January 2007

This is a term I’ve heard a lot lately. There’s a misconception that if an agency is handling your Internet CPL campaigns, that it’s a conflict of interest for them to handle your web marketing campaigns (SEO, PPCs to their web site, etc.). I’d like to put that misconception to rest.

The first thing to understand is that interactive marketing is completely different from web marketing. One is active advertising that goes out and gets leads on a cost-per-lead basis. Web site marketing is passive advertising that helps people who are looking for you, find you. These services are often budget- or fee-based.

Not only are they targeting different Internet populations, but they also find their targets in totally different manners. Interactive marketing focuses on volume, and therefore it and its affiliates target broad search terms like “career training” and “schools in Colorado.” Web marketing focuses on a smaller, niche set of searchers who know what they’re looking for. So web marketers will target search terms like “massage therapy training” and “medical classes in Michigan.”

If you type “career training” into a search engine, the results you get will be entirely different from what you get if you search for “medical classes in Michigan.” There can be no conflict when these two forms of interactive advertising don’t draw from the same group of search results.

The fact of the matter is, if you’re using one and not the other, you’re missing out on a piece of the interactive pie. The secret is to use both. And if the same agency handles both sides of your interactive campaign, it can even be beneficial.

On this season’s breakout hit NBC series Heroes a large cast of characters are just discovering they each have individualized superpowers of fantastical varieties. It caused me to think about the people I work with in Media. (Also, I was multitasking when I wrote this, and Heroes happened to be on in the background.) Working in such a large department, there are so many talented people who each bring a special ability to our department.

We have buyers who specialize in Print and can drop astonishing CPLs in large cities’ major daily newspapers. There are super strong analysts who can see between the countless pages of data on multi-campus markets and discover the key element to save the school. Look! On the phone! It’s a TV buyer using her awesome powers of negotiation to deliver a staggeringly amazing bonus schedule. Leading the team are managers who seem to read the minds of their employees to foster creative, productive environments that help us accomplish our daily mission: providing our clients with high-quality leads at the lowest possible cost-per-lead.

While some heroes covertly exercise their talents under cover of darkness, it’s no secret that PlattForm has the #1 Media team in the industry. I’m constantly in awe of the ways individuals in the department band together to achieve one common goal. Need a low-cost solution to your unusually slow market? Our top buyers and analysts will join forces (faster than a speeding bullet, natch) and bring their specialized gifts to the table, presenting a plan of action more powerful than a locomotive. Or at least as powerful as the daytime ratings on Maury Povich.

The champions at PlattForm know that saving the day for our clients is why when results matter, there’s only one team to turn to. On that note, I need to get back to building a new plan for my client. Time is running out to finish up our plans for February, and the clock is ticking …

Wait. I think I just mixed my TV show metaphors.

I cleaned my desk today. I know … I know … alert the media. And while I did not stumble across Jimmy Hoffa, I did manage to locate a misplaced Starbucks gift card and a half-eaten packet of peanut M&Ms. (Trust me, they are half-eaten NO more.)

So I did a quick scan of the rest of PlattForm to see if organized chaos is running rampant – or whether it’s just me.

Here now are my official findings …

The fine folks in Client Services seem to be holding up nicely despite being buried under 46 tons of paperwork. Mercifully, PlattForm does not allow smoking … it’s a total fire hazard back there. But from what I can tell … it’s tidy. Not pristine, but neither are the fine folks in Client Services.

The designers of Printopia … are, well, a bunch of pigs. And I say that with love. While they are wildy creative and colorful individuals, I’m absolutely convinced you could find the cure for Anthrax back there. Must be all the wacky hours they work. If there’s a blizzard and we’re trapped in the building, I’m headed down there. They have enough food in/on/around/under their desks to sustain a small village.

The guys and gals of Quality Assurance, meanwhile, are clean teens. It’s nauseating really. Remember when Howard Hughes went insane and kept himself trapped in a hyperbaric germ-free chamber? It’s a lot like that. Except with some pleasant smelling Mango-infusion candles burning. They get an A for effort … and anal-retentiveness.

The managers all have their doors closed with “Do Not Disturb – This Means YOU!” signs hung at eye level. I tried to use a swift Batgirl karate kick to open their doors and investigate … but they must have the stupid doors steel-reinforced. I think they’re on to me.

The Media team sits in the basement … in the dark. I had to squint to see anything down there. Looks clean … but I couldn’t break out the white gloves because, frankly, all their beady little eyes staring back at me kind of freaked me out.

So, there you go. A quick creative clutter update. So now I’m off to use my newly found Starbucks card. I anticipate being gone until the furor over this blog post has completely blown over. Or PlattForm hires some Merry Maids … whichever comes first.

You know what I’d like to see more people in the career education business utilize – postcards. Yeah, I said postcards and I mean it too. It’s one of those advertising avenues that I believe can be very successful, but only if used in the right situations.

If you’re trying to generate an immediate response from a perspective student, either through a BRC, phone call or e-mail, then the standard letter package should be your first choice. In that situation, I’d recommend the standard letter package every time because a postcard just doesn’t elicit a quick response.

So what is the right situation to use a postcard? I recommend sending out a postcard to promote any special event that your school might be having. Whether it be an open house, an information session or a carnival, people will look at your postcard in the mail. According to the Direct Marketing Association 2006 Statistical Fact Book, 41% of respondents said they read postcards that they receive – the highest percentage among any other piece of mail (the next highest was Catalog Not in an Envelope at 35%).

Think about it, how hard is it to look at a postcard? You thumb through your mail, you see a postcard, you look at the front, you turn it over, you look at the back and then you’re done. With a letter, you have to open it. Let’s face it, we’re lazy and the two seconds it takes to open a letter is asking a lot. With a postcard, you’re able to catch the reader’s attention and get your message across without the reader having to exert much energy. It’s a win/win. We get our message across, and they don’t have to break a sweat.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying to only use postcards for special events. Feel free to use them at any time, just don’t expect much, if any, of an immediate response. Leave the lead generating to the standard letter package. But if you’re looking at driving people to any type of event at your school, always remember the power of the postcard.

The soybean fields along the back roads on my drive home turned a shade of radiant green sometime after Christmas. From the shoulder you could see rolling hills of color sweeping out where the clouds settle in for winters’ night about 5:30.

These fields, while ordinarily in blossom, don’t typically have the day called on them so early in the springtime. It happens, though, when they sprout with the northern hemisphere tipped away from the brooding sun. At first, it was a welcome sight – an electric blanket or florescent color breaking up the doldrums of the scraggly trees and dead, rutted farm fields.

But any inspiration they might have brought was seized last week when an ice storm buried the plants in a layer of inch-thick ice. There are reports of unseasonable weather around the globe. The media has closely documented the melting of the polar ice caps, trees already budding in upstate New York, and in Asia, temperatures so warm animals are refusing to hibernate. NASA has declared global warming is no myth.

I was mulling the new ironies of our Midwestern climate yesterday when my wife received a letter from Robert Redford. Actually, it was more a plea for the support of an organization called Natural Resource Defense Council and its initiative to curb global warming, called Partnership for the Earth. The letters didn’t discuss any more specific examples of the effects of the warming planet, yet seeing his words there in print brought a level of deeper seriousness to the matter.

I’ve used this space in the past to pass on some insights learned from my experience in assisting institutions of higher learning with public relations campaigns. While I could explain the effectiveness of Redford’s letter and the effectiveness of celebrity-backed PR campaigns (again), this time, I use it as an actual message:

If the trees and fields can be forced to bloom early, they can also be persuaded not to bloom at all. Plant some trees. Recycle. Trade in your SUVs. I love my four seasons and the dependable, boring drive home, where the fields are dark shadows, indistinguishable on the horizon, until spring breaks for real.