From Custom Code to Plugins - Cut Higher Ed Recruiting Costs with Smart Tech Investments

Invisible Us, a division of the established higher education marketing agency Verified Studios, was created to make higher ed marketing easier and more cost-effective. Through dozens of custom projects, building websites and running marketing campaigns for higher ed institutions of all sizes, two important truths emerged: 

1) All our clients had very similar needs, and 

2) Building websites to meet those needs was very expensive and time-consuming. 

Understanding these truths led to a simple solution: It is possible to meet those institutional needs much less expensively and far more quickly by creating easily customizable plugins, rather than writing custom code every time. 

How is that possible, you ask? 

Experience Pays Off

For over a dozen years, we’ve built custom solutions for higher education institutions. The following are just a few of those clients:

• Duke University
• UNC Greensboro
• UNC Chapel Hill
• Durham Technical Community College
• Cleveland Community College
• Wake Forest University
• SUNY UAlbany
• IFSA Butler Study Abroad
• Sacred Heart University
• Pfeiffer University
• Appalachian State University

Here’s a fun fact about that last client. The contact person there was so impressed with our work that when the opportunity came, he joined our team. He’s our COO. (Say hi to Terry on LinkedIn here!) 

Let’s get back to those two truths. While working with a variety of higher education institutions (both in Drupal and WordPress), we discovered the first truth: while projects ranged from small (landing pages) to huge (websites), they all involved the same elements for success. 

Verified Studios is more than just a website development company; we’re also a marketing agency. As such, we study marketing trends and we compile our experience into marketing best practices. Most importantly, we specialize in saving our clients time and money whenever possible. 

So we couldn’t ignore the fact that much of the code we were writing was similar. And we began to look into what it would take to transform the core of the code we were creating for these projects into reusable products—plugins.

Understanding Plugins Versus Custom Code

A plugin is a piece of software that enables an application—in this case a program or website—to do something it couldn't do before. When you add a plugin to your website, you instantly have added functionality—this could be the ability to present your content in a new way or the ability to customize the content on your website—without having to pay a software developer to write unique code just for your website, or wait the months it takes to develop it.

The difference in cost is tremendous, and the experience is analogous to many things you purchase in your personal life. For example: let’s say I want to upgrade my dining room because the furnishings are no longer adequate for my growing family. I can pay a carpenter $4,000 to listen to my specifications, find the perfect lumber and then cut, build, stain and polish a new table to my liking. Or I can purchase a new leaf and additional chairs for my existing table from a furniture store for $400 and spend the remaining money on a summer vacation. Buying a plugin for your website is like buying the pre-made dining room furnishings. 

If the chairs are falling apart and the table is on its last leg, it’s time to skip the vacation and buy new furniture. If your website is constantly crashing and it just isn’t functional, it’s time for a new website. However, if your furniture (or your website) is functional, you have better places to spend the money. There simply is no reason to hire a software developer to write custom code when a plugin will do. The bottom line: A plugin typically costs a fraction of the cost of a custom development project. Investing in a plugin instead of custom code is the best of both worlds—you can take the vacation and buy the furniture, too. 

Another benefit of a plugin purchase? Maintenance is part of the deal. As technical changes happen, the plugin is updated. No need to hire a contractor to go back in and make changes and upgrades. You simply pay the fixed annual license fee and the maintenance is provided for you. 

What Sorts of Plugins Support Higher Ed Marketing?

Chances are, your website already uses plugins. Some may have been built by your own team; others may be university approved but crafted by third parties. Plugins are usually purchased to ensure things like regular backups of the site happen, or to provide calendar functionality or other functions. Other plugins support the crunching of image files so the site can load quickly despite the number of images hosted on the site.  

There are several plugins on the market today that you’re probably already using. For example, your webmaster likely already has installed a plugin like Yoast SEO or All in One SEO. This sort of plugin provides SEO guidelines to ensure optimization of the site occurs. If you upload and edit content on your website, you’ve probably either noticed this plugin or actually used it to rate and improve optimization efforts. (Improving SEO is one way to support your marketing efforts 😉

Remember, Invisible Us was created by a marketing agency that does creative website development, so we have created plugins that take schools to the next level in student recruitment. 

For instance, we have created plugins that:

• Add dynamic careers data to your website 
• Map your programs to careers, and support that map with career profiles
• Create career and programs databases that are searchable and browsable 
• Produce dynamic program-relevant ads that can be used in nurturing campaigns
• Deepen your program pages so that prospective students get the answers they need to feel comfortable enrolling

All of these plugins provide the following marketing benefits:

• Enhanced program pages that support deeper copy 
• Better SEO through the addition of careers and program text and keywords
• Improved website stickiness and time on site
• Answers to the questions today’s students are asking 

Higher Ed Marketing Support Tools

Built upon 15 years of experience marketing for higher ed institutions, our Student Recruitment Suite employs a program-centric marketing approach that delivers exponentially higher matriculation rates and improves applicant quality, on average, by half a GPA point. It includes:

Program Marketing Essentials

Program Marketing Essentials delivers all the information a student needs to commit to your programs—in one place—perfectly optimized for SEO and student conversion. 

Career Profiles Pro

Career Profiles Pro provides salary, demand and educational requirement data for careers associated with your academic programs, supplying the compelling data students need to feel confident enrolling.