The marketing agencies available to help you reach your goals are as varied as the schools we serve. If you’re trying to dig through offerings to see which firm is best positioned to help you, you’re probably confused. So many firms talk about your branding, websites, their proprietary software, SEO, Social Media, Paid Search and design management – how do you make sense of it? At Enrollment Resources, we pursue the truth. We think it is important that you get the best service for you. We’ll tell you if we don’t think we can help you and we’re paid on our performance only. Whether you are hiring us or not, we think these three questions are what you need to ask when doing your research.
1. Who owns the campaign?
Many clients hire a Marketing Agency to manage their AdWords campaign only to find that when they cancel service the account was actually set up in the vendors’ name. This is bad for you because Google factors into their algorithm how long an account has been active. So you lose the history, and all innovation when having to start from scratch. It’s good for vendors because it’s a way for them to trap you into a relationship.
At ER, we always set up all accounts in your name so YOU control the asset. We just assist you in building your asset, we do not own it.
2. Are you working for my competition?
The education industry is big but it’s not so big that agencies don’t get themselves into conflicts of interest. Do you really want to share a campaign with your direct competition? Clarify what the company’s approach is with another school with your same offering in your region.
At ER, we are a boutique company that only works with a select group of schools at any time (spanning North America and even Europe), we do not take on competing clients. If you are a massage school in LA, you will be the only massage school in LA (or school that offers massage training in LA) that we will work with.
3. Is your vendors’ proprietary “secret sauce” software designed to tie you to them indefinitely?
In the age of abundant open source and low-cost software, there is almost no reason to get tied into a vendors’ software platform. Yet, some companies still use proprietary content-management, email marketing, or other systems make it tough to exit a relationship.
At ER, we have a strict “no-proprietary software” policy. And, if needed, will steer you toward widely adopted software that can be handled by any number of suppliers should we part ways.