Research has shown that an admission person only needs 60-80 leads per month max. Everything after that represents diminishing returns. The enrollment rate goes down, leads are poorly worked or ignored, and enrollments flat line. Basically you reach the mental capacity limits for your Admission people.

So to figure out your lead goal, just multiply admissions people x 60: If you have 3 admissions people, you need is 180 leads per month, which is usually totally achievable through your own efforts.

You most likely DO NOT need to buy 3rd party leads to increase student enrollment.

Now, the flip side of this, is that you are more likely to have an Admissions capacity issue and not a lead issue. Most of the schools we have analyzed are under-resourced in Admissions, and that’s the real bottleneck for them.

It’s understandable: Generating more higher education leads is easier and cheaper than hiring, training, managing Admissions people.

A client story comes to mind: They were buying a ton of garbage 3rd party leads for years, hundreds of them per month. They switched to a self-generated education lead generation campaign with us, and volume dropped 60% or more. They were understandably anxious. But within a month, enrollment increased as lead quality vastly improved, and the staff had the time and mind space to succeed.

 

It’s all a little phoney, unfortunately.

Ghandi was a known bigot. Einstein a womanizer. Mother Teresa had a cruel streak. But human nature is to make people one thing or the other, their legacies do not reflect the shades of their characters. Everyone knows Ghandi was benevolant. Einstein a humanitarian genius. Mother Teresa the embodiment of loving kindness.

And that’s basically the nature of a brand — you are one thing, or another. But not both.

Good marketers understand this and as a result their product strategy is one of a “slice of slice”. They create narrower and narrower niches usually within vertical markets. It’s not good enough to be a CRM company, you need to have a CRM for cosmetic dentists to compete against Sales Force.

The big positions are taken, leaving only little ones.

And that also why there are are so many niche products and so many people pumping the next greatest, MUST-DO tactic. It’s a little marketing hill to differentiate from bigger competitors. But that’s all it is.

A more productive way to look at marketing your school (or business in general) is to focus on making your funnel as effortless for your prospect as possible. Make it easy to connect. Add value up front. Give them something.

We focus much of our product development and testing on the language that appeals to the deeply human needs driving a buying decision for a prospective student. That’s why Virtual Adviser comes with pre-written campaigns that we know work, because they’ve been tested and proven with many other schools.

And that’s why we can increase leads and enrollments for your school, year after year.

Click here to learn more about Virtual Adviser.

Or better yet, schedule a demo.

You deserve better leads.