Speaker 1:        This is one that's worth this entire half an hour, that you're on treat education fairs as a legitimately generator. So we've done, um, mysteries shopping of, of, uh, education fairs. And the last one we did there was we had 45 people, [00:00:30] um, that we went and pretended to be students or prospective students. And guess how many people actually said, Hey, here's my card. Hey, when's a good time to get together. Versus the, the rest you just smiled and gave out for sures. Well, I'll tell you, there are only two out of the 45 people that try to advance things along. Think about that. Now there's [00:01:00] hundreds and hundreds of people that go to these. What, what if you, at your EDU, your trade fair booth gave, um, that request to everybody. They spoke to, man you'd have full classes, like nothing. I remember, um, 20 years ago, thereabouts, I worked at university of Phoenix and one of the things we came up with was, and landed on, was offering, um, we, we, we would go into [00:01:30] home improvement shows and, and the, the headline on the, the booth was smashed through the glass ceiling, which is Phoenix was famous for and helping women, uh, get degrees, um, by using their system. 
Speaker 1:        And boy, oh boy, we would get 30, 40 leads a day out of these trade fairs. And then typically there'd be three to five. People would become students chip number one. So, [00:02:00] Hey, if you guys do that and nothing else do that, nothing else, you will a dozen students, uh, easily to your year now, to what Dr. Pond was saying, identify the top 100 employers relevant to your school's graduate, uh, school's graduates and speak to them, and it can go on a continuum. You can invite them to come out once a quarter and just go, [00:02:30] Hey, um, come out and, uh, come together for lunch sandwiches and tell us what you're seeking in your curriculum. You can have the, the HR department from the, the employers that will hire the grads for the program. How have one a week come in and pitch the industry that they're moving into and pitch why their business is so great where, or their organization's a place to work. 
Speaker 1:        But that does is that also has a bonus of [00:03:00] creating persistence, improving grad rate graduation rates. You can go the next rate, where you work a deal with the employers to go and create contracted education. Um, for you, you know, the, a huge source of potential business are the HR, is the HR, uh, files at a hospital. Let's say, then they wanna desperately hire these people. They can't because they don't have the, [00:03:30] the, um, the, the relevant, um, certifications. So that's a big one. And, um, that's so easy to organize and you don't have to buy advertising. So tip three, make sure all your lead generation tools are truthful and relatable. That seems like a, a no brainer, but you [00:04:00] we're, we're, there's just thing called ad puffy, which is created as a byproduct over the many years, cynical, um, consumers that don't quite believe what they're, they're reading, cuz they're just sick of being lied to when they go to buy the vacuum cleaner or the hot tub or the car and they get over promised and that kind of thing. 
Speaker 1:        So it's imperative that you're when you have a landing page on your website, or if you're using paid search [00:04:30] that you take the, the unlimited space that you have and given a Folsom manner, um, the, the, the objective, um, elements to this program that they're considering going to, it's absolutely crucial, uh, because if you don't, you're just gonna create cynical upset people. The, the, the leads flow will be really low, which will really annoy your, uh, um, [00:05:00] your admissions reps and in your state or province, you might, uh, uh, create the ire of the attorney general. And then you have a really large problem. And if you're a large school, the FTC, which is a huge problem. So what rather than risking upsetting the regulators in heightened market, why not just really spend a lot of time being objective in your, your promotional [00:05:30] material and be objective and not worry about trying to, you know, hook somebody in unnecessarily use third party things like on net, the department of labor stats, which talk about the, the, the, the, the, the job prospects for a prospective student that covers you off nicely. Cause the FTC will not Sue the department of labor. All right. Tip four. 
Speaker 1:        [00:06:00] All right. This is, this is kind of hippy. Okay. Okay. So bear with me. This is hippy. Um, but if you do it, you'll increase the revenue of your school by 10% a month, like within a month. So you guys ready to hear some hippy stuff. Here we go. All right. Always. [00:06:30] Yeah, here we go. Step one, write this down. Everyone. You bring your client facing people together, financial aid, career services, your missions, people, your marketing people, and you get, 'em say, okay, write down all the reasons why our school is great in terms of students, our staff in the community. And what you're gonna find is people will come up with about three to five ideas. Then [00:07:00] you get up on a whiteboard in the meeting, or if it's a zoom meeting and you start pulling out people's different lists. And you'll find that very rapidly, you'll have 20 established 20 reasons why your school is great. 
Speaker 1:        And the challenge is the VA, majority of the people that work for you really have no clue why your school is, is great. They sort of know, but when it's articulated, uh, then, and there's 20, think of it like arrows [00:07:30] in the quiver. If you have two arrows and you're hunting some big bear in the Forester, some big animal that's gonna eat you, you got two shots that protecting your, but if you have 20 arrows in your quiver, the odds increased tremendously. Well. So that's what you do. That's very easy. And that's a fun project. And people get all psyched up, tidy it up, make a little, I put it on a little piece of paper. This is not electronic. That's why it's hippy, it's, uh, paper. [00:08:00] And you put it on the corner, the, of the person's desk, and you use gum while gum or tape old fashioned tape, you tape it on, right? 
Speaker 1:        And then the last step is you remind by email, uh, to your team to look at those 20 reasons every day and then forget about it. And what you will find is at the end of, uh, uh, at the end of the year, [00:08:30] um, or sorry, the month that those 20 reasons will become integrated and they'll become part of your lexicon and part of how you communicate and connect what you write and your landing pages, um, how you interface with people doing financial aid and so on and through incremental improvements, you will increase your enrollment revenue by 10% per month. So that's a good, now here's the thing. You guys, you go, Greg that's so that's so hippy. That's so [00:09:00] stupid. Well, I'll tell you this, if it is, and I fail, it hasn't cost you anything, right? It's a freebie and nothing. Nobody can get harmed by doing this exercise. So please do it. And I think you'll find I'm right if I, okay. 
Speaker 1:        There's a, uh, book, the, the granddaddy of all marketing books is called scientific advertising by Claude Hopkins. [00:09:30] He wrote, wrote it in 1927. If you guys read this 56 page book, you will know more than the two thirds of the so-called marketing experts out there. All subsequent marketing books were written out of that core treaties, uh, scientific advertising. And inside that book, um, one of the things to say is, um, your admissions reps, would you, would you dress them up as clowns and have them behaving like [00:10:00] idiots? And the answer is, of course not, you want your admissions reps to be, you know, um, paternalistic maternalistic. You want them to be serious and loving and supportive, but you don't want them behaving like clowns. You don't want them acting like idiots. So if that's the case, why do schools create their advertisements, their advertising, they write it all up. 
Speaker 1:        Like they're like, they're, they're talking to fools talking to idiots. Uh, [00:10:30] and if you go back to some of your material that you might give out, um, some of your website stuff, your landing pages, you might find that there's some whackadoodle stuff going on there. That's just kind of over the top. And it's just basically taking your, your advertising agency and feeding 'em 20 cups of coffee and a way they go with their goofy stuff. Do not write your ads [00:11:00] as if like, if your, for admissions reps, you're not gonna make your admissions reps dress up, like clowns, don't make your advertising clown like you want. And also you want your advertising to tie in to the, uh, the tone and tenor the culture of your admissions team. You want it con congruent. So when they actually connect with the admissions reps, there's no dissonance so far. So good. 
Speaker 2:        Yeah. [00:11:30] I have a, a question about this tip. Do you want me to ask it now or wait until the end? 
Speaker 1:        Oh, you can ask it now. I'll give a quick answer. 
Speaker 2:        Thanks. Um, with this one, I was wondering if you had any advice on, um, sort of so heading or managing that, uh, that tonal boundary between different types of, um, of content. So obviously you're talking about ads here, but something like social media is inherently going to be a little bit more [00:12:00] informal. We want it to be, you know, falling under the same style guide, generally do tone as everything else. Sure. But it's gonna be a little bit more fun maybe. Um, here I, may you draw that 
Speaker 1:        Line? Yeah, that's a great question. And my question, I answered the question with a question whose definition of fun and is the, is the social media, person's fun, the fun for the other 5,000 [00:12:30] people who are tuning into it. And I would say, just look at, uh, like sports talk shows. They have, uh, these, uh, personalities and they giggle at their own jokes and they just annoy people. So I would say, um, what I'd like you to challenge yourself on is, is, um, <affirmative>, is, does it have to be fun because the people on [00:13:00] the social media don't care about the pizza party or the puppy in the office. Um, if, if I can, if, if the risk of offending anybody, I'll just tell you what to do in social media. And, uh, if you write this down is super cool. It's super easy, very easy. 
Speaker 1:        Once a week, you have a, a headshot of a grad, a little photo, uh, Alonzo is now working at, um, Boeing as a, um, parts mechanic [00:13:30] quote from Alonzo. This is the best job ever. I don't know how I could have done this without going to school at aircraft maintenance Institute, one paragraph post, post it everywhere. And after you do that, once a week, 15 weeks in, you've got an overwhelming, um, third party credentialed, um, uh, proof that the school is the right place to go. And if you've, my advice would [00:14:00] be focus on what I've just described, do nothing else. And, um, your, your social media will actually become a lead generator in addition to building brand, because really people go to career schools to get careers. So you need to create social proof that the, uh, the careers are in fact being, uh, handled, uh, correctly, and the people are happy and, uh, explain their experience. 
Speaker 1:        Um, responsive design is a basic, [00:14:30] um, 80% of people will look at school's websites by way of mobile. Um, this is, um, something, and for those that don't understand this, or don't do this, you have your website on a desktop and responsive design, basically reorganizes the production values of the website on a phone, um, to the screen sites. So it looks good. This is a tiny thing. You'd be amazed at the number of schools [00:15:00] that don't have a responsive design of their website for the phones. And you, it, it kind of, you just, it turns people off so onward. Okay. Split testing, split testing. So, um, I'm gonna just share with you a couple split tests. Okay. Um, that you can use after this is done. So, uh, multiple people, um, poor, uh, polls, more poorly than a single person on [00:15:30] a photo. Number one, number two, um, a I'm gonna call it a relatable person, uh, pulls better than a supermodel ad agencies make the mistake of pulling out a photo. 
Speaker 1:        Banks's a supermodel with gleaming teeth, male or female doesn't matter. Um, and the actual lead, uh, lead flow out of the, that goes down. It's counterintuitive. But when you think about it, well, we actually know why [00:16:00] when there's super beautiful people on photos, um, the regular person like me or a, you know, this regular person will go. If everyone's had in their friend group, that ultra beautiful person, him that took, took all the attention, and then there's this low grade resentment. But of course you never expressed it because that's not cool going and crapping on your friend because they happened to be beautiful. In my friend group is a guy named Dan JSON. And we would go [00:16:30] to a bar. He looked like Peter Frampton. He had this gold locks know we would have to patiently wait. Well, Dan would sit there and talk to all these. 
Speaker 1:        It was so vacuous, but I gotta tell you that relatable people out pull supermodel type gorgeous people, and that's not fair, but that's the way it is. Sorry. Beautiful people. Um, if you put a caption under the photo, like you see in magazines and newspapers, you'll get more leads, um, [00:17:00] in your headline, if you use the word, get you'll increase your lead flow 20 to 30%, depending on what you're selling. Uh, so get the, get the skills needed to become a wow, that's your killer headline. Get the skills needed to blah, um, coffee or your complimentary career starter kit have people phone. So there's a few things test, test test. One last one, which is really quite amazing is admissions. [00:17:30] People are always leaving outbound calls. And so you say, imagine that that message is a radio ad with an audience of one person. So if that's the case, you can go through trial and error and you can go and, uh, split test that radio ad. 
Speaker 1:        That phone message. And what we found is that through six, seven renditions of trying different things, an admissions rep will increase the number of people, the meaningful conversations by five [00:18:00] to 10%. So you go, Greg, big deal, 5%. And I say, okay, let's run the math. So the math is this. They make 30 outbound calls a day, that's 600 a month. We call it. And 5% of 600 is 30, more meaningful phone calls. When you have a meaningful phone call, that's called synchronous, um, marketing or sync synchronous admissions. And the conversion rates on synchronous admissions is typically 15% versus [00:18:30] three, four, 5% asynchronous, 15% of 30 is four to five, um, uh, four to five, uh, additional students a month per rep. So by just split testing those messages, you leave. Boom. So there you go. Uh, one last little test instead of, uh, sending somebody a reach out like a magazine article, you send out, you go, [00:19:00] I'm gonna send you a magazine article, and then you send a magazine article by separate, separate, uh, uh, submission. 
Speaker 1:        Why is that important? Because the, the beginning of the process with the admission admissions rep and perspective student is a trust building process. So you do lots of tiny little miniature, um, uh, agreements. I'm gonna send you a magazine article that you'll find interesting, then you send it. So you're keeping your word. You're demonstrating that you're trustworthy [00:19:30] and you can become a trust with advisor versus somebody schlepping education, onward admissions training cannot overcome lead quality issues. So a big issue is that a school will say, I need a hundred leads for phlebotomy for my market. And then the, you, the marketing guys will say, we'll do whatever to go and get those [00:20:00] hundred, um, leads. And a lot of them are horrible, marginal, barely, barely viable types of leads due to the, the myriad of tactics. And I, I won't get in it with you. 
Speaker 1:        You can phone me later. It can tell you the dirt that they do, the better thing to do is I need, um, leads for phlebotomy. I need the leads to convert at X percentage or higher. Um, [00:20:30] and then that is a whole different game. Maybe there's only 30 leads instead of a hundred, but wouldn't, you rather have 30 leads to work with of people who are genuinely interested versus getting yelled at, why are you phoning me? So that's what happens is, and you can't train you can't in our company, we call, we run into these marketing companies to do that, and we call it polishing a turd. It's just, you can't do [00:21:00] it. Um, never do it always go for quality and marketing tip nine. 
Speaker 1:        Um, okay. So, and we don't know why, but, uh, and a digital lead, if you don't treat it like a phone call on hold, um, it plummets by about, uh, 75% in terms of the lead, the, to sit rate in terms of [00:21:30] a student, we don't know why this is the case, but, um, and, and schools do really well. They go, I, I give back to the prospect within two hours, which is really good, but to their, the conversion rates are gonna go from 5% to 1.2%. If they're calling within in two hours, you have to call within 60 seconds. Phone call on hold requires a culture change in terms of first point of contact. Um, or you can use tools such as, [00:22:00] uh, speed to lead, uh, down in San Diego, where when the lead comes in, they'll actually phone the rep and say, Hey, press this button and talk to Sally who wants to be a phlebotomist. 
Speaker 1:        So, uh, your contact rate increases typically like 300%. So tip 10. I hope this is good. I, we, these are called popcorn talks. We keep giving tips. And the [00:22:30] hope is that if you can get two or three, four gems out of it, then boom, we're done our job. Um, okay. Admissions teams work office hours. Now we know through our virtual advisor software, that the majority of people wanna be called from, you know, six 30 to eight 30 at night, or noon to five on the weekends. We know that they, they stay for up to 30 minutes. [00:23:00] Um, and, uh, so the, and we know the conversion rates are super high. So how is an organization? Do we organize our admissions reps to work from six 30 to eight 30 at night, five to seven on Sunday, five or five to six on Sunday, five to six on, on Saturday. But if you do off, you go conversion rates go way up. Now you have an HR challenge there, but, um, [00:23:30] if you can't, then we have like a virtual advisor that after hours, which works exceptionally well, if you can't create a, and they're gonna do a demo of that at the end, for those interested, okay. On where do we go? 
Speaker 1:        So after 21 days, the lead becomes marketing's responsibility. So, uh, [00:24:00] and the cadence, here's the cadence. You might wanna note this down. Um, for people reaching out six calls, five emails, supporting the calls and two voicemails, and that's over 21 days. After that time, it goes into transactional messages, uh, in nurture campaigns. Now school [00:24:30] will typically do a poor job of this. They just self promote self promote. But what you want to do is most of the people that get to 21 days are people that are just early in their buying cycle, the green cherries on the cherry tree. So what you wanna be doing in that, um, that lead flow, the nurture campaigns is help them create clarity around their career paths, sending them career path, um, workshops and [00:25:00] templates and things to try and quizzes, to help them gain clarity around what they're doing. That's what they need, um, to help the gift that, that career schools, if they do a good job, is they give the perspective student clarity about where they're going in their life going forward. So what if somebody hates the sight of blood? They don't wanna be a phlebotomist. 
Speaker 1:        Okay. [00:25:30] Tip 12. So most people, this is the school for you. This is the school gotta come here. The better way to go is to what's what we call qualifying. So you need to stay objective as an admissions rep, bloody minded, and talking to the perspective, student asking lots of juicy questions to really draw out where they're [00:26:00] really at. Cause you don't wanna be working with somebody who really shouldn't be there. Somebody has a really a be a problem with their back. Um, you don't wanna go and, um, get somebody convinced a 'em to become a cosmetologist. So, uh, and marketing needs to do the same thing. And the program pages of the website, you need to be honest and objective, and fullsome in how you communicate. [00:26:30] So qualify hard, have the courage to walk away, tip 13. And now this is controversial in our company at invoice time. If you feel like you've not gotten your money's worth, you can adjust the invoice to whatever you deem to be fair. That's our guarantee. Now this is more of a rhetorical question. Schools would recoil at the site of this, but if you feel like you [00:27:00] can't offer the and guarantee and have a look in the mirror and ask yourself about your product, what, what is lacking in our offering, where we are lacking.