New Virtual Experience Platform Provides Prospective Students, Parents an Immersive Look at Colleges, Universities

Virtual tours of college and university campuses have become a marketing necessity for admissions officers and marketing departments across the country. Pipitone Group, an integrated marketing and communications firm, has taken the virtual tour one step further by creating the Virtual Experience Platform (VEP). VEP uses a visually appealing platform that engages prospective students, their parents and other important influencers in an interactive experience to learn more about a college or university, helping them make the next step to schedule an on-campus visit or apply.

“This unique platform is an innovative way to help colleges and universities increase not just the quantity of leads and applications, but also quality ones for their admissions counselors,” said Jeff Piatt, principal and chief creative officer, Pipitone Group.

The Virtual Experience Platform enables visitors to self-select their online experience, making it truly personalized. Other features of the VEP include a journaling feature that allows students and parents to record their activities and even share their thoughts on Facebook. For the college or university, the VEP provides admissions professionals critical information about users, enabling them to tailor their post-virtual experience response to fit a prospective student’s needs. Creating the institution’s VEP is easily accomplished using existing images, videos and other web-ready assets, and institution staff can update it at any time thanks to the tested and proven ExpressionEngine content management system.

“We’ve developed the VEP based on our more than 20 years of experience in higher education marketing,” said Piatt. “The admissions process has evolved and grown more complex in that time, so we’re developing tools to help institutions of higher learning meet those challenges.”

For more information about the Virtual Experience Platform, visit www.pipitonegroup.com/highered or call (412) 321-0879.

Websites for Higher Education: Building Impressions that Generate Intelligence

Long before students ever set foot on a campus, they’ve already formed their first impression of an institution. That’s why having the right website is a key component for recruiting and admissions, as well as serving as an important resource for students and alumni. A site with multiple audiences and needs can certainly seem like a daunting proposition, which is why it’s important to establish a strong framework at the start. The first step is an obvious one. An effective website must align the website’s messaging, architecture, and visual look with the school’s overall marketing strategy. However, the other steps take careful planning and an intelligent approach.

Defining Your Primary Audience

This step can be the toughest since one of the biggest challenges for higher education websites revolves around diverse audience needs, which include prospective students, current students, alumni, faculty and recruiters. These audiences are different, so how do you communicate effectively with each of them? For one thing, it’s knowing you can’t be all things to all people—for a website to work you need to focus on the primary audience that supports your marketing goals—and in the case of higher education that primary audience is the prospective student and their parents. The combination of these two visitors combine to make a single audience that shares the same primary information needs. In fact, according to the article 2011 E-Expectations Report: The Online Expectations of Prospective College Students and Their Parents, academic programs at more than 38 percent and admissions information at more than 21 percent, are the first links that are scanned for by prospective students and parents. To capitalize on this primary audience a website’s information architecture must be tuned to attract their attention as quickly as possible. At the same time, it’s important for the institution to be able to collect data in order to start and keep a dialogue going with prospects.

Intelligence at Work

For example, our work with Assumption College in Worcester, Mass. puts the above into practice. Knowing that virtual tours are the number one tool high school students use to get their first impression of college campuses Assumption College’s Virtual College Experience makes it possible for prospective students and parents alike to customize a virtual tour of the Assumption campus. Visitors can then connect to their Facebook account and keep a journal of the campus experiences they’ve enjoyed. Admissions staff benefits by learning more about prospective students and utilizing this intelligence to create customized follow-up communications.

Building a Roadmap

You’ve defined the audience, now you have to make it easy for them to find the information they need. Website navigation presents the information architecture of the website to the visitor and is the most used functional element of a website. A clear, concise, and predictable navigation must be developed to help visitors find what they are looking for as quickly as possible. If users are using the site search or Google searches to find information that means the website navigation is most likely broken – they shouldn’t have to look that hard.

In order to promote the intended navigational response, the content needs to be organized in a way that is intuitive for the target audience. This step is critical during the evaluation and development of the sitemap and ultimately the website navigation.

Building the Structure

You build a roadmap and then you need to implement it. There are two competing strategies for website navigation—the more traditional hierarchal navigation structure and audience based navigation structure. Based on our experience with higher education here at Pipitone Group, an audience based approach is preferred. This helps ensure that when a visitor from the target audience is visiting the website they will be able to clearly identify themselves and use the navigation to locate the content that they are interested in. With the audience based navigation approach you are providing a one-stop-shopping experience for the primary target audience of your marketing campaign. As with all navigation development, care must be taken to ensure that the user is not confused by competing ideas or content clusters that are not related to the intended audience. Audience based navigation can be implemented in many creative ways with the goal of providing most efficient path to the content that is most important for the intended audience.

Evaluation and Adaptation

The beauty of web development is the fact that it’s fluid. That’s why applying the proper analytics is so important so you have a good picture of what’s working, what’s not working and be ready to adapt.

About the Author: Director of Interactive Technology

In the interactive space, if you’re not setting the trends you’re falling behind them. With more than 20 years of leading teams of developers, digital designers and project managers Augie understands that fact better than anyone. From creating an interactive virtual experience tour for Assumption College to a recruiting microsite for Grove City College to brand new sites for the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and St. Francis University, he helps higher education become high tech by combining the right technology with the best design and content. To see Augie’s highlights, check out our Education website.

Old Model Gets Makeover, Changes Name and Turns Heads

Although still attractive by scanning electron microscope (SEM) standards, ASPEX Corporation’s EXpress bench-top SEM got a facelift and a complete internal makeover—and the result turned their old model into a supermodel that garnered some well-deserved attention in the field.

ASPEX, an FEI company and a supplier of automated SEMs for industrial, manufacturing and academic applications, looked to its agency of record, Pipitone Group, to launch its new-and-improved EXpress microscopy system with an integrated campaign that would increase awareness and drive sales of the new SEM.

PG’s first step in making the strategic recommendations was to conduct a series of due diligence interviews with some of ASPEX’s current customers about their uses for and opinions of the current EXpress SEM. Their feedback showed that the ASPEX brand had excellent name recognition and an outstanding reputation for customer service, but that awareness of the product name itself needed a boost.

To generate awareness of the new SEM and immediately differentiate the new model from its predecessor, Pipitone Group recommended renaming the instrument. To do that, PG had to find out what made it different from the previous model as well as similar competitor products.

One of the major upgrades to the EXpress was the addition of a proprietary technology that enables dramatic gains in sensitivity and productivity, literally making it the fastest automated SEM on the market. That exponential increase in speed and efficiency formed the basis for both the campaign’s tagline, “By the Power of X,” and the renaming strategy, changing the bench-top SEM from EXpress to EXpress^X.

Other elements integral to the integrated campaign included:

Advertising - A comprehensive media plan with a mix of print and online trade journals was developed. Full-page, full-color ads as well as prime-position banners and boxes featured creative copy and dramatic photography.

Public relations - Already on the media’s radar as thought-leaders in SEM technology, news release distribution and editorial outreach of this new product’s launch garnered further and widespread coverage, including media-reported stories, and contributed articles and guest blogger posts by key ASPEX experts.

Website enhancements - The singular call to action for paid and earned placements drove traffic to a central landing page where ASPEX target audience could download a whitepaper showing them how to utilize the new technology to increase profitability. Additional upgrades to the home page, product page and other critical site pages not only reflected the campaign’s look, their on-page search engine optimization using campaign keywords helped ensure increased traffic even if the target audience wasn’t exposed to the Ad/PR portions of the campaign.

Collateral - A four-page, full-color product brochure that features dramatic photos of the SEM, a host of technical data, and a bulleted benefits list, in a design complementary to the entire campaign. Used as a leave behind by the sales force, the brochure was also distributed at an international trade show.

Positive Results - The campaign was launched in August. Since the launch, the campaign has seen:

· Hundreds of earned placements in print and online increasing both awareness of the product and credibility of “the Power of X” message

· A 15 percent increase in month-over-month site traffic

· A significant uptick in conversions via form completions in August, 40 percent of which were from the EXpress^X campaign, and 42 percent of which resulted in EXpress^X campaign whitepaper downloads

· A pipeline full of leads for ASPEX’s inside sales team to qualify and turn over to external sales team members to help them efficiently and effectively sell this revolutionary new product.

Pipitone Group has been proud to work with ASPEX Corporation: from a complete brand identity transformation and brand building campaign in 2011 to new product launches and ongoing thought-leader positioning in 2012. Stay tuned and see what the combined ASPEX-PG team has in store for 2013.

News: Pipitone Group Welcomes New Digital Marketing Specialist

Pittsburgh, July 11, 2012 – Pipitone Group (PG) is happy to welcome Laura Hudson to its team of channel marketing professionals. She joins the company as a Digital Marketing Specialist.

Before joining Pipitone Group, Laura worked as a business development associate/web research coordinator for the Center for Women’s Entrepreneurship at Chatham University. There, she gained experience managing advertising and conducting market research. Most recently, Laura worked as a marketing consultant/project manager for ShowClix, Inc. where she was responsible for the research and development of an innovative marketing plan for e-ticketing services.

Laura received her bachelor’s degree in International Business and her MBA from Chatham University.

NEWS: Innovative Work for Innovation Works

Past Innovation Works reports were traditional, but for this year’s report, PG showed off its own innovative side by creating an annual report that was anything but traditional—combining print, video, and interactive online materials.

Setting A Conversational Tone

The report titled “Seeds of Success” features eight video conversational testimonials highlighting startups as well as Innovation Works professionals. The videos not only showcase the innovative entrepreneurs, but focuses on Innovation Works team members who serve as business mentors to these early-stage startups.

The vignettes feature conversations with Innovation Works mentors and illustrate how the organization not only invests financially in these young companies, but how much time and intellectual capital is spent fostering these companies into their next growth stage.

“Many of Innovation Works’ stakeholders – entrepreneurs, investors, university researchers – are the most tech savvy and creative people in the world and we want to communicate with this discerning group in a way that is as engaging as possible,” said Terri Glueck, Director of Communications for Innovation Works.  “We also must communicate effectively with more traditional audiences such as government officials and the regional business community.  It’s a challenge on a non-profit budget to meet all these expectations and to really be transparent about what we do and how we do it. 

Glueck continued, “We believe in innovation and we believe in entrepreneurs. So, it’s great to have a partner in Pipitone Group that will offer lots of ideas to experiment with, help us make smart decisions and execute. That’s what we expect of the companies in our portfolio, that’s what we expect of our own organization, and that’s what we expect of our partners. And we get that level of innovation and tight execution from our longstanding partners at Pipitone Group.”

“As one of our longest standing clients, Innovation Works challenges us to push our creativity to the next level every year,” said Scott Pipitone, president and CEO, Pipitone Group. “This most recent project, however challenging, was quite rewarding and is a reflection of what can happen when you do innovative work with innovative people.”

“We loved the idea of showing not only the companies, but how these companies interact with the talent and high energy of Innovation Works’ team,” added Pipitone. “It adds another dimension to their annual report and provides a glimpse into the truly collaborative environment that has been cultivated at IW.”

An Event to Remember

In addition to the community report, PG also worked closely with Innovation Works to promote and prepare video and marketing collateral for its annual Investor Day and Community Meeting. More than 600 people attended the event both in person and by live video feed to showcase the ideas and creativity coming out of the region’s technology startups.

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