Higher Ed Storytelling University

00:00:00:03 - 00:00:23:17
John Azoni
All right. Well, today we're talking all about marketing to adult students or nontraditional learners. And here to share his personal testimony, having been an adult learner himself and experiencing some highs and lows is Chris Raposo. Chris leads the marketing efforts at Hannan Hill and EdTech Company based in Atlanta, Georgia. He was born and raised in Germany, moved to the U.S. at the age of 22.

00:00:24:08 - 00:00:47:20
John Azoni
Chris graduated as a nontraditional adult learner from University of Florida, and evangelize is the positive impact a degree from a higher ed institution can make? He aims to spread the word about the benefits of attracting nontraditional students to higher ed campuses to mitigate the looming demographic enrollment cliff. And Chris is a member of the American Marketing Association and the podcast host of the Education Marketing Leader.

00:00:48:10 - 00:00:50:04
John Azoni
Well, Chris, welcome to the show, man.

00:00:50:18 - 00:00:56:12
Chris Rapozo
Well, thanks, John. Happy to be here. It's kind of weird being on the other side of the mic and being asked the questions.

00:00:58:01 - 00:01:24:16
John Azoni
I know it's it's hard for me too. I'm getting used to it the more podcasts, I guess, on, but it's never easy. I'm way more comfortable asking the questions, say. Yeah, well, so let's see. So we're talking about marketing too, to nontraditional students today. Let's kick things off. I like to ask our guests something a little like on a personal note, what is something that people would be surprised to know about you?

00:01:25:14 - 00:01:54:07
Chris Rapozo
So as you just mentioned in the intro, I am originally from Germany. I was born and raised in Germany, but I did play American football in Germany. So there's teams spread out the country of Germany that have some American football teams. Some of you may be familiar with NFL Europe. I wasn't anywhere near that league, but wherever there was an army or military base from the Americans, there was usually some American influence.

00:01:54:21 - 00:02:23:13
Chris Rapozo
And I played American football for about ten years in Germany, and as an adult, between 18 and 22, I play for an adult league and I had a I had a pretty good season. So my coach sent me to try out for the national team, for the German national American football team in Frankfurt, Germany. So I don't really talk about that a lot, but that's something people usually don't know about me, that I played American football in Germany.

00:02:24:00 - 00:02:26:01
John Azoni
That's really cool. What position did you play?

00:02:26:19 - 00:02:32:02
Chris Rapozo
So the first two years I played quarterback and then that's two years I played wide receiver.

00:02:32:16 - 00:02:34:07
John Azoni
All right. So you're like the guy.

00:02:34:13 - 00:02:45:11
Chris Rapozo
I mean, the guy. Yeah, they gave me that. They gave me the keys to the team. So I had a good arm. That's the only excuse why they put me on the on the quarterback position.

00:02:46:07 - 00:02:52:03
John Azoni
That's really interesting. I would not have picked the as a football player, but maybe I.

00:02:52:10 - 00:02:55:02
Chris Rapozo
Was about £60 heavier than.

00:02:57:09 - 00:03:20:22
John Azoni
Well, cool. So you just had a a webinar last week that I attended with. Keri Phillips Dr. Keri Phillips And it went really great and that was all about the, the looming enrollment cliff and you had a little segment on there just kind of sharing your personal journey. So for people that weren't on that webinar, tell us a little bit about, you know, your journey with with higher education.

00:03:22:02 - 00:03:49:10
Chris Rapozo
Yeah, so higher education was never the plan in the beginning. When I was raised in Germany, I was raised by a single mom who worked all the time in a family business. So education wasn't a priority in our family. You know, it was like, keep the business going, make sure there's going to be food on the table. So since she worked all the time, which I cannot fault her, I have two kids of my own, you know, And if you if you're a single parent, you I'm not a single parent.

00:03:49:10 - 00:04:11:11
Chris Rapozo
But if you were if I were a single parent, I would do everything in my power to provide for my kids. And during that time, things kind of fell to the wayside as it came to my to my education, to homework. So I barely made it through high school. And then I went to the to a trade school in Germany because I couldn't get into university with the grades that I had.

00:04:11:19 - 00:04:36:10
Chris Rapozo
So the next the trajectory in Germany, if you don't have a good enough grades to get into a white collar job, an apprenticeship or the university, you do an apprenticeship at a blue collar job. And I got a job at a construction company and worked on construction for about four years doing bricklayer work and concrete finishing. But there was just backbreaking work and I could see as awful.

00:04:36:21 - 00:04:56:14
Chris Rapozo
I can see 50 year olds that looked like 70 year old was like walking like X and I was I looked at them and I said, This is there's no way I want to end up like that. I mean, I hated every day working on construction, so I have dual citizenship. My father was American, so I had the opportunity to move to the United States.

00:04:56:14 - 00:05:19:16
Chris Rapozo
So after I graduated from trade school, I told my mom that I want to go to America. And, you know, she said, you'll be back by Christmas. I left on Labor Day weekend. I didn't know it was Labor Day weekend, but I arrived here Labor Day week in 2005. She said you'll be back by Christmas, 2005 and eight years later, I'm still here.

00:05:20:17 - 00:05:38:16
Chris Rapozo
But you know, when you come to America, I told you I played football in Germany. So part of the dream was, hey, maybe I can play college football in the United States because I was good enough to try out for the German national teams. I was like, Maybe, maybe I can get on a college college team. So I went to the University of South Florida.

00:05:38:16 - 00:06:02:00
Chris Rapozo
It was the closest place in Tampa, and they basically told me, Well, you have German transfer. First of all, you need to translate your transcripts. So I had to figure out how to do that. Then my grades were awful. I wouldn't have been able to go to a four year school right away. So they told me, Hey, man, you got to go to community college first in order to go to university.

00:06:02:13 - 00:06:15:21
Chris Rapozo
My English was terrible. Okay? It's it's the kind of English, you know, when you go to high school in the United States and you learn Spanish, it's maybe good enough to get around. If you go to South America, to Spain, you're on vacation.

00:06:15:23 - 00:06:18:01
John Azoni
A loaf of bread or something like that. Yeah.

00:06:18:14 - 00:06:41:02
Chris Rapozo
Yeah. Getting a job, working in a professional environment or let alone go to university and succeed there. That wasn't the type of English that I had at that time. So and I also had to pay bills, right? So I got an entry level job at a mailroom, just worked my way through the ranks and then got into a law firm, worked in a law firm for several years, got better at learning the language.

00:06:41:02 - 00:06:57:11
Chris Rapozo
And then, you know, I hit a career ceiling and I was like, well, I also met my my girlfriend, my wife now at the time. And we discussed future plans and I hit a career ceiling. I said, well, the next step, if I want to grow and be I've become a better provider, I would have to go to school.

00:06:57:21 - 00:07:21:09
Chris Rapozo
So at the age of 30, I enrolled in Hillsborough Community College in Tampa. It's a two year college. You know, it's open access so you don't have to you do replacement test, but you get enrolled right away if you apply for it. So I did that part time while working. So that's how I got introduced to two higher education at the time at the age of 30.

00:07:21:19 - 00:07:41:08
Chris Rapozo
And you know, when you're 30, when you're an adult learner, you're also you have a little bit more clarity and purpose, which, you know, gives you a reason to enroll in the first place. Like if you get right out of high school, it's kind of like that's the next thing to do. You know, college, you're it's like high school.

00:07:41:08 - 00:08:01:09
Chris Rapozo
You just live in a different place. But as an adult learner with a family on the way, you just have a little bit more clarity. And then personal growth of course, was always part of the conversation there as well, especially since I had the opportunity to immigrated to the United States. And the last thing I wanted to do was just get by.

00:08:01:09 - 00:08:19:18
Chris Rapozo
I mean, I moved all the way from Germany to the U.S., crossed the Atlantic, and the last thing I wanted to do was just to squeak by and, you know, not live up to my full potential and the opportunity that I was afforded my home country.

00:08:21:02 - 00:08:55:10
John Azoni
Wow. That's that's quite a story. And I have so much respect for people that come to America and learn English because English is hard. Like like I'm trying to teach my my daughter to read My daughter. My daughter is six. And we read in this kid's book, Class Night, she read most of it and just impresses me. She almost literally taught herself to read like, I don't know how she did it because I, I haven't worked with her that much, but she's reading this and like, she'll get stuck on certain words like that, even just like they don't follow the rules of like, how a letter should sound, you know?

00:08:55:20 - 00:09:18:11
John Azoni
And it's just like, sorry, kiddo. Like, you just got to memorize that one. Like, there's no real explanation for it. You know, I remember I went and did a semester in France when I was in college and tried really hard to learn the language. And it was so hard. It was so hard and like, but like and when you're an adult, that's even harder because I would meet these.

00:09:19:09 - 00:09:38:11
John Azoni
I would do it like a church there. And then they had like kids that had come over from the, you know, families that come over to the states to like, you know, live there. And their kids were just like, fluent like almost like seemingly instantly. It's just like their brains just soak it up so much better. And but like, when you're an adult, I can't imagine trying to learn English as an adult yet.

00:09:38:23 - 00:10:01:04
Chris Rapozo
I met somebody when I first moved here and she's she basically you said cut kind of cut off all communication with your German speaking people because you have to fully immerse yourself in the culture in order to learn it. So when I first started working here, I worked at a trucking company and they told me to answer the phone and it was in the South and I couldn't understand the accent.

00:10:01:04 - 00:10:19:13
Chris Rapozo
I was like, Oh my gosh, this is awful. Then I switched careers, our jobs and I worked in a mailroom for three years. You know, all I did was sold mail and read emails, and that's how I learned the language in the sentence structure. I read emails on how to, you know, form a sentence, a proper sentence, a business sentence.

00:10:19:13 - 00:10:23:06
Chris Rapozo
So, yeah, I learned that within the time I was working in a mailroom.

00:10:24:03 - 00:10:41:23
John Azoni
Interesting. Well, that shows so much grit. And I think that adult students definitely like that. It's inherent in a lot of adult students. It's just like when you're deciding to go back to school as an adult, you're you're really making a sacrifice. And you're saying, like, this is what needs to be done. So I'm just going to like, pony up and do it, you know?

00:10:42:19 - 00:10:43:03
Chris Rapozo
Yeah.

00:10:44:12 - 00:11:02:08
John Azoni
So can you share like, how did you research school? So thinking about like marketers, listening to this podcast, how would you advise them in terms of like how you found value in certain schools over others? What was that search process like for you?

00:11:02:21 - 00:11:27:12
Chris Rapozo
So I always tell a story about I had two schools that I went to. I went to Hillsborough Community College the first two years for my A.A. and living in Tampa. That was the obvious choice, is the is basically the community college in Tampa that everybody goes to. It's low cost, it's easy access. So I didn't do a lot of research on that.

00:11:27:12 - 00:11:55:01
Chris Rapozo
It was kind of word of mouth, you know, because it was so in the community that everybody who went to school, who couldn't go to university, went to the Hillsborough County Community College. But then once I graduated from HSC or right before then, I had several options, right? So cost was obviously a factor. So I knew that I was not going to go to the University of Tampa, which was a private school and super expensive.

00:11:55:01 - 00:12:22:21
Chris Rapozo
So I needed to find a cost effective way to get my undergraduate degree. And the obvious choice is University of South Florida. They're based out of Tampa, but there's this time commitment having to go to the university. After I was finished with my job and it was at a certain part of town where there was always traffic, you could never find a parking spot.

00:12:23:06 - 00:12:45:03
Chris Rapozo
And the last thing I wanted to do was after I got out of work, sit in traffic for an hour, and then drive around campus to find a parking spot. Right. You know, I didn't want to do that to myself. So I looked at other options. Like what? What else was out there, you know? And I learned about online schools other than University of Phenix at the time.

00:12:45:03 - 00:13:06:18
Chris Rapozo
University of Phenix was the online school, but it didn't have the reputation that I wanted. So I was like, Well, I don't want to go to I don't want to go to University of Phenix. Right? That doesn't seem to have the same weight then, like a University of Florida or a University of Central Florida. So I started researching all the public universities in the state of Florida.

00:13:06:18 - 00:13:36:12
Chris Rapozo
It was Florida State, it was University of South Florida was University of Central Florida, and then it was at Florida International. I think it was as well. You know, I didn't really look at North Florida, but just the big name schools, I'll look them up, I'll navigate their website. And then I what really you know, what helped me make a decision was the user experience on the website with the website popped and it looked modern and it looked like they had it together.

00:13:37:16 - 00:13:57:09
Chris Rapozo
It told me a lot more of what kind of education I would get or perceived, at least that that perception of it. They know what they're doing on their website. They must know what they're doing in the classroom or the virtual classroom. So that was kind of like the research that I did on the get go before I enrolled in a in a two in a four year school after the eight.

00:13:57:17 - 00:14:20:03
John Azoni
A That's interesting. The website just the just the layout of the way I experience that recently, I can't remember what website I was on, but I was like, I was like going to buy something or something like that. And the website was just kind of like clunky and like old. And I was like, I don't know, I just, I experienced like that friction of like, I don't know if this is the right decision based on how this looks.

00:14:20:03 - 00:14:41:15
Chris Rapozo
Exactly. It's it's the perception, man. You know, first impressions matter and if and a university website is basically the first impression somebody gets after they either get referred to it or they see a billboard or something, they go to a website. When it's the website look like, do they look like they they're in 2023 or do they look like they're back in 2008?

00:14:42:04 - 00:14:59:20
John Azoni
Right, Right. As you were going through college, what did you see in the like marketing that stood out to you as like, oh, that's kind of a miss for someone like me? Or Oh, that actually is very good messaging for someone, you know, like me.

00:15:00:06 - 00:15:22:05
Chris Rapozo
Yeah, Yeah. I before I enrolled that at Hillsborough Community College, I, I must have visited the, the campus and the admissions office at least three times over the course of maybe two years or so. You know, you go in there, you're like, maybe this is something I should do, but then you talk the way out of it. It's like, Oh, this is going to it's going to be way too hard.

00:15:22:05 - 00:15:39:17
Chris Rapozo
It's going to take way too long. I'm already 30. I was 28 at the time. I'm already 28. You know, I'm too old for this. That's the kind of stuff you tell yourself, you know, because you're in the media and on the in the movies, you only see the the 18 year olds right out of high school going to college.

00:15:40:05 - 00:16:03:00
Chris Rapozo
So as an adult learner, especially from a different country, you were like, well, that ship has sailed, man. I'm I'm not going to go to university. I'm too old for this. But, you know, it's you kind of try to get over yourself. And so I showed up at the campus a couple of times and there was a I still remember this and there must have been 12 years ago now, but I still remember it to this day.

00:16:03:00 - 00:16:26:14
Chris Rapozo
I walked the admissions hall. I just walked around the building and I saw these posters with students on there and it said, Invest in the one thing that earns you a hundred return of investment, which is yourself, you know? And it kind of stood out to me. I was like, because you're always when you when you come, especially from another country, you're always trying to figure out a way how to make money.

00:16:26:22 - 00:16:43:14
Chris Rapozo
You're like, Why should I invest in things? You know, should I invest in the stock market? How can I make money fast? And then I saw this invest in the one thing that earns you 100% of the return of investment, which is yourself. And I was like, That stuck with me. Yes. Like, yeah, man, I got to I got to invest in this.

00:16:43:14 - 00:17:10:20
Chris Rapozo
And everybody told me, like, go to school. If you have that degree, that's something nobody can ever take away from you. There was always that saying, you heard that before, right? Like nobody can take away that education from you. And then when I was made aware of the University of Florida online, where I went to I of all pieces of all, you know, marketing pieces, it was a it was a mail piece that I received.

00:17:10:20 - 00:17:32:05
Chris Rapozo
And it was a magnet that said the Gator Nation is everywhere. And to this point, I didn't know that the University of Florida had an online option. UCF is huge in Florida, Right. And especially in Tampa is a lot of you have grads. I work with a lot of UCF lawyers at the law firm that I worked for before I enrolled.

00:17:32:05 - 00:17:54:16
Chris Rapozo
And I thought, my goodness, you know, I always wanted to go to University of Florida, but that was 2 hours away from Gainesville. And I didn't obviously, I wasn't going to leave Tampa because I had a job there and I wasn't going to commute to Gainesville to go to the University of Florida. But when I got that mail piece that said The Gator Nation is everywhere and brought awareness to their online program, I was like, Wow, this is it.

00:17:54:16 - 00:18:04:13
Chris Rapozo
And you know what? USF was the only school I applied to after my age or right before I graduated. And luckily I got in.

00:18:05:23 - 00:18:10:06
John Azoni
So the Gator Nation was is everywhere is it was more about just it being online.

00:18:10:20 - 00:18:15:21
Chris Rapozo
Yeah. This is the tagline like everywhere basically you can't be a gator from anywhere in the world.

00:18:16:08 - 00:18:24:16
John Azoni
Okay cool. Because when you said that, I was kind of like, Oh, that would be a great slogan for like, our alumni network is really strong, you know?

00:18:25:04 - 00:18:43:03
Chris Rapozo
Yes. But it's also like you're a gator and you can be a distance gator and you can I had I had students or classmates that that were in Italy that were based in Italy. They maybe in the military, you know, they were stationed in Italy and they did their schooling from from there.

00:18:43:03 - 00:19:05:02
John Azoni
Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. Just like because I think that's like the that's the obvious hurdle that that higher ed markers need to overcome is like, is this really going to be like the real college experience if I'm doing online school, is this going to be like a YouTube education or am I really going to be part of something and really ingrained into the culture?

00:19:06:06 - 00:19:24:22
John Azoni
And those are really like the stories that I think that we need to be telling to adult students is like, Here's how my what I perceived online school to look like. But here's like the community I actually found, you know, through that and it was very much like you know, being on campus.

00:19:24:22 - 00:19:46:09
Chris Rapozo
And Yeah and the other thing they, they always promoted was that the USF online students get the same faculty as the students on campus. So a lot of the faculty that I had, they actually taught in the classroom on campus at UF and then just did, you know, got some extra courses and did them online and shared their knowledge there.

00:19:46:22 - 00:20:07:16
John Azoni
Yeah. And so you said you posted the other day just on LinkedIn about your experience with Hillsborough and, and then you have and some of the challenges that, that you had, maybe just some misses that that were there that you wished were different. Can you tell us like unpack that for us a little bit.

00:20:08:18 - 00:20:35:21
Chris Rapozo
Yeah. Some of the challenges that I had there were obviously before the challenges of balancing work and family, I would say is when you go in as an adult learner, you want to make sure that you understand that you sacrifice short term pleasures for delayed gratification. Mm hmm. Well, you know, you go in there and you're you're working, you're going to the gym, you got your life together, right?

00:20:35:21 - 00:20:58:14
Chris Rapozo
But then all of a sudden, you got to switch things up and you got to make sacrifices in order to be able to complete your coursework. But some of the other challenges that I had was, of course, the cost, you know, because all of a sudden now, especially me, I wanted to pay out of pocket. I didn't want to take on student loan debt, so I wasn't going to do that, right?

00:20:58:17 - 00:21:21:08
Chris Rapozo
So that was kind of tough to to navigate. And even though I made a budget for I always made a budget for the tuition, but then I got blindsided with with the additional costs like the textbooks or sometimes you had to you had to sign up for some sort of a software in order to complete the assignments and that they weren't included in the course.

00:21:21:14 - 00:21:44:13
Chris Rapozo
Like Cheesman. These are like these hidden costs. Now, with the textbooks, what I did was I either rented them or I bought them. Really cheap use. I didn't care what they look like, which book. But if you had an online lab or whatever and you had to pay another $100 to on top of tuition to get in there, you know, it was always kind of annoying.

00:21:44:22 - 00:21:46:14
Chris Rapozo
So yes, there was. Yeah.

00:21:46:22 - 00:21:49:02
John Azoni
Just pricing transparency.

00:21:49:02 - 00:21:55:09
Chris Rapozo
Yes, pricing transparency. And then other things were sometimes there was flexibility as well.

00:21:57:10 - 00:22:26:03
Chris Rapozo
That's where the educator in your faculty about that adversity on campus comes into play, too. You know, if you do an online college year, you expect that you can complete assignments on your own terms, even if that's when in the course of one week, like usually it started Monday morning at 1201, a course open, a module opened up and then you had the entire week until Sunday at 12 1159 of completed.

00:22:26:17 - 00:22:52:16
Chris Rapozo
But there were some faculty, some professors that expected the midterm to be done within like let's say on a Wednesday evening between six and 9 p.m.. Mm. You know, I was like, well, what if I can't make the 6 to 9 p.m.? Like that's going to be a problem. That creates friction. Obviously, you tell them this situation, I have a job over the night shift or whatever, they're moving it around.

00:22:52:16 - 00:22:59:11
Chris Rapozo
Right. But it creates this extra layer of stress. Yes. And you know, that's unnecessary.

00:23:00:02 - 00:23:02:23
John Azoni
Yeah, for sure. And especially. Did you have kids at this time?

00:23:03:21 - 00:23:31:14
Chris Rapozo
Yes, I actually had one son. I had my son when I was just enrolling in in the University of Florida online after I had the A, And then in my final semester, I had my daughter and my daughter was scheduled to be born during finals week in the. So here was I emailing my professors saying, Hey, I know we have finals this week, but my daughter is due around this time.

00:23:31:14 - 00:23:37:13
Chris Rapozo
So she came three weeks early, so it wasn't a problem, but she could have been born right around that. The finals day.

00:23:38:00 - 00:24:04:21
John Azoni
Oh jeez. I read a story that popped up in my news feed about a mom who was giving birth and took the bar exam while she was in labor in her hospital bed, which is. But yeah, I mean, kids are a whole level of complexity of the things that you wouldn't understand if you didn't have kids. And I and I really underestimated that.

00:24:04:21 - 00:24:22:10
John Azoni
And I think a lot of people do just like the scheduling and like because I never could understand why my friends, that when they started having kids, they you just never see them anymore, you know, And they would just be constantly you just like you're constantly on call and like the kids always come first. And of course you want them to come first.

00:24:22:17 - 00:24:54:00
John Azoni
And it's hard to, you know, your wife probably has so much mental load going on. So it's not just as simple as like while she'll take care of it, you know, she's been working all day. Then it's like, okay, now you can make her work more and watch the kids and stuff. So anything like for me, like it's really tough for me to plan anything in that 6 to 9 period of time because that's like prime like it could be going really good or it could be like witching hour or like trying to get to bed, you know, and stuff like that.

00:24:54:00 - 00:25:00:20
John Azoni
It's yeah, that's really tough. And that's something that you wouldn't understand, you know, as developing programs and stuff if you didn't have kids.

00:25:01:06 - 00:25:07:01
Chris Rapozo
Yeah. And the other thing was at the same time, my wife earned her MBA.

00:25:07:16 - 00:25:08:09
John Azoni
Oh my gosh.

00:25:08:14 - 00:25:29:10
Chris Rapozo
I was 30 undergrad, so that was actually a blessing. And you know why? Because we were both going through it. So it was kind of like, you know, we understood each other's struggles. So I was like, okay, I want to I want to do schoolwork around this time, you have two babies. And then I took them after I was finished and she did her stuff.

00:25:29:21 - 00:25:50:17
Chris Rapozo
You know, it wasn't like she never felt neglected because she was going through the same thing. And that could be another issue. If you're an adult learning to have a family and your wife or husband are used to you guys hanging out on a Friday night or traveling on the weekend, you can't do that because the weekends are the time that you complete most of your schoolwork.

00:25:50:22 - 00:25:51:07
Chris Rapozo
Mm hmm.

00:25:51:20 - 00:26:16:13
John Azoni
Well, gosh, I. That's so that sounds very stressful to me. So thinking about, like, the stories that universities tell in their marketing as we're coming to this, you know, enrollment cliff and, you know, one of the opportunities, you know, here that I think is just kind of an obvious jump is is schools shifting their marketing towards adult students.

00:26:16:13 - 00:26:45:11
John Azoni
And so like thinking about the adult learner and the things that you experienced and the things that you wish you had or that you did have that you appreciated having like support services and, you know, in an inclusive environment or whatever it is, what what kind of stories or marketing content would you suggest marketers create content around, you know, that tell us the story of like you can do this as an adult.

00:26:45:11 - 00:27:10:05
Chris Rapozo
Yeah, yeah. You definitely want to lead with social proof. Social proof pieces you have online. Actually did a couple of pieces telling my story. One was right before graduation, the headline was Father of Two and Finishes or graduates with a degree from the University of Florida Online. And then the other one was a year later was sort of a where are they now?

00:27:10:11 - 00:27:38:17
Chris Rapozo
POST Right. So you graduated. What's the ROI on the investment? You always want to you're going to showcase that, right? Because adult learners don't go to university to to find themselves. They have a purpose and a mission when they go to the university and sacrificed the time and the time with family and the personal time and whatever else, you know, even if it's career progression at that time, you're you're focusing on your schooling, right?

00:27:38:17 - 00:28:05:23
Chris Rapozo
Yes. Really focusing on growing a new career, if that happens. You know, kudos to you, but something's got to give. So definitely communicate social proof. Talk about the success stories. But here's the issue that I always find and I learned this the more I work with higher ed, the more I talk about on this topic. We always want to tell the hero stories the end, but we never want to talk about the struggles, you know?

00:28:05:23 - 00:28:06:22
John Azoni
Absolutely. Yeah.

00:28:07:08 - 00:28:38:00
Chris Rapozo
Because we think that well, maybe that'll that'll deter someone from coming to our schools. But if you're at all aware of yourself, you know, going in it, this is going to be difficult. You know, you talk to yourself, you talk to your family, you're going to be see, this is going to be a really, really tough season. And if I don't go in 100% of probably not going to make it, I'm going to be one of those 40 million people that have some college but no credentials.

00:28:38:13 - 00:28:56:09
Chris Rapozo
And that's just a waste of my time. And it's a waste of our money, you know, because I'm sure we'll pay for the you're going to pay for the classes, but you're not going to have anything to show for at the end. And then it's always something that'll linger with you. You know, you to be like, Man, should I have gone back?

00:28:56:09 - 00:29:24:10
Chris Rapozo
Should I have finished it? So that's something you want to communicate, but you also want to communicate the support systems that are in there. You know, I had a wonderful academic advisor who went with me every step of the way. I, I check in with her every, every semester right before. And I said, Hey, which classes do you think I should take next in order to get to my ultimate goal quicker?

00:29:24:20 - 00:29:51:13
Chris Rapozo
So not only telling student stories and the success stories, but also to talk about the struggle, but then also introduce the faculty and introduce the the advisors, those people that are the unsung heroes and talk about them. So people because people do business with people, right? So you want to make sure you build that trust. And of course, with with adult learners, you have to communicate flexibly to be flexible options.

00:29:51:13 - 00:30:18:06
Chris Rapozo
You know, you know, some people think, well, all I know is what I see on TV. I have to be on campus from 9 to 3 or whatever the timing is. Some people may not know that there's evening classes available or online classes and create awareness of your institution. I've got to be honest with you, I don't think I got another email piece, another promotional piece other than the University of Florida online.

00:30:18:18 - 00:30:48:15
Chris Rapozo
Mm hmm. So what I would say, if that's legal or possible, for universities to partner with two year schools and get a list of their soon to graduate students that are going to graduate with their AA and want to go to a four year school. Yeah. So you can target them because maybe university of Florida, University of South Florida in Tampa may have had a program that I would like better, or University of Central Florida in Orlando.

00:30:48:16 - 00:31:09:04
Chris Rapozo
That was another school I looked at, but I was never targeted by them. The only school that targeted me was University of Florida, and then they got me in the end. And then the last thing I would say, you want to make sure that you make the admissions process as simple as possible. I, I watched a higher ed web presentation the other day.

00:31:09:04 - 00:31:35:00
Chris Rapozo
By day, she works at ology and she talked about how she was an international student, how she tried to get into MIT and just the admissions requirement page. She clicked on like she had like 23 clicks and landed 17 pages just to figure out how to what she needed to send to the school in order to get the admissions process going.

00:31:35:00 - 00:31:45:01
Chris Rapozo
So make it a little bit more simple. We talked about friction earlier and did we want to alleviate the friction, especially when you're trying to get somebody into the door, make it as easy as possible on them?

00:31:45:11 - 00:32:07:02
John Azoni
Yeah, absolutely. I have. And I was just dealing with this this morning. I have a program that I've been working with, a piece of software that I've been trying out, and it's I'm finding it to be a really good potential. Like the in theory, this is really helpful, but the user experience is so clunky and I have to click.

00:32:07:06 - 00:32:28:19
John Azoni
It's so confusing and I'm just like, I spend 10 minutes with it. I'm just like, I can't do this like this. You know, you have to eliminate clicks as much as possible and make it very clear. And I think that you can really only do that effectively with like getting feedback from students on how they're moving through the site.

00:32:28:19 - 00:32:48:00
John Azoni
And what's confusing, because you really don't know, like, you know, you could think that you're making this very simple, but but they're you don't know what they're getting. They're getting tripped up on should I click here and I click here, You know, where's the button? What's the you know, what's the next step here? Yeah, that's that's so important.

00:32:48:20 - 00:33:21:03
Chris Rapozo
Yeah. I heard a story about an admissions team on a university, and they said four new hires to understand incorrect intricacies of the of the admissions process. It takes about two years for people to fully grasp it in the onboarding process. And then they were like, well, if it takes the employees of the university two years to get fully get a full understanding of what's going on and how to navigate it, how do you expect the student going in there and figuring that out?

00:33:21:22 - 00:33:25:03
John Azoni
Right? Maybe that's never been to college before or. Yeah.

00:33:25:13 - 00:33:35:05
Chris Rapozo
Exactly. Or who's an international student who's a first generation student who doesn't have the support system, doesn't have anybody in their family who can tell them, This is how you do it.

00:33:35:17 - 00:33:54:12
John Azoni
Yeah, yeah. That's a good talk from Deanna builds from from ology. I've I've heard her talk about that on a on a different podcast. I can't remember the name of the podcast. Yeah. It's kind of one of her like Piller talks I think that she that she give. So if you follow day on LinkedIn or something, I'm sure you find it or something like it somewhere.

00:33:54:12 - 00:34:12:06
John Azoni
It's very good, very good talk to listen to. I want to back up because you said the school did two videos on you. So one question that I always have when I work with schools is what? And we work with a lot of adult students, you know, because it's you know, I work with a lot of grad programs and stuff like that.

00:34:13:19 - 00:34:28:14
John Azoni
What incentivized you to say yes to that? Ask? And they got two videos out of you, which I think is remarkable. Did they pay you? Was there an incentive or what did you feel like, Oh, there's something in it for me that's less tangible and so I'm going to do it.

00:34:29:00 - 00:34:36:21
Chris Rapozo
Yeah. So these were actually write ups. There was there were articles on me, not videos, but but still, you know, you got to take take the time.

00:34:37:07 - 00:34:52:03
John Azoni
Yeah. Let's pretend that they were videos. What would what what because that because that involves like Sure. Several hours of your time filming. Do you think you would have said yes to that same ask if it was a video and why or why not.

00:34:52:11 - 00:35:19:13
Chris Rapozo
Absolutely man Stephanie the huge exposure for your personal brand. I mean, I'm like I said, I went to school to to grow in my career to better myself. And if I get backing from a school like the University of Florida and they spotlight me, it's like social proof that I put on my my LinkedIn and just have them featured like, hey, you know, it's kind of like they think I'm good enough to be featured.

00:35:19:13 - 00:35:27:02
Chris Rapozo
This this huge institution thinks I'm good enough to be featured. If you're looking for a marketer, you probably should give me a little something like that, you know?

00:35:27:02 - 00:35:27:18
John Azoni
Right, Right.

00:35:28:06 - 00:35:47:17
Chris Rapozo
You know, so it's that social proof. It's like it's that earned media like we'd like to say in marketing just name when you it's why you have people come on your on your show that you because you're not all of a sudden you become the expert in whatever topic you talk about because somebody interviewed you like we talked about higher ed adult learners, how to attract the adult learners, right?

00:35:47:17 - 00:36:12:22
Chris Rapozo
And this is how I want to position myself. If you have people like you with your podcast that has a following, it's like, okay, John thought I was good enough to talk about this program. Then other people probably think that too, and that's why we're so huge on social proof when it comes to marketing. Everybody wants to see, Hey, I don't want to be the first one to to try this product or to hire this person because I don't know how this person's going to turn out.

00:36:12:22 - 00:36:26:11
Chris Rapozo
But if I have John over here who's who's an expert and trusts Chris, I'm going to trust Chris for sure. I'm inclined to trust Chris a little more, as if, you know, if he's off the street. I never heard of this guy before.

00:36:26:16 - 00:36:42:15
John Azoni
Yeah, that's such a good point. The social proof and I think about this a lot because, you know, one one of the barriers to the work that we do unveiled is helping schools find stories to tell and find people willing to participate. And I'm working with one school right now where people are a bit reluctant because it's a lot of international students.

00:36:42:19 - 00:37:01:19
John Azoni
They're not really comfortable with their English enough to be on camera. So we're we're working intricately together to try to solve this problem together. How can we get people to raise their hand and say, I want to be featured? And it in occurred to me yesterday where it's like that social proof is a really good incentive because you always think about like, well, should we offer them a gift card?

00:37:01:19 - 00:37:29:14
John Azoni
Should we offer them know, should we pay them? Should we include this in the budget? Should we, you know, buy them coffee? I don't know what how can we bribe them? But really inherently, you know, it occurred to me that I'm like, you could put this on your LinkedIn and and even if it's not like even if like an employer after you graduate from I mean, people are graduating from this particular college and working for like big companies, you know, like data science.

00:37:29:14 - 00:37:59:06
John Azoni
So it's, you know, into it and, you know, those kind of like big, big companies like that, you know, that that need these analysts. And so it's like even if a hirer, what do you call it, a recruiter is going on and they find your on your LinkedIn and they even just get a chance to hear your story that go that goes before you, you know, that goes before that student in an interview where like, they might not even interviewed you, but but now they got an emotional connection to you, so they want to hear more.

00:37:59:21 - 00:38:11:14
John Azoni
Yeah. So even just that, the social proof, but also the opportunity to present yourself to employers in a way that's that's like, here's my story, here's why I about this thing that I studied.

00:38:12:03 - 00:38:28:07
Chris Rapozo
That's right. And like you said, this particular school is big companies recruit them. And, you know, a lot of people can make up, hey, I graduated from this school and they may never have gone there. But if you have that story and that school featured you, there's a sure bet that this person actually went to that school.

00:38:28:23 - 00:38:57:14
John Azoni
Oh, yeah. For sure. Awesome. Well, can you offer any like, let's see, any insights into the role of, like, you know, technology, social media in reaching and engaging in adult students? We've talked a little bit about storytelling. We've talked a little bit about, you know, you know, you mentioned the mail example, but but what about like, what are some other things that marketers could put into practice to reach a student like you?

00:38:58:01 - 00:39:20:19
Chris Rapozo
Yeah, well, we talked a lot about social proof and the videos we just have, so I'm not going to get too much into that anymore, but definitely want to have the social proof because people want to before they buy, they want to see. That's why everybody goes on Google reviews before they make a purchase. They want to see, Hey, other people that look like me, that had the same background as me, did they make it through your rigorous program?

00:39:20:19 - 00:39:48:17
Chris Rapozo
So social proof is top. The other thing we just talked about was the the issue created on websites. If you have to do all these cliques, you have to do 70 clicks and or 70 pages in order to get to where you want to go. So one of those new up and coming things is website personalization. You want to make that you have website personalization on your particular site in order to push out tailored content that's relevant to your visitors.

00:39:48:17 - 00:40:16:12
Chris Rapozo
And there's a couple of ways to do this. Like you can do that through personalization tools that that collect data through implicit data, like see the computer or that personalization tool figures out the geo location where you visited or they it reads your digital body language. Let's say you went to a nursing program previously and then all of a sudden it's kind of like if you go on YouTube or Netflix, you watch a video and then it recommends other videos or movies like that.

00:40:16:19 - 00:40:38:12
Chris Rapozo
Same with the pages. If you're constantly on that nursing page, looking at the at the tuition fees on the nursing page, if you're looking at the different programs on the nursing page, all of a sudden the personalization tool realizes, Hey, this is what this person's interested in. Let's give them more of that content that's relevant to them right through personalization tools.

00:40:38:21 - 00:41:06:03
Chris Rapozo
And of course, you want to have in technology don't have chat bots on your website because let's say you have a traditional student who's locks in after they see your Instagram ad at 11 p.m. that nobody's going to be on the university. You know, admissions department looking at this. But if they can get their answers, question questions answered through a chat bot, it'll move them further down.

00:41:06:03 - 00:41:31:23
Chris Rapozo
The enrollment funnel while they're looking at the information on their own terms without having, you know, a life person there. And then of course, when it comes to social media, if you are doing targeted advertising, especially for adult learners, they want to grow in their career. I would say LinkedIn, you know, because we all especially white collar guys like us, we hang out on LinkedIn a lot, or if you're blue collar, you may be on Facebook.

00:41:32:07 - 00:41:41:17
Chris Rapozo
So if you tailor your messaging when you're targeting on on those social media pages where older adults hangout, I would say that would be super relevant as well.

00:41:42:04 - 00:42:09:02
John Azoni
Yeah, the chat bot thing is really smart in, honestly. Like that if you want to retain me as a as a customer or if you want to at least like push me over the edge, make it easy for me to ask you a question because like the sites like sites that, you know, I go to and I'm like trying to figure something out and they have a little like, Hey, chat with us thing in the corner.

00:42:09:02 - 00:42:27:06
John Azoni
It's just so easy. It's always there in the corner. I always know what to click on if I have a question and even if I get a bot, you know, that's still remotely helpful. But then, you know, usually I'll like outsmart the bot, like I'll ask questions beyond the bots pay grade and then they'll be like, We need to get someone in here.

00:42:28:01 - 00:42:48:14
John Azoni
But even if I want my accounting software, sometimes I'll have, you know, questions about how to do one thing or another. And what they do is they'll it's kind of like sending an email. You just put a question in there and they'll say it will will usually respond in like one or 2 hours. It's like, that's good. You know, that's like good enough for me.

00:42:48:14 - 00:43:06:08
John Azoni
I don't need to know right this second. But at least I didn't have to go to like, contact page, go down. Is there a form, is there an email address? Some somewhere in here. Is my email going to get buried and take, you know, five days to respond to get a response? Yeah but yeah that, that chat bot is is super helpful.

00:43:06:08 - 00:43:24:00
John Azoni
I used to have on my website and I can't remember why I took it down, but it was like a text me thing like you could click and it would open up like the messages app if you're like on map Mac and you could like it would go right to my phone. I thought it was so cool. I was like, Yeah, I like that.

00:43:24:00 - 00:43:37:21
John Azoni
My wife tested out a bunch of like, text me something, texts me from the website. You know, I need to get that back up. I think there are some technical things I was having with it. But yeah, that's but like to me, to me that's like, yeah, super important to retention.

00:43:38:02 - 00:43:42:11
Chris Rapozo
It's super important because if you don't have that they'll, they'll just move on to the next school.

00:43:43:00 - 00:44:05:22
John Azoni
Yeah. Yeah. The confusion like if you trip people up with, with confusion it's, it's so leaky like, like people will just leak from your, from your funnel so easily you have to be so clear. But okay well so tell us, this has been great, by the way. Tell us a little bit about tell us about Hannah Hill, what you do there.

00:44:06:10 - 00:44:08:14
John Azoni
What value can people get from Hannah Hill?

00:44:09:04 - 00:44:36:02
Chris Rapozo
Sure, sure. So I work for Haddon Hill. I'm the marketing specialist, but I'm a solo marketer. So I am I am basically running the whole department at Hannan Hill and at Hannan Hill. We we've been trusted advisers for hire at institutions for over 20 years now. So our flagship product is Cascade CMS. It's one of the leading web content management systems for colleges and universities in the United States, Canada and abroad.

00:44:36:11 - 00:45:09:19
Chris Rapozo
And we also have a web personalization tool called Cliff. I briefly talked about the importance and the power of web personalization and a web personalization tool like Life. It integrates with any CMS so you don't have to have Cascade CMS. But this personalization tool shows targeted content to the audience so that each visitor sees the content that's most relevant to them and they don't have to click through 17 different pages in order to get to what they actually want.

00:45:09:19 - 00:45:16:09
Chris Rapozo
So it alleviates the friction and it gets people the information that they came to the website for.

00:45:17:06 - 00:45:21:14
John Azoni
That's cool. I want that for writing for my website.

00:45:21:14 - 00:45:25:05
Chris Rapozo
You should schedule a discovery call. We give you a Yeah.

00:45:25:14 - 00:45:45:23
John Azoni
When you're when you're like a solopreneur, the website just becomes the Wild West really fast because you're like, All right, you start out, you're like, I just need a basic website. And then like couple of months earlier, our AMA had a podcast and then you're like, I'm going to have a blog. Well, now is that a dropdown? Like does its driver name the menu thing like content and then have it say like podcast?

00:45:46:04 - 00:45:59:00
John Azoni
It just gets like so many pages. It's just personalization. What would be helpful is be like, just cater this to somebody, you know? All right, cool. Where, where can people connect with you at?

00:45:59:20 - 00:46:18:22
Chris Rapozo
LinkedIn is the best way to connect with me. So I'm always on LinkedIn, active on LinkedIn. So. Chris Raposo So you'll easily find me there, maybe tag me in the recap. And then if you want to email me, it's Chris Dot Raposo are a O CEO at hand. Inhale dot com.

00:46:19:18 - 00:46:37:13
John Azoni
Cool. Yeah. Chris is a great follow on LinkedIn. I follow him. I'm sure a good handful of the people that listen to the podcast also follow Chris. He's kind of a popular guy on LinkedIn, so definitely go, go check him out. Reach out to Chris. But yeah, Chris, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate this great episode.

00:46:38:02 - 00:46:39:14
Chris Rapozo
Thank you, John. It's been an honor.