EN
Universities are faced with more competition than ever before. The normalization of remote learning, online classes, and hybrid models have made “campuses” more accessible to more people virtually, regardless of where they are. New technologies and capabilities have simultaneously helped schools up their offerings, while piling on new pressures to stand out. And that means more innovation, more creativity, and more assets — lots more assets.
But with everyone trying to make the marketing honor roll, there’s one thing always grounding us: our budgets.
Higher education isn’t the only industry embracing a more sophisticated digital world on tighter budgets, but it does have its own unique challenges to overcome. So if you’re trying to maximize your marketing budget this school year, we’ve got some tips to help send your creative production to the top of the class.
1. Review Your Current Process
The busier we get, the more likely we are to find patchwork solutions to keep our processes moving. But when we do that, we’re left with vulnerable gaps that slow us down or cost us big in the long run. Whether you’re having trouble managing client expectations and communications or struggling to coordinate time zones for asset delivery and feedback, the first step to more efficient production is identifying the key hurdles in your process.
This means deeply analyzing your day-to-day workflows, team dynamics, and toolset to identify key pain points and challenges. The best way to remain agile in an ever-changing landscape is to first take a step back and fix whatever isn’t working. Every small hurdle you can remove can have a major impact on your speed, your output, and your team morale, which all translates to better campus culture.
2. Update Your Drupal CMS
Regardless of the CMS you’re using (WordPress, Joomla, Ghost CMS, Drupal), they all have one thing in common: updates are a must. Not only are these upgrades done specifically to address various security and bug issues of previous versions, but they also ensure the best performance and usability for users — which can be a major selling point (or deal breaker) for potential students looking for a school that will prepare them for a future in a digital world.
With 26% of all .edu domain sites on Drupal, thousands of universities worldwide are discovering how secure, scalable, and robust this CMS is. This platform makes it easy to have an infinite number of sites across your departments with streamlined site maintenance, increased operational efficiency, and fewer overhead costs.
But if you’re one of those sites still using Drupal 7, you’re way overdue for an update. With the upcoming roll out of Drupal 11, you’ll soon be four versions behind.
Without the update to 11, you’ll no longer receive updates, community support, or security patches, creating the perfect storm of potential breaches and functionality issues. Don’t worry, we fill you in on all the potential risks and how to update your Drupal site here.
3. Embrace the Idea of New Technologies & Tools
It’s no secret that many higher education systems are rarely the first on the emerging tech bandwagon, and in the past, that was ok. But today’s tools are creating a massive gap between the schools willing to evolve and those stuck in the past.
In addition to elevating capabilities in the classroom, AI and machine learning are helping automate the redundant tasks in your production process. Tasks like optimizing layout spacing, standardizing various components across assets, and resizing images for bulk production text treatments can all be automated, saving time and eliminating errors. When you have dozens of asset variations in any given campaign, reducing manual tasks can significantly speed up your processes and launch dates.
More and more universities are also adopting decoupled or headless CMS setups, leveraging frameworks like ReactJS (NextJS) and Gatsby for their user interfaces, and using Drupal for backend management. The benefit to this is that it decentralizes the process of updating and maintaining multi-site interfaces, so various department teams can work on frontend elements more efficiently.
At Assemble, our commitment to lifelong learning means relentlessly seeking and mastering new technologies to bring your campus’ top-of-class experiences to the digital space. And if we can’t find one, we create our own. Check out our BannerForge toolkit to learn more.
4. Optimize, Optimize, Optimize
As leaders in higher education, you know the pursuit of learning never really ends. And that’s the same mentality we have at Assemble. If there’s a new technology or service out there that can benefit our clients, we’re going to become experts in it, so you don’t have to. But this way, we can help you stay on top of the latest tech out there and ensure your process doesn’t miss a beat.
In addition to becoming experts in multiple CMS platforms like Drupal to help universities manage digital content for multiple departments and thousands of users, our team is also certified by Google in HTML5 Development, Quality Assurance, and Dynamic Creatives, with developers who have unparalleled experience in Motion Graphics, UX/UI, video editing, and more.
And this due diligence translates to an average reduction of digital production costs of around 40%, as well as significant improvement in speed to market and creative quality of assets.
Elevating Your Production with the Right Creative Partner
A good creative studio efficiently produces high volumes of work that feel highly personalized to each recipient — your students, your faculty, your alumni. Our experts ensure flawless execution, timely delivery, and seamless technical management of any asset you need to help every unique department within your university achieve its production goals without sacrificing quality or creativity.
At Assemble, we’ve built a team of top development talent and passionate tech trailblazers, so that your department teams have a partner who knows how to maximize efficiencies to multiply your asset production while reducing costs. Contact us today to learn more.