2019 Marketing Holiday Wish List

Every year, I love trying out new technologies and tools for enrollment marketers. But they’re not all made equally. So today, I give you the best in my 2019 Holiday Wish List!

One of my favorite things about being a marketer in the education space is the incredible innovation happening in digital marketing.

Each day, some new company or startup is changing the way we reach our audiences – and the way we listen to our audiences.

However, not everything new is helpful.

I don’t recommend every shiny, cool thing that comes out to my clients. But every year I discover new digital marketing tools that really work – and I enjoy sharing these findings with you here in my holiday wish list.

These are cool applications or marketing tools I use and recommend that will save you time, money, and a whole lot of worry.

[Full Disclosure: For some of these, I’m an affiliate and will make a small commission if you buy or subscribe. But whether I get anything out of it or not, the only gizmos on my holiday list are tools I’ve seen in action or tried myself. And I’m sharing these because I believe in them and know you’ll get lots of value out of them.]

So feel free to put them on your holiday wish list, too!

My Holiday Wish List

BombBomb Video

I like BombBomb video so much, I wrote a blog post about it. It’s a tool I use personally in my business, and I’ve seen good results from it in cultivating prospective students.

BombBomb is a video email marketing software that lets you create quick, personal video email messages that you can send through your Gmail or Outlook email.

We know that the most effective form of marketing is high touch.

When you’re up close and personal with your prospect, they feel a level of authenticity and general excitement that you can’t generate in mass marketing messages.

Since there’s only one of you, and you can’t be working 24 hours a day, you can’t afford to have a personal conversation with all of your prospects.

You save that precious time to spend with only the most qualified prospects.

But with BombBomb, you can send personal video emails to your prospects one by one or via a mass message.

Like a hybrid technology, BombBomb combines the personal, high touch nature of email with the even higher touch level of video communication (like FaceTime or Skype) to bring your prospective students a message packed with authenticity, excitement and professionalism.

With BombBomb, your email messages will stand out among the rest ensuring that yours get watched.

Besides all that, BombBomb offers some great analytics tools to show you how well your video emails are performing. 

It’s truly exceptional. Buy it or try out BombBomb for free here.

Zhiyun Smooth Q2 Gimbel

As I share in my ebook, Marketing on a Shoestring Budget, you don’t have to spend millions of dollars to create high quality, stand-out marketing.

One of my favorite ways to increase your video marketing quality by at least 5x (I don’t have studies to back this up, but it really feels like a 5x increase!) is using an iPhone gimbel.

Your iPhone (or many other mobile devices) has an excellent video camera already installed. 

Especially if you have the latest iPhone 11, you have the power to create ultrawide 4K videos, which means you’ve already got all the power you need right in your pocket. 

But using your hands to hold the iPhone produces shaky video, making  it unprofessional at best, and unwatchable at worst.

The way around this is to use a stabilizer called a gimbel.

And I highly recommend the Zhiyun Smooth Q2 Gimbel.

Made of high quality materials, it’s highly durable so your investment will go far. But at just $99 on Amazon, you won’t be out that much to begin with.

You can use the gimble to record live events around campus, host virtual tours, or use it to produce video blog material for your school. 

Having a gimble will allow you to create high quality video content in seconds rather than setting up a complicated studio.

Ring Light with Cell Phone Holder

Proper lighting is crucial to producing quality video content. Ring lights make setting up lighting quick and easy.

Personally I like using the B-Land Ring Light with Cell Phone Holder (under $15 on Amazon) because of it’s economical price and durable parts.

I also really like the cell phone holder. 

That means I can see myself as I’m recording so I know what the video will come out like before I go to post-production. 

Seeing everything as I record means fewer mistakes, and fewer mistakes means less editing!

Google Home Mini

While most people would typically buy a Google Home Mini or other voice assistant wireless speaker for the audio experience, enrollment marketers should get one for a completely different reason.

I use my Google Home Mini as a research tool.

Using Google Assistant, I can research voice search keywords.

Asking Google Assistant to search for colleges, scholarships, or other related education marketing keywords reveals the most popular voice searches for those topics.

In the hands of an enrollment marketer, the Google Home Mini is a voice SEO device. 

Amazon Echo Show

I also recommend using the Amazon Echo Show for the same reason. 

Get this incredible gadget and use it to work on your content’s voice SEO (and expand your Kindle library). 

The reason I like this one is because it shows you where it is obtaining the data from…such as Yelp. 

Q Mic

You can’t produce great audio or video content without a great mic. For that I recommend the Q Mic featured on IndieGoGo.

There are so many reasons to love this mic.

First, it’s relatively inexpensive.

Second, it is an omnidirectional mic, interview mic, and background sound mic all-in-one. 

This means you don’t have to lug around a large set of different microphones with you to the shoot. And you don’t have to buy all of them separately.

Third, with the dial control, it couldn’t be easier to use. 

It works, it’s in the budget, and it limits any headaches with the sound of your content. It’s fantastic.

Zoom

Zoom video conferencing turns old, boring phone calls with prospective students into exciting, personal meetups. 

You can also use Zoom video conferences to host webinars with interested students or parents. 

Zoom is probably the most stable and economic video conferencing tool that I’ve found. I use it almost daily, and I highly recommend it. 

Fiverr

Where do you go when you need to get professional things done, but you don’t have the budget to hire a professional? 

Fiverr! 

This is an incredible marketplace full of talented writers, graphic designers, web developers, video editors, virtual assistants, project managers, and many more kinds of freelance professionals.

Fiverr makes finding and hiring these freelancers for projects a breeze. 

Scribit 

This is an incredibly innovative and fun way to get the latest information from live feeds like Twitter or from data sources like your admissions reports.

The Scribit robot allows you to draw beautiful daily reports on your admissions office wall, for example, to give everyone a boost of encouragement. 

Of course, you can also use it to draw out motivational messages and inspiring designs for your team as well as Scribit draws and erases on almost any kind of surface.

What’s on your list?

So this is my holiday wish list for 2019.

I’d love to hear back from you on new tools, gadgets, and innovations you’re trying out to enhance your enrollment marketing performance. 

Let me know what you’re using that works for you in the comments below or contact me here.

And feel free to contact me for a free no-obligation consultation to see how we can help you hit your marketing goals for next year.

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Featured image by deagreez via Adobe Stock