Marketing is a comprehensive plan that targets the right demo and caries them all the way through the process. Advertising is the first part of marketing – Advertising alone is not marketing. I make that distinction because too often, a school’s marketing plan basically stops at the point they book some ads and hope for phone calls. A successful school admissions department works with (and is often trained by) the marketing department. Everyone in the process should be aware of the entire process, including post-purchase satisfaction and what efforts are being done after graduation to get word of mouth referrals from graduates. If you don’t have a marketing plan that covers every step of the student lifecycle – including different branches based on progress and reaction – then you’re not putting enough effort into your planning.

The more you plan, the better you’re ability to target and reach potential students.

Education is a life-change product. As such, the education marketing plan needs to focus on – and exploit –  the entire lifecycle, not just experimenting with new marketing channels and quirky PR ideas. If you have limited financial resource to spend on your advertising and outreach, then you need to pour what you have into the marketing channels that are most capable to reaching your highest-converting prospects.

Lead targeting within your education marketing plan:

I’ve seen this time and time again: people get really excited when they try a new ad placement that gets a lot of leads. That’s great, don’t get me wrong, but more leads doesn’t automatically mean more income. Just because a source gets a lot of new inquiries does not mean it will result in a linear increase of students. Don’t forget that processing leads also costs you money: admissions staff time, materials, etc. You don’t want to have your admissions team spending your money on leads that never turn into students: every bad lead is wasted money.

Two plans are below. You choose which you’re prefer:

1. You spend $10,000 and get 700 leads that convert to 60 students; (or)
2. You spend $10,000 and get 500 leads that convert to 60 students.

Which do you prefer? Ad cost is the same, so if we were doing long division, that cancels out. So what’s remaining? Students enrolled… that’s the same too, so null that as well. The only number remaining: 700 leads vs. 500 leads… our gut instinct is to think 700 is better… it’s not! What about the cost of your time? It takes a lot of time to work the 200 leads… but no revenue comes from it. If you have a collection of ad placements with a higher conversion rate like the 500 leads -> 60 students, then you can put more money there and know you’re not wasting as much money. It’s not just ad cost / student: never forget the time involved and that that time decreases the return on investment. Eventually, as you put more money in, the conversion rate will go down, and it’s your job to be able to identify that point, maintain it, and then explore additional lead sources from there.

The point is: don’t get excited about a lot of leads. That’s just as bad as getting exited about web traffic. Just because you get a lot of web traffic doesn’t mean they call your school.

You want to get excited about quality, not merely quantity. You wouldn’t spend money on, for example, a phone company if your calls never connected, so why spend money on sources that generate leads that never “connect” to a student enrollment for your school?

Never be afraid to spend more money on a lead generating source if  it has a high conversion rate and hasn’t yet reached the downward turn where the more money you put in only decreases the conversion rate – always keep you eye open for that “conversion rate plateau”. Sometimes it’s a bit of a shock to pay $50+ on a lead, but if that advertising channel has a 15-20% conversion rate –  compared to a $10 lead that has a conversion rate of 1% – , then it’s worth your time and money because your get more students. And that’s the whole point.

Read Part Two: Nurturing & Converting Leads to Paying Students

The intent of PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing campaigns for vocational schools is to capture the lead so your admissions team can then get them into the school for an appointment.

That’s it.

Pay Per Click can be your highest unit cost referral source, so you don’t want to waste it on email lists. If at first you don’t succeed scheduling an appointment, then have your admission funnel move them into alternate paths like free email courses or online seminars. PPC advertising for schools has one goal: collect their contact information and get an admissions representative to contact them as quickly as is possible (within minutes is preferable).

Given that goal, optimized landing pages that encourage the person who clicked on the ad are a very important part of any good online marketing strategy. What’s the point of paying to get visitors if they don’t contact you or request information? If they don’t submit their information, you just wasted money on the click.

Never have your ads click to you school’s home page. Your home page might be the one you spend the most time designing, but it’s also probably not even remotely designed to capture a lead. There are companies that make millions of dollars annually just designing effective landing pages. It is a science as much as an art, and you can make a good one with just a little research. Search Google images for “great landing page designs” and you’ll be presented with countless examples.

Every time you start an online PPC campaign remind yourself that the landing page is more important than the ad. The ad finds the prospective lead, the landing page converts it to a real lead that your admissions team can contact.

Match your ad groups to your landing pages.

The text in your ads should reflect the text in your landing pages. This helps you on both ends of the process: you get a better ad quality score, and the person who clicks on the ad feels like they “got what they clicked for” and so will be more likely to engage the page.

Even if you have only one program of instruction: make multiple landing pages so you can test how well each converts and act on the resulting research. Sometimes a simple change like a photo swap, or moving a form slightly higher on the page can make a large difference.

And never forget about mobile ads. Mobile PPC clicks normally cost less per click than desktop/laptop – because they don’t convert as well – but you can take advantage of that format if you take the time to put a decent system in place. For example: have a mobile-only PPC campaigns, so those ads click to a unique landing page with a shorter, more mobile-friendly inquiry form. Make sure the image size is reduced and the column layout organized to be easier to navigate with taps instead of mouse clicks.

Good landing pages should have a clear call to action, be straight forward, to the point, and have purpose – including an offer is even better: download a free brochure, we’ll send you our booklet: 10 Tips To Be A Rockstar, etc. Whatever you can do to entice the person to engage: try it.

There are plenty of large (and very expensive) CRM  systems (Customer Relationship Management) available that are “designed” for private, post-secondary and vocational schools. Why? Because they are THE tool for your admissions team to help usher potential students through the admissions process. Having some form of CRM is a need for virtually any business, honestly, whether it’s in paper form scattered all over your desk, or database-driven and entirely an online CRM system.

If you are currently not using a CRM for your school, it’s highly recommended, but be sure to shop around because no CRM is “one size fits all”

Here’s the basic point: most CRM systems don’t understand schools and the vocational or career school process. Most CRM systems are good at one thing: delegating leads, rating them, tracking conversatios, and giving management some reports.

But you’re a school…

1. What about all tracking the steps and all the paperwork required for a student to be fulling enrolled?
2. What about tracking financing?
3. What about enrollment caps on the class size for each class?
4. What about tracking each individual education program?
5. What about managing open house?
6. Online applications?

You see… there are a lot of aspects that are specific to marketing education and tracking people with a CRM from the first inquiry all the way through to new student orientation. Most “all for one” CRM solutions are NOT capable of catering to those needs.

As I mentioned, there are systems where you can pay thousands a month, based on the number of users and/or students, that do have aspects for vocational and career schools – but once again, YOU have to adapt to how THEY work.

Getting a custom CRM solution built just for your school ends up being less expensive and both the look, layout, and process can be designed to perfectly first YOUR SCHOOL. Moreover: you own it. Once it’s complete that’s it: it’s yours. No monthly leases, no maximum number of users of leads. Most you pay for after that is if you have new requests to be added to the system.

In the introduction about marketing culture we covered the importance of campus appearance and how that can self-perpetuate a good looking environment. Your school needs to dress well just as much as you would hope your staff would. Here, we have to look into how a student’s personal culture can become a part of your campus environment, and how all of that combines to become a marketing tool for your image.

Often when I’m consulting for a school and provide briefs about various aspects of how student life and happiness is intertwined with your marketing, I’ll write about how social media and how people live lives ON the Internet have given any type of business the ability to perfectly shape your image so that it reflects the image that your target demo portrays online (which is most often the person they want to be, not necessarily who they are in their current state, which is a very good thing for marketing).

The basic concept is that HOW we communicate in today’s world (… whatever “today’s world” implies… that term seems odd and old)…. alas, HOW we communicate is a demonstration of who we are and what we like to do. We communicate on networks and platforms (facebook, twitter, Google +, flickr, youtube, and a million others with which I honestly never have the time to spend time). Each network and platform attracts groups with specific interests, biases, etc. Just that factor of “the HOW” means that your image of being present on MySpace implies something different that being present on Vimeo.

Marketing to and about culture is an enormous topic that can fill volumes. In this post, the bottom line is that to have a successful private, post-secondary school, you need to demonstrate authority AND be the coolest school in town.

Students wanting to attend your school isn’t enough – you want them to brag to other students that they are attending your school. You want to create a sense of school pride just like Texas High Schools have about their football teams.

A student ID should be shown like a badge of honor. It should make them feel as though they are part of the hip crowd.

At first that might sound a bit ridiculous, but it’s an important aspect of your overall school marketing plan: What makes your school cool?

How to make, maintain, and market your school’s culture

When marketing education, highlighting your school’s culture is extremely important because the prospective student will become a part it. As such, your institution needs to demonstrate two things:

1. The school respects and embraces who they are now, and;
2. The school staff, instructors, and graduates reflect who they want to be in the future.

Demonstrating those two things requires work; primarily a lot of market research to know who your target market is. You need to know what they like and why; heck, time spent curious about how they’d decorate their home can even help you.

When a prospective student walks in the door and into the lobby of your school, they need to feel a touch of home, a dash of intimidation, and a flood of possibilities. Often times just having the right collection of photographs, books, and magazines can create that triad. The person working at the front desk also needs to be stellar as a welcomer: know who they are, welcome them and genuinely be interested in how they are, then make them fill out a form that’s has a few questions that might be a tiny bit intimidating so they know your school means business. That questionnaire should have questions about what thye know know, what they want to learn, and what they’d like to be. That gives whomever is giving the tour some insight so they know what sort of questions to ask and which selling points to highlight.

Some aspects of school culture grow organically based on the student body, but the faculty and administration determine most of the direction overall culture of the education environment. They can be fun, but the teacher / student lines must never be crossed. Your teachers represent 80% of the school’s authority, and as such they need to behave like it.

When I consult on campuses, one of the topics we discuss is always the “vibe of the school”: how does it feel, how are the students interacting with one another, do they hand around after class or  leave immediately? How do they interact with admin staff vs. instructor staff? We even get down to how the colors of the walls, furniture and classroom design can impact the impression that the school. All of these things are important factors because they help influence how students behave. Beautiful and clean campuses result in students respecting their school more, and therefore they inherently respect it more.

Every little thing counts, but at the top are the two points mentioned in the beginning: embrace who they are, and show them you can help them become what they want to be.