Recently a school owner approached us asking for strategic advice about Internet Marketing. I mentioned the usual key points; the Internet is not going away, your ranking on search engines is super valuable like owning real estate; never ever let third parties own ‘your’ online real estate, etc…
I asked him who owns the URLs of his websites, his Google Adwords account and his Facebook account. He didn’t know. He trusted the marketing company implicitly to look after his best interests.
A few days later I got a phone call from my friend. This time the tone in his voice was MUCH different. He told me that the URLs for a number of their “micro-sites” and the Google Adwords accounts were owned by the agency he hired. I could hear his anger as the implications began to sink in.
If he was to ever to part ways with his agency, much of their cumulative effort in building a presence online would disappear.
Poof…
Owning your presence on the Internet – on search engines in particular – is akin to owning valuable property. It’s your online real estate. My friend realized that a third party had taken that online real estate, charged him money to develop it, and then refused to give it back if the relationship ended.
Sadly, this is pretty common. This seems to be a ‘client retention’ strategy used by many agencies. It’s wrong.
My message to you today is that you MUST absolutely, without compromise, own all of your core online assets. This means your website URLs, your Google Adwords account, and your social media accounts.
These are your core Internet Marketing tools that can generate a single-campus school 100-200+ students a year. Just run the math. You must absolutely own these assets, not an Ad Agency or third party lead provider.
At Enrollment Resources we ‘insist’ you own your online assets. We work for you directly, much the way a property management firm works for the owner of an apartment building. If you want to learn how to ensure that you own and control these key assets, call us for an informal chat.