Enrollment in Focus: How Video Transforms the Admissions Game

Speaker 1  0:00  
You're listening to Filling Seats, the state of enrollment marketing in Higher Ed, hosted by StudentBridge. In this podcast, you'll learn what's working to grow, shape and sustain enrollment at colleges and universities directly from fellow enrollment marketers, thought leaders and Ed Tech innovators.

Host  0:16  
Hi. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Jonathan Clues, CEO and founder here at StudentBridge, welcome to today's 50th episode of the Filling Seats podcast. And for our 50th anniversary, we have a special guest a great friend of mine, Mark Forehand, has joined us in our podcast studio today to have a great fun conversation about video. Mark, why don't you say a few words? Give us a bit of an introduction. I know who you are, but for the people listening at home or in their cars, 

Mark Forehand  0:42  
Thanks. I'm excited to be the 50th how awesome. Mark forehand, I was in the public school higher education sector for the last 10 years, where I was really successful using StudentBridge solutions along with other solutions to grow enrollment, conversion and retention. And I am a convert to the program, and I just want to sit here and talk about videos with you today. 

Host  1:05  
Great. Thank you. Okay, so talking today about video, obviously something dear to my heart. StudentBridge, we are a video centric business. We believe in the power of video. Tell me a little bit about from your old side of the fence. You were at Kennesaw State and other institutions. Before that, you've been adopting video. In fact, you're one of our better partners. Thank you very much. But tell me what you've seen as the evolution of video within the four walls of a university. 

Mark Forehand  1:31  
Video has become what students have decided to use to make their decisions before they go talk to their parents. Videos are what parents are deciding to see what their children saw. Videos at the smaller level are really great ways to communicate to students about what your program is about, 

Host  1:51  
and you mean smaller level by length of time, like short form video, we may call it

Mark Forehand  1:52  
 45 seconds, just to talk about the program and the things you would learn in the program for both the parent and the student. 

Host  2:02  
I love always with our guests, talk about stats, because it's great. You've got so much experience. I've got so much experience. We could be somewhat anecdotal in our conversation, but backing that up with the evidence Gen Z, about three hours a day watching short form video. Three hours a day. Three hours a day. Yeah, they're only awake for 12 of it. So basically, isn't that incredible? Three hours a day. How do schools stand out in the noise? 

Mark Forehand  2:24  
You have to stand out in the noise by getting where they are right now. You have to talk to their platforms. You can't be on Facebook with your program. You've got to be on their platform. Some of that is made difficult by Tiktok. However, there will be new platforms that come up. I'd like to point that out new platforms will arise, and you have to keep up with those platforms. 

Host  2:45  
When we had you on the on the last time you were talked about the whole need to stay up that too often, administrators and or marketing teams at universities will put a big platform in place. I mean, just let it sit there. But it doesn't. It needs to constantly kept up with. We see video as just the number one medium, except from in person. In every watch the news. Do you read a newspaper or watch the news, right? So you know when you're scrolling through, even if it's an old person's platform, like Facebook. For me, I stop and watch the videos. I might scan the written ones. Tiktok clearly a video only or video centric, video first platform. But as you see, we're of the belief that, of course, different videos have different meaning, because conversations have different meaning. If I was talking to you about maybe buying from StudentBridge, I wouldn't want to do it on Tiktok. I might want to get your attention on Tiktok, so talk to me about how universities are think or college universities are thinking about more videos like a big word. What's the strategy behind it? 

Mark Forehand  3:49  
There's a lot that has to do with digital marketing, so finding people in areas and then digitally getting them your product. Now if, for example, you have a stem student, those are much more effective to go to stem sites, but you're more generalized student. You've got to go where they are, and you've got to build marketing that will make them click so that once they click, you then are able to continue and get them that video, because if they get a video to click on, then they'll stay there on your site. If they just get an inquiry form, is a very good chance they're going to leave. 

Host  4:29  
Well, that's really a great point Mark, because how often do we see somebody go right? I want to put a lot of effort into my Tiktok videos or and then, then they click, which is the job? Because you're not going to do the transaction on Tiktok, they click to a really static, boring site. And again, that's what StudentBridge I always say, like we're that kind of off ramp from that high speed, 150 mile an hour, swipe left, swipe right on social media to the more pedestrian speed of a school website, which should be pedestrian, by the way, because it was too jazzy and fun.

It will be a bit off putting when you try to make such a large decision. What are you seeing in some of the challenges of giving this constantly sensational the appetite for content, you got this need over here on the left side, you want to do the left side of content, content, content, social media. More calm, reassuring, informative content. How are you seeing people bridging that gap? 

Mark Forehand  5:21
A lot of people are creating two different types. This is the audience, the parent is the audience, the child. One of the things is highly successful is the 3d map and the 3d tour. Students like that a lot, and they get to show their parents how to use it. And that's a connection they make about that college interesting. So like, even when we know that this large decisions got multiple stakeholders. The idea is that you need to give them the tools in order to continue that conversation with their other influences they've been I don't mean social media influencers, I mean parents and other people. So that's going to be a key part, and it becomes highly critical with first gen experiences without I've already been a college son, here's how you're going to do it. First Gen experiences are totally driven by video, completely driven by video.

Host  6:05  
Talk about faculty and video. 

Mark Forehand  6:10
Faculty and video are fantastic to talk about their program, to explain in the language of how it's going to be, what the course is going to be about. And they're able to also talk about the types of jobs you can get, which is the important thing for the parents. 

Host  6:25 
Now you said something already 45 seconds. I've met many faculty members, great people, great at their skill of teaching a course, maybe not the best people at trying to say something in 45 seconds. What would your advice be there?

Mark Forehand 6:36 
My advice would be to talk to us, because I have worked with StudentBridge for six years, the videographers come in and ask pointed questions to the faculty member. The faculty member gets to talk, and then it's edited and taken care of, and the thing you're trying to solve is solved. 

Host  6:51
Good, great. One of the StudentBridge items, or one of our beliefs, is no more than four or five max talking points per video. So that would be great advice for our listeners and viewers is, look, if you've got a video that's going on longer, because you need eight talking points, break it into two, right? Exactly. Make two talking points. And faculty love talking points also, so they would be online for that as well. So we talk about the whole point. Why are we doing this video? Right? It's not for entertainment, it's to try and influence and impress a prospective student to becoming a student and getting on that journey with the university, to move along through application and admit and to enroll.

What are your views on the step by step mentality of that strategy? 

Mark Forehand  7:41
Well, I think you can skip to the end if you're not first gen, because you already know the answer. I believe strongly in step by step. If you are first gen, it takes you through the process. You start here, you have your StudentBridge experience. You move on to these video experiences. You have your campus visit experience. And then you come back in to come it has to be step by step, if you don't already know. Now, of course, the average life

Host  8:09  
Don't mean life, average journey, lifestyle, life cycle. I was going to call it for a prospective student to becoming a student, two and a half years for a boy, three and a half years for a girl, just because boys think about it a year later, that's a long time. Yes, and they're not continually thinking about their university choice, they're going to do something, go and do something else, come back in. Maybe it's the tour season. Maybe their parents can run around a bit. Maybe they come back out. How did how do you change it from that kind of asynchronous feel of having great video content to stay involved and in touch, but then peppering that with those vital person to person interactions, right? 


Mark Forehand  8:49
That's very difficult, great question, because if he is two and a half years away, everything's going to change in two and a half years, right? If she's three and a half years away, everything changed 10 minutes from now. So it's this is a stumbling block content, and how do you keep content real? The faculty courses aren't going to change. That's how you keep that content real. And once he he or she makes her speech, we've got it in the can, and we're great. Other content must be freshened up each academic year, not shooting whole new videos, but sending us new stuff you've seen on campus so that we can incorporate and fix for you, right? 


Host  9:33 
Right? I think that's a key part of that content strategy that I've suggested maybe twice already. Content has different shelf life, and there's some content that if you watched last week's news today, would make a difference. That doesn't mean anything then, but there's other content that should have been more evergreen, have maybe a two year shelf life, and so that's part of that strategy where we really need to look at video, not just as a push a red button on a camera and edit it and publish it. It's what is the purpose of that content? What. You trying to evoke, is it short term branding? Just get just three, four videos a day, right? Five videos a week, whatever. And there's other stuff that go, No, this is a marquee piece. This is something that's stable, standardized, needs to be there for a longer period of time. And that's how you approach it. And you did a good job approaching it that way. So what would your advice be, kind of, maybe to some of the viewers or listeners there 

Mark Forehand  10:25
You really want to explore videos you it's short term, it's they come on campus. It's all taken care of for you. All you really have to do is schedule the people you want to explore a vendor shooting videos for you, because they are high quality and they will get return 

Host 10:40
Absolutely so think it was actually yourself, but certainly, being some other people, it was yourself. They said they made a request for some videos. Hey, let's try and make a series of 24 videos, and they were quoted 18 months by the internal team. 

Mark Forehand  10:55
That's exactly right, and the internal team gladly allowed us to move to our vendor because they could not meet the goal. 

Host  11:03  
And when we talk about internal teams, what are they busy doing? 

Mark Forehand  11:07
Then a lot of what they of internal communications teams are doing. If you break up the university into social athletics and then academics, they're pushing taking a lot of pictures for online content. They're doing a lot of videoing for the athletics, and they're doing an awful lot of videoing of events. 

Host  11:23
Now, one thing I heard was for another school, not not KSU, but so what else was our video team just continually following the president around, trying to get those short clips? Yeah, you've heard the same thing. So like, you know, the person at the top says, hey, you know, we got to keep this constant need of content going out on the social media channels, but it means those marquee marketing events of video content isn't getting produced, right? 

Mark Forehand  11:47
Exactly So, and then you're missing out on the key element. And I really you cannot discount first gen, second generation. You cannot discount the importance of faculty in America. It's higher education. These are people with doctorates. They're highly respected in America. You, you cannot underestimate what people think when they speak. 

Host  12:10
So again, that credible source and when you in fact, in fact, when you look at the data and stats of who looks for what, content, absolutely, residence life, campus experience, student life, those kind of things are high. We do see specific program videos also be very high. So if I come to you who's going to teach me, what are they like? Do I like? What they say? Are they credible? So you see that as a it's kind of this multi pronged attack, right? 

Mark Forehand  12:37
Because if you hit with the faculty member who is a valid speaker, subject matter expert. You're talking about what's in the course and what you can do afterwards.

Host  12:45
Let's talk a little bit about like it's still within the realm of video. But I really want to talk about why people aren't answering some of the common issues facing the industry as a whole. So universities, you go to their website quite often, it's got some stats, like you will do this, you'll do that, but then it's all about themselves. We've got great dining greatness, great academics, great, great athletics. Why is no one tackling that? This is worth it story.

Mark Forehand  13:16  
It's becoming very difficult to wrap their mind around the data, because I'm going to say it post COVID, the data changes for everything. What is a job? What is success? Is working from home five days a week, a successful job to a group of people, it absolutely is judging success. And what value is, is very difficult. The secondary follow on is, it has to be done with computers, and the algorithm can only pull from people who say, here's how much money I made in this job, and here's how much success I had in this job. And so if you don't have people reporting on it, then you've got a real problem. The biggest issue is that we're still trying to teach something from the last century, and we're not yet fixing what our students want to know. That's what the real problem is. And people are not are struggling with their own version of what is the value of this? Because I'm going to have to go learn Georgia history. I'm going to have to go learn something that happened in 1850 I don't want to do that right so we're still overcoming that problem right there. And until we overcome that, people will not want to succeed as highly at these institutions as they could have in the past. They'll just float through and that's not what we want 

Host  14:38
Now, working with you in the graduate program, specifically, you actually have to give you credit. You came up with a pretty brave thing, which was to create almost like a pre qualifying experience, non traditional learners, people looking to hold out a job while go and get their courses credits, probably didn't know what they were getting into, right? And so you enroll them. But if you don't retain. Them at the graduate level, now causing a big cause of problem in undergrad, but specifically, that was quite interesting idea. And again, telling that story and video, because what we it's that what will you become in one way, but also, what will you need to invest, not just financially? Time Are you effort?

Mark Forehand  15:19  
Should you be here? Because, as part of that video experience, it was a STEM based it was about computer science and information technology and software engineering. A lot of people didn't have the math. They ended up self selecting themselves out after the quiz. 

Host  15:36
Got it. Now, some people might go, Oh my gosh, terrifying. Why'd you do that? But for you, it was like, No, this is the right thing to do, right? 

Mark Forehand  15:43  
I did this for the faculty. In the end, the faculty kept complaining, nobody's got the math because it was a jump in program, people who had not, people who had majored in other degrees and were changing their career to these three things so they didn't have the math right, so I did it as feedback from the faculty,

Host  16:05  
Something I know that our viewers, listeners would definitely be interested in. Look videos difficult to produce, right? You've got written word I can send you a Word document in the next three minutes, and you can cut and paste in this be published. Video takes, planning, timing, thought actors, and by acts, I mean paid actors. I just mean subject the subject matters, editing, post production, everything else is a big lift. It's hugely powerful, hugely powerful, way more powerful than the written word Forrester Research. I always like to remind said, one minute of videos worth a million words, but But where's AI going to come into all this? Like, I'm going to see if you and I agree on this. It'll be a challenge. But AI videos coming? Yes, it's already here. I actually made my first AI video of a man walking on the moon with his dog last week. Nice. Yep, very nice. I'll show it to you. It didn't come out very well, but it worked. I mean, as far as me getting a video of a man walking on the moon and I got it in three minutes right? Would have taken me three months to do that before. So, yeah, tell me. Tell me where you see that and where, how institutions and schools should get ahead of it. Because before I ask that question, then don't ask the question, go ahead. And then I caught on my second point. 

Mark Forehand  17:20 
If you don't get ahead of it, you are going to have a disaster. People are going to be doing their own stuff all over the campus. If you have 1000 staff with access to AI who can do whatever they want, and you don't have a policy that says, here's how we use AI at university. X, 

Host  17:40  
Funny, I just so, I just wrote that to our team today. It's we need to have an internal policy of how we use AI, how we publish AI. Last year for International Women's Day, I said, let me go to Dali, the image generation. I wrote in give me an image for International Women's Day. It couldn't even spell international right three times it got it wrong, and I was like, I'm giving you the word, and I actually had my first argument with an AI machine. I'm giving you the word. What's wrong with you? And then, so look, this isn't this a this is a Jonathanism, but it's one of my beliefs. I think that the younger generations are the biggest, like they sniff out fake quicker than most people. Right Is that the right way to say it? They say they know when something's fake, and they've had a hard enough time with real imagery of a campus quad with the diverse picture of the four kids with a backpack, different ethnic backgrounds, it all looks the same, right? And it lacks the personality of the university, because unless you know that's a specific bell tower for that university or a tree, right? It could be, you could take that picture and put it on 55 other university 100 other websites, they're just, it would just be the same image, right?

Where I'm going through my long winded thing there is, we're nowhere near it with imagery yet, right? You can't trust AI to create an image that should be the brand of a university. Yet, definitely coming. Video, even harder, and my fear for video AI video will be the amount of stock content it has to use to produce a video for you, right? So that's going to make it all look the same even more, because University X and university y, different parts of America type in I want a video to do this. It's gonna generate the same thing, maybe some different colors, but it's gonna look very similar. Have you seen universities looking at adopting AI into their process yet? 

Mark Forehand  19:39 
Not a one. Nobody's doing it yet. I think I got a lot of people's attention in Hollywood when the movie stars said, hey, you've got my image now, and now you're going to manipulate it with this AI, I want to cut. I think that got a lot of, yeah, the strike. I think that got a lot of people's attention. But if you're trying to grow enrollment, and somebody comes to you and says, You can do all this with AI, you. I mean, that is just so dangerous to tell anyone that, and people are going to do that. 

Host  20:00 
Yeah, I see it. Look StudentBridge is proudly in business. To do business, we always look at competitive threats and external, internal threats. And I think it's the missinformation of AI that there's gonna be some Renegades or first adopters in the industry, they're going to go, I want to try this and make it work, and it's not gonna have a good result. And it's a bit like anything, I mean, like, look at VR, right? I mean, just look at anything that goes on the hype chart. Everyone's hyping it. And it just needs to come back down to a more reality where we know how to maneuver it. I would say a good way to do it is ask AI for what kind of thing should we be speaking about? I think it's more about content structure than content production, right now, right? 

Mark Forehand  20:49
What should we be saying? Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very fascinating. The future will be fascinating. 

Host  20:50 
The future of video will be fascinating. Let's talk about one of the one of the things you want to talk about, like showcase the dean. How does that lead to the personalization of a solution, or how does it lead to the because look our students and prospective students for our institutions, they're looking for that. They don't want to be a number. They're a name. They're a person. How do you take content, video and make it personalized? To speak to someone? 

Mark Forehand  21:15
You put someone in the classroom, they'll be learning. One of the great things you can do with a dollhouse type map that StudentBridge uses is implant your videos into where these faculty will be speaking. You'll be seeing them in their classroom. It's their video. When a dean speaks to a graduate student, that graduate student is connected to that college forever, right? Graduate Students love to meet the dean, not so much undergraduates, but they love to see their faculty in the classroom. Got it, and the map will allow them to Hey, that class is right there. 

Host  21:50 
It's interesting. You brought up maps long when we speak to again, prospective partners that aren't aware of how to really utilize different solutions. Our maps are very much about discovery, exploration, just, just, do I see myself there? Now we've got some really great competitors that build maps that are functional. Where's the bus? How do I go from A to B? They're great functional maps, but they're not marketing maps. And we've found a big win for us is generating that relationship between what that building is and how it'll impact my life on campus, and that's been something very large that you, I think you talk to when you speak about campus maps. Okay, so you and I big believers of video, right? We video by itself is not enough. Video just thrown out again, that scatter gun effect where you just put 1000 pieces of video into a slingshot and sling it. It's not going to work. So we talk about strategic video, who in the who in the institution? Is that a mark on that? The marketing team? Is it the enrollment team? Is the fact, who should run that? 

Mark Forehand  22:50
Well, if you're talking about specific to programs, I think that comes from the department chair, up through the dean and over to communications, if you have to, and the Dean's college people and their marketing unit can reach out specifically, because for that a graduate program, it would be specific to that college. When you're going larger, always from the communications staff, if they have marketing and communications is where should start the process. I recommend, though, having had to do it a lot, separating it over to the college as quickly as possible, so that you and the college can control message, right, 

Host  23:27 
Right? The audience cares. A sort of stat on our screen, the hashtag, college of life, right, has been gone at over 30 billion views on Tiktok, 30 B billion, right, makes sense, where the audience is. They're put in the hashtags to go and find things Google. Over 80% of Prospect prospective students plan to attend university after watching Online Video. Yeah. I mean, it's a huge driver. And I we've been in the industry for I've been in the industry since oh six. That wasn't the case. 1516, 20 years ago. I had to argue with everyone why video is important. I think now all institutions know video is important. I've seen the problem switching to we know it's important. We just have the bandwidth to get it done. We don't have the bandwidth to do something. Any kind of thoughts on on how you would advise your colleagues to approach that bandwidth issue?

Mark Forehand  24:19
Work with us. Let's see where we can work. Work together to solve your bandwidth problem. We may be able to help you to work a lot smarter with materials we have right now and the data you're using right now. It's really important to get with us so we can provide you with some consulting about you know, where we can help you and where you can help us. Now we say, help work with us. 

Host  24:42
Obviously, Mark, you've, you've launched your own successful consulting firm helping peers. You're also actually doing some consulting completely openly with StudentBridge to help us with some thought process and thought management on the on how to talk to our colleagues in the industry. But that's it. I mean, I think that no one out there, everyone out there is.

Struggling with the same problem, but no one's alone. And to give everyone actually some confidence, we are close to announcing a major partnership with a large university that I visited this campus. They've got production facilities literally 10 times better than we have. It's phenomenal what they have, but they don't have either band a, the bandwidth or B, the know how, how to produce some of this marquee content. And I talk about this quite often. It's a weird analogy when I go down it, when we talk to universities, KSU actually was one of these, when the undergraduate, they're always very proud of things like dining. Oh my gosh, you got great dining. And so then we come to video, and they go, we got video producers here. I'm like, but look, talk about it. You've got great dining. They agree, yeah, I just told you that. And I said, but would you have them cater your wedding? And they stop and go, Well, no, but why not? They're great catering people, well, it's different. Then I go. So is video. See, there's great people that can produce news like content, fast turnaround, get the story out there and it's got a short shelf life. It's gone Snapchat mentality, right? It's a different and that's that's your dining hall. Quantity, quantity, quantity. Your wedding. You got to change that conversation over that's not to say the people in the dining hall aren't able to cook great food for your wedding. Just different. That's your marquee event. You want people to talk about it for the next couple of years to come. That's where I see a big difference between trying to do it yourself versus bringing in people. Did you have that experience yourself? 

Mark Forehand  26:28
My experience was using private vendor got it done quicker, highly professional, much more professional. Once marketing communication saw it, they flat out said they couldn't do it. It efficiently gets the process done, working with the vendor to get the people on campus, get it all scheduled and get it back to you. It's much faster than using your own on site team, because there's nothing pulling it's a contract between you and a vendor. 

Host  26:55
Now we talk about that time, time is money. Yeah, right. So every month you don't have the right video experience up, wasting millions of dollars of revenue, millions that you'll never recapture. So how much do you think your colleagues feel that time pressure?

Mark Forehand  27:08  
They do not most of the time. The time pressure is felt at the end of the year, when it's too late. Every year, as the Senior Assistant Dean for Graduate enrollment every year one week before the deadline for admission, and people are asking to extend their deadline for admission to get more students right. And we all know statistically that if you're admitted towards the very end, you're likely not to attend. Got it so they don't they wait until the last minute. They are reactive, not proactive. 

Host  27:45
That's a very key fact that I've actually never so statistically, if you get accepted as a student, you get accepted to an institution late in the process. Statistically, you're less likely to you're less likely, yeah, so really is a matter of getting out there as soon as possible, building those relationships. You're up against 10 other institutions fighting for attention. 

Mark Forehand  28:03  
It's also the later you tend to do it in the fall, it would be late to file your FAFSA, and you'll never get your financial aid money. And that's how a lot of people lose out. 

Host  28:10
Got it so getting the student behind the eight ball. 

Mark Forehand  28:12 
And that's another video that I'm very interested in about FAFSA slash, apply early so that you can have your FAFSA, because if you apply late, it's problematic. 

Host  28:20
Yeah, and I spoke about it earlier, I think there's lots of content that I believe institutions, university, colleges, should be looking at. Not just why you should come what to us, but why should you get an education? First place being a chosen let me help you through that process. These are things you need to think of. So very pro we need to move that into process video as well, don't we, because that's a human time when you're trying to catch it well. Thank you very much. Mark. It's always a pleasure to have you on and we've seen a lot more of you. I know that. So thank you everyone at home and and in your car listening in for joining today's episode of filling seats podcast. We look forward to having you visit us soon, but in the meantime, if you want to catch up with StudentBridge, it's www.studentbridge.com
if you want to go to the website, there's some great resources from prior podcasts and webinars, some really useful resources. Mark's been a guest on a couple of them, and until then, we look forward to seeing you soon.

Speaker 1  29:16  
This is the filling seeds podcast hosted by StudentBridge, where we help enrollment teams achieve more by fusing authentic storytelling with industry leading technology and personalized digital experiences to connect with this episode's guests, check out the show notes. If you enjoyed the episode, leave a rating and review and don't forget to subscribe. For more information about StudentBridge and this podcast, go to studentbridge.com forward slash podcast.