a customer. Be prepared to find a new solution partner so customers can place orders efficiently and quickly.

Your customer journey plays a huge role in

Manage B2B Relationships while becoming a competitor

Hopefully, your retail partners support your transition. Either way, be mindful that you are becoming a competitor by selling directly to consumers. Ultimately, if you do not end your wholesale operations, striking a successful balance between B2B and D2C requires a little synchronizing with retailers.

Don’t be afraid to own your consumer and make no apologies for it ! Building relationships with your customers directly increases brand awareness, which drives traffic and retailers to your website. Collaborate with your retail partners to find ways to elevate business for both of your companies.

In addition to being collaborative, be supportive. Appeal to traditional shoppers who use their senses to make purchase decisions by letting them know where they can find your brand. Include web pages like “Find us in stores” or “Find us elsewhere.” Sure, that might mean you don’t win their direct sale at first. But, if a retail partner has a trustworthy reputation, customers may be more likely to purchase from you directly next time.

Transitioning, growing, evolving – whatever you want to call it – it all means that your business is changing and moving in new directions. Going from wholesale to e-commerce is a business decision you’re not making alone. Consumers are aligning their purchasing behavior with private, personal lifestyles. So, building brand equity is a smart move. Learn the D2C language and start speaking it in every part of your business. Find a marketing partner specializing in profitable growth and scaling customer acquisition. Then, collaborate with and support your business relationships.
If you still feel like a piece to your puzzle is missing, let’s find it together .

When done right, SEO can yield an ongoing, free source of high-converting organic traffic for colleges and universities. More than half of prospective students begin their enrollment journey using search engines like Google.

But while students rely on search engines to find top schools, many higher education marketers overlook the importance of SEO. We listed 6 tips to get back on track with SEO best practices and climb search rankings.

Why is SEO So Important for Colleges and Universities?

Search engine ranking matters more than you may think. Statistics show that 28.5% of searchers click the top result, while only 4.8% make it to the second page of search results. The higher your college’s or university’s website ranks, the more prospective students will click on your website. But if you rank on page two and beyond, searchers may never find your institution.

Understanding search behavior is important for higher education SEO

Let’s do some math: The keyword “culinary school” gets ~8,100 searches per month. Assuming 28.5% of those clicks go to the first result, ranking for that term will give you ~2,308 clicks. Assuming a conversion rate of 10%, ranking for that term would give you an extra ~230 enquiries per month!

Being that all those clicks are “free”, in the sense that you don’t need to pay for the clicks, organic traffic is a valuable lead generation channel.

5 SEO Tips for Colleges and Universities

1. Perform a thorough SEO audit

Before you can build an effective SEO strategy, you need to understand which areas need work. That’s when a SEO audit comes into play. Tools like SEMrush, ahrefs, and Screaming Frog are a great starting point providing insights about your website’s health. If you want to dive deeper, we recommend working with a SEO professional who can read all technical and structural aspects of an audit.

2. Build content around searcher’s intent

It’s not uncommon for a higher education marketing professional to write site content that doesn’t align with search intent. A website like this can’t rank high, would you agree? A little research helps. Start by investigating your prospective student’s intent. Why did they perform a search? What are they looking to learn? Then, identify what search queries users type into the search box. This exercise will help you build a list of keywords to use across your site.

Identify a keyword strategy that involves a healthy mix of industry-standards and how prospective students may refer to programs or topics. Think “Industrial Organizational Psychology Degree Program” vs. “I/O psychology program”.

3. Optimize for local search to rank in local searches

When prospective students are looking for colleges or universities in a certain region, you want to make sure your institution is front and center. Claim your Google My Business listing and work on achieving NAP (Name, Address, Phone) consistency across your contact page and other local business directories.

This local SEO tactic can be automated using a local business management platform, such as Yext. Does your school have multiple campuses or offices? Create an individual Google My Business listing for each location.

Add each location as its own Google My Business listing.

4. Analyze and improve page speed

Let’s face it, nobody likes a slow loading site. But, besides upsetting users, slow page speed impacts SEO performance. Google’s Algorithm Speed Update announced page speed as a direct ranking factor. It also impacts search ranking indirectly because slow page speed increases bounce rate and reduces dwell time.

Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool analyzes your site’s speed and even provides recommendations for how to optimize it.

Image compression is an easy first step to reduce a page’s loading speed. Try free online tools like TinyPNG to quickly resize images before uploading them to your website.

5. Maintain brand consistency in Google search engine results page

How your institution is represented on Google search engine results page (SERP) is often a student’s first touchpoint with your brand. So, you should aim to give a good impression. While you can’t control what information things like Google Knowledge Panel pulls in directly, there are steps you can take to ensure accuracy:

Update Wikipedia and ensure all data is accurate and up-to-date
Claim your Google My Business profile and keep information up-to-date
Claim the Google Knowledge Panel to make recommendations and send feedback to Google
Consider paid partnerships with ranking sites that Google pull information from (such as US News and World Reports) and pay attention to how you’re submitting information

This is what Google SERP looks like for Miami International University of Art & Design.

6. Remove problematic subdomains that damage SEO performance

Lastly, review all existing subdomains. Are they currently managed and kept up-to-date by someone? Remove abandoned subdomains that can cause a bunch of technical SEO issues for a school’s website. Typically, these subdomains are for internal purposes, or course catalogs, but house the most critical SEO implications, potentially damaging SEO value and ranking ability.

How to Implement SEO Best Practices for Higher Education?

Dedicate some time every week to optimize your college’s or university’s website for SEO best practices. The tips we listed in this article are easy to implement in-house and are guaranteed to improve your site’s SEO ranking.
If you’re finding SEO too tricky, contact Mason Interactive’s higher education marketing experts for additional support and guidance.

Apple’s iOS 15 Mail Privacy Protection marks a new era for email marketing professionals. It’s a continuation of Apple’s efforts to offer iPhone owners more control over their privacy and data.

It’s also a time to turn a new leaf towards customer-centric, hyper-personalized email marketing.

What’s the impact on email marketing?

iOS 15 security feature is good news for users who, after the update, will be able to:

Turn off open tracking
Block their IP address
Hide their email address

For marketers, however, it’s a different story. The Mail Privacy Protection will prevent senders from using hidden pixels that gather valuable post-send data. Senders won’t be able to track KPIs like open rates, open times, or location, that are the main performance pillars of email marketing.

Email marketing is not a thing in the past

Fear not marketers! iOS 15 Mail Privacy Protection may sound like the end of email marketing, but every cloud has a silver lining. Yes, updates like this will eliminate marketers whose only goal is to send out mass emails to mass lists. But for others it’s an opportunity to shift focus on creating personalized customer experiences.

How to think beyond open rates and continue running effective email campaigns? Let’s take a look at a few email marketing best practices.

Create content that resonates with your audience

You may be sick of hearing it by now, but personalization is kind of a big thing. It spans across every marketing channel, including email marketing. Generic emails don’t cut it anymore. Think of your audience personas and their needs to create meaningful, useful content that resonates. Some may be driven by promotions and coupons, whereas others need a softer approach through brand stories or how-to guides.

Whatever your approach is, always ask yourself; “is this email worth sending?” before hitting the send button.

82% of consumers feel more positive about a brand after reading customized content.

Understand who’s who

List segmentation is the only way to create customized experiences. Segment customer data based on demographics, interests, or previous activity with your brand. Behavioral data is always a good place to start. Hyper focus on subscribers that engage with your emails. Narrow the list to contacts who have purchased your products, or visited your website.

Consider what information you want to collect during a purchase or a newsletter sign up. Could you add a question or two about their interests? The more segments you can add, the better.

Keep your email marketing list tidy

The number one rule in email marketing is to maintain list hygiene. Regularly remove “dead” email addresses from your mailing list. These are contacts who haven’t opened emails, or clicked content for a period of time. Emailing to unengaged contacts brings down email performance, and damages your sender reputation. Once a month, send a “win-back” email to unengaged subscribers to try to engage them again.

Email marketing and SMS marketing together make a powerful strategy

Email + SMS = the power couple

Like Batman and Robin, email and SMS can do wonders together. SMS is most effective for new product launches and special offers for VIP customers (= SMS subscribers). It can also be used to promote your email channel. Consider sending a special offer via SMS, and ask the recipient to check their email for a promo code. POW!

Test, test, test!

It may sound obvious, but testing is the best way to find out what works. Dedicate time for A/B testing to find creative elements that work best for your audience. Test subject lines, test long vs. short messages, text-based vs. image-driven messages, sassy vs. serious copy. Then, double down on them.

Takeaways

Whether you like it or not, it’s time for us marketers to go back to our roots. This means shifting our focus from data to customers’ needs and wants. Today’s customers want privacy and customization from brands that they trust. It’s that simple.

Ready to enter the new era of email marketing? Contact Mason’s email marketing specialists to book a consultation.

This article was written with expert advice from Deatrice Lockhart, Mason’s Integrated Communications Manager.