Are you (inadvertently) advertising on blacklisted sites?

During a recent marketing audit for a college I was told they were expanding their newspaper advertising as no other form of advertising seemed to work.   As an advocate of online advertising, who believes that if young people are on Facebook that is the place to advertise, this rather shook me.

I asked what stats they had to prove that newspaper adverts worked.  Sadly they had no stats – just a gut feeling. However they did say they had stats that proved online advertising didn’t work.  So I looked at them and made some terrible discoveries.

The client had complained that the advertising “click through rate“ was low.  It certainly was as a percentage, but it still represented thousands of people that had visited their website at very low cost.  They were ignoring real people visiting their website as the percentages were low.

However, the real revelation was that the College they had been advertising on newspaper websites – sites like the Scotsman and Times – without being aware of it.  The Scotsman amused me as this is a College in the Home Counties and had recruited no one from more than 50 miles away.

What I didn’t smile at were the adverts they had been running on porn sites.

Let me explain about these sites.  Google wouldn’t let them advertise on hard porn sites (thank goodness), but these soft porn sites aren’t places you’d want to justify to the Chair of the Corporation or local journalist.

It had happened because the member of staff hadn’t really understood the advertising medium and hadn’t been adequately trained.  I commented on the lack of training last month in “May you live in interesting times”.

We all need to regularly update our skills.

Competition is stalking the sector

In the last few weeks I’ve run several Marketing Secrets seminars and met many FE News readers.  The seminars have been very democratic in that they have appealed to an audience that ranged from marketing assistants to Principals.

The topic that seemed to interest most attendees was how our competitors in the private sector are marketing.  I cited the case of one private “College” that are offering a qualification that the majority of colleges offer.  Where most of us offer it in the classroom they have gone online.  They are selling the benefits of online learning, and this course in particular, to SME and corporates via webinars and videos and do it very well.  And they are doing it in such a way that their competitor colleges can’t see the online ads, emails and letters that businesses are receiving.  This competitor is prowling your patch and is invisible to you. .

This private college engages businesses with a teaching and learning style the businesses like.  You see, most businesses I speak to about training find the whole idea of sending staff to college a little odd.  They live in a digital world and wonder why colleges seem to largely ignore the medium.  They like the idea that staff can watch a webinar live from their desk or home, and can refer back to the recording as they travel to work on the bus or train (remember tablets and laptops enable us to download video for later viewing without an internet connection).

I saw several SMT members open their eyes wide when I explained about this competitor and one has already been back asking for my thoughts on how to market and deliver similar courses worldwide.  They have understood that online delivery is a threat, or an opportunity, and they are grabbing the opportunity to teach specific “British” courses in the BRIC countries.  If you think this is going to be problematic, then consider the OU who cracked the distance learning concept many years ago.  Today’s technology just brings this up to date.

Stefan Drew is a marketing consultant, and was previously director of marketing at two FHE colleges. He now works with providers throughout Europe and the US. Visit: www.ProviderMasterMind.com