Are you thinking about adding the services of a distance education portal to your online marketing efforts? According to Jeff Harmon, marketing director of the University of Illinois Online, there are four primary strategies you should take before investing in any of these services.

1. Ask how they market their portal. Do they have any search engine or other portal agreements with third parties, such as CNN or MSN? Do they attend education conferences? Do they have a print advertising campaign or any other forms of promotional activities to get the word out and drive traffic to their portal?
    
2. Enter key words related to distance education inside some of the major search engines, namely Google, Overture, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. See if and where the portal you are considering gets listed in your search results.
    
3. Do another search on these same engines entering your specific program type(s), i.e. history degree online, MBA online, etc.
    
4. Negotiate. Be sure to ask for an introductory offer for three to six months. Never contract for anything beyond 12 months. A great negotiating strategy is to mention that their portal may be improved by simply adding your quality institution to its listings. These portals needs business and understand that public institutions have had budgets cut heavily.