Marketing Strategies to Drive School Enrollments

OVERVIEW & PURPOSE

With more and more people spending time online, education institutions need to build their online presence and be more proactive in building their admissions pipeline and lead generation efforts.

The purpose of this document is to present strategies that have generated positive results for Rise’s clients in the education industry. We’ve accumulated these strategies after reviewing education industry clients, including private elementary, middle, and high schools, higher education, and professional career training programs. 

Marketing Strategies to Drive Enrollments

1. Ironclad measurement, before spending a dime, ensures that every lead is measured, including newsletters, lead generation forms, and even phone calls. 
   • To add, pass this information back to each ad platform to inform forward marketing strategy. 
2. Conversion-based bidding. As conversions are reported back into each ad platform, such as Google, the bid strategy should be to maximize conversions or a target CPA. In this example with Google, Google will focus on driving conversions and less on traffic.
   • Bonus is importing MQL or SQL salesforce conversions into Google. Here is a helpful article on how to import salesforce data into Google Ads.
3. Conversion-focused landing pages with a prominent lead generation form and phone call lead tracking.
4. Combination of high-intent and consideration-level keyword targeting in Google Search campaigns.
5. Whenever possible, remarket audiences targeting users that visited high-intent pages, such as tuition, student life, and contact us pages but did not convert. 
6. Organizing campaigns, and ad groups by search intent so that ads can be tailored to specific audiences (changing careers, remote learning, international vs domestic students, etc.) with appropriate landing pages.
7. Using Google Ads custom audiences with custom segments and combined segments to serve highly-relevant Display and Performance Max ads to high-intent, decision-ready audiences.
8. Tracking UTM parameters to assess which campaigns, ad groups, and audiences are driving high-quality vs low-quality leads.
9. Optimizing campaigns based on lead quality feedback from clients.
10. Active social media presence to reach audiences in multiple channels. Social presence is a validation check for many potential students. If the website looks great but there is a lacking social presence, that can hurt conversion rates. 
11. Email marketing to foster leads. Implement an email capture on-site that ties into an automated welcome series of emails. Additionally, create and send a monthly newsletter (at a minimum).  

Key Recommendations for the Schools

1. Prompt lead follow-up. Within 24 hours for each lead at a minimum. 
2. Communicating with Rise Marketing Group regarding the quality of leads, allows Rise to optimize campaigns based on lead quality rather than quantity.
3. Strong CRM system. One client uses Salesforce to manage the admissions process. Lead records are automatically or manually entered into Salesforce and assigned to an Admissions Officer. The AO’s focus is speaking to qualified leads on the phone to answer questions and “sell” the school. The AO is responsible for qualifying the leads and guiding them through the admissions process. 

Best Tools for Schools

1. For building a standalone landing page:
   1. Unbounce
      1. Paid subscription required
      2. With Unbounce, you can easily build a conversion-focused landing page with content related to keywords and search intents and a prominent lead generation form.
      3. Leads are added to a “Leads” tab in Unbounce which can be exported and imported into a CRM system.
      4. Add hidden fields to the lead form for UTM fields.
      5. The client will need to either purchase a new domain or configure a subdomain using the existing domain’s DNS, for example, “hello.existingdomain dot com”
2. Email marketing, such as MailChimp, to send an automated email “welcome” sequence to familiarize leads with the school, mention upcoming events, highlight features/benefits, etc.
3. CRM systems, such as Salesforce or Hubspot
   1. Also important for Rise Account Leads to have access to the CRM so that we can log in to monitor lead quality.
   2. Configure CRM to automatically create a lead record when someone submits a lead form.
   3. Ensure correct lead source attribution, e.g. CPC vs. social.

Need help driving enrollments?

Contact Rise Marketing Group at [email protected] or visit our contact page. We will be happy to customize a strategy for your unique school and leverage a wealth of past experiences we’ve gained over the years.