#64 - In-house Marcom Staff vs. External Partners
w/ Joel Goodman
Principal & CEO, Bravery Media
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SHOW NOTES
My guest today is Joel Goodman, founder of Bravery Media. Joel helps colleges and universities increase their web conversion rates using hospitable design practices. In this episode, we discuss insights from the Simpson Scarborough CMO study and how it relates to budget constraints, staffing, and curating the best marketing communications team with the resources available.
Joel shares his background, including working in web marketing roles at two universities before starting Bravery Media in 2012. He advocates for a "hospitable design" approach that focuses on caring for the user's journey and reducing friction.
Key Takeaways:
The study reveals significant variability in marketing budgets and staffing across institution sizes, directly impacting strategies and job satisfaction.
Despite budget declines, website experience remains a priority with a focus on quality content for prospective students.
Effective web governance, strategic digital investment, using analytics, and adapting to AI are crucial for meeting younger audiences' expectations.
Salary levels for web roles are often too low to attract top talent, leading to subpar user experiences compared to other industries.
Having an in-house video team can make sense for large institutions, but most lack the budget for a complete product team (producer, UX designers, developers).
Hiring external partners can be more cost-effective and provide better quality for web design, video production, and content creation.
AI tools should enhance research and data analysis, not replace authentic creative work that connects with prospective students.
Connect with Joel:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelgoodman/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joelgoodman/
Connect with Bravery Media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/braverymedia/
Website: https://bravery.co/
Connect with John:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnazoni
Website: https://unveild.tv
Newsletter: https://unveild.tv/newsletter
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Transcript (done with AI so only about 90% accurate):
00:00:00:04 - 00:00:25:11
John Azoni
My guest today is Joel Goodman. After six years in advancement and web marketing, Joel moved to Austin, Texas, started bravery media. Since 2012, he's helped colleges and universities increase their web conversion rates using hospitable design practices. Today, we're going to be talking about some insights from Simpson. SCARBOROUGH CMO study and how it relates to budget constraints and staffing and curating the best marketing teams.
00:00:25:11 - 00:00:30:15
John Azoni
So you can do that with the resources that you have. So, Joe, welcome to the show.
00:00:31:08 - 00:00:32:18
Joel Goodman
Hey, John, Thanks for having me back.
00:00:33:16 - 00:00:38:18
John Azoni
Absolutely. So tell me something that people would be surprised to know about you.
00:00:40:10 - 00:01:09:13
Joel Goodman
You know, I feel like I'm not a very surprising guy in general, but I think one of the one of the more formative experiences I had in my life was working in the music industry for a summer. So before I got into web stuff in general, I really wanted to be in the record industry. And so I spent a summer interning at an indie label called the Militia Group that, you know, represent a whole bunch of bands that I liked.
00:01:09:13 - 00:01:30:08
Joel Goodman
And. And in that process, I did social media marketing before there was a name for it. You know, we were like posting on people's MySpace boards and or pages or whatever profiles and and message boards and all kinds of stuff like that. But that was I learned I learned a ton from that experience. And still still think about it a lot.
00:01:30:18 - 00:01:43:18
Joel Goodman
Glad I didn't go into the music industry because that's a it's a whole nother it's a whole nother thing. But. But the experiences I had that that summer and especially the connections I made, have been super pivotal and a lot of the work that I do now.
00:01:45:01 - 00:01:47:07
John Azoni
Were you ever a livejournal user?
00:01:48:00 - 00:02:03:13
Joel Goodman
Yeah, I was. Yeah, My very emo days. You know, early college is actually, I want to say. So I like I started blogging early and I want to say there was a platform called like blog ops lists or something like that.
00:02:03:20 - 00:02:04:00
John Azoni
That.
00:02:04:01 - 00:02:21:15
Joel Goodman
I used to blog. I can't find any reference to it anywhere. Everyone. So I'll go back and do a little search to try and find some of those fragments of my past. And yeah, I can't find it, but I did a livejournal for a while, you know, especially when when friends were like going to Zynga and stuff. I was definitely a.
00:02:21:15 - 00:02:40:23
John Azoni
Little Oh, yeah, anger o the early days. Yeah, I remember I was 18 like around 18 graduating or high school and there was like a predecessor to LiveJournal that came out and I just thought it was like the coolest thing, like you could just like, put your life out there and like, yeah, people could comment on it. Like, that was like, revolutionary.
00:02:40:23 - 00:02:57:21
John Azoni
So I was like, Totally. Like, my girlfriend broke up with me and then I, like, wrote this whole post about, like we broke up and was like super emo. And then she was mad at me for posting that I was like, whatever, It's my it's my journal I could do ever I want. That's right. That's right.
00:02:57:22 - 00:03:19:02
Joel Goodman
I write for me and for other people and yeah. And it's it's funny how all that's changed because like social media, even like, you know, when Twitter was a place that I actually wanted to be, you know, at the start of that, like, you know, 27, it was like, I'm just posting for myself. And now, like, everything we do online is for other people.
00:03:19:11 - 00:03:29:01
Joel Goodman
Time And I actually posted that to threads like last week. I was like, Yo, y'all remember when the internet was just fun and not about just selling stuff all the time?
00:03:29:08 - 00:03:46:09
John Azoni
Yeah, it's weird now because, like, you know, I go on Facebook and I'm like, I was thinking yesterday I saw someone post, like, a tribute to their best friend. Like, is it her birthday or something? And I'm like, I don't know this person. And I was just like, I'm like, That is now annoying to me too, to, like, get something so irrelevant.
00:03:46:09 - 00:04:23:19
John Azoni
Like, I, I don't know the person you're, you're, you're gushing about. I don't care. And I don't want to see it in my feed. So anyway, so, you know, in lieu of asking you about your, you know, your personal journey into web design, although you sort of you sort of got us partway there, what would you say? So, well, first of all, tell us a little bit about bravery and then tell me, like, what would you say are like your main points of view that kind of come out of your involvement with bravery and about college websites?
00:04:24:05 - 00:04:47:10
Joel Goodman
Yeah. So I you know, right out of right out of undergrad, I hit a recession and it was, you know, I entered I exited undergraduate education into a recession and first job, the first real jobs. I don't really count the eight months at Old Navy and in a barber's row. The West Virginia is a real job. But I the first few weeks.
00:04:47:22 - 00:04:49:15
John Azoni
Yeah, right. Two weeks at Old Navy.
00:04:50:04 - 00:05:05:06
Joel Goodman
Now, man I became I became a cash handler like that. They were like, wow. Someone with a bachelor's degree wants to work here. I sold way too many of those credit cards, and I regret it. That was probably the worst. Probably the worst thing you could. I did. But I.
00:05:06:00 - 00:05:29:00
John Azoni
I got fired because somebody told me to go work in the dressing room or whatever, like, man, the dressing room. And I just did what I was told. And then apparently, like the manager didn't want me to do that. And so it was that. Plus I checked my phone on the floor, like, so like my girlfriend called me and I answered the phone.
00:05:29:16 - 00:05:33:11
John Azoni
So they fired me. So partly my fault. Partly not. You didn't.
00:05:33:12 - 00:05:34:10
Joel Goodman
You didn't miss a lot.
00:05:35:08 - 00:05:39:01
John Azoni
Yeah. Anyway, but you get to, you know.
00:05:39:13 - 00:06:03:17
Joel Goodman
So I'm glad we have that shared that shared experience. But I, I took a job as assistant director of public relations at my undergrad alma mater, and that turned into a web role pretty quickly. You know, this was like 27. And they were everyone was trying to modernize like, you know, we're starting to get into that four year website redesign cycle that seems to permeate the industry.
00:06:03:17 - 00:06:24:07
Joel Goodman
And I, I ended up working at two institutions over the course of six years and then started Bravery Media because I was tired of those. Our fighting internally was really kind of what it was. I felt like I still do it today, just I get to be a consultant and so it's a little bit easier.
00:06:24:17 - 00:06:25:16
John Azoni
People listen to you.
00:06:25:22 - 00:06:28:07
Joel Goodman
Right? Is usually yeah, but like.
00:06:28:21 - 00:06:33:09
John Azoni
The consultant, but not the not the guy that has consultant level beliefs.
00:06:33:14 - 00:06:54:14
Joel Goodman
That's exactly it. That's exactly. And it was and like it was it was less they didn't listen to me was it took so much effort to get them to listen to that right And so like when I started up bravery, the goal was to to work with a lot more institutions, work on a lot of projects, like hoping not fight as much and that sort of thing.
00:06:55:02 - 00:07:23:07
Joel Goodman
And so we we've transitioned more from being just a straight website design or web design as we did like smaller projects to a web design agency, to a much more research backed and research focused agency that really focuses on usability. Like we want to look at the user experience and and take what I'm calling hospitable design practices and the act of like caring for the users that are coming to your website rather than just making it easy.
00:07:23:07 - 00:08:01:06
Joel Goodman
It's it's kind of a bunch of different things thrown into it. We want to make sure that the journeys that prospective students, their parents, donors, you know, whoever that audience is are interacting with on your site are easy and feel like they're they care for you, right? Like they're there. I want to say personalized but not personalized in the way that Higher Ed talks about it, because I'm not talking about like, you know, retargeting ads or like making your content feel creepy or putting someone's name on it, all of the content, but really like that, that it suits their journey and where they're at and it definitely reduces friction through that.
00:08:01:06 - 00:08:35:08
Joel Goodman
But, but the idea is that when we shift our focus from this is only about the college or universities. Bottom line to this is about making sure these people feel cared for. That helps your bottom line. You know, it like it actually helps increase the revenue. It increases your student or student body increases the interactions. And so the main things that kind of come out of that point of view are I tried to simplify it because like in higher ed, I feel like we get these big ideas and then we say like, Oh no, what how do we how do we make these big ideas happen?
00:08:35:20 - 00:08:56:08
Joel Goodman
A lot of that comes down to site speed, and I talk about that all the time. And, you know, follow me on LinkedIn if you want to hear about that stuff or just get me going. But like you have a fast website converts better and it's that's the bottom line. And there are so many slow websites in higher ed that that's a huge opportunity.
00:08:56:14 - 00:09:20:03
Joel Goodman
And then the other the other side of it really builds on it is that whole wider hospitable design practice where I'm taking ideas from the hospitality industry and the ways that we feel when we have our favorite restaurants or bars or, you know, a really good hotel experience or things like that, and finding ways to weave that methodology into the ways that we take care of our web users.
00:09:20:12 - 00:09:38:17
Joel Goodman
But I think it extends beyond that. I think it extends to how we take care of our students that are on campus, the people that we interact with in person. I just, you know, end up staying in my web, my web, my web arena web web fencing, because that's what everyone knows me as a Web guy.
00:09:40:04 - 00:10:16:20
John Azoni
Cool. So you actually shared with me this Simpson Scarborough KMO study that came out and I've mostly digested it and I'm going to read and we'll talk about AI as part of this. But I actually ran this through cloud. I was able to upload all three PDFs. It's like a three part thing talking about, you know, it's like different chapters of this of the study for people listening, but ran it through cloud and Cloud was able to analyze this whole thing and produce this one paragraph study or our summary of it.
00:10:16:20 - 00:10:46:16
John Azoni
So I'll just read this for our listeners who haven't checked this out. The Simpsons. Gabriele KMO study for 2024, based on a survey, is based on a survey of 268 higher education CMO's. It reveals the significant variability in marketing budgets and staffing across institutions sizes which directly impacts CMO strategies and job satisfaction. Despite some budget declines, website experiences remain a priority with a focus on quality content, especially for prospective students.
00:10:47:01 - 00:11:22:07
John Azoni
The study highlights the importance of effective web governance, strategic investment in digital solutions, harnessing harnessing analytics and adapting to emerging technologies like A.I. to meet the evolving expectations of content focused younger generations, CMO's must advocate for the inclusion of websites in strategic planning, prioritize user experience and SEO, and address staffing gaps through partnerships and leverage data driven insights to personalize content and optimize websites website performance in order to stay competitive and relevant in the digital landscape.
00:11:22:07 - 00:11:53:01
John Azoni
So that was an AI summary of of the of the of the study. So but we're going to talk kind of kind of we're going to hone in a little bit more on the staffing part of things because you and I were talking yesterday in our in our pre call just about like the advantages and disadvantages of hiring external staff and in-house or external partners and hiring in-house staff.
00:11:54:00 - 00:12:10:20
John Azoni
And from this study that shows there's this big gap in budgets that that kind of play into that equation. So so we'll talk more about that but what were what were some of your major takeaways from that report? What stuck out to you?
00:12:11:15 - 00:12:39:22
Joel Goodman
Yeah, there's a there's a ton in it. There's actually a still a fourth report that's coming out soon. And so if listeners haven't dug into that, that's Simpson. SCARBOROUGH They do really good research and have a lot of great things to say and some really good people over there, I think. Yeah, like you said, I think the staffing, the staffing part stuck out to me because it's something I've been talking about for years and we'll we'll dive into that.
00:12:40:05 - 00:13:03:19
Joel Goodman
I think the other side of it comes back around to constantly and in a couple of the a couple of the docs there were explanations of how leadership at these institutions tend. And I mean like leadership above the CMO position tend to not really understand the power or value of marketing, and so they don't fund it adequately. Right.
00:13:03:19 - 00:13:27:07
Joel Goodman
And so even if even if these institutions are able to hire the people that they're trying to hire for, even if they were given, you know, a little bit more budget, they're never given enough to actually make that huge difference. They're always kind of constantly trying to catch up. And that's been systemic in higher education for years. We see that.
00:13:27:15 - 00:13:51:04
Joel Goodman
I mean, it just goes in cycles, like we see that all the time. And one of the one of the things that kind of troubles me about this industry is where money gets spent and the lack of expertise to understand what a return on that investment is supposed to look like and what is actually coming back to it.
00:13:51:04 - 00:14:16:05
Joel Goodman
And so like when you look at web investment, usually it's lower than it should be, but then at the same time, they're not hiring partners or they're not hiring the right people internally to get that money back really, really fast. You know, and we've focused that bravery on whenever we build something or whenever we design something. Part of this goes back in that hospitable design practice.
00:14:17:01 - 00:14:44:13
Joel Goodman
We want the institution to have that investment in their website or that web property paid for as soon as possible. It shouldn't be a three year process after you redesign a website for you to realize that money back and start making profit on that investment. And a lot of times it is or it's worse than that. You know, you put in a half a million dollars into a website, redesign.
00:14:44:13 - 00:15:04:19
Joel Goodman
It launches, but then you actually don't know what data is supposed to come back. And so you can't measure it and someone higher up just decides that, oh, it's not working. And so you get in that 4 to 5 year cycle of want, cool. Now we've got to drop another half a million or a quarter of $1,000,000 on a new website redesign.
00:15:04:19 - 00:15:25:00
Joel Goodman
But you're never actually measuring what the results are when that new site comes out. And so we always advocate for making sure that anything that goes out on the web is measurable but measurable in terms that are tied to revenue, actually tied to money and in higher ed a lot since we don't like to talk about the money side of it.
00:15:25:00 - 00:15:48:16
Joel Goodman
Right. But the industry on the marketing side at least, is already firmly centered in business practices. It's just figuring out are the business practices there understood by everyone or just about people that should understand it, or are we kind of just like playing at it a little bit and hoping that we hoping that we understand those things, you know?
00:15:49:19 - 00:16:13:14
John Azoni
Yeah, I found it interesting the that 50 56% of the respondents state that their website is not part of their institution's strategic plan. 42% have no plans to modernize their user experience in the next EDU redesign. I thought that was weird. Like 42% of people are like, We're going to redesign this thing, but we're not going to make that good, honest.
00:16:13:18 - 00:16:44:16
Joel Goodman
It's wild to me because we're looking at a demographic cliff coming up in this industry. We're looking at all the FAFSA issues in the U.S. that have constrained the applicant pool. We're looking at people just unsure about college in general because of the discourse. And then all, you know, FAFSA backing that up and all this sort of stuff to not modernize and to not optimize and to not make your website really, really good.
00:16:45:23 - 00:17:22:10
Joel Goodman
You're shooting yourself in the foot like, I mean, it doesn't make any sense to me because it is the largest possible marketing device that you have. Like most schools want to dump a bunch of money into paid advertising. That's cool, sure. But when someone gets to your website, if it's slow, if you're if you don't have proper journeys in place so they don't know what to do when they get to your site, then you just wasted money on that ad and so like, if you're not paying attention to that side of it, you're a really terrible steward of all that funding, of all that money that's coming in right.
00:17:22:10 - 00:17:50:20
Joel Goodman
And the website should be the first thing that people look at. It affects your search engine rankings. It affects whether AI is going to be able to recommend you to people. And one of the things that we've seen coming up in a lot different sizes and I think Simpson's carbo referenced this in one of their decks is that, you know, younger generations, like the next generation of students are totally happy to use to use like Chad GP style.
00:17:50:20 - 00:18:28:23
Joel Goodman
Yeah you know interfaces for for searching the web and figuring out where to go. Instead, we want to put all those tools on our Web site, forgetting that they have to find us first. Right. And so we just and then we make our websites worse because because we think like that's what we need to do it. But no, just make your website usable and tailored to a specific type of person coming to it and then put the other stuff on top of it because a good fast cohere into well-written website is going to affect all of these fine ability type of tools that sit outside of our institutions.
00:18:30:13 - 00:18:52:14
Joel Goodman
We just don't look at that way. And leadership doesn't doesn't tend to look at it that way or realize how important it is maybe. And so your CMO's, your marketing officers are just stuck without the funding to do it properly or with even worse mandates from provosts and, you know, vice presidents and the president for things that aren't going to move the needle at all for the institution.
00:18:53:19 - 00:19:40:18
John Azoni
Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. And, and going back to the I think I think that it really is becoming increasingly clear that like Gen Z, maybe millennials, too. I don't have the data on that. But I but, but for sure, Gen Z is is wanting things curated for them and like very much willing to use an AI tool that's going to take a lot of this manual search work out of the process and and and yeah, it's becoming like the new Google and I find myself using it to where I'm just like, I don't like, I don't want to really search every recipe, but just like, tell me how to do this.
00:19:41:10 - 00:20:02:13
John Azoni
You know, like I was grilling a flank steak the other night for my daughter. My daughter love steak is her birthday now, and I don't grill that much. So I had this. I got this. I got this app called Pie Pie. And it's just like you like almost like, call it and you just have a conversation with it.
00:20:02:13 - 00:20:11:11
John Azoni
So I was just like, how many? How many minutes On each side I grill is flank steak. And it just told me and I'm like, I don't need I don't need to go to like a website. Right.
00:20:12:01 - 00:20:17:16
Joel Goodman
Well, and socially for recipes, read through someone's life story before you get to the actual method and everything.
00:20:18:06 - 00:20:22:02
John Azoni
Yeah and not to recipe button should be should be mandated.
00:20:22:17 - 00:20:46:16
Joel Goodman
But I think that I mean I think there's a there's an interesting point in there within our own websites especially is like institutions are trying to put, you know, chat bots and AI assistance to help people figure out stuff on the websites like, you know, what that indicates is that your website's content strategy is bad. It means that you haven't organized your content in a way that's easy for people to understand.
00:20:46:16 - 00:21:20:04
Joel Goodman
You haven't written it away. That's engaging and helps people understand what you're trying to get across, and then you're giving them a way to bypass all of your all of that branding, all of that storytelling, all of that stuff. There's something to learn there. If people don't want the story, then get rid of the story. Maybe. But also if you still need to communicate that kind of stuff, why are you giving them a way to bypass your brand bypass, making some sort of affinity connection with your institution by putting by putting a an AI assistant in front of it?
00:21:21:07 - 00:21:50:10
Joel Goodman
Yeah, that could be lying to them, too. I mean, we're still early days. This technology is young, like, you know, like a year ago, no one was no one publicly was using this stuff. Like, it's still super, super young. And I just I think we I think we jumped the gun a lot in in higher ed without like, really, really thinking through the implications of some of this stuff and whether or not it does make an experience better for someone or not.
00:21:51:13 - 00:22:20:06
John Azoni
Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of correlations between budgets, not enough budget going towards the website, not enough optimization going on, not enough understanding of the the student, the prospective student journey. And I see you know, we see a lot of that in in the video world too. And so, you know, obviously you're a Web guy. I'm a video guy, so I want to get into specifics that were kind of recovered from the report.
00:22:20:09 - 00:22:41:10
John Azoni
And one of them was, you know, as we talked about budgets, budget constraints, related to staffing, the decision whether to hire in-house or external partners, because that also comes into the equation as well. Yeah. So from a website perspective, what what concerns do you have about the role of the in-house web designer?
00:22:43:03 - 00:23:25:15
Joel Goodman
I don't like I'm going to hedge this would like I don't want to I don't want to sound like a jerk, but so this might sound like super critical and and this isn't this isn't a diss at any web designers that I know in higher ed. But I think when this comes directly out of the report, I think when you look at the salary levels that institutions put in place for any web position, whether that's a developer, a designer or a content strategist or whatever, they're so far below the not just the kind of industry average or like even median in, you know, general web design or general web development.
00:23:26:14 - 00:23:47:07
Joel Goodman
They're not priced to get the best sort of person in that role, you know, And we are a hyper, hyper competitive industry. You know, every university offers basically the same thing. And so to be able to stand out, you can't do that just on your programing. And you're probably not doing that on your programing. You know, you're right.
00:23:47:12 - 00:24:01:11
Joel Goodman
Academic programs are the same as someone down the street with maybe a couple of little tweaks here and there. But that's not enough for anyone to understand. You have to make that difference in your marketing in the way that you tell your stories and the way that you design your collateral and the way that you provide a better experience.
00:24:01:19 - 00:24:23:20
Joel Goodman
And in order to do that, you need to have web designers, web developers, web marketers in general that are better than everyone else in the industry. And most people don't because they're not spending the money for that. And so there should be competition there. There should be competition in terms of the quality of staff that we are targeting and hiring in higher ed.
00:24:23:20 - 00:24:51:02
Joel Goodman
They do that on the faculty side all the time. But the reality is that faculty don't sell your school unless you're looking at graduate programs, you know, and even then it's it's a small sliver of people that that are paying attention to that. That's one of the bigger concerns I have. It's that we we don't recognize is that these are important positions that require a lot of talent and require a lot of learning and require a lot of thinking.
00:24:51:02 - 00:25:18:08
Joel Goodman
And we don't make those positions attractive enough to get the people that are creating the great experiences in startups or big tech companies and that sort of thing. So our experience design always ends up being subpar to the rest of the experiences that prospective students interact with every day on the on the World Wide Web right there. Because no one just spends all their time in higher ed looking at higher ed websites except for higher ed pros.
00:25:19:03 - 00:25:53:18
Joel Goodman
You know, we're the only ones that look at our Web sites all the time. Prospective students are interacting with banking software and e-commerce and, you know, music apps and all this kind of stuff. And we can't compete with that level and we can't even compete with each other because our the bar is so low in higher ed. And, you know, I don't know that hiring an in-house web designer is smart because you also can't change higher ed to go to more of a product design standpoint and work in products cycles.
00:25:53:18 - 00:26:27:22
Joel Goodman
It's always just like, you know, it's fire drills all the time. So, oh, this is a problem. President wants this problem, wants this, VP wants this, you know, and so like if you have someone on staff, they're just doing busywork. You know, they're, they're, they're not able to strategize about the design that they're putting in place also. And since governor mentions this in the the website part of their report or their study, the fact that so many schools try to do website redesigns in-house is scary because they're never going to get it done.
00:26:27:22 - 00:27:04:20
Joel Goodman
There's so much work. I mean, the reason that you go and work with an agency is because you're getting 3 to 10 people working on this website redesign at any given time, you know, for the different parts. And they still tend to take a year plus to get done. I think that could be shortened. I think part of that's political stuff on on the institutional side, but trying to do that with one underpaid paid web designer who has probably never tackled that before, and a bunch of people that have multiple responsibilities across the institution isn't sustainable for those people.
00:27:04:20 - 00:27:25:22
Joel Goodman
You know, like you consider their mental health, you're going to burn them out. I've been there, you know, I had my the last campus job I had I had redesigned eight websites, redesigned it, launched eight websites in six months. And yeah, I mean, like, it affected my health. It was it was bad. Like, it's part of why I left university work.
00:27:26:01 - 00:27:48:08
Joel Goodman
Yeah. And started my agency. It's but that's that's a reality that we have to face is that vertical izing all of this stuff and trying to get all of these positions in-house is is not is not as simple as people think. You know, you don't you have to have someone that can run a product team because that's part of what this is.
00:27:48:08 - 00:28:14:07
Joel Goodman
If you want to compete, if you don't want to compete, you're just going to you're going to close. I mean, honestly, I get I mean, just like point blank, you look at the closures that are happening across higher ed times, they're smaller institutions that definitely can't afford the types of people that they need. And it's just misstep after misstep in what they're what they're paying for, who they're hiring, how they're how they're configuring their teams and what the things.
00:28:14:07 - 00:28:40:09
Joel Goodman
I really liked that someone Scarborough said when they're talking about staffing was that it's important to reassess the staffing that you have because if you can go super lean in-house and then rely on agency partners, you can move faster, you can get better quality out the door and you can see results a lot quicker. And I've been saying this for five years like this is this is not a new thing.
00:28:40:09 - 00:29:02:12
Joel Goodman
It's higher. Ed just keeps kind of digging itself a little bit deeper and it makes it a lot harder to get out of out of the ditch. You know, it makes it a lot harder to get back into a competitive stance because someone refuses to change their thinking or doesn't realize it because they're not cut out for whatever.
00:29:03:15 - 00:29:30:07
John Azoni
Yeah, and I see this on the video side, too, and I posted on LinkedIn last week a post about in-house versus versus external, and there seem to be a lot of resonance with that because, you know, I've I've seen jobs posted for like a full time video producer for like $45,000 a year. And I'm like, who's going to do that?
00:29:30:10 - 00:29:35:00
John Azoni
Like, like what? Respect there. No, buddy. No, that's.
00:29:35:00 - 00:29:42:06
Joel Goodman
A lot of work. Like, no one understands how long it takes to edit, let alone shoot and try to tell a story, you know, within all that.
00:29:42:20 - 00:30:12:09
John Azoni
Yeah. No, no. Respectable like no person that like, actually has their foot in the door and like, is doing real projects and working on really like, you know, big stuff is going to accept a $45,000 a year salary. It's just not going to happen. Like the, the there's such a gap between quality in in that sort of entry level salary versus what you get when you hire an external right crew.
00:30:12:09 - 00:30:20:22
John Azoni
I mean, one day of filming with a small crew, like small crew is like 20 $500 a day.
00:30:21:08 - 00:30:44:15
Joel Goodman
And that's assuming that the ads assume that you own your own equipment, you're not renting cameras and lenses and the stuff that you need to write. And so it doesn't take into account all of the money that the that the firm that the you know, the the video firm has spent on the back end that a lot of times, you know like professional photographers, professional videographers will like fly to a place and just rent the equipment that they need.
00:30:45:01 - 00:30:50:03
Joel Goodman
And it's going to be more than 2500 bucks for that. You know, like in a lot of cases.
00:30:50:03 - 00:31:11:12
John Azoni
Yeah, we underestimate like I think I think it starts with like number one, it starts with this this pattern of, you know, allowing, you know, the marketing team, allowing themselves to be order takers. And we've talked about this now and in the last two consecutive podcast episodes about, you know, the short order cook versus versus the vision leaders.
00:31:11:12 - 00:31:34:04
John Azoni
And I think when you are this when you have a short order cook mentality in your marketing team, then yeah, you're gonna just go, Well, we need to be doing video, so let's hire a video guy that knows how to run a camera and knows how to use Adobe Premiere. And then and then we'll just open the floodgates and let you know all the requests come in.
00:31:34:04 - 00:31:57:20
John Azoni
We'll try to monitor some of the requests and prioritize a little bit. But like, we've got a video guy, we've checked the video box. Like that's completely different than than having a video strategy. Right. And knowing like, what types of videos are going to convert people into paying students and what does that cost? How can we optimize the costs for that?
00:31:58:01 - 00:32:13:19
John Azoni
If you just want to crank out like videos and, you know, like like that kind of salary, 40, 40 to $50000, like that will get you maybe like a video technician that technically like knows some stuff. It's not great, but.
00:32:14:15 - 00:32:32:05
Joel Goodman
It's in The Graduate that came out of a digital media program or something like that. Yeah, and that's fine. Like, but you're not going to you're not going to hang on to him as a thing, Right? And like you were saying, you're not going to get the strategy, You're not going to get someone with experience. And so you're not going to get that result of paying students.
00:32:32:05 - 00:32:52:09
Joel Goodman
And so I don't know if you saw this in the in the the CMO study, the budgets and staffing reports like since Scarborough include a bunch of data at the end of it, it's not a huge sample size, but of those 228 schools or whatever it was, 79% of them report having a full time videographer role on staff.
00:32:52:10 - 00:33:25:21
Joel Goodman
Mm hmm. Yeah. Which to me is not surprising. And I constantly see job postings, like you were saying, for videographers in higher ed. But I just question if that if that role should be there. Like I question like whether they should be hiring for that role at all when it can be so much more cost effective to go out to someone else, to go out to, you know, to go to you and have you and your team produce videos that have strategy.
00:33:25:21 - 00:33:53:04
Joel Goodman
And, you know, our thinking about the brand side of it. And I think about that same thing on the Web side, like why would you have a full time web developer in-house when you're not even structured to fill their time with work all the time? You know, like, yeah, they will go and find stuff to do. But like if you're smart about how you're running a website, if you're smart about how you're producing video, if you're smart about how you're producing any sort of content, you're going to be planning that stuff out.
00:33:53:12 - 00:34:30:17
Joel Goodman
And then it doesn't take as long to to to come up with the execution side of it. Right. And instead we just think like now we need a full time person to do this, like get the fractional time. It's so much less expensive. And at the same time, think about think a little bit beyond the the actual price of the thing and think about what you're going to get back from it and tie that content high, that website high, that development work to actual fiscal goals or actual enrollment goals versus just thinking, well, we need visibility.
00:34:31:06 - 00:34:34:13
Joel Goodman
You've got to be strategic about visibility to, you know.
00:34:34:13 - 00:35:05:22
John Azoni
Mm hmm. Yeah. And obviously, you know, you and I are are biased to some degree because we have a vested interest in schools hiring external partners. But, you know, at least from a from a video perspective, I mean, I can tell you, like I've met some really talented in-house folks and and what's I think a lot of what's maybe keeping them there is the mission of the school, the type of work they're getting to do or the fact that they don't want to you know, they don't want to be entrepreneurs.
00:35:05:22 - 00:35:29:21
John Azoni
You know, they just want they want a steady paycheck. So I definitely like that. And I don't know what they're getting paid, so I can't factor that into the equation. You definitely can get really, really great talent. But I think, you know, when there's that sort of like lobbing over the fence of like, well, we'll get it, we'll get video going here.
00:35:30:11 - 00:36:01:19
John Azoni
And the first instinct is, is hire staff like you're not thinking about a the level of talent you can get for that price. But B, the the benefits, the the cost of managing that employee, the cost of the equipment. So if you know, which is like 20 grand, at least 20 grand on this. Yeah. You know, and so, so right there, I mean you're, you're starting to push six figures even even if you're paying, you know, kind of a crappy salary.
00:36:01:19 - 00:36:25:16
John Azoni
And so it's like, man, you could get a lot of really intentional work done from an external partner for that for that money. And they're to come in and they're going to have that mindset of like they're not with the bullshit, you know, of the of the school. They don't care. Like they don't answer to any sort of provost or president that, you know, and they're just going to sit this is what I think we should do.
00:36:26:21 - 00:37:12:07
John Azoni
Completely absent from the politics that your internal videographer is going to be so worried about job security and wanting to tow the line and things like that. So it's just I talked to enough in-house videographers. We have a community for in-house videographers that I run. And one of the big patterns is just like they just kind of like they commiserate about the fact that like that their job ends up being the president needs to deliver a message in an email, so we need to go film this or the the nursing school has an event and so we need to go film that.
00:37:12:07 - 00:37:35:21
John Azoni
And it's like, what are you going to use that for? Like, how is that event? Like now who cares? Yeah, who cares that like some random person that no prospective student knows about was speaking. So you're going to get shots of them at the podium and you're going to get people eating food. And it's like, why are we why are we investing, you know, the in-house videographers time And no one.
00:37:35:21 - 00:37:39:11
Joel Goodman
Wants to watch a video of someone chewing food. You know, no one wants to. No.
00:37:39:17 - 00:37:56:06
John Azoni
No. I mean, yeah, maybe maybe it's fun for the people that already go there that are like, Oh, yeah, that was a fun event. Or there I am. And that shot. Yeah, that was a funny moment, you know? But like, but if that's the kind of work that, that you're using the videographer for, like think about how much.
00:37:56:06 - 00:38:17:03
John Azoni
Oh yeah you know this is dire circumstances here with, with like this enrollment cliff and all and all this stuff. And in a lot of schools, like you mentioned are closing like we shouldn't be spending time on, you know, on just fulfilling orders and filming events and yeah. And things like that Or.
00:38:17:04 - 00:38:22:20
Joel Goodman
How how common is it for these videographers that you talk to to either.
00:38:22:20 - 00:38:23:14
John Azoni
Have.
00:38:24:13 - 00:38:44:17
Joel Goodman
Someone in a producer role or to have to be the producer themselves, you know as well like someone that's actually thinking through the strategy of those videos. And I think in general, like I mean, CMO's some really good CMO's will take the time to do it, but like you're still kind of getting into this generalist sort of thing, right?
00:38:44:17 - 00:39:06:20
Joel Goodman
I mean, I remember like my first, my first higher ed job as an assistant director of public relations and then like a web content coordinator also had me learning how to, how to shoot with a DSLR and going out to alumni events and shooting photos, which I was like other duties as assigned, I guess. And like, right, I'm glad I picked up that skill, but at the same time, not my job.
00:39:06:20 - 00:39:30:17
Joel Goodman
But you know, one time we had a full time photographer and print designer and, you know, my boss was also a photographer. It's like these things were I mean, even commencement. I had to shoot every once in a while. And I know that if we were doing video, we wouldn't have had someone in that producer role, like being strategic, helping craft the story, helping tie it back to marketing goals.
00:39:30:17 - 00:39:38:00
Joel Goodman
And it does end up being that order taking that you were talking about. It's yeah, we just need someone to get footage of this and why like.
00:39:38:09 - 00:39:38:16
John Azoni
Yeah.
00:39:39:12 - 00:39:57:18
Joel Goodman
And now we need someone to throw together, you know, a snappy little video that we can toss on YouTube or or whatever. And it has no, it has no actual value to the underlying mission because there was no strategy or intent or purpose behind it. Right.
00:39:58:13 - 00:40:24:12
John Azoni
Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think the point I'm trying to make is not necessarily that an in-house videographer is is a bad idea, but it's I think it's two points. It's it's one, if you're going to have an in-house videographer, you need to really carefully prioritize that person's work towards stuff that's actually going to bring in money to the school and not just be, you know, spinning their wheels, just doing busy work.
00:40:24:12 - 00:41:09:12
John Azoni
The other thing is, is that to to really have a thriving in-house production team is is more than just having one person that knows how to shoot and edit videos. Yes, it is like you mentioned a producer at least at least a producer director. That's like one person, you know, that's typically the role that that I play and that's the role that I played at previous production companies, is really conceptualizing each project, working with the client, understanding the messaging, adding my input, all the stuff, getting the right team on board and then managing that, that project and shooting and directing and blah blah, blah.
00:41:09:12 - 00:41:41:05
John Azoni
So yeah, so that kind of stuff, it's, it's that leadership organized, emotional person and then somebody to edit full time, you know, at the very least like one person to produce and shoot and another person to edit. But beyond that, I mean I, you know, ideally you're, you're having someone to, to produce and direct, someone to do the filmmaking, the cinematography or the lighting and all that stuff, and then some of that.
00:41:41:10 - 00:41:50:04
John Azoni
So when you talk about, yeah, you know, two three different salaries easily you're, you're yeah, like crossing the $200,000.
00:41:51:00 - 00:41:51:08
Joel Goodman
Mark.
00:41:51:08 - 00:41:59:21
John Azoni
Just on, just on that you know you can get a lot of videos from an external partner that's going to put a team of 5 to 10 people on this thing.
00:42:00:16 - 00:42:21:19
Joel Goodman
And so yeah that, that are, that are quick and decisive and are thinking about the strategy as well. And you know, I think I think it brings up a good a good practice. It's it's identifying the identifying where your institution fits in the stack, you know, and really, really seeing if it makes financial sense to have a video team.
00:42:21:19 - 00:42:45:18
Joel Goodman
I think for larger schools or schools that are like in like massive growth phases and just have a lot of liquidity. Sure. Like doing in-house production. Totally cool. Like I've seen that work out really well. And even in that sense of Scarborough data, like a lot of you know, a lot of the like is like 93% of the of large institutions had a full video team doing that production work.
00:42:46:13 - 00:42:56:18
Joel Goodman
But it's because they have a full video team doing production work. It's not just hiring a videographer for an ad and expecting them to be everything video people right. Right.
00:42:56:18 - 00:42:57:19
John Azoni
Which you.
00:42:57:19 - 00:43:13:18
Joel Goodman
Can't do. Yeah most people that most people that can shoot like can totally edit. They can, you know they can put a story together but it is a lot more taxing and it's a lot slower when you have to do all three of those things. Right. And that's why production houses don't work on one person doing all that stuff, right.
00:43:13:23 - 00:43:15:06
Joel Goodman
It's not sustainable.
00:43:16:03 - 00:43:44:18
John Azoni
It's very not sustainable. And it was there was times at my previous job as a creative director at a production company, and it would get so crazy sometimes, like just tons of work coming in. I was the one guy. Yeah, that was managing everything. And, and then we had like one main editor that was doing pretty much all the important editing.
00:43:44:18 - 00:44:09:21
John Azoni
And then we had like a really junior guy making like maybe 35 or 40,000 a year doing like assistant editing and assisting on shoots and stuff like that three person team. And I, this isn't like fully due to that reason, but I had like a complete mental breakdown in 2018 and I was out of work for three weeks.
00:44:09:21 - 00:44:31:06
John Azoni
It just got too much. Yeah, I was, I just felt too much pressure and there was a lot of other things that that played into that. But that was one of the big stressors was it was it was getting really crazy and I was carrying the weight of this entire of everybody's creative. Every client's like creative desires and projects on my shoulders.
00:44:31:06 - 00:44:50:18
John Azoni
Yeah. To manage. And if and if they weren't good and if the client wasn't happy, it was my fault, you know? So it's just that's just a lot of pressure to put on one on one video. Then I wasn't even doing all the shooting and editing and fact I was doing very little of that. That's a lot of pressure to put on one person that's doing that.
00:44:50:18 - 00:44:52:07
John Azoni
Plus the shooting and editing.
00:44:52:15 - 00:44:55:04
Joel Goodman
Yeah, yeah, it's a ton, man. There's a ton.
00:44:56:06 - 00:45:18:20
John Azoni
But I want to ask, you know, so we've talked about like, you know, what, what it could look like to have an in-house video team that is actually thriving. So like if you're really going to make the investment in it, here's how you would do that. But what does that look like for for web web design? Is there ever a scenario in which an in-house web creative team is going to make sense?
00:45:18:20 - 00:45:20:08
John Azoni
And what does that investment look like?
00:45:20:21 - 00:45:43:07
Joel Goodman
I think there is. I think there's always a scenario where it can make sense. And I know that there are some institutions that that do this and do it really well. It comes down to it's very similar. It comes down to like having a complete Web team. And I would advocate for running it more like a startup or product team, right?
00:45:43:22 - 00:46:06:01
Joel Goodman
So like more like a tech company and how they run going through product features and cycles and all of this sort of stuff. Like it makes it very, very strategic, very intentional. Any change that happens to the website, I think the status quo tends to be, All right, we've got a web designer and they don't have enough work to do on the website.
00:46:06:01 - 00:46:28:01
Joel Goodman
So we're also going to make them design graphics for social media and make them design graphics or, you know, all of this sort of stuff. Hi, I did that for a while. Sometimes we're going to make them go shoot videos for the website, you know, like that sort of thing. And then you might have a web developer, you might be relying on IT resources and in general, it does not like that.
00:46:28:15 - 00:46:46:02
Joel Goodman
You know, I've I've worked with a lot of I.T. departments. I know a lot of people that work in I.T. They've got other stuff to do. And and I think that they should be focused on that other stuff, because one thing that no one talks about is how terrible the digital student experience is on most campuses. And like that could help you with some retention.
00:46:46:02 - 00:46:48:11
Joel Goodman
Just just a little so little tidbit.
00:46:48:11 - 00:46:51:23
John Azoni
Drop their ls3 we won't charge them for that one.
00:46:51:23 - 00:46:52:20
Joel Goodman
Yeah, right. That's now.
00:46:52:20 - 00:46:53:06
John Azoni
It's free.
00:46:54:02 - 00:47:21:11
Joel Goodman
You know, let your i.t focus on the student experience or, you know, even even better, have a have a separate design team working on your student experience. But that's a lot of money too. But I think it's, you know, I think the proper setup is you got to have a project manager or product owner or product manager, you have to have at least a UX designer, a researcher sort of person that's going out and validating this stuff.
00:47:21:19 - 00:47:38:02
Joel Goodman
Someone that can do UI at the USC position could be combined in some cases because they are kind of connected. You would need a front end developer and then you would probably need some sort of full stack developer that can do stuff and you need these people to be paid well because you need them to be talented, right?
00:47:38:10 - 00:48:03:17
Joel Goodman
And so at a bigger institution, I think it makes sense to have a web team and I think they have the flexibility and, lateral ability to design a really good product team and put them in place. But usually at those large institutions, they don't do that. They decentralize all their sites and so they have 15 or 16 or 20 different small web teams and a bunch of different places, and they all kind of compete with each other.
00:48:03:17 - 00:48:40:14
Joel Goodman
And I know some really great ones. I mean, I know that UT in Austin, a couple of their schools have really, really great web teams managing their websites, and it can work in decentralized sense. But if you had everyone to go, if you had, you know, similar to how some of these decentralized marketing offices will have like a central marketing office, and then they kind of like help out the different, you know, decentralized offices, you could have a central product team and then have sub teams off of that that are working on the websites and the technical things for all of the different schools from a marketing perspective and make that work really well.
00:48:41:02 - 00:49:20:06
Joel Goodman
It's just a complete change in how higher Ed has always done it, but we're still trying to fit 3040 year old methodology into the modern world when everything is changed from, you know, since then. And it doesn't it doesn't pay off very well. But that would be my recommendation. Like if you if, if you were assessing whether you should have an in-house team, you need to be able to say, can I afford to have a product owner, a developer, a designer, a UX researcher, UX designer type of person and accessibility person to check all that stuff, Don't rely on plug ins or things like that.
00:49:20:18 - 00:49:47:23
Joel Goodman
If you're going to do it, like do it right. And all those people in place and and go from there. But you're looking at, like you were saying with video teams. I mean, like you're you're looking for like good versions of those people. I mean, you're looking at upwards of 700, 800 K a year without without benefits, without the equipment, you know, without the costs for the software that they need.
00:49:48:13 - 00:49:57:05
Joel Goodman
And most I mean, I don't know of an institution that's prepared to pay upwards of $1,000,000 a year on just the staffing for that sort of a team.
00:49:58:05 - 00:50:00:19
John Azoni
Just for the website, too. I mean, that's just for the website.
00:50:01:01 - 00:50:05:02
Joel Goodman
Yeah. Yeah, etc.. Except for big universities that can afford it, right?
00:50:05:13 - 00:50:41:07
John Azoni
Yeah, for sure. Like, it's a pretty interesting perspective. One of my main filmmakers that I that I work with on a contract basis on my team, he, I mean, he shoots all kinds of like commercials, feature films, documentaries and stuff like that. He's really good. He's a really good director, slash cinematographer. And, you know, he told me, like last year, you know, doing taxes or whatever he made like 450 grand just just for him, like, just for people hiring him and and renting renting his his gear and stuff.
00:50:41:07 - 00:51:14:04
John Azoni
Like what would compel someone at that level to go make $60,000 at a college and work for somebody else? You know, you got you got to think like if you're looking for a commercial cinematic level. So, I mean, that's that's an extreme case. There's not a lot of videographers, filmmakers out there making like half a million dollars a year, but even say it's 150, you know, a year, that's pretty realistic.
00:51:14:15 - 00:51:15:02
John Azoni
Yeah, Well.
00:51:15:02 - 00:51:15:08
Joel Goodman
I mean.
00:51:15:12 - 00:51:17:04
John Azoni
That's going to compel someone to make 60.
00:51:17:17 - 00:51:48:18
Joel Goodman
The the underlying thread here, though, is that higher ed can't fill these roles that they have open for that very reason. You know, it's because someone like him, you know, maybe not making 450 a year independently. I mean like he obviously but if you like you were talking about like, you know, if you're a person that doesn't want to be an entrepreneur, you know, that wants to have the stability of a paycheck given with layoffs in tech and everything else right now, I don't know how.
00:51:48:18 - 00:52:10:07
Joel Goodman
Much stability is really there at this point. But if you wanted to go that kind of more traditional employment route for whatever personal reasons, you have, you're going to find higher paying jobs outside of higher ed to do the same thing. And they're going to be less stressful and they're going to be less frustrating. There's going to be different, but probably fewer political fights happening internally.
00:52:11:12 - 00:52:44:09
Joel Goodman
And we just can't compete with salaries. We can't compete with the benefits, We can't compete with any of that sort of stuff. And so the people that do stay I mean, you know, I'm if people are sold on the mission, like get on them, like, I was there for a while. But like, I mean, I would secretly probably encourage them to go look outside of the industry for something that'll pay them a little bit more and allow them to do more creative type of work, you know, and probably more structured work that makes them feel a little bit less, you know, scattered all over the place.
00:52:45:05 - 00:53:10:08
John Azoni
Yeah. So we got a few minutes left. I want to I want to make sure we hit the the eye part of our conversation because I know you know it with general Eye Mark I'm teams are thinking how how can we save money in this area? I think there is I'm a big proponent of I for for certain things for things that you could otherwise do yourself.
00:53:10:08 - 00:53:22:06
John Azoni
It would just take you ten times longer, that kind of stuff. But like from a web perspective, want to talk about the blessing and the curse of of I.
00:53:23:15 - 00:53:46:04
Joel Goodman
I think we're jumping too quickly with too many feet, you know, more than just our two feet into the air pool in a lot of cases. And I mentioned it kind of at the top of the top of the episode. But I think that we want to fit air into things that aren't problems yet. Like you, you know, it can solve this thing.
00:53:46:04 - 00:54:11:03
Joel Goodman
We students can talk to an air chat bar and, you know, really the only reason why an air assistant on your website should be there is because your UCS is bad, you know, and and actually it shouldn't be there because you should fix your UCS. Either way, I worry that, you know, we're going to get to a point kind of going back to like video type of stuff where marketing offices just think like, Oh well, cool.
00:54:11:03 - 00:54:34:14
Joel Goodman
There's all these generative video video platforms that are coming out of video models that are coming out. You just use some of that for our B-roll and you know it. We start to lose the authenticity side of what we have been saying for years and years and years is the defining characteristic of higher education marketing, right? Like people want more authenticity.
00:54:34:14 - 00:54:46:09
Joel Goodman
So if they want more authenticity, what do we do? Let's put an AI language, large language model in front of them so they're not interacting with an authentic person. I don't I don't understand that thinking. I don't understand that gap.
00:54:46:18 - 00:54:51:03
John Azoni
So I get one that that sounds natural. That sounds authentic, right?
00:54:51:03 - 00:55:14:00
Joel Goodman
It sounds like a person. And then we got to figure out, well, is it always telling the truth? Is it going to get us in trouble? Is it making stuff up? You know, how well have we trained it? Why are we using a third party like open? I you know, when everyone uses the same, uses the same generative models, uses the same large language models, like at what point are we all just the same thing, you know?
00:55:15:12 - 00:55:44:08
Joel Goodman
But even then, like there's huge changes in search engine rankings that are taking into account whether content is actually engaging and or whether it's just kind of like milled and farmed out. And I just I worry that in a race to save time so that we can do I don't know what else you know I don't know what we're going to fill all of this new time that we have that is giving back to us with that, we're outsourcing the wrong things to.
00:55:44:12 - 00:56:05:10
Joel Goodman
I like we're not using it to help us research. We're not using it to help us make sense of data and information that's coming in. We're using it to write website copy or write video scripts or or make images. And I may I you know, I'll use mid journey for for images, for like podcast episodes and for social media and stuff like that.
00:56:07:08 - 00:56:38:22
Joel Goodman
But at some point, like, like for me, small business, like I feel like that's kind of okay and I'll use my own photography when I, when I have it and it makes sense. But like for an institution that has a videographer on staff or has access to, you know, has money in budget that could go to actively pursuing these sorts of things, we're taking that human element out of the wrong places and it just it it worries me because because of the buzz and I know how higher Ed always responds to technology buzz.
00:56:39:09 - 00:56:42:20
Joel Goodman
And there just needs to be a little bit more thought that goes into it.
00:56:44:04 - 00:57:10:15
John Azoni
Yeah, I'm with you on the like the research, the research stuff, making sense of data, finding things that would otherwise be a manual hunt for. Yeah, I definitely think that like yeah I'm all on board with like mid journey and that kind of thing. Sometimes it's just like you just need an image that that communicates the sentiment of your blog post or breaks up the text a little bit or whatever.
00:57:11:02 - 00:57:32:21
John Azoni
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's I think it's when when people are outsourcing entire creative roles to, to A.I., that that then it becomes a problem. I think if you're if you're driving the ship and and you if you're treating A.I. like an assistant, you know that's that's kind of that's kind of the boundaries for me.
00:57:32:21 - 00:58:04:12
John Azoni
It's like I'm not I'm not going to copy and paste anything from from A.I., but it's very I super useful editing assistant. I have it, I have it analyze transcripts and timecode and stuff like that and help pull out like, oh, tell me all the places where she said she talked about this thing or something like that. You know, it's that's assistant editor work, you know, it's pulling selects and it's, and it's, and it's that kind of stuff but when it's but when it's just here copy and paste write this blog post copy and paste.
00:58:04:21 - 00:58:09:07
John Azoni
Right. Let's do 20 of we could do 20 of these now and we can fire our content writer.
00:58:10:01 - 00:58:36:18
Joel Goodman
For I like it for menial tasks. So we're launching, we're launching this website called Speak to You. That is a database of every college university website in the U.S., Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand. And one of the things I wanted to do was go through and get some cohort type of stuff. So I hop into perplexity and I ask it to get a list of every business school with its URL.
00:58:37:09 - 00:58:54:19
Joel Goodman
It's city and region within Australia and it comes back with that full list for me and it will, you know, format it into a CSV file so that I can import it into our database. Like that's the stuff that makes a lot of the saving a ton of time seem like hours of like just looking at Google links, right?
00:58:55:09 - 00:59:16:16
Joel Goodman
That stuff makes a lot of sense to me. But outsourcing it to write content and then just doing a like copy edit on it, like you're going to run into, you're going to run into differentiation problems and you're going to run into brand problems or you're going to sound fragmented or you're going to sound completely generic, depending on which path you take.
00:59:18:10 - 00:59:37:05
Joel Goodman
And half the time figuring out the right prompt to get good content out takes longer than writing the thing in the first place. You know, like just just write it just or like, write something and have it do a quick edit for you. You know, use a tool like Grammarly or something like that to help to help tighten up the stuff that you've written already.
00:59:38:20 - 01:00:06:12
Joel Goodman
But yeah, just farming out the creative stuff to something that is not creative. It is, it is predictive. It is built on algorithms, it is scientific, it is data driven or data backed. You just lose creativity and you lose authenticity in that process. And when higher ed loses, what little bit of authenticity we're able to put out there already, I think we're going to be in big trouble for sure.
01:00:06:14 - 01:00:37:07
John Azoni
Yeah, Yeah. And I've tried to pull I've tried I did a video tutorial for my newsletter audience at one point about using the journey for like populating blog posts with images. And one of the things that you had to sort of chuckle about in this tutorial was like how generic? Like it took diversity, like it is like it like really tried to like kind of get an equal but like unrealistic mix in there of every of every culture from around the world.
01:00:38:02 - 01:01:02:17
John Azoni
You know, these students like studying together or collaborating or something like that. So you got to be careful about that because people see see right through that tone. Yeah, but okay, so wrapping up here, I want to give you the last word. You know, talking about budgets and staffing and you're creating a great markup team with external or internal partners and web design and blah, blah, blah.
01:01:02:18 - 01:01:06:06
John Azoni
What would you be or some at Summit all up for us? What are your final thoughts?
01:01:06:19 - 01:01:36:09
Joel Goodman
Yeah, I mean, I think if you're in a budget crunch, find ways like if you're especially if you're a CMO or if you're, you know, kind of in that sort of that sort of position because it might go under a different title. Connect with your connected, your CFO like consider ways with that, with that person that manages the finances to decrease the amount of money allocated to open positions or frozen positions and reallocate that back into your marketing budget.
01:01:36:17 - 01:02:00:05
Joel Goodman
And when you lose staff because they're going to a job that pays more, reconsider that position that they left. And if you actually need someone in that position or if you could take some of the budget from that salary and put it toward working with an agency, working with an outside partner, working with an independent contractor that can do that kind of work, because you will save money, the institution will save money in the long run.
01:02:00:22 - 01:02:33:12
Joel Goodman
In most of those cases. And you'll see better results from from from those from those partnerships. And then when you're back to stability and have tons of money coming in and like are thriving, then you can reconsider going vertical and having all of those positions in house again. But I just don't think status quo in hiring and in staffing and in higher ed has been something relevant in five or six years, at least not since pandemic.
01:02:34:11 - 01:02:41:07
John Azoni
Yeah, All right. You heard it here first, folks. All right, Joel, where can where can people connect with you?
01:02:41:23 - 01:03:03:15
Joel Goodman
Yeah, I'm I'm on LinkedIn. Joel Goodman on threads at Joel Goodman I'm on Instagram. Rachel Goodman Also bravery media is the business that I own. We're also on LinkedIn and Instagram and threads, and I'm going to bring Rico to learn more about the web and and consulting services that we offer.
01:03:05:02 - 01:03:07:11
John Azoni
Awesome. Well, this has been great chat and thanks for being here.
01:03:07:22 - 01:03:09:03
Joel Goodman
Yeah, John, thanks for having me on.
