[Webinar] The Anatomy Of A Rock Star DOA
On Thursday, August 29th, at 11 a.m. PST / 2 p.m. EST, we will take a deep dive inside the Director of Admissions role to find out exactly what it takes to be a Rock Star DOA.
On Thursday, August 29th, at 11 a.m. PST / 2 p.m. EST, we will take a deep dive inside the Director of Admissions role to find out exactly what it takes to be a Rock Star DOA.
Original Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash
I have a story about ‘1%’ and how it can be the difference between mediocrity and excellence for a school.
We were having a beer together lately, reflecting on our relationships with our clients. We landed on the insight that in addition to schools buying services based on benefits, they also buy on risk mitigation. Let’s say a marketing company promises a school a big benefit. If promises are not kept, a nightmare could unravel before your eyes: your school is financially compromised due to some crazy-assed idea a vendor brings you that was poorly thought through and/or implemented. Many purchasing our services are senior staff. School leaders don’t need their well-developed careers partially ruined by having a vendor not come through on a promise or do something unethical. Read more
Seventy percent of companies within the Fortune 1000 did not exist 10 years ago. The disruption and consumption of 100-year-old enterprises are now commonplace. EDU is like the Telecomm industry 15 years ago. The natural lifeforce of Western Commerce is many companies looking to take advantage of inefficiencies (ie: Uber, Craigslist, Udacity).
Embrace this disruption by doing an do an ‘amazing’ job of filling needs. There are many ways to do this: competency-based learning, blended learning, flipping classrooms, day 1 externships, employer-funded training, etc. Put safety nets in place, then attack with aggressive split-testing.
In this webinar recording, Shane & Gregg share the results from eight actual client marketing split tests and discuss the critical role of conversion rate optimization in marketing.
Check out our Podcast #29: “Which Test Won – 8 Surprising Marketing Split Tests” to learn helpful education marketing strategies. With 1 click you’ll have access to over 30 podcasts featuring industry insiders espousing their wisdom to you – for free!
In this short (4:25 minute) video, Shane Sparks explains how schools can break away from third party lead generators and the long-term benefits of split-testing.
Recorded at the 11th Annual Pacific Institute’s Best Practices and Business Conference in April 2014.
Shane discusses how fundamental your product offering is and the consequences of giving marketing to 3rd parties. Marketing is about “testing your way to the truth”, Shane shows some neat examples of split testing, including a 20% improvement conversion rate just by changing the color of a button on a call-to-action form.
My opinion is we’re at the end of about a 10 or 15 year marketing experiment that has failed for the crucibles, and what we’ve done is we had really taken away responsibility. We had to market our own businesses and given that to third party people in the form of lead generation, and the result of it, the consequence for our sector is we’ve commoditized our businesses, we’ve commoditized our schools. As a result, the result of that is that we’ve had a product erosion, which sucks.
The good news is that the path to prosperity and the path to improving our station in our marketing starts with product. It’s the systems, the people, it’s the experience we deliver, it’s fulfilling the promise of creating a transformational experience for the students that attended our schools.
Fundamentally the question we all have to ask ourselves about our businesses is, fundamentally, do we have something worth buying? Is it worth it for somebody to invest their time and their money in our enterprise and do we deliver on the promises that we make in our marketing? Fundamentally this is about product. Can we deliver on what we promise in our marketing or is it just lip service? Is it just words that somebody wrote in a board room or an ad agency wrote on a whiteboard somewhere?
That’s the challenge we have, product, and product extends from how you first engage prospects, that lead generation stage, and that extends all the way through the admissions process, the delivery of our programs, the job placements, externships, the career services part through graduation and continuing education with our graduates. When we nail it, when we hit product right, when we do it right what happens is that an abundance of new opportunities come to us because we succeed on social media, we increase our referrals, we establish our brands as a premier place that people want to go. It’s an attraction strategy. What’s awesome about it is that it comes from fundamentally doing the right thing so your people can get behind having an exceptional organization.
Marketing doesn’t have to be that hard. It’s basically psychology and math. It’s responding to the unique wiring that we have as human beings. I’ll give you an example of that. We have a client where we’re testing an advertising campaign. It’s landing pages, and we’ve been testing three different photos–they’re all very similar–that advertise the program. What we found is that one photo in particular of these three resulted in a 50% higher conversion rate, so people were 50% more likely to take action, and all that changed in the ad was this one little photo. So the math and the lesson on that is that when we find the thing that is psychologically resonant with somebody, when we find that, and assuming that we’re measuring it so that we can actually know that this is an improvement, we create a permanent result. We’ve permanently created an innovation that we can use for years to come. So fundamentally marketing is just about testing your way to the truth.
Another example would be on, most businesses have some kind of sign-up form, so there’s something that is “fill this form out and click a button.” After a number of tests we found that having a button that was red vs. Blue created a 20%, it was actually a 19.65% lift in conversion rates. We created almost a 20% improvement and all we changed was the color of the button and so when you do the ROI on that, it costs, well, nothing really or maybe a $100 to get somebody to make a red button, but the return on that is permanent. That’s a permanent 20% improvement in conversion rate, and the only way you find it is through testing.
How can a single sentence can increase conversion and two other surprising test results
On December 18th, 2012 and again (due to overwhelming requests) on February 14th, 2013, Enrollment Resources co-founders Gregg Meiklejohn and Shane Sparks conducted a Webinar presentation on the Art & Science of Testing. Read more
In this episode of the Enrollment Management Round Table, Gregg Meiklejohn and Tom King discuss how your school can capture the benefits of split testing. Learn how to test your way into impressive conversion breakthroughs in your enrollment management process and start enjoying the ROI of split testing at your school!
Subscribe to our free Training Library to stream this podcast.
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An online lead generation and qualification tool that helps prospective customers understand their personal strengths, explore their motivations and match with your school. It is delivered through a simple and fun online questionnaire that guides prospects to request a meeting with your sales team. The comprehensive Career Training Readiness Report generated by the pathway gives your sales teams deep insights about your prospects. In addition to creating high-quality leads, sales staff gain valuable information on each prospect’s perceived strengths, support network, perception of key features of your business, and much more.
This is a survey delivered to your enrolled students to determine their marketing habits. Learn marketing demographic and psychographic information including their content delivery preferences and habits (TV, internet, radio, etc.) to aid your school in determining marketing direction and opportunities.
This is a key tool for capturing those highly interested website visitors who want more than just “Requesting Information”, they are ready for the next step… a virtual or in-person appointment. Use this tool to engage more appointments for your admissions team that will convert higher than your standard organic website leads.
Truth be told, this isn’t a true application, but is very useful for pulling out your highest intent website visitors (typically about 7% of inquiries). Use it to high-grade your top prospects and put these at the top of your contact list.
So much more than a typical “Request Info” form, our website form is a conversion powerhouse that has been tested and perfected with numerous clients. It features a number of subtle but important conversion magnets and “in-the-code” enhancements. Widely copied by competitors, they never capture the beauty and conversion-power of our original.
As young people near the end of high school they face an enormous amount of change and what to do after high school can become a looming question. This 2-part pathway starts with providing a lead gen interface for gathering leads from presentations, then helps high school students and parents to identify goals, articulate strengths and explore their options in a low-pressure survey. Utilizing a variety of question types including sliders, multiple choice and open-ended, the High School Recruitment Pathway allows students to feel empowered and gets parents involved.
Provides an entry point to re-engage old “stale” leads and a reason to reach out to those prospects who may have dropped off of the radar, but who are potentially still interested in going to school. Not only will you increase your ROI by re-engaging existing leads, you’ll also have the opportunity to potentially improve your admissions process by identifying possible barriers that may have held prospects back from initially enrolling.