Emotional Connection as the Key to Higher Ed Marketing Success

This episode of FYI features higher education marketing expert, Bart Caylor, and dives into his new book; Chasing Mission Fit: A Marketing Guide to Fill Your Institution with Students Who Will Succeed

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Who is Bart Caylor?

Bart Caylor is the founder of Caylor Solutions. He has decades of experience helping colleges and universities better tell their story and build connections with prospective students.

In this Episode

Bart Caylor of Caylor-Solutions, The Higher Ed Marketer podcast, and author of the new book Chasing Mission Fit: A Marketing Guide to Fill Your Institution with Students Who Will Succeed, joins FYI host Gil Rogers to talk about how colleges carve out their identities and find students who truly align with their missions. They discuss the thin line between brand awareness and effective lead generation, and the art of targeting niche audiences with discovery-based marketing tactics. Bart stresses the power of forming emotional connections with prospective students, and seek them where they are to be truly effective.

Gil and Bart discuss the magnetic pull of pay-per-click campaigns versus the enduring impact of search engine optimization and content creation. Bart shares ways to become a trusted resource and engage potential students deeply.

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Episode Transcript

Emotional Connection as the Key to Higher Ed Marketing Success with Bart Caylor

Publishing Date: June 4, 2024

[00:00:06] Gil: Welcome back to FYI, the For Your Institution Podcast, presented by Mongoose. I’m your host, Gil Rogers. Today, I sit down with Bart Caylor, president and founder of Caylor Solutions and co-host of the Higher Ed Marketer Podcast. Bart and I talk about his book, Chasing Mission Fit: A Marketing Guide to Fill Your Institution with Students who will Succeed. Let’s listen in.

Hey Bart, how’s it going?

[00:00:31] Bart: Doing well. How are you doing, Gil?

[00:00:32] Gil: I’m doing lovely. It’s springtime in Maine, and we’re warming up. So, I’m excited. And I know we’re here to talk about a book that you recently published, but before we hop into conversation about Chasing Mission Fit, I’d love for you to introduce yourself to our audience. Tell us where you’re from, how you got there, and what inspires you.

[00:00:52] Bart: Very good. Well, I am Bart Caylor. I’m from Indianapolis, Indiana. I live on the north side of a little town called Fishers, Indiana and been here most of my life. I grew up not too far from here in Anderson, Indiana, about an hour northeast of here. And, you know, I was a first-generation college student and didn’t have a whole lot of knowledge of where I was going to go to school. And so, there was a private college in town called Anderson University and a regional public called Ball State University. Those are the two that were in my purview. I mean, that’s, really, I knew about other schools, but that’s about it. So, that’s, kind of, how I ended up getting my education. But yeah, I’ve been here in Fishers for almost 25 years now. So, it’s good to be here.

[00:01:31] Gil: Awesome. And I appreciate you taking the time. So, in addition to an author, you co-host a podcast, you run a consulting firm. Tell us about The Higher Ed Marketer Podcast.

[00:01:41] Bart: Higher Ed Marketer Podcast is a very pragmatic weekly podcast. We’ve been publishing since. So, we’re well within our third year now, and we’ve done it every week for almost a little over three years. So, we’re creeping up on episode 200 here in the next year or so.

And so, we interview a lot of leaders and influencers in higher education marketing. And so, that could be everybody from large flagships down to small, what I call, micro colleges, you know, under 300 students. And so, we try to really, kind of, get very pragmatic and try to make sure that everything is on the lowest shelf that you can reach. And so, I host that with Troy Singer. And so, we’ve, we’ve had a good run, and we really appreciate all the guests that we’ve had on it.

[00:02:21] Gil: Awesome. Awesome. And it seems like we have similar, kind of, superhero origin stories. A lot of people don’t get into admissions and higher education because they went to college for it, right? There’s no degree in enrollment management. There’s master’s degrees, clearly, but there’s no bachelor’s program. And hey, I think the closest thing is being a tour guide, right? Like, that’s our…

[00:02:39] Bart: Exactly, that’s about it. That’s how you get started. That’s how I actually started some of that when I was in college. I worked in the admissions department, did the camp teams, went out during the summers, and you went to youth camps and represented the college and wore myself out being a camp counselor, but really always enjoyed the admissions office feel. And so, when I had a chance to start doing that as a graphic design major later in my career, I really, really enjoyed that part.

[00:03:04] Gil: Yeah. I remember when I was giving campus tours first, this is going to be cliche for everybody who listens to this podcast, but it’s the skills of walking backwards, right? That’s one. And two, I knew that days when we had rain, my evaluations of the quality of my tour were going to be lower than the days when we didn’t have rain, because for whatever reason, people decide that the rain is something that we can control as the tour…

And it’s not as good of an experience. No matter how many umbrellas you hand out at check in, it doesn’t matter, right? But it was great experience of, you know, dealing with people. And I feel, like, it’s a breeding ground for admissions folks. Orientation leaders, too, right, is another space, because it has those people who have an affinity for the institution and go above and beyond to be a part of that campus community and campus culture.

So, for you, for, obviously, you wrote a book, Chasing Mission Fit. I’d love for you to share with our audience the origin story of that. Obviously, there’s… you’re already creating a lot of content. You got a podcast you’ve been hosting for three and a half years, almost four years. You’ve got your firm that you’re working. And so, I’d love to, kind of, understand what inspired you to go down this path.

[00:04:10] Bart: Yeah, so I have been in higher ed marketing in one way or another since the late ‘90s. I did my first website in 1994 and my first higher ed website in 1998. And, at the time, you know, no one was doing higher ed websites. In fact, my first website was for my alma mater, Anderson University. And The Chronicle picked it up and U.S. News World Report wrote an article about it, about these new breed of consultants that were working on, these ideas of getting schools and universities on the information superhighway. And, you know, while I was doing a little bit in higher ed, I was working with Motorola, helping people understand what these new cell phones were, that you could do these text messages and take a photo with your phone. And I was working with RCA.com, did their website. And so, really had a great deal of background in B2B and B2C consumer electronics, as well as higher ed, you know. And over the course of the first 10 years of the 2000s, I was, like, getting more excited about doing higher ed, you know. We were doing websites for Notre Dame and other schools. I get more excited about selling the idea of somebody changing their life through education than the next cell phone or the next TV or the next disposable device.

And so, in 2011, I left my partners that I was with. I had another firm and I left that and started Caylor Solutions, just to totally focus on higher education marketing. So, I’ve been doing that. We’re going into our 15th year. And so, that’s been a real joy to be able to do that and to be able to start exercising a lot of my experience in the corporate work and some of the other areas and really being able to hone that down into what I’m doing for higher education.

Where the book came out of that was the fact that, because I do a lot of work with a lot of these micro colleges that I referenced earlier, some of them, I would say, “Hey, this is what you need to do. We can provide that as part of our consultancy.” And I think they couldn’t get two nickels to rub together. And I was like, “Man, I really need to be able to inform them and help them understand all of this,” because, as you know, with the enrollment cliff, there’s a lot of risk for a lot of schools to be closing and mergers and other things. And some of these schools have great missions, as most schools do. And with the podcast, I started getting more and more opportunities to talk and let my opinion be known. I mean, as, you know, with a podcast, you, kind of, bantering back and forth with your guests.

And I realized that, maybe, I have something to say. And so, I took the time to actually write it all down and had some help putting that out. And so, I really wanted to, kind of, develop a little bit more of a, rather than just pie-in-the-sky ideas, really, kind of, say, “Hey, if I were in your chair, this is what I would do to really impact enrollment with the tool of marketing.”

[00:06:37] Gil: Yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the things that’s, you know, having had the benefit of experience, and we’re not going to do the math on starting a website in 1990s and whatnot, as far as the length of time. I live in a reality where 1994 was perpetually 15 years ago. I don’t know if you can wait, but, you know, the Colorado Rockies came out last season and that’s why they’re so bad, right> It has nothing to do with that.

[00:07:02] Bart: I hear all of my team and my kids saying, “Okay, old man, go back to what you’re doing.”

[00:07:06] Gil: Right. Yeah. But I think one of the things that is unique and most helpful about your book, from my opinion, is that there are so many business books, self-help books, leadership books, which are great. We love those, and those are helpful, but I think, for enrollment managers and admissions and marketing folks, they’re having something that is like a blueprint, right, that they can use to say, “Okay, I need to understand how to better leverage digital marketing, or I need to better understand how to refine my search process or better understand how to align with marketing,” right? There are key steps that are outlined in the book, right?

And so, I would love for you to, kind of, share high level for listeners. And we’re going to put a link to your podcast, as well as your website, as well as the book in the episode notes for our listeners. So, take a look at those. Keep listening if you click through and you’re going to buy the book, right?

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[00:08:45] Gil: I’d love for you to share some of your key recommendations that you feel are universal. Because, you know, every institution is different, each chapter is going to resonate differently, but there are some universal truths for admissions and marketing for higher education that everybody needs to know. And I think that that would be helpful.

[00:09:03] Bart: Yeah, I think that, probably, some of the universal truths are around the ideas of, hey, hard times are coming, you know, the enrollment cliff, the perception of higher education, the value that people see in that. Hard times are coming. And so, you’ve got to accept that and start preparing.

And so, I think that’s, kind of… and I start off with the enrollment cliff is real, that’s chapter one. And then I get into the idea of just higher ed’s a unique industry, in the sense that there are armchair quarterbacks everywhere you go. Anybody who’s in marketing or enrollment, or even advancement for that level, you know that there’s always, and I don’t want to generalize, but I will, faculty tends to say that, you know, “Hey, you’re not doing it well, you’re not doing it right. We know what we’re doing.” And that’s often not true.

And so, I think, a lot of times, part of what we talk about in the book is just the idea of understanding who you are as an institution, being able to lead with that, as opposed to just being the “yes” to everybody on campus. I mean, if I had a dime for every time somebody said, “Bart, we’re the best-kept secret in town. We need to get that changed.” If I had that, I could retire now and not worry about anything. But the reality is that you’re not a car wash and you’re not the hospital and not everybody in your town needs to eventually show up at your doorsteps.

And so, you have to really start to think about, if you’ve got 100,000 people in town, how many of those people are looking for education? Well, that might go down to 50,000. And then how many people are looking for the type of education that your school offers? Well, that might go down even further. And if you’re like a very niche-based education, maybe a technical college or community, or even just a faith-based school, that slice of the pie of attention that you need is very slim.

And so, in the book, I talk a lot about the difference between brand awareness marketing and lead generation marketing. Because again, that’s the other thing I hear, especially from small privates, is that their board comes in and says, “Hey, we need more billboards. We need more, you know, all that.”

And billboards are not the answer. I mean, yeah, if I needed everybody in town to know about you, that’s the answer. That’s why the flagships do it. That’s why the big community colleges do it. But if you’ve got a niche audience, and that’s where the name Chasing Mission Fit comes from, is, like, who is that mission fit audience, the student that’s going to, that’s going to, you’re going to attract, that they’re going to, they’re going to matriculate, they’re going to retain, they’re going to graduate, and they’re going to be evangelists for your school when they leave as an alumni? How do you find more of those types of students? Because they’re out there. They just might not know about you yet.

And so, that’s where a lot of the marketing ends up being more discovery-based. It ends up being more, maybe, guerrilla tactic-based because the other reality of small schools is that budgets are tight. And so, a lot of the book we talk about doing things on a shoestring budget, focused on the three big pillars of higher education marketing, which is your website, your content, and things that are going to drive people to you. So, really being able to focus on those things, I think, is really what the book tries to do.

[00:11:52] Gil: Got it. Got it. And you host a podcast yourself. So, you understand how this works. Sometimes, there’s serendipity in how and when guests appear. And when we have certain topics, sometimes it’s planned; sometimes, it’s… it just happens that way.

So, when this episode drops, last week I spoke with Scott Novak, who is the creator of the small college movement. He’s worked in higher ed, in enrollment management forever, right? And a big part of what he is evangelizing is this idea of supporting the category of small colleges, right? And they have, as you mentioned, a very small sliver of attention that’s needed. One of the things that, you know, one of the companies that I work with, they focus on high-value search engine results, right, and making sure that you’re not necessarily trying, chasing the search term that gets 10 million views, because now you’re lost in the clutter. Let’s find those smaller populations, because those are the people you’re actually looking for. And you can convert those, you’re in a much greater space, right?

I think that these topics go well together because small colleges have a different mission. They fill a different space in the higher education ecosystem than large flagship publics and others. And they all fill great spaces, but small colleges, I think, are in a challenging news cycle right now, right?

The other interesting topic I want to tie in, and this is, kind of, a preview for next week’s episode, for anyone who is not already subscribed to the podcast, make sure you subscribe so you get next week’s episode, but we’ll be talking to Gordon Boyes, who is the CEO of Concept3D, and he’s going to be sharing a story about how he went through the college search process with his son and is, kind of, rethinking the way college matching happens.

And so, I’d love to share an idea with you, Bart, and see your insight, because it’s, kind of, that new age, you know. I think one of the big challenges, and it’s not really new, actually, now that I think about it, is that there are so many institutions vying for the same pockets of students, right? And there are students that sometimes get lost in the shuffle or missed. And they might under-index themselves because what they are doing is thinking through their small universe of schools that they’re looking for. In a world where institutions continue to buy large lists of names and continue to do mass market approach, and when everyone’s doing it, it creates the piles of mail you see on social media. It creates the clogged inboxes. And so, then the schools who are focused on targeted outreach and trying to be better about their approach, kind of, get lost in the shuffle and lost in clutter, right?

And so, for institutions in that space, what are some ways to really differentiate? Because if everybody’s the same, nobody’s the same, right? It’s a challenge to, kind of, stand out.

[00:14:28] Bart: Well, and that’s where I think getting back to just some of the basics of marketing with personas and that’s why I focus so much on the idea of a mission fit student. I mean, you have to really dive deep and to understand who are those students that you want to go after. And in the book, I refer to it as watering holes. Where are we going to go to find their watering holes? And you need to go and then participate in those watering holes.

And so, that’s where, sometimes, the non-traditional type of marketing plays in, because I really believe that so many students today are discovering schools, whether it’s be on, you know, social media, like, they just find a real… you know, got a friend who’s a social media director at Greenville University in Illinois. It’s a small faith-based school in the south of the state. And he told me a story about the fact that they had a TikTok with their softball team, and the coach just gave a pair of sunglasses to each girl, and they just quickly put them on, and they put it together in real quick fashion and had, kind of, a trending music on it.

And it only had, like, 1,500 people saw it, but it showed up on a feed of a girl in Texas who follows a lot of softball stuff. And she was a high school student. And she came across that reel. And she was like, “That looks like a really fun group of girls.” And she looked up the school and she decided, “I want to see more about that school.”

Well, she ended up matriculating and playing baseball on that team, just because of the feeling that she had when she saw that TikTok video. And I mean, I’m sure that their heads are blowing now of enrollment leaders on this podcast, saying, “What do you mean a TikTok could do that?” Well, yeah, it can, because at the end of the day, all the students make a decision based on their emotions, and then they back it up based on facts.

And more than likely, your school can be backed up by facts. But if you don’t emotionally capture somebody, and people can say all day long, “Well, you got to change the subject line. You got to put more emojis in it.” You have to be where they are. So, that’s part of what I’m thinking about, is a lot of, how can I get in front of students where they are in their natural environment, in a place that they want to consume it?

And that’s where a lot of times places like social media doing trending videos that are more of just about who you are, as opposed to don’t forget to get your apple, you know, deadline is this date. That’s not what they’re looking for. They’re looking to be entertained. And I like to call it edutainment where I’m educating them about something through entertainment. So, we’ve got to get more creative on the way that we get in front of prospective students. And getting outside of the noise is one of the critical ways of doing that.

[00:16:59] Gil: Yeah. And I think one of the challenges, and this is because everything in higher ed takes longer to change, adapt, than literally anywhere, is that a lot of these recommendations are, again, not new, we’re just repeating them over and over again, which is marketing in a lot of ways, right? And so, we know we need to do better with video content. We know we need to be better targeted with our student list acquisition. We know that billboards are not necessarily going to be the thing that drives a student to enroll at the institution, but if the president wants to buy a billboard, you let the president buy a billboard. At the end of the day, that’s their budget, right?

And so, I think the challenge for many institutions is, kind of, is really making it happen and following that advice and having the patience to let it play out. And when we’re under so much pressure to show vanity metrics that are increasing year over year, again, I get the benefit of hindsight and I get the benefit of not being on that side of the desk. But if I have the choice between reporting to my board that I have more inquiries and more applications, but then I have to explain why I’m flat with enrollments, versus having the same amount or less inquiries and applications year over year, but I’m actually converting those at a higher rate, that’s a much better story to tell. But that takes time to lay that out, right, and for that to actually play out and, ultimately, panic sets in.

I remember one that, you know, I used to get the daily report printed out by the admins downstairs of where we were year over year for inquiries and applicants admits, enrolls, right? And the year, you’re down by one. But you realize, “Oh, wait, last year, it was Friday. This year, it was Saturday. So, we didn’t have anything, right?” You lose that context. So, what advice do you have for institutions to avoid the panic and be patient and actually let these things play out?

[00:18:47] Bart: Yeah, I think you’re exactly right, Gil. I think that, too many times, we’re reacting to everything rather than being proactive. And one thing I would say is that, a lot of times, we’re very quick to jump and change things. And sometimes, it’s appropriate. I mean, and I’ll just use an example of lead generation. I think, a lot of times, it’s like, “Hey, we’ve got to get more students in here. We’re going to throw a lot of money at a pay per click campaign.” And pay per click campaigns deliver. I mean, there’s no doubt about that. I believe that. And I think that’s a good thing, but it’s a little bit like getting addicted to, you know, chocolate. It’s really good. And it’s like, “Man, this tastes great. And it’s, you know, filling me up and it’s serving it.” But you know what? After a while, it’s not going to be healthy for you.

And so, I think that, like, a longer term solution is, you know, search engine optimization. So, being able to write blog posts that answer questions that students have. And we talk about this in the book, of creating content that people are going to discover that’s going to answer the questions that they have, and then generating calls to action within that content. And if you do that long enough, you do that well enough, you’ll show up on number one on Google for a lot of, you know, long tail categories that are going to be mission fit for your students.

But the problem is that we are so quick to jump from one thing to another, that we never take the time to build that long-term investment. And so, you know, one suggestion I would have right now is, if you are currently in this cycle of doing a lot of digital marketing and digital advertising, constantly changing things and moving levers, invest in a longer-term play alongside that, so that you’re diversified a little bit in your digital investments.

And so, while your organic SEO is growing, you can still be doing the other things, but don’t do one or the other. I mean, it has to be a blended diet of everything. And so, I think that that’s where, sometimes, where I look at it and people are so quick to jump from one thing to another, that they’re really not doing anything long enough to see the benefits that might take longer to do.

[00:20:40] Gil: Yeah, they’re always looking for that quick fix, the fun-sized candy bars, right?

[00:20:45] Bart: Exactly.

[00:20:46] Gil: Stick with that analogy.

[00:20:46] Bart: Well, I’ll do that. I need to remember that. That’s good.

[00:20:48] Gil: There we go.

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[00:21:31] Gil: It’s interesting because one of the things I remember when I was on a campus, one of the best performing pieces of content that we ever created was a guidebook. This was when print stuff still mattered more. But again, we’re dating ourselves, gray hair, how long did Horsfield open in 1995, which is 15 years ago. But the most impactful piece that we created was a booklet that we just titled, The Junior’s Guide to College, right? And it’s, in the springtime when we started doing travel and stuff, you know, it was very little information about the institution. And it was all about process, financial aid, where to find scholarships. But it was branded by from us, right? And so, it was the, it wasn’t shoving our campus down their throat. It was helping them understand the process. And then they ended up, a larger share of the students we met that spring ended up applying to the institution.

[00:22:22] Bart: You became a trusted resource, and that trust goes a long, long way.

[00:22:26] Gil: Exactly. And you think about how institutions engage with vendors, right? They trust the vendors who are publishing good content, are providing good resources, and all of that sort of stuff. Just take that and apply it to the student outreach and the student engagement.

[00:22:40] Bart: Yeah, and don’t forget that that applies to mom as well, because if mom has a resource like that, mom is going to see you as trustworthy as well.

[00:22:47] Gil: Absolutely. Parents’ guides, parents’ resources, keeping you in the process, for sure. Awesome. So, Bart, I appreciate your time. I’d love for you to, kind of, share high-level final key takeaways, key recommendations, and then, of course, how people can get in touch with you.

[00:23:04] Bart: Yeah, I think that, you know, just obviously read the book. I think there’s a lot of good things in there, and I’m not trying to toot my own horn. It’s been told by a lot of people, that there’s very practical things in there. I think, also, just being able to have more of your team read it, too. I’ve had a lot of small colleges where the president and the cabinet are reading it so that they have a better understanding of what to expect from marketing, what to expect from enrollment, how to really rethink the way that they set up their expectations. And so, take advantage of that.

And then, obviously, if you have any other questions and you want to talk to me about that, LinkedIn is a great way to get in touch with me. I think that would be one way that you can do that. And then, obviously, with Caylor Solutions, it’s caylor-solutions.com. You can go and learn more about that. Learn about our different things that we do, from websites to admissions materials, to com flows, to all kinds of creative, as well as some AI training. We’re starting to really lean into AI and teach marketing teams and enrollment teams how to use tools like ChatGPT to really improve and enhance their efforts.

[00:24:05] Gil: Awesome. Well, Bart, thank you so much again for your time today. We’ll put all… as I mentioned before, we’ll put all the resources and links in the episode notes. The book is Chasing Mission Fit: A Marketing Guide to Fill your Institution with Students who will Succeed.

Thank you, listeners. We’ll see you all next time on FYI. Bye.

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