What Makes People Click: Marketing an IEP Program on the Web

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What Makes People Click:
Marketing an IEP on the Web
Marketing your IEP program on the web? The following was prepared as part of a Demonstration held at TESOL 2003, Baltimore, MD, USA, in March. It is an ongoing project. It is intended as a guide for all marketers and program webmasters. I hope it is of use to you. -Thomas Leverett, CESL, SIU-Carbondale, Carbondale IL 62901 USA.
[Resources for Program Marketers] [Bibliography: IEP marketing] [(more recent) faculty projects]
Table of Contents

Introduction

Ch. 1: The Web as a Medium

Ch. 2: General Principles of Marketing

Ch. 3: Our Market/Our Students

Ch. 4: Making a Page, Putting it Up, Maintaining a System

Ch. 5: Basics of Web Design

Ch. 6: Web Extras: Cgi, Javascript, Flash, etc.

Ch. 7: Search Engines and Optimization

Ch. 8: Online Marketers and Directories

Ch. 9: Pages in Other Languages

Ch. 10: Advice: What to Aspire To, What to Avoid

Ch. 11: Looking into the Future

Appendices

Introduction

The world is changing quickly, and along with the increasing presence of the web in our lives, the world of IEP's (intensive English programs) in the US and worldwide is also changing. Program directors face increasing comptetition for dwindling numbers of students, only made worse by world political situations.

If you are in this position, you ignore the web at your peril. These days, having no web page is like having no phone number: it puts you in a strange light, puts you out of the loop. A few years ago, one of the major newsmagazines said that 85% of American students had used the web to choose their college. Why would internationals be any different? The number could only have gone up since then.

So, get started. Make yourself a web page or two, put them up, and go see how they look from the computer in your den.

This set of pages is intended mostly to get you started finding resources, exploring areas of web marketing you may not have been aware of, etc. It's a new world, and a quickly evolving one, so I suspect this will be outdated soon. Nevertheless, I hope it's useful now, in 2003.

A word about the name. I came up with "What makes people click" myself. Soon after, I noticed, through a web search, that a marketer already had published a book by that name. I kept the name, however, since I came about it honestly. I wish him luck. I am not trying to intrude on his territory.

One other caveat: Please do not use our program as a model. We are not perfect; we don't even use everything we know (yet). We try our best, like everyone. I am a full-time ESL/writing teacher with seven children. I would know more, and do more, if I had the time. I don't. However, I hope that what I've done, an ever-evolving project, is useful to you. I am still working on it. If you have additions, or comments, please write me at leverett@siu.edu. I'd love to hear from you.

copyright: reprintable with permission
Thomas Leverett
CESL, SIU-Carbondale, Carbondale IL 62903 USA
March 2003
leverett@siu.edu
[Effective Webpage Design] [Resources for Web Designers] [Bibliography]
Page made and maintained by
Thomas Leverett, CESL, SIUC
Photo above (Spider Web) by Jim Leverett.

What Makes People Click: Marketing an IEP on the Web

What Makes People Click:
Marketing an IEP on the Web