#95 - Bad RFPs, Sidestepping Marketing on Design Decisions, and Enrollment Lessons from Online Dating
w/ Cheryl Broom
from GradComm
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SHOW NOTES
In this conversation, Cheryl Broom, a leading expert in higher education marketing communications, discusses her experiences and insights into the challenges and strategies in marketing for community colleges. The discussion covers the importance of branding, the nuances of RFPs, and the parallels between student recruitment and online dating. Cheryl also reflects on the role of LinkedIn as a powerful networking and marketing tool, and on her viral “Don’t Tell Marketing” series, which underscores the risks of inconsistent branding. Throughout, she emphasizes the need for effective communication and collaboration between marketing and admissions departments to improve student engagement and enrollment processes.
Key Takeaways:
Perseverance from surfing – Since age 12, Cheryl has learned patience and resilience through surfing, lessons she carries into her professional life.
LinkedIn as a growth engine – She views LinkedIn as essential for brand building, networking, and driving opportunities in higher education.
Brand consistency matters – Her “Don’t Tell Marketing” series highlights how off-brand colors, DIY logos, or rogue flyers can damage institutional credibility.
RFP frustrations – Many higher ed RFPs already have a pre-selected partner, wasting valuable time and resources for other vendors.
The student journey is like dating – Colleges must follow up with urgency and personalization; ignoring inquiries is the equivalent of “ghosting” a potential student
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Transcript (done with AI so only about 90% accurate):
00;00;00;11 - 00;00;19;03
John Azoni
All right. My guest today is Cheryl Broom. Cheryl is a leading expert in higher education, marketing communications with nearly two decades of higher education experience. Cheryl has worked extensive early with community colleges and universities nationwide on various projects, from successful bond passages to complex marketing campaigns. So, Cheryl, welcome to the show.
00;00;19;27 - 00;00;21;20
Cheryl Broom
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
00;00;21;28 - 00;00;37;28
John Azoni
Happy to have you. So once in a while, I like to get someone on the show that I've been following on LinkedIn and has posted some bangers that I've saved in my you know, I text myself. I have a running text thread with myself of posts that I saved from LinkedIn. So you're on there a couple of times.
00;00;37;29 - 00;00;42;25
John Azoni
So I think that's the threshold, maybe like two saves or something and then you get to come on the podcast.
00;00;42;25 - 00;00;44;07
Cheryl Broom
So yay.
00;00;45;01 - 00;01;02;03
John Azoni
So you have a series of while it's not called anything, you have a series that's like, don't telemarketing, which we'll talk about. And then you also posted one about RFP, which we'll talk about kind of a topic near and dear to any higher ed vendors heart, I think especially mine that I want to unpack kind of from the vendor perspective.
00;01;02;18 - 00;01;02;29
Cheryl Broom
Great.
00;01;03;14 - 00;01;23;14
John Azoni
So yeah, also just a disclaimer for listeners, I'm testing out a new camera. I mean, my wife's office, I don't have my normal microphone and all that stuff, and I'm testing out a new webcam that we can send to people to do virtual interviews with for for client work. And it also has like audio built into it. So I'm hoping this episode sounds good.
00;01;23;17 - 00;01;35;27
John Azoni
If it doesn't, we're going to blame Insta360 and possibly be human error. So cool. So I start off with just tell me something that people might be surprised to know about you.
00;01;36;26 - 00;01;58;10
Cheryl Broom
Okay. Well, I am from San Diego. I'm from North County. San Diego, from a beautiful little beach town called Encinitas. And something that people are still surprised about is that I am a surfer and I've been surfing since I'm 12. Surf this weekend. Yeah. So I actually I have surfing one contest in my life and I want it.
00;01;58;25 - 00;02;00;03
Cheryl Broom
That was when I was 14.
00;02;00;21 - 00;02;00;28
Cheryl Broom
Hi.
00;02;01;27 - 00;02;21;01
Cheryl Broom
So that was a long time ago. 30 plus years ago. And I think it does surprise people, eh? Because, you know, surfing now is a sport that both women and men enjoy and are really good at. But not a lot of women over a certain age are out in the water. And I learned when it was definitely a male sport.
00;02;21;01 - 00;02;25;25
Cheryl Broom
So I have something I love and I think part of kind of who I am.
00;02;26;08 - 00;02;43;23
John Azoni
That's really cool. It's been a dream of mine to learn how to surf. You don't really get if you go to either coast, either side of or up north in Michigan. If you go to any of the coasts, you could probably surf is like sort of waves if you go on the right day, but like not like California situation.
00;02;43;23 - 00;02;50;27
John Azoni
But as a skateboarder, that's been a dream of mine. So I'm envious and I admire that about you.
00;02;52;01 - 00;02;52;26
Cheryl Broom
Okay. Well, I'll.
00;02;52;26 - 00;03;15;18
Cheryl Broom
Tell you, when one thing that surfing has taught me is perseverance, because everybody sees surfers stand up and you think, that's right, that's surfing. That's the payoff. But it's the paddling and getting over the waves and learning the ocean and getting pounded and getting run over. And it's a really hard sport to learn, but it teaches you patience and pay off.
00;03;15;18 - 00;03;20;06
Cheryl Broom
And all that hard work gives you like a 45 second ride. That's amazing.
00;03;20;11 - 00;03;31;10
John Azoni
Yeah. I think the biggest thing holding me back besides geography is that like, I have this like if I get worn out and like swimming or whatever, I have this, like, drowning panic. That's.
00;03;31;24 - 00;03;33;20
Cheryl Broom
Oh, there.
00;03;33;21 - 00;03;51;08
John Azoni
Was from one time that was actually like maybe only five or six years ago that we went up north with my family and me and my wife and my sister in law decided to just swim out as far as we could go. And as I'm coming back, I'm like, I'm just getting gassed. And I'm like, But I keep like trying to touch the bottom.
00;03;51;09 - 00;04;06;25
John Azoni
I'm like, Shoot, I can't touch the bottom. And I'm like, I'll swim a little further. And I'm like, I still can't touch the bottle. And I'm like, I'm getting so panicked and winded and, and I also can't float. Like, I don't I just don't have that, like, ability to float on my back. So anyways, well.
00;04;06;25 - 00;04;10;17
Cheryl Broom
Luckily for you, a surfboard is like a giant flotation device, so.
00;04;10;20 - 00;04;11;02
Cheryl Broom
Okay.
00;04;11;12 - 00;04;26;29
Cheryl Broom
I do like sprint triathlons and I thought, I don't need I surf, I don't need to practice swimming. And I thought I was going to die swimming like, yeah, because I'm used to laying on a board and paddling and it's not the same as putting your face in the water for half an hour.
00;04;26;29 - 00;04;27;11
Cheryl Broom
Yeah.
00;04;27;24 - 00;04;30;06
John Azoni
Well, that that makes me feel better. I did. I did.
00;04;30;06 - 00;04;32;27
Cheryl Broom
I hope to see you when skateboarders make great surfers.
00;04;32;28 - 00;04;33;08
Cheryl Broom
Yeah.
00;04;33;09 - 00;04;45;24
John Azoni
Okay, cool. I picked up snowboarding pretty easily in my in my younger days, but I tried surfing anyway. Cool. Well, tell me, how. How long have you been on LinkedIn? Like, in an intentional way. What's that journey been like for you?
00;04;46;15 - 00;05;07;15
Cheryl Broom
Yeah, so I always use LinkedIn. I used to be a marketing director at a community college and LinkedIn was really just a place to put my own personal updates, like, Hey, I attended this event or and then I started working in the agency world and was working as the president of a H a marketing agency, and started a California office.
00;05;07;15 - 00;05;36;11
Cheryl Broom
And I started at that point for about seven years using LinkedIn more to talk to new clients, to post things that might be relevant to colleges. And then when I started my own company, LinkedIn really became an important platform in our own marketing. And so I try to post something useful to people weekly. You picked up on something that happened in my personal life that I ranted about and ended up going viral, which is the first time something happened like that to me.
00;05;36;11 - 00;05;58;18
Cheryl Broom
I mean, I've seen followers like my first with the first Don't tell marketing post got like 4000 likes and shares and just really resonated with people. So I use it now at four for networking. I've gotten clients from it, have conversations with people. I learn things every day. I've seen your content. John It's great. So I love it.
00;05;58;18 - 00;06;03;09
Cheryl Broom
I think it's a great it's a really important part of our own company's marketing strategy.
00;06;03;25 - 00;06;26;08
John Azoni
Yeah, that's what I look for every day. There's a part of my day where I spend on LinkedIn and every morning and one of the things that I do is like, look for new people to follow. And that's the first thing I do is go down to their posts and see if I can at a glance, tell if they have a point of view on anything, or it's just kind of like, here's this random stranger that I don't know that won an award at our school, you know?
00;06;27;13 - 00;06;27;28
Cheryl Broom
Right.
00;06;28;02 - 00;06;28;15
John Azoni
You know, there's.
00;06;29;05 - 00;06;35;02
Cheryl Broom
A point of view is so important. It's yeah, that's what people want to hear. Is somebody with an opinion.
00;06;35;20 - 00;06;47;00
John Azoni
Yeah, absolutely. So the Don't tell marketing series, I thought it was just one of them that went viral. But as I was scrolling back through to, like, freshen up on your posts, there is a couple of them that that took off.
00;06;48;01 - 00;07;11;08
Cheryl Broom
Yeah, they really did. So the first one I had taken the afternoon off because I was my son is a senior, but back in April or May when I posted the first one, he was a junior and at his school, junior parents volunteer for senior night and like my job, for example, was being the person in charge of getting all the seniors over to the photo booth.
00;07;11;22 - 00;07;41;11
Cheryl Broom
So the marketing director at my son's school, she wanted to show us some giveaways that she had made, but she'd made them using a different color than the school's official colors. And before she unveiled these giveaways, she literally said, Don't tell marketing, but I use my own color. And and I was then the marketing director and I lived through that like every department being like, we don't like the school colors.
00;07;41;11 - 00;08;01;09
Cheryl Broom
We we even had our school colors were supposed to be red and black, but over the years, everybody decided they were blue and teal and white. So our sports teams were one color, our marketing collateral was another. The buildings were painted a different color. It was like people just picked whatever they liked. Yeah, and that's what she said.
00;08;01;09 - 00;08;22;10
Cheryl Broom
She's like, I just picked the color I liked because I think that the seniors will like this color better. And I thought, you know, this would be I'm going to share this experience because this is what dilutes the brand is when everybody goes and picks their own color. So I posted like a rant and within like 2 minutes I had like 700 people like it and people started commenting.
00;08;22;20 - 00;08;27;23
Cheryl Broom
So I knew I struck a nerve. Other people out there have gone through the same thing.
00;08;27;23 - 00;08;53;21
John Azoni
Yeah, that's awesome. So you're the one that I saw was Don't tell marketing, but we made our own logo. So I gather your college that you were working at went through a logo redesign and it wasn't going well. The takeaway was, you know, they were suggesting, well, let's get a student to do it. And I thought the interesting part of that post and you can tell me the story, but was was more like, well, we don't want to put a student through the process of designing a logo.
00;08;53;21 - 00;09;00;16
John Azoni
So anyways, without me trying to regurgitate your post, tell me about that in that story. And like, what was the take away from that?
00;09;01;09 - 00;09;19;26
Cheryl Broom
Yeah. So, so after this first post blew up, I thought, you know, maybe I'm on to something here and I'm going to share some other experiences where I've literally heard people be like, Don't tell Cheryl or don't tell marketing or, you know, and sometimes they don't. Even people say those things and they don't mean it in a negative way.
00;09;19;26 - 00;09;38;17
Cheryl Broom
It's not like they want to hide it from you as a person. It's just like they know what they're doing is wrong and they don't want to be caught. It's like, don't tell Cheryl. But yeah, so there were two to different posts and the first one was about having a student design it and what happened at the college I worked at.
00;09;38;17 - 00;10;02;23
Cheryl Broom
So I was there for 12 years and different positions, but I ended up leaving as the executive director of Marketing and we went through a brand redesign and we brought in a company, an expert, because we weren't able to do it ourselves. We had a very old logo that was hand-drawn in the 1970s, like, you know, one of those logos that's drawn on a napkin.
00;10;03;04 - 00;10;32;04
Cheryl Broom
And this was in the 2000 late 2000, and we weren't able to reproduce it. While it needed to be able to be used digitally, it was too busy. The font was hand-drawn, like there were just a lot of problems with the logo and it was time. It was just time. It was time to address the logo and it was the time to dress the school colors too, because like I said, athletics was athletics was black and red and the logo was blue and teal and the buildings were blue.
00;10;32;04 - 00;10;53;00
Cheryl Broom
And I mean, there's like just a million different shades of blue. So we wanted to rebrand not just the logo but the colors. So we put together a committee. And for those of you that work in higher education, that's how you make decisions is in committee. So we had a committee, we had a committee of 12 people. So we had myself who led the committee.
00;10;53;01 - 00;11;17;18
Cheryl Broom
We had faculty, deans, students, board of trustees, Foundation members, and we hired a company, fantastic company that came in. They did research and we went through around eight logos and then we went through a second round, the second round of logos we thought were really good and we wanted to release the top three logos to the campus community.
00;11;18;01 - 00;11;45;03
Cheryl Broom
And so we did that. And as we're recording this, it's like the middle of the Cracker Barrel like logo does after that. So like what happened to Cracker Barrel happened to us, like the entire college community revolted. I mean, it was just like it was so bad that the president of the college shut off the ability to people to send emails to more than one person.
00;11;45;05 - 00;12;06;14
Cheryl Broom
Like he eliminated listservs like nobody was allowed to do, like, reply all anymore. It was just I mean, there were thousands of messages. People just hated it, hated them. And the thing I heard the most was we should have just had students do this. Why did we spend 100 grand on this company? We should have had students do it.
00;12;07;08 - 00;12;29;10
Cheryl Broom
And at the time my boss said to a faculty member who brought this to her, she said, you know, do you really want students to go through this? And I thought, this is such a good point because we think about logos, we think about marketing as the end product. And the end product is where you want to get, but there's a process to take you there.
00;12;29;16 - 00;13;00;29
Cheryl Broom
And the process is so important and the process is painful. And without the right training and experience, I wouldn't want to put a student through that process. Now it's a great opportunity for them to learn, but they're not going to be able to be to push back or to offer opinions when they have 40, 50, 60 year old faculty members screaming at them that they don't like the color or the shape or the icon or or how dare they mess with with the way even the logo.
00;13;01;25 - 00;13;13;17
Cheryl Broom
So, yeah, it's just constant. Felt like the process is so important and student can be learned through that process and can be taught a process, but they could never be the one to lead the process that comes with experience.
00;13;13;26 - 00;13;40;19
John Azoni
It really does. You develop a thick skin as a creative speaking for myself, only through getting experiencing that rejection over and over again and learning how to navigate different personalities on the team and like, yeah, just how you how you make everything work. And it's just like one of the, you know, the things for me that I still struggle with is like, you know, I'll work super, super hard.
00;13;40;19 - 00;14;01;12
John Azoni
You know, my team worked super hard on a video. We're so excited, sent to the client and they immediately start picking out like little mistakes, like, Oh, let's change this clip and put it here. And I'm like, But did you like it? Did you like it or not? Or Yeah, and I'm just like that. Even as a 40 year old, that is a challenge to navigate.
00;14;01;12 - 00;14;13;13
John Azoni
College age, John is only would be even worse at that. And also just more like I think about how I was in college just a lot more like defiant I think.
00;14;14;05 - 00;14;14;09
Cheryl Broom
Yeah.
00;14;14;11 - 00;14;22;07
John Azoni
And for a while you would of like stood up, you know, inappropriately to what I thought were bad ideas or bad, bad feedback.
00;14;22;25 - 00;14;42;07
Cheryl Broom
So I know. And also like on the flip side, what if faculty sugarcoat it to students because they don't want to hurt them? I mean, they're totally fine throwing me under the bus and attacking a professional company. Right? But maybe they wouldn't. They would probably hopefully be a little kinder to students and then their voices wouldn't be heard.
00;14;42;07 - 00;15;09;07
Cheryl Broom
And I mean, what I've learned over the years through, you know, working with grad com, where we do branding for community colleges is the first round people hate. They just hate it. Like I've never had a logo or a brand redesign where the first iteration was like, We love everything about it. Let's go. Part of the process is learning what people don't like and they can't vocalize that until they see something they don't like.
00;15;09;07 - 00;15;16;05
Cheryl Broom
And then you can be like, okay, what don't you like? What don't you want to see? And that's invaluable. That's just part of the process.
00;15;16;18 - 00;15;36;26
John Azoni
Yeah, we encounter that all the time. It's like people you want to be like, Well, I wish you would have told me a month ago when we were planning this. Yeah, but then I'm like, Do you really think that they know what they want until they see it? Like, Oh, you just don't know what you don't like until you see something that has your brand's name on it.
00;15;36;26 - 00;15;40;19
John Azoni
It's representing your brand and you have the alarm bells go off for you.
00;15;41;20 - 00;16;01;09
Cheryl Broom
And I mean, you have a creative brief. We use creative briefs and we one of the questions we've integrated on our creative brief is like on a scale of 1 to 10, how conservative are you? Like with one being the most conservative and ten being I don't remember the end of that scale, but it's like, Go Wild, We're up for anything, you know?
00;16;01;09 - 00;16;14;22
Cheryl Broom
And the colleges, while we say like, Oh, we're a seven, and then we'll give them a seven and they're like, Oh, I think we answer that question wrong. We're like a two. You need to dial it back. You need to be more conservative.
00;16;14;22 - 00;16;29;28
John Azoni
So I need to start asking that question because that's what I tend to push a little less conservative, you know, and the little more like, I don't know, like irreverent or personality driven, you know, the videos that we create and, you know, schools are usually walking me back a little bit.
00;16;30;29 - 00;16;31;13
Cheryl Broom
And well.
00;16;31;17 - 00;16;40;20
Cheryl Broom
It's actually really funny, too, because you can be like, well, you you said in the creative brief we could push the envelope and then they'll always laugh and be like, Yeah, I guess we didn't mean that.
00;16;41;22 - 00;16;59;11
John Azoni
I wanted to push this to a ten, but you said seven. So this is Yeah. So we said, you know, we'll just have a student design it or I think I've seen some other posts of yours where or at least one other post where it was like, Oh, we'll just design our own flier.
00;16;59;11 - 00;17;05;24
Cheryl Broom
Or Yeah, we'll do it. And I, Oh yeah, how we design our own flier. Yeah. And that was another one that people really, really liked.
00;17;06;01 - 00;17;06;15
John Azoni
So how do.
00;17;06;15 - 00;17;06;29
Cheryl Broom
You yeah.
00;17;07;04 - 00;17;34;03
John Azoni
How do you navigate or how do you suggest marketers navigate that delicate balance of like, here's the brand standards, but here's also like, we don't have time to be like short order cooks for every project that comes, that every request that comes through our inboxes. So like how do you decide how to equip another department that's requesting this to create something they're sell themselves within brand standards?
00;17;34;03 - 00;17;40;08
John Azoni
Or do you do not do that? You just say, we're just going to bite the bullet and do everything or no.
00;17;40;08 - 00;18;07;21
Cheryl Broom
And the interesting part of that post, So just a little backstory on that post as I when I was again, was that Mary Koester When I was the marketing director, we had a student event and to market it on campus, somebody it was like a Taco Tuesday event had drawn a taco at the sombrero and a mustache and guns like it was like gun touting taco and all.
00;18;08;02 - 00;18;25;29
Cheryl Broom
Yeah, and printed it out and put it everywhere on campus. I mean, I was like, bathroom stall and this poster was everywhere. And somebody one a faculty member came to the president's office and was so mad because it was very stereotypical and she thought that we did it, that the marketing department did it. I hadn't even seen it.
00;18;25;29 - 00;18;47;26
Cheryl Broom
Like it didn't make its way into the administration bathroom. Like, I didn't see it. So you know that the president, who was Hispanic actually found it to be comical but understood 100% why it was inappropriate. And it was a good learning lesson for the school. Like this is why we should be following like somebody should have an eye on this.
00;18;47;26 - 00;19;08;09
Cheryl Broom
Like you can make your own flier, but can you run it by Sheryl? Can you run it by her department just really quick, Have somebody else look at it just to see if you've if you've missed something or it's inappropriate. And that, by the way, that flier was made by a student. So that's another example why you might not always want students right to make things because they don't have the experience to know what could be offensive.
00;19;08;27 - 00;19;42;03
Cheryl Broom
So anyway, that's that was touting Taco. But back to your question. An interesting thing I saw on a couple of my posts was people saying, well, we went to our marketing department. It took them three months or I have an event like the next week and nobody in marketing even emailed me back. And I get it because the marketing department is busy and people who aren't creators don't have a grasp on how long things can take right up, how much time and thought and energy and creativity go into something as simple as a flier.
00;19;42;22 - 00;20;09;06
Cheryl Broom
And if they have other priorities, especially if they're working in the President's office and report to the President who's always going to take priority over anything, it's hard for them to to get things done on time. So when I was answering people on LinkedIn and what we do as a company is help make templates, guidelines, shared resources, whether that's photo libraries, logo libraries, Canva templates.
00;20;09;06 - 00;20;30;19
Cheryl Broom
I mean, we've helped clients fully build out canvas suites where there's easy templates where people can go be creative, but do them within the confines of of the brand. And then training and the continual training is so necessary. And I think colleges skip out on this because they might have done a brand training one semester and they're like, Oh, we did that two years ago.
00;20;30;29 - 00;20;51;26
Cheryl Broom
But there's always new students. They would love to hear about the brand. People love to talk about marketing. I mean, branding and marketing is popular. Like you could give a workshop every semester to students and faculty and people will show up for it. They love talking about it. And we consume marketing. We consume brand. You should be teaching.
00;20;51;26 - 00;21;10;26
Cheryl Broom
You should be a teacher, a partner, a collaborator. I think the frustration with marketing is when you are the the no sayer, not the naysayer, you're the no sayer When you say no all the time or I'm too busy, you become the enemy on campus. So just find a way to support people and train them and educate them.
00;21;11;13 - 00;21;15;15
Cheryl Broom
That's going to help. I think, the whole brand as a whole and help your standing on campus.
00;21;15;24 - 00;21;31;07
John Azoni
Yeah, that's great. Okay, let's talk about my favorite subject, Garfield's. So you at your post? I'm pulling it up here. Top four things I hate about the RFP process. I'll list them off and then we can kind of go.
00;21;31;08 - 00;21;31;16
Cheryl Broom
Okay.
00;21;31;16 - 00;21;46;24
John Azoni
Great. All right. So the pre picked partner, the budget was brainstorm, the freebie fishing RFP and the procurement playbook RFP. So so give me your overall thoughts on higher ed RFP and then tell me about the woes of the three picked partner.
00;21;47;19 - 00;21;52;04
Cheryl Broom
So I think I posted this one after I lost an RFP.
00;21;52;04 - 00;21;53;16
John Azoni
So naturally that means.
00;21;53;22 - 00;22;16;05
Cheryl Broom
These are these we've actually made a rule at grade com that we we, I can't say it's always because I've broken this rule as the CEO. The CEO is by the way, for those listening who aren't CEOs, they break all the rules. We break all the rules that we make like we're the worst ones. But absolutely, we absolutely like we made this rule.
00;22;16;05 - 00;22;34;17
Cheryl Broom
We're going to break it. It's my rule. I'm allowed to break it, but we only respond to RFP if we've gotten a personal invitation, because because of these four things and the first one being the biggest one, which is the prefix partner and in higher education, especially now, we don't work with private institutions, we only work with the public.
00;22;34;17 - 00;22;55;23
Cheryl Broom
We have worked with some four year colleges and universities, but they're public as well. And the majority I mean, 99% of our clients are community colleges. So they are public and they are required by law to go out to bid when a contract ends. And at certain over over a certain dollar amount, they have to bid it out and they're constricted by the laws of their state.
00;22;56;20 - 00;23;22;00
Cheryl Broom
But there are usually incumbents, and usually the incumbents have done a pretty good job. And usually when there is an incumbent, that is who the college is going to go with and you will see questions in the Q&A, do you have an incumbent? Are you happy with the incumbent? Is the incumbent going to bid? Why are you going out to bet like and purchasing more like sideline these questions?
00;23;22;00 - 00;23;44;18
Cheryl Broom
And it just is infuriating because it takes I mean, it could take 40 hours at least to respond to some of these fees. And they already know that they're going to rehire who they're working with. And it's a waste of our time, the college's time, the committee's time, the incumbents time. And I've been the incumbent over and over and over and over.
00;23;45;03 - 00;24;04;08
Cheryl Broom
I saw it's really, really frustrating. And I just wish there was a little bit more honesty so that we can make better decisions for our company and for our time. Like if you have an incumbent and the relationship has been positive, I would like to know that before I invest thousands of dollars and hours into answering your RFP.
00;24;04;12 - 00;24;22;29
John Azoni
So yeah, that's a good happy medium because as a vendor I think about that too. I've been on both sides where it was clear they had a preferred partner when I lost an RFP and then I've one RFP is where they told me ahead of time, like we have your proposal, we're going with you. We have to just do this sidestep RFP process.
00;24;22;29 - 00;24;36;15
John Azoni
And I'm like, I feel bad for anyone that's participating in that. And but I always think like, well, what would the alternative be? Because anyone that says, like, you know, an RFP that says we've already got someone that we like, then who's going to who would.
00;24;36;15 - 00;25;00;19
Cheryl Broom
Apply now and I mean, that's why that's why it's so frustrating because then this is Lee. It's not the college's fault. It's the state has to do this. And here in California, where we're located, where we're headquartered, the bid limit, I think, is about $108,000, which is great because marketing is expensive. And so, you know, $100,000, you don't have to go to bed.
00;25;01;00 - 00;25;21;05
Cheryl Broom
And I find that there are less our fees in California because of that rule. We have a contract with the Hawaii System of Community Colleges. They asked to go out to bid for $5,000. So, I mean, they're bidding out like copy paper. Like that's that's where it gets to be ridiculous. So I don't know if I could change it state by state.
00;25;21;05 - 00;25;25;29
Cheryl Broom
I'd be like, let's raise the bid limit to a threshold that makes sense. You know, one.
00;25;25;29 - 00;25;40;00
John Azoni
Hundred is big. A lot of schools, I mean, that I've encountered and it's like ten, you know, which is like not a small number, but still not enough to really bring on a third party vendor that you're going to That's not like a single freelancer.
00;25;41;05 - 00;25;49;16
Cheryl Broom
Yeah. And for you, if they're doing video and then they want, you know, the videos to be marketed on YouTube like that's, that's way past thousand now. Yeah. Now.
00;25;49;18 - 00;26;01;09
John Azoni
So Yeah. But that's a good, that's a good thing I think for marketers to know and I know every school is different, but maybe someone from purchasing is watching this and or listening to this. But I would.
00;26;01;09 - 00;26;01;28
Cheryl Broom
Love that.
00;26;01;28 - 00;26;03;02
Cheryl Broom
Answer the question.
00;26;03;02 - 00;26;18;16
John Azoni
If, if they're happy with the vendor, that's I feel like that's enough of a like you're still staying in the gray area but you're giving someone a chance to like, I'm going to make you happier with me with my bid. And then that's on you. If you want to spend that time, you know, shooting for the moon.
00;26;19;13 - 00;26;41;03
Cheryl Broom
And, you know, some states also have collective purchasing agreements. So if you go through like a states process, you can be on a preferred vendor list and then colleges can piggyback off of that. And those have been great to be a part of because then we can say to colleges, Hey, we've been vetted by the chancellor's office, we're on a preferred vendors list, you can piggyback off their contract.
00;26;41;03 - 00;26;56;27
Cheryl Broom
And so we've done that with a couple colleges who have been like, fantastic, we don't want to do an RFP, we are going to do this piggybacking. And then there have been other colleges where we're the incumbent. We're like, Hey, we just got accepted. You don't have to bed and purchase things like, Well, we're going to bid anyway.
00;26;57;04 - 00;27;04;01
Cheryl Broom
That's why why like, yeah, it saves everybody time to do it this way. So yeah.
00;27;04;04 - 00;27;04;25
Cheryl Broom
Yeah.
00;27;04;25 - 00;27;08;06
John Azoni
So the budget, let's brainstorm. What's been your experience with that?
00;27;08;26 - 00;27;35;15
Cheryl Broom
So this is another hard pass for us, unless it's our current client, we will not do spec creative. Now the old agency I work for would do this, and so what would happen is RFP would want to see creative as part of your RFP and RCO would stop all work across the whole company. Client work is soft, everybody's on deck.
00;27;35;15 - 00;27;56;22
Cheryl Broom
We're now pumping out. We don't even know the client. We don't know anything about them. We haven't done research and all of a sudden we're doing designs and you know, I, I sat through one and interviewed one at that old company where they canceled the RFP after the interviews. And what do you think happened to all that design work that they got from the 15 marketing companies who responded?
00;27;56;29 - 00;28;11;07
Cheryl Broom
You know, that becomes their property and you sign that away in the RFP. So that's a huge red flag for me is when they're asking you to do creative in a response to an RFP, my company now Groupon, we will pass on that.
00;28;11;18 - 00;28;11;27
John Azoni
Yeah.
00;28;12;09 - 00;28;26;05
Cheryl Broom
We want to know who you are. We want to understand your pain points. We want to talk to your students, do some research. We don't want to just pump out a bunch of ideas. You know, that that we don't know if you're going to like or if they're even going to solve your problem.
00;28;26;05 - 00;28;46;12
John Azoni
So yeah, and it's tough for or for vendors like us where the, you know, a lot of times like video vendors and maybe it's maybe it's true too for like design or branding vendors or whatever. It's, it's not like a real productized industry where you can say like, I can give you a video and it's going to cost this much.
00;28;47;11 - 00;29;13;02
John Azoni
What you're really asking when you don't have a budget that you're communicating on the RFP is, Hey, vendor, how much does I don't know, cost? And and yet nobody knows how to respond to that because you could, you know, if we had our way of doing this, we might have a 20 person crew, you know, what am I going to bother budgeting for a 20 person crew when you have the budget for one freelancer?
00;29;14;05 - 00;29;33;11
Cheryl Broom
Yeah. And I guess that's what I called on LinkedIn. I called the budgeting Brainstorm. And then the whole like spec creative was my freebie freebie fishing. Yeah. And the budget fit freebie fishing and the budget was brainstormed. You're right. Because I mean, you have a great such a great business because you're so niche, your niche in higher ed and then your niche and video.
00;29;33;11 - 00;29;54;01
Cheryl Broom
So like fantastic like vertical and horizontal nations, you're, you're in a great spot We're broader so we'll do, we'll do paid marketing, we'll do branding, we will do logos and you know, they'll, they'll be like, we don't have a budget like and then it's like, well, you could do I mean, we want to hear what you think our budget should be like.
00;29;54;01 - 00;30;14;08
Cheryl Broom
Well, I think your budget should be $1,000,000. Yeah, but I know you don't have it right. So, you know, now they're looking for strategy and just like the the freebie fishing where they're looking for spec creative, a lot of these are our fees are asking us to develop strategy for them in the RFP and that's our secret sauce.
00;30;14;08 - 00;30;35;03
Cheryl Broom
Our strategy is what makes us special. And without a budget, we're just throwing things to the wall and hoping that you like something, that something is going to stick. Yeah, they're want to see strategy. And I think I love our feeds that look at your capability and your case studies and your process and big on process. How do you get us to this point?
00;30;35;03 - 00;30;55;24
Cheryl Broom
How do you get to know us? Those are the questions I think that they should be evaluating in the RFP, not give us all you're thinking for four budgets. I've had five budgets given an RFP is like, give us your strategy for 100,000, 200,000, 300,000, 400,000. I have to you know, and I'm going to go get paid for this.
00;30;56;02 - 00;30;57;04
Cheryl Broom
I'm doing this for free.
00;30;57;25 - 00;30;59;19
Cheryl Broom
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00;30;59;19 - 00;31;27;16
John Azoni
I definitely feel that because the art piece that I've responded to has had marketing as part of the conversation. So I say this to marketers listening to this episode, even any project, not even just an RFP, like give any sort of range is more helpful than the nothing. Because what I end up having to do then, because, you know, a lot of times like when we're doing custom, custom work, you know, I'll be like, Hey, and it's true.
00;31;27;17 - 00;31;55;24
John Azoni
Like we've done work like this for, you know, $60,000. We've done work like this for $20,000. Like if I came to you and said this was going to be $40,000, what would you say? Then you can kind of see their body language like, boom, that's, you know, and then I can kind of walk them down. And I've had success doing that with people where we get, okay, we're we're somewhere in the 10 to 20 range, which is what I wish you would have told me to begin with.
00;31;55;24 - 00;32;18;05
Cheryl Broom
Yeah, I mean, a range is great. Like, hey, we think we, we don't want to spend more than 40,000 on this marketing campaign. Great. Okay, For 40,000, I can tell you where your dollars are going to go the furthest. Yeah. No. So just throwing out a whole bunch of numbers are no numbers at all. Isn't going to help you or, or make your your project successful.
00;32;18;14 - 00;32;19;13
John Azoni
Yeah. What I don't.
00;32;19;17 - 00;32;30;03
Cheryl Broom
She was in an interview for an hour fee and they asked they had a budget and then they asked what do you think about our budget? And I was like, Well, it could be more. It can always be more.
00;32;30;08 - 00;32;30;18
Cheryl Broom
Yeah.
00;32;31;08 - 00;32;37;16
Cheryl Broom
That's what I think about your budget. Now is be more. But, but you have a budget you're working with and so let's work with what you have.
00;32;38;08 - 00;33;10;08
John Azoni
Yeah. What I don't like because when I hire freelancers and I say like, here's the budget. Well, a lot of times when I'm hiring people, it's a very like cut and dry thing. Like this thing would cost this much. But like I see video companies doing this where it's like, Well, if you're budget is this, then we're going to give you we're going to we're going to quote you at that number where it's kind of like you have to know that like the the discomfort on the other side is that I don't want to give them the top of my budget because then they will max it out.
00;33;10;08 - 00;33;29;04
John Azoni
What if they can do something cool for for less? And so we always in those situations, try to try to strike a balance and say, hey, we're going to give you we're going to give you an option that's under your budget, at your budget. And then here's like if we're shooting for the moon and you want to you want to spend more money, here's what that could look like.
00;33;29;16 - 00;33;54;07
John Azoni
And a lot of times they will choose the top one. Yeah, because they're like, Oh, I see what more money gets us. It looks like this, but like, you can't really ask in an RFP situation for three different strategies like that. It's it's, it's a little different when it's so time intensive to when you're working directly with the client and you can have a back and forth.
00;33;54;26 - 00;34;16;00
John Azoni
That's one thing to be able to send options, but when it's like this, hands off, like submit a question and we're going to answer you in three weeks on a spreadsheet. You know, with all the other answers, it's harder to give you options in that sort of format. So tell me about the procurement playbook. This one I'm less familiar with, but maybe when you explain, I will be familiar with it.
00;34;17;05 - 00;34;40;20
Cheryl Broom
This is just like insane amount of forms or you can tell that that Procurement wrote the RFP and didn't have anybody weigh in. So things don't make sense at all. Like what they're asking for. You're like, Hmm, I don't understand what they're asking for. Or like, we've had our fees where we've had to get like three different forms notarized.
00;34;40;20 - 00;35;11;23
Cheryl Broom
We're filling out like things like, do we subcontract with Iran or, you know, like attach your X, Y, Z policies where I've had to attach employee handbooks. I'm like, who is even looking at this? Like, is this necessary? It doesn't make sense for industry. Like we had one RFP that they wanted us to have sexual molestation insurance works and we're like, You're a college and we're not even coming on campus.
00;35;11;23 - 00;35;34;16
Cheryl Broom
Like, I don't and nobody want insurance. I couldn't even respond to the RFP because we call our insurance company. They're like, we don't do that. Like, we don't even heard of that. And it turns out it's for like K-12 districts. If a like a videographer came and was going to video children and then we you know, we weren't able to submit that because we couldn't get proof that we had this random insurance which wasn't even applicable to to doing digital marketing.
00;35;34;16 - 00;35;39;27
Cheryl Broom
But it was stuck in there because someone in procurement put it in there. So it's like random thing.
00;35;39;27 - 00;35;59;24
John Azoni
So yeah, I've been through that and in the RFP process I will tolerate it in the vendor process if I'm if I'm applying to be a vendor and we have a job and I'm just have to go through this formality to get unveiled, to be able to be approved by purchasing to do this job, that they are only looking at me for, I'll do that.
00;35;59;24 - 00;36;08;12
John Azoni
And I've had to I've had to go through some pretty ridiculous vendor onboarding processes where it's like they're asking for like, what I'm.
00;36;08;22 - 00;36;09;11
Cheryl Broom
Hey.
00;36;10;01 - 00;36;19;17
John Azoni
Did you in on what specific date did you submit your business to be in an official business with the state of Michigan or whatever? I'm like, I know.
00;36;19;25 - 00;36;21;22
Cheryl Broom
I don't know.
00;36;22;20 - 00;36;23;11
John Azoni
Where. I'm like.
00;36;23;11 - 00;36;25;02
Cheryl Broom
I hope I didn't.
00;36;25;04 - 00;36;26;14
John Azoni
Get it on my calendar.
00;36;27;12 - 00;36;56;10
Cheryl Broom
Yeah, So, well, in a perfect world, I mean, I understand the need for an RFP, but if my advice to purchasing a marketing department is to have a budget or arrange, like you said, even a nice range, to be clear with what you're asking for, to be honest about the role of the incumbent and to really try to measure some of these process and past projects rather than forcing them to to make a bunch of stuff that you might not even like.
00;36;56;10 - 00;37;08;29
Cheryl Broom
So just be respectful, like we're small. Most of us are small companies. You know, most of our agencies in higher ed or 30 employees or under. And this is a lot big time crunch for us.
00;37;08;29 - 00;37;09;24
Cheryl Broom
So, yeah.
00;37;10;00 - 00;37;36;23
John Azoni
And it's interesting to hear you say what you will pass on, because I think that's really important for marketing departments to know if you're hiring, if you're doing a bidding out for a marketing related vendor, if you're causing a bunch of good people to pass on, your are you, then you're going to get the bottom of the barrel that wants just any opportunity and will willingly submit to all of these demands to hopefully get a job.
00;37;36;23 - 00;38;00;07
John Azoni
And the type of business that's going to do that is usually pretty young and inexperienced and, you know, that might reflect on the quality of work guarantees. But but it is helpful, I think, for for marketers, too, to know that going into this, that these are some definite things we have to make sure we address in RFP or else we might not get good candidates to get in the first place.
00;38;00;16 - 00;38;00;25
Cheryl Broom
100.
00;38;00;25 - 00;38;19;09
Cheryl Broom
Percent. I actually had a college and I was at a conference and they came to me and they said, Hey, we just we went out to bid last year and you never responded. Why didn't you bid? And I was like, let me let me look back at my notes. And I went back and looked at their bid and I said, Oh, this is why I didn't bed.
00;38;19;09 - 00;38;40;25
Cheryl Broom
And I gave them, you know, pretty much these four examples. You wanted spec creative, you didn't have a budget and I knew you had an income, but they're like, Well, we we hated our incumbent. And I'm like, Yeah, but we ask that question to procurement and nobody answered. They wouldn't they didn't answer honestly. They just said, Yeah, we have an incumbent and that was it.
00;38;41;12 - 00;38;57;10
John Azoni
So yeah, no. So you got an e-book out. I want to switch switch gears here comparing student recruitment to online dating. So tell us about that. Tell us about the book and tell me what's one of your favorite parallels between dating and higher ed marketing?
00;38;58;05 - 00;39;22;19
Cheryl Broom
Yeah, sure. So, yeah, my book is it parallels online dating with community college marketing and really focuses on why it's failing. So why your community college marketing is failing. It's lessons from online dating. And I have a lot of fun examples in there. I met my husband online, so I did a lot of online dating about 15 years ago and learned a lot of lessons in that process.
00;39;22;19 - 00;39;42;24
Cheryl Broom
And I think the one that I liked the most about in the book was just this example of ghosting. So, you know, we do a lot of marketing. We booked $4 million worth of paid digital marketing last year and another like million and a half and traditional marketing. And so we're booking a lot of money, spinning a lot of money, getting people interested in the college.
00;39;43;03 - 00;40;04;14
Cheryl Broom
But then what happens is they're filling out forms or filling out applications and then they never hear back the college ghosts them. And that's like, you know, you're you're online dating, you're chatting with someone, you're texting you a phone call, maybe even have a first date. And then all of a sudden it's like crickets. You think it's all going well, You think, you know, you hit it off yet Chemistry.
00;40;04;14 - 00;40;24;28
Cheryl Broom
Yeah. And you never hear anything. And you call and you leave message and you text and it's just crickets. It's just silence. And that happens so often especially in community colleges, we work with you. You spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of getting these students to your front door, and then nobody pays attention to them once they're there.
00;40;25;11 - 00;40;37;27
John Azoni
Yeah. Oh, man, I love those second date updates on the radio. And you've heard them. One called in like the day went great, but she didn't call me back. And then it's some weird reason why.
00;40;38;21 - 00;40;39;06
Cheryl Broom
You know.
00;40;39;27 - 00;40;42;11
John Azoni
The guy did something really creepy or something like.
00;40;42;25 - 00;41;01;06
Cheryl Broom
Right that he doesn't even know. Yeah, right. And our students were doing what I talk about in the e-book, which, by the way, is free. So if anybody wants a copy of it, they can just go to my website Homecoming. There's a dropdown and you can just download it. It's really easy to read because I don't have a lot of time.
00;41;01;06 - 00;41;23;25
Cheryl Broom
I know marketers don't like 60 pages, but you know, we are dating students like we we are dating them. We're higher. Ed is a big decision. There's it's costly, there's opportunity cost. You are away from your family. You have to you know balance work and kids and classes and it's a huge decision. You're not just buying a car.
00;41;23;25 - 00;41;43;19
Cheryl Broom
So they want to date the college. They want to see if someone's going to be there to answer the phone, to answer my questions, to be there for me. And, you know, when you're not, that's a big red flag. Yeah, I talk about red flags. That's another fun part of the book is like read red flags you find when dating a partner are pretty common in colleges too.
00;41;43;26 - 00;41;56;15
John Azoni
Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I like the dating analogy. You know, with marketing in general, you know, just the idea that, like, even cold outreach, it's like you wouldn't just go up to someone at a party and be like, Hey, do you want to get married?
00;41;57;03 - 00;41;58;13
Cheryl Broom
And that. Yeah, exactly.
00;41;58;24 - 00;41;59;12
Cheryl Broom
I think a lot.
00;41;59;12 - 00;42;03;06
John Azoni
Of that's like, that's like half the emails in my inbox right now.
00;42;04;03 - 00;42;25;10
Cheryl Broom
Yes, I have my, I presented to a board of trustees a couple of months ago and he was like, I want to see I have digital ad click through an application, click through submission and go all the way to enrollment. Like he wants attribution from one ad and I'm like, It doesn't work that way. Like it doesn't you don't see an ad and decide to go to college right then.
00;42;25;17 - 00;42;40;08
Cheryl Broom
Like now, it takes time, it takes dating. They're going to call you, they're going to have questions. They're going to need to for financial aid forms. You can't attach to that type of attribution. You don't get married to somebody because you see their match profile without ever meeting them now.
00;42;40;08 - 00;42;51;17
John Azoni
So they're so if you could snap your fingers and change one thing about the the student journey here that most colleges struggle with, maybe it's something you just said, but what would it be?
00;42;51;17 - 00;43;17;21
Cheryl Broom
Well, it really would be this idea of of treating every student, you know, as super important that personalization. And I think that's most of the colleges I'm working with want to get there. But maybe they're understaffed or they don't have the right processes. But I think marketing usually is doing a really good job and like their brand is great, their videos are great, their strategies good, and then it just falls apart.
00;43;17;22 - 00;43;40;05
Cheryl Broom
We do a lot of secret shopping projects where we actually will send in students and have them try to apply and enroll and get information and we'll document that process. And it's shocking. We had one college or a student called 28 times and left 28 voicemails with admissions and did not get one callback. Not one actually made the Dean cry when I presented it.
00;43;40;05 - 00;44;02;06
Cheryl Broom
It was painful. And it's like, you know, this is why your enrollments down here, It's not your marketing department. Yeah, no, it's it's just people can't get their questions answered or the application itself is cumbersome. So people need to be introspective and look at their processes and and figure out how they can support students to make this Journey a little easier, a little less painful.
00;44;02;28 - 00;44;29;17
John Azoni
Yeah, that's. That's so important. The more we work with schools on video strategy, the more we see that partnership between admissions or student affairs and marketing is so important. And like, everything is, you know, a lot a lot of it is relying on emails and it's like, okay, but if those so whatever video someone creates for you isn't going to do anything, if that's a terrible email that that's going into.
00;44;29;25 - 00;44;48;16
John Azoni
Like, you know, we had, we worked with one school recently where they're like, Yeah, most of our mark, you know, they're doing all this great work at the top of the funnel and they're like, But as soon as someone gives a signal, like they fill out an RFI or something like that, we don't know what happens to them after that because Student Affairs takes over.
00;44;48;26 - 00;45;01;11
John Azoni
And I imagine that's that's pretty common. But it's like if you're just sending people into a black box where you don't know what if or how they're coming out, the other side, that's a huge problem that's going to reflect on the marketing team.
00;45;02;12 - 00;45;25;10
Cheryl Broom
100%. We had one college that we did. They hired us to do five secret shoppers over five semesters. So each semester we had a different student. We didn't were not able to actually enroll until the fifth super shopper experience. So we do a six week window. Six community colleges are usually like students are like, okay, I'm going back to college this fall.
00;45;25;10 - 00;45;42;00
Cheryl Broom
And they have like there's six weeks we're going to apply, we're going to do financial aid, We're going to try to enroll in a class four times. It failed. And it was just and every time we do this presentation to student services and the president and the president would be like, I thought we fix this. I thought we fix this.
00;45;42;17 - 00;46;11;24
Cheryl Broom
You know, And it's it's like this is this is the problem. It's not marketing. It's not it's not that it's not that top of the funnel they're getting people in. And if you look at your application to enrollment yields, most community colleges only enroll 40 to 50% of their applicants. So what's happening now? The other 50% of their applicants, you know, some probably decide they don't want to go back, but there's a probably a big portion of them that weren't able to get the support they needed in time.
00;46;12;12 - 00;46;15;17
Cheryl Broom
And how can you support those students?
00;46;15;27 - 00;46;41;05
John Azoni
Yeah, I think it's yeah that's a really good it's I gather you offer that as a service secret shopping so that's awesome because I think that we are just so like blind to we've been in an environment long enough like, like, I don't know. I went into a restaurant recently with my family and like, we were sat in a booth and like, on the booth was like dust and like, stray hairs, like, on the windowsill.
00;46;41;10 - 00;46;43;03
Cheryl Broom
Oh, yeah. And I'm just like.
00;46;43;27 - 00;46;54;04
John Azoni
You probably are wiping down the table. They're probably doing a great job, but they're probably not coming in for the first time from a customer perspective and seeing what else is gross, you.
00;46;54;04 - 00;46;55;20
Cheryl Broom
Know, right, right.
00;46;57;10 - 00;47;08;16
Cheryl Broom
So and think of it like one bad thing, Like if you got a hair in your food, like you're not going to go back to that restaurant Like it can take one bad experience to ruin it for you.
00;47;08;24 - 00;47;09;03
Cheryl Broom
Yeah.
00;47;09;23 - 00;47;16;09
John Azoni
I did get a here in my burger at McDonald's and I still go back to it.
00;47;16;09 - 00;47;16;20
Cheryl Broom
Now.
00;47;17;13 - 00;47;22;17
John Azoni
McDonald's has a lot of leeway with me. Literally.
00;47;22;27 - 00;47;27;00
Cheryl Broom
I don't think I would go back. Oh, yeah. I don't think I could go back.
00;47;27;20 - 00;47;31;18
John Azoni
I don't think I'd go back to that location. But you know, that I'm still.
00;47;31;23 - 00;47;36;20
Cheryl Broom
Well, you're you're a true customer. You're like everybody's dream customer.
00;47;36;22 - 00;47;37;01
Cheryl Broom
Yeah.
00;47;38;10 - 00;47;45;00
Cheryl Broom
That could be their testimonial. I got a hair in my food and I still come back.
00;47;45;00 - 00;47;49;27
John Azoni
Well, cool. Super great having you. Tell us about Gatcombe before you go and where can people connect with you guys?
00;47;50;20 - 00;48;15;03
Cheryl Broom
Yeah, well, grad com we are a higher education marketing agency that specializes in community college marketing and you can learn about us at grad com ecom. And then of course I'm on LinkedIn. That's where John and I connected and I love to connect to new people on LinkedIn. So please hit me up there. It's just. Cheryl Broom Yeah, I'd love to love to have some new friends.
00;48;15;22 - 00;48;18;16
John Azoni
Awesome. Super great talking to you. Thanks for coming on the show.
00;48;19;07 - 00;48;20;13
Cheryl Broom
Well, thank you so much.
