Marketing has never been more important for institutions than it is right now. How are you able to recruit prospective students during a pandemic? How do the ways you communicate to parents and students differ during this time?
These questions and more are answered on this episode of The Higher Ed Marketer. Bart Caylor, President & Founder at Caylor Solutions Inc, and Troy Singer, Senior Account Executive at Think Patented chat with Jamie Hunt, Vice President and Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Miami University of Ohio
about:
- Transitioning into a Chief Marketing Officer role during a pandemic
- How marketing visions have pivoted and evolved during 2020
- Keeping teams engaged, motivated and feeling supported remote
Know of a higher education marketing change agent you’d like to hear on the show? Does your university have an interesting story to be featured? Connect with Bart Caylor or Troy Singer. If you’re not on LinkedIn, check the Caylor Solutions or Think Patented websites instead!
To hear more interviews like this one, subscribe to The Higher Ed Marketer on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.
The Higher Ed Marketer podcast is brought to you by Caylor Solutions, an Education Marketing, and Branding Agency.
Transcript
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But I really encourage the listeners to
see the future as of blanks late and
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see filling that planks like as something
that feeds the soul rather than something that
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drains energy. You are listening to
the Higher Ed Marketer, a podcast geared
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towards marketing professionals in higher education.
This show will tackle all sorts of questions
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00:00:19.390 --> 00:00:23.980
related to student recruitment, don'tor relations, marketing trends, new technologies and so
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much more. If you are looking
for conversation centered around where the industry is
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going, this podcast is for you. Let's get into the show. Welcome
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to episode two of the Higher Ed
Marketer podcast. I'm troy singer in here
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today with the cost of the show, Bart Taylor. How's IT GOING BART?
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It's going well. Thanks, Troy. It's exciting to be here on
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episode two. Really looking forward to
our interview today. Yes, as M
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I we all have had to pivot
and adjust all across their lives with the
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covid nineteen pandemic. In today we're
going to talk about how that has affected
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our professional lives and the marketing that
we do with today's guest. Tell us
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a little bit about that, Bar, sure we're going to be talking with
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Jamie Hunt. She's the new Chief
Marketing Officer at Miami University of Ohio.
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She's gotta tell us a little bit
about what it was like personally and professionally
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having to pivot in the middle of
the pandemic and how that affected her life,
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as well as her role as a
chief marketing officer. I think it's
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always interesting going into a new role
like that and some of the ideas that
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she has I think are great.
So I'm really excited to share this with
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everyone. Awesome. Let's get started. We are very excited to introduce Jamie
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Hunt, chief marketing officer at Miami
University of Ohio. Welcome, Jamie.
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Thank you, I'm happy to be
here. Well, we're happy to have
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you, Jamie. Before we dive
into the professional part, will love to
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know if you can share one or
two personal passions that you have that we
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may not be able to see in
your linkedin profile. Sure. So.
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I have a ton of hobbies that
keep me busy when I'm not working.
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I so, I paint, I've
write. I have told people that if
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I'm not creating, I might as
well be dead. So I'm always trying
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to create. I'm also super interested
in turtles and tortoises, which is an
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interesting, strange hobby. When I
retire I want to have a tortoise ranch.
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So right now I just have my
little friend Clementine, who's next to
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me, but she promises to be
joined by many other tortoises in the years
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to come. Well, that is
wonderful, and you have recently moved to
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the southwestern Ohio area. So could
you share something, maybe a favorite thing
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that you've discovered since you've moved here? Yeah, so when I moved to
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southwest Ohio I had never set foot
in Ohio before I actually moved to Ohio,
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site unseen because of the pandemic and
I had no idea what it was
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going to the landscape was going to
be like, what it would feel like
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in this region, and I was
so excited to find all the trails that
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there are around here. Miami University
has seventeen miles of trails on campus and
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then there's a ton of state parks
and city parks and country parks and awesome,
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awesome trails and planscapes really beautiful with
the rolling hills and the river bluffs
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and all of that. So I
was pleasantly surprised at how beautiful this part
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of the world is. Yes,
and it'll keep you hiking and running for
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years to come. Thank you for
Shanne a little bit more about your personal
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experiences, Bart Yeah, thanks,
Troy and Jamie. I was just going
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to get started on our on our
conversation here. When I reviewed your linkedin
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profile, one thing that stood out
was when you started your new role there
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at a Miami University of a September
of two thousand and twenty. You've already
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kind of referenced the idea that you
know, showing up an Ohio side unseen
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because of the pandemic. Tell us
about what that transition was like. What
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was that like, you know,
personally, just kind of setting into that
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new role? Yeah, I really
underestimated how challenging it would be to move
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during a pandemic. My husband and
I took the lockdowns really seriously in the
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spring and so we hadn't set foot
inside of a store or interacted with any
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human not part of our household between
March and July. So when I was
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off for the job and we put
our house on the market, suddenly we
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had to have strangers in our house. We had to do. Go to
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thows to do some home improvement projects, and that was sort of daunting and
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anxiet I producing for us after all
those months of not engaging with people.
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We ultimately decided to drive straight from
Winston Salem to Oxford, with just one
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stop to pick up some food through
a drive through because we were so anxious
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about the travel, and we ended
up arriving here at eleven o'clock at night,
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so I was still sight on seeing
technically until the next morning. I
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have to I lived here for about, you know, ten hours before I
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got to see what it looked like
here, but it was it was worth
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it. The biggest challenge, honestly, was not being able to stay goodbye
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to my friends and colleagues in person. There are people that I had not
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seen since we left in March,
not having any idea that we would still
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be in this situation, and not
being able to hug them or say goodbye
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to them in person. That's still
kind of breaks my heart that the last
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time I saw them I didn't know
was going to be the last time I
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saw them. Yeah, yeah,
I'm sure that that was hard, and
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I mean the the pandemic. I
don't think any of US estimated what it
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would be like. You know,
I think that the idea of the toll
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on even mental health sometimes, I
think is is underestimated on what this has
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been so far. So I'm curious. I appreciate your sharing personally first and
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foremost, but I'm also curious just
professionally. I mean I know that any
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time any of US moved from one
school to another or we were changing our
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career path, that certainly, you
know, put some challenge in just in
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a normal time. But I was
just curious, you know, how did
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that work during the pandemic? I
mean you're going into a professional news new
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era, your chief marketing officer at
a major school and you've got a team
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that you're going to be working with
and you're in the middle of the pandemic.
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What was that like? That was
also challenging. I'M NOT gonna lie
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Um it's hard. You don't realize
when you start a job how often you
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poke your head into somebody's office and
ask questions and learn more about what do
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I do about this? What do
I do about that? And there was
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no ability to do that. I
was working in the office suite with one
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other member of my staff. So
and I tried not to bother them too
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much, but I had a ton
of questions and it's really a new challenge
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to lead a team you've never met
in a pandemic all of the issues that
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come along with that. That through
a virtual means, so just having meetings
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with people via zoom and having all
team meetings via zoom. And then sort
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of layered on top of that was
it was September, so the academic year
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was just starting and all of the
issues that come up at the beginning of
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the academic year in general, and
then all of the issues that come up
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when you're bringing thirteenzero college students to
campus during a pandemic just hit. I
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told people I had a thirty minute
honeymoon because at thirty on my first day
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I was just diving straight into that, that covid situation on our campus.
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But I've had to make sure that
my staff still understands that I have an
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open door policy and that open door
looks like slack. It looks like,
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you know, making a phone call
and getting on my calendar to have a
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conversation. Have the some of that
face virtual, face to face in her
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action and making sure that people understand
that I'm still well. I guess I'm
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not. Still making sure that people
understand that I'm available to them, I'm
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a resource to them, I'm present
and I want to interact with them,
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and having that relationship with them despite
the pandemic has been really important. Right
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from what you described, obviously things
were different than when you prepped and when
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you were interviewing. So could you
give us one or two examples of how
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you had to change your expectations?
Yeah, so I was interviewing in June
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and July and at the time everybody
was thinking we were going to be back
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to full in person classes in the
fall and the institution I was coming from
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was opening a little bit earlier than
Miami was opening, but we kind of
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thought we were going to be more
back into the swing of things than we
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were. Miami ended up having a
five week delay where they had five weeks
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of online classes. So that kind
of gave me an opportunity to get to
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know the lay of the land a
little bit before students came. They move
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started moving in about two weeks late, but I don't think anybody expected the
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scope and scale of how the pandemic
would influence higher education. I personally didn't
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predict that we were going to have
as many students who wanted to be back
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and as many students who really didn't
want to be back. It was sort
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of like a fifty mix of what
students and parents wanted, and that divide
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has been really challenging to navigate,
I think, for most of us in
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high education. Yeah, I think
you're think you're exactly right. I mean,
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I've a lot of the clients that
I work with it. It is
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kind of a little bit of a
segmentation on either side where you know,
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you've got a lot of students are
just, you know, committed to fully
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wanting to get back to a full, full on college experiences that is maybe
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they knew a year ago, and
then you've got a lot that are just
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a very hesitant, the parents are
hesitant and there's a wide range there.
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So tell me a little bit about
as you as you got started there in
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September, I mean obviously interviewing and
prepping, you know, you had maybe
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a certain type of vision, and
probably a vision that you even cast during
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your interviews, about what what the
marketing vision would be for Miami of Ohio
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going forward. And but, but, tell me. I mean once you
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got in there and in September and
you're adjusting to slack and not having that
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chance to have everyone in a team
one room meeting things that were used to.
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Certainly you had to start to change
a little bit of how you were
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looking at that vision, at least
the the tactical execution of that vision as
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as it related during the pandemic.
So how did some of that change,
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or maybe tell me a little bit
about what is that marketing vision going forward
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and how has the pandemic impacted that? Yeah, so prior to the pandemic,
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Miami was poised all out a new
brand platform. When my predecessor left
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and Covid nineteen hit, that effort
was put on pause and now that I'm
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on board, I decided to kind
of continue that pause to give us an
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opportunity to do a little bit more
brand research. We really want to understand
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how our pandemic response has impacted our
current brand perception, but we also need
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to know how the pandemic has changed
people's mindsets about what is important to them
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about the college experience, what concerns
they have about the college experience and all
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of that. So we're doing some
additional brand research and are going to tweak
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our platform accordingly before we roll that
out to the community. And beyond that
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said, we've tried to be pretty
innovative with our marketing tactics this fall.
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There's a lot of changes that have
happened because you can't bring students physically to
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campus for large group tours or for
big events, and that's been really central
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to the Miami experiences of residential campus
and it's all about that student interaction and
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that student experience. And we can't
have admissions counselors on the road and there's
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no college fares occurring. But we
have to get in front of students and
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the ways that we have done them
have had to change because we have students
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who are have zoom fatigue, so
it's not necessarily that we want to suddenly
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fill the rest of their days up
with more zoom meetings. So we've done
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some some AI retargeting, we've done
some connected TV, we've done some ticktock
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advertising, we're looking into some influencer
marketing to just try to get in front
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of them in new ways and I
think it's really working. As institution,
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and probably everybody right now is having
to rely more on marketing than the quote
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unquote sales side of things, because
we can't get on the road, we
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can't get people to our campuses,
and so I think we've done a really
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good job of supplementing what we have
done in years past and it's showing.
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We have our applications are up about
nine percent right now, which is really
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good. We'd had some some slow
declines and applications over the past few years,
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nothing to be super concerned about,
but to have that that large of
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an increase at this point in the
middle of a pandemic is something that we're
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really happy about. That's great and
I I'm sure that most of what you
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talked about there is the traditional Undergrad
what about some of the other audiences?
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I mean certainly parents and current students, current parents and and maybe even to
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the to the degree of how development, marketing and donor relations and just community
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relations, how has that been affected
as well? Well? It's been interesting.
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Our parent relations are really strong.
I think at Miami we have someone
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who's dedicated to parent relations. We
have a really active facebook group for parents.
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We have about Eighteenzero students and we
have about thirteenzero parents in that group.
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So that's a huge percentage of our
students. Parents are in there and
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they're active. It is dozens of
posts a day, honestly, and we're
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pushing out our messaging to them at
the same time pushing it to the students
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because we know they want to know. They have a lot of concerns.
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Their concerns might be different than their
students concerns, and so we want to
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make sure that they're seeing information.
In addition to their students, we want
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to keep our board of trustees engaged
and understanding what's going on. We want
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to keep our alumni engaged, understanding
our response the Pantem and some of the
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social unrest that we had this summer, making sure that we're keeping everybody in
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the loop, connecting with our legislators
making sure they're aware of the decisions that
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we're making. We've had to be
really nimble, just like I suspect almost
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everybody in higher head has had dad
Ted to do with the governor making mandates,
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are passing down regulations or things that
he would like to see us do,
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making sure that we're communicating back to
him that, yes, we're doing
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that. Those are important, we
understand it, but getting in front of
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those people. I think has never
been more important parent connection previous to the
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pandemic. I think it would be
a real challenge to build that on the
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fly at this point. But making
sure that parents understand everything we're doing.
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I don't think anything is more important
right now. Yeah, beyond, of
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course, communicating with students, but
making sure parents are in the loop,
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and prospective parents so that they know
what we're doing to keep kids safe and
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what we're doing to keep our campus
healthy during this crisis. I think you're
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right on that and I'll speak as
a as a college parent myself. I've
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got it, you know, as
a junior at Butler University here in Indiana
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and I'm freshman at Pretty University.
And even before the pandemic, I noticed
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that the more schools engaged with us, even in the in the in the
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process of looking for schools, my
students looking for schools, the schools that
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were actually engaging with us as parents
kind of floated to the top because those
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are the student those are the schools
we were talking about. Because, you
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know, mom and I didn't get
a fiftyzero emails from all the schools.
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We got one or two, and
so I agree with you. I think
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that making sure the parents are engaged
in communications, whether it's during the pandemic
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or even outside the pandemic, is
so critical. Yeah, absolutely. We
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did a lot more print this year
than we did in the past years because
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we wanted to make sure parents were
seeing things, and that's the best ways
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mail it to the house and have
the parents able to get their hands on
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it. I believe we either have
recently sent our plan to send a piece
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that is just directed directly to the
parents that they get an understanding of what's
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going on. There's no way to
overstate how much influence a parent has on
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college choice. That's exactly right,
Jamie. You have shared so much with
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us today and, like we said
at the beginning of the PODCAST, we
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like to at least have one or
two great ideas that can be shared so
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others can benefit from it at schools
that are listening to it. So is
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there anything that you haven't shared that
is discovery or maybe just the pet idea
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that you could give to us here
at the end? Yeah, absolutely,
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everybody should start a tortoise pay.
That's my pet identerful. All Right,
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I think now is really the time
to start thinking outside the box and I
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know that the stress of the pandemic
is wearing on all of us and that
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generally means creativity suffers. We've been
doing this for ten months and we're tired
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and we're slogging through it and it's
all of us. But I really encourage
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the listeners to see the future as
a blank slate and see filling that blank
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slate as something that feeds the soul
rather than something that drains energy. Right
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now, marketing has never been more
important to meeting institutional goals. We are
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the front door and they're the sales
team is having to do all kinds of
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new tactics that aren't as front and
centers they've been in the past. So
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we really need to be out front
and doing creative, creative things. This
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is our time to shine. This
is our time to show leadership how much
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we can move the needle. It's
our time to show leadership the value of
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marketing and how marketing can drive sales, and it's the time that we can
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show the Roy of our work.
And so I think if there's something creative
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and innovative that you've wanted to try, now is the time to do it.
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I feel really lucky. The president
here at Miami gave me a large
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sum of money and said, I
don't care if you fail the things,
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just try something new and innovative,
try something creative, and that's what we've
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done and we'll see if that pans
out. He saw that this is the
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time to try things, to take
bold steps, and I encourage listeners to
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do that too. But I also
encourage listeners to understand and and realize that
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their teams and everybody that you're working
with is also living with a lot of
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anxiety about what's going on in the
world. We all have zoomed fatigue,
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we all have stress, we've all
grieving experiences that we've lost, weddings that
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we've missed, hugs that we haven't
had and lost family members and friends,
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and I think if we can give
each other grace through this time and really
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understand that our audiences are feeling all
of this too, and when we communicate
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with them we need to be cognizant
of that, I think that's really important.
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That's great, Jamie. Thank you
for such a beautiful and applicable response
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to that question and I thank you
for joining us and sharing all of your
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expertise today. You definitely provided plenty
of useful takeaways. Thank you so much
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for having me. It's been a
great discussion. I'm happy to be part
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of it this episode of the Higher
Ed Marketer podcast. It's sponsored by Taylor
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00:18:08.839 --> 00:18:15.430
solutions and education, marketing and branding
agency, and also by Think, patented,
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a marketing, execution, printing and
mailing provider of higher it solutions.
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On behalf of my cohost Bart Taylor, I'm troy singer. Thank you for
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00:18:23.349 --> 00:18:30.420
tuning in. You've been listening to
the Higher Ed Marketer. To ensure that
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you never miss an episode, subscribe
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