Education functions on a strict timeline and enrollment process. It operates within windows of promotions and conversion goals: application deadlines, class start dates, and on-campus events. As such, the marketing channels for education utilized must be adaptable and dynamic, while also reaching the correct people with the highest student conversion potential.
There’s no point spending money to reach 70% of a population when only 5% make up the group who are making or influencing the actual education decision. We have the technology and know-how to target the right potential, so that’s what we should do.
Create your marketing plan side-by-side with your academic calendar so that the time it takes from inquiry to enrollment, your start dates and open houses all work together as one “Business Plan” for your school.
Then look at that calendar and pick the right marketing channels for each job based on how quickly you can activate them, how many leads you expect them to generate, and how many of those leads convert to students from each marketing channel. That’s your marketing plan: tangible, measurable, and (hopefully) predictable. Don’t place ads in local papers for the sole reason that it’s what you’ve always done. For some goals that works, and for others it doesn’t. Be specific with your prospective student targeting.
Marketing plans for schools is not merely placing ads or using pay per lead sources. A Marketing plan is a comprehensive set of lead-generating marketing channels, that then filter into your admissions system, and have at the least an estimate on how many leads you need from each channel to enroll your target number of enrolled students.
