Speaker 1:        We're marketing meets admissions. Here's where I wanna start. So what is it like on your campus and what is the relationship like between marketing and admissions? In my experiences, it is the number two source of conflict at most schools. Usually the, the greatest conflict and the most finger [00:00:30] pointing is between admissions and financial aid. And I know I'm stereotyping here, but that's at least what I've experienced. But number two, on that list is between admissions and between marketing. So what is the mindset on, uh, at, at your schools or at your school? And, you know, uh, these leads are lame, you know, that's the classic, uh, admissions, no good leads. And then from the marketing department or, you know, [00:01:00] lazy reps or, or they're just not working them or they're just not converting them. So couple things, the first one is a lead is a life, you know, a lead is a life. 
Speaker 1:        And, and I, you know, I, I know it's easy, you know, to, to, to get caught up in the score, keeping and goals versus actuals and conversion rates and all that. But these are all human beings, they're people and, and, and they want a better life for themselves [00:01:30] or, or they wouldn't have, uh, you know, they wouldn't have ended up in a, in our database. So a lead is a life and is that front of mind, and is that something that as leaders were, are making sure that we're aware and our teammates are aware, you know, and then, you know, cost per start is king. And so, um, do you know your cost per start for each different [00:02:00] type of lead that you re see? What is your cost per start? Are you on top of, you know, your different marketing channels and, um, you know, how, how much you're spending and how much you're getting back. 
Speaker 1:        Um, are you on top of your functional ratios? You know, what is, what is your admissions manpower as a percentage of total revenue? What is your advertising spend is a total, you know, of revenue, [00:02:30] um, you know, are, are, are you aware of those? And just keep in mind, cost per start is king. You know, um, it's not cost per lead. It's cost per start. You could have a ton of lead and they could be making things worse. They could be worse than useless cuz they're taking up time and they're creating, you know, conflict. So anyway, um, and then what's the longest you had a lead that converted. [00:03:00] I'm curious, let's put that out as a poll question. I can't see the chat Suzanne, you could see the chat, right? How many, what is the longest time? And when, when I was a rep, mine was, mine was four to six years, depending on which, uh, one people questioned lead, but I had a rep, it was eight years. 
Speaker 1:        Hers was eight years. She worked a lead or had it in her database. Not that she was working it constantly for eight years. So what's the longest [00:03:30] that that's that some of you out there have had for, uh, you know, leads. Why am I not? I don't see the chat box. That's not cool. Uh, nobody responded. Huh? Nobody put a number in there. There we go. There we go. Number one. Yeah. Four months. Four. Okay. Well that's pretty quick turnaround. So I see four months on there, you know, in, in, um, uh, P PK through 12 space. Oh, okay. Got it. [00:04:00] Two to years. Three to four years. Uh, no leads yet at launch. Oh, that's exciting. <laugh> yeah. So, so, um, you know, just, just keep in mind a lead is a life and, um, you know, cost per starters, king and you know, I, I do, I came, my first job in the sec was as an admissions rep. 
Speaker 1:        So, you know, I get the urgency and, and um, you know, what's gonna convert right now, you know, and that's really what I want, [00:04:30] you know, gimme the Glen, Gary Glen Ross leads. That's all I want. You know, I get that. <laugh> um, okay, let me, uh, move to next slide. Okay. So, um, dashboards. So I hope you guys can see me. I can't see myself. I don't know why, but I hope you can see me. And if you can, I'm gonna share, I've shared this with some of you. So one of my early mentors was a pilot and he would take me flying, which was really cool. It's a lot of fun. And he had me, he let me [00:05:00] fly his plane, which was super cool. And he had me pull my sweatshirt. I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt up over my head and fly the plane. 
Speaker 1:        And I was doing a great job flying the plane until I pulled my shirt down and I could see what I was actually doing. And I had us in the early stages of this like negative left death spiral, you know, I just didn't know it <laugh>. And what that did for me was it really drove home [00:05:30] the importance of dashboards and the difference between a feeling fact and an actual fact fact, the difference between what I believe to be true and what was actually true, you know? So, um, so how are you with your dashboards? What are you measuring and how frequently are you measuring it and how cumbersome is it to get to [00:06:00] that information, a whole nother issue? You know, so what do we measure and how frequently, how are we trending? How are we doing month to date versus our goals in our, versus our budget? 
Speaker 1:        You know, my experiences is, most of us are pretty good at that. If we do have actual goals and if we have backed into them and broken them down into, you know, number of applicants or, [00:06:30] um, you know, by month, great. And, and, you know, and most, um, most people have some kind of dashboard in place for that. If you don't, I strongly encourage you to have one, how are you doing month over month? You know, and, and just historically, you know, I, I do value month over month, but I think I value same time last year, a little bit more so, because I, I think that's a little bit more apples to [00:07:00] apples unless you've had a massive, you know, economic event, like a pandemic happened, which can totally change the data, but, you know, for the most part, and, you know, in my 30 years of doing it, I think I've gotten more value out of same time last year. 
Speaker 1:        You, and then what about your three year trending? How are you doing on your three year trending? And, um, are you measuring that? Are you looking at that what's happening to conversion rates, you know, [00:07:30] your appointment, setting your show up, rates, your, your finalization rates, your start rates, you know, how are they trending over the years? What's happening to your rates by different marketing channel, you know, year over year. Why is that happening if you're planning for next year and you're putting together some kind of proforma, what are your assumptions that are going into that? And what are you basing those conversion rates and those numbers on. Um, and then is that information ease you to access [00:08:00] and already organized in a systematic way? 
Speaker 1:        You know, so, um, you know, I typically see, um, that most schools have a weekly report on lead flow appointments, interviews and enrollments, and see most schools have some more downstream data on FAS received, signed MPS, [00:08:30] you know, things of that nature. Um, is this information pushed out to you or do you have to go get it? And do you have to, you know, do you to play with a few buttons in order to get it? And what I encourage you to do is to push this information out, have somebody that's your master CRM S I S user push this information out on [00:09:00] a weekly basis. And, um, because if somebody has to go chase it, they might do that. But, um, they're, they're, you know, if it's getting pushed out to them, at least they've got the information they've got the data. And a lot of the times when you gotta go chase it, you're not really chasing it. 
Speaker 1:        Or you're, you're very inconsistent at chasing it, or at least I was <laugh>, you know, so anyway, I, I wanna challenge you to push the data out. Um, are you happy [00:09:30] with your CRM? Do you even have a CRM? <affirmative> you know, when, when I was first a admissions rep, um, there weren't CRMs. So we had the, some of you older timers might remember this, we had the boxes, you know, the one through 31, the Monday through, you know, Sunday boxes and you put hard copies of everything you were doing in the, and that's how you followed up. And, and it worked, it worked really [00:10:00] well. And we had to fill out daily activity reports and they were tabulate at the end of the day. And they were turned into a weekly spreadsheet that was done on Lotus 1, 2, 3, you know, and, and, um, and so I still had good data, you know, it was cool and, and it was useful and it was helpful. So anyway, um, how are you trending, what's your month to date goals versus actuals, Hey, doing month over month, how you doing same time last year, do, are you keeping at least [00:10:30] a rolling three years worth of information and are you actually looking at it and using it on a, on a systematic way and being deliberate about it, and then how easy is it to get to that information? And is it being pushed out to you? 
Speaker 1:        Okay, dashboards, what are we actually measuring? So speed to contact, you know, so, I mean, you've heard a lot of the expression, you know, first in the door first to score first to contact first, to contact, blah, blah, blah. [00:11:00] You know, and statistically, it's very true. You know, the first to contact, you know, usually wins, you know, so how are we doing with speed to contact and what, you know, certain leads sources that's even more important than others, you know? So how are you doing for your speed contact? Are you measuring that, you know, are you under a minute? You know, that's cool. If you are congratulations, what's your contactability rate? [00:11:30] Do you know that by different lead channel? So how contactable are these leads? What's your appointment to lead rate? So are you setting appointments and, and is that even what your best practice still is? 
Speaker 1:        Is it going for the appointment for a face to face, or if you get 'em live, you're going right into the interview, you know, which seems to be a real, um, real, um, direction that the sector's [00:12:00] going. And, um, and, and the outcomes are actually really strong for that, you know, old school was you just, um, you, you always set the appointment unless they know showed you times. And if they know showed you a few times, that was the only time that you'd call 'em and try to take 'em right into the interview right there when you got 'em live, but today that's different, you know, and the pandemic's taught us a lot of that. Um, what about your application to interview rate? You [00:12:30] know, so how is your closure? Is it possible to be closing too high? Is there a closure rate that's too high? Should you be closing every single person you're interviewing, be curious to see what you guys opinions are on that one? Um, you know, how, oh, how about in, in, um, you know, what's your language? So is an application enrollment or those two different things is in the application. [00:13:00] Somebody that applies to go to school and an enrollment to somebody that's submitted their P and agreed to their financing, you know, what are your definitions? And if you're multi-site, are those definitions consistent across your locations? 
Speaker 1:        What is your what's? How many starts to enrollments, what's happening to your start rate? You know, um, what I believe is happening, but this is a feeling fact, not a fact fact, [00:13:30] cuz I haven't seen enough data on it, but what I believe is happening is that application contactability interviews and applic are increasing and start rates are decreasing. I believe that to be true, that is true with a couple of the larger boxes that I have former teammates working at. Um, but I, you know, I'm curious as, as across our sector, what's happening there. Um, I do believe that that is how happening, I think we're [00:14:00] starting to see, but it's easier to contact it's it's um, we're getting more interviews, we're getting more applications and our start rates declining and whether we're getting more or less starts depends, you know that one's not as consistent. 
Speaker 1:        Um, how's your call volume in connect time. And where are you measuring that from? Where are you getting that information? Are you pulling that off of your phone system? Are you pulling that outta your CRM? Does it take manual human entry to [00:14:30] update a record for you to know your call volume? Or are you getting it elsewhere? You know, so I am a fan of pulling whatever your telecom system is of pulling your call volume and your connect time off of that. What about other methods of outreach? So are you measuring how many texts are going out? How many emails are going out and do you have, um, [00:15:00] do you have great language and templates and is it easy to do so you're not having to organically recreate every message like that, you know, so some of them are able to, you know, automatically, um, you know, populate with a name and you've already got, you know, that and you can send them out in bulk, but on the, on the perspective students end, it looks like it's all been customized, you know? 
Speaker 1:        And do you have a CRM that's capable of doing that and even if it is [00:15:30] capable of, are you using that functionality? You know, I've seen lots of folks have killer CRMs, but they're barely even using them, you know, or they're just using a, a fraction of what they could do. Um, do you know your cost per lead? Do you know your cost per start? Um, this one's a little bit newer, this is more recent. What's your first time contact to interview rate. And I'm curious, are any of you actually measuring that your first time contact to interview rate? [00:16:00] All right. So what's your lead management system and how are you distributing leads? So let's talk about that for a minute. So are you distributing 'em based on rep availability? What if your rep calls out? Are they still getting leads or not? 
Speaker 1:        Are you set up, are you automatically routing leads through your lead management system in some sort of round Robin or in some SI sort of [00:16:30] weighted average based on conversion rates, what's your conversion rate by lead channel? So do you know your, your different lead channels? Do you know your appointment, setting your show up, rates, your closure rates for those lead channels? Do you know what you're spending on those particular channels and what starts you're receiving from them? [00:17:00] How about conversion rate by program? Do you know your conversion rates by program? Do you know what reps are better at converting? What programs does that even factor into to your lead distribution? 
Speaker 1:        Are you feeding more to your heavy hitters? You know, so, so prior to having, um, you know, [00:17:30] technology, when it was done, you know, paper, pen, pencil, you know, remember we used to have one for direct mail, one for newspaper, insert one for phone in one for walking, we had all of our different lead channels, you know, billboard, whatever it was, you know, and then it had a, each rep's name, but you could put two or three, you could put the same rep two or three times in a row if you wanted to feed him more. Well, we [00:18:00] can do that same thing today with, with, with using our technology. So are we, are we doing that? Are you feeding you're heavy hitters more or not? You know, and I encourage you to do that, um, internal or external support. So do you have the luxury of having somebody contact your leads and warm tra [00:18:30] to your reps? <laugh>, that's pretty cool. If you do congratulations, do you have your own internal department that does that, you know, and do they warm transfer or do they set the appointment and, and you know what, what's your process there? You know, so if you've got somebody live and you can get them right to an admissions rep, that's awesome. You know, so that really is the best practice you can get. Boom, get 'em [00:19:00] live. But if you can't, can you at least set the appointment and do you have a process in place to do that? 
Speaker 1:        Lead mix types of leads? How do you work? Different types of leads. Okay. So let's talk about that for a minute. So how do we work? Different types of leads and, um, why is [00:19:30] speed to contact so important? Um, I don't like when it's all one way, I feel like I'm kind of more in like tele mode right now and I like to interact a little bit more. So, um, if any of you wanna comment or, or enter something in the chat feel free to do so, you know, and, and so, um, how are we working different types of leads? So what, what is, [00:20:00] what is different about somebody that was online and submitted a lead at 3:00 AM last night versus somebody that phoned in, you know, at 10 30 today? How, how, how are those two leads doing? And in the talking points on whatever phone scripts you may or may not be using, how would you treat those two different or not? Or do you treat 'em exactly the same? You know, so I'm curious [00:20:30] anybody doing anything different with, with those two leads and I'm gonna be quiet until somebody says something or chats, so we could sit in silence. 
Speaker 1:        So come on, what are we doing? Shay? You gonna say something? <laugh> spit it out. You're you're you, you queue it up on my screen here. Like [00:21:00] you were gonna say something, 
Speaker 2:        Oh, he muted, um, muted <laugh> and I, we could take this further, too different types of leads. Doesn't just mean different sources. You could have a play online and a contact form on your website. Those are different types of leads when you get those in to someone to treat them exactly the same. Um, do you, you could have a book of tour, you could have get info and, uh, learn more if they do those. Are they all exactly the [00:21:30] same? No people they're never the same. Excellent. There we go. <laugh> 
Speaker 3:        And I, and I'm actually more on the marketing side of things. So, um, I just actually switched into from a campus president over to admission slash marketing. So, um, I just took a on this role, so I've kind of seen all the different mixes over my tenure of a decade or so. Um, but I mean, it really just varies, right. Is it a phone call? Are we getting somebody over to an admissions rep right away? Is it three o'clock in the morning? [00:22:00] We don't wanna look like psychos and, you know, having a glass of wine while they are too. And just say, Hey, yeah, I'll call you buddy. No, we're not gonna do that. Do we have, you know, the virtual assistance maybe? Um, and if not, then it's, you know, who's first, you know, seven, eight o'clock in the morning to be able to get, get to that person and provide that information. So yeah, it's gonna vary person, you know, what type of lead source it is, what type, you know, was it, you know, requesting information through the internet? Did it come through the phone? How was it generated? [00:22:30] So, yes, it's gonna vary each and every time. Awesome. 
Speaker 1:        You, you know, um, a, um, one of the books that I found very valuable, I used to run an executive search firm, um, for a number of years. And that was just pure phone animal, you know, in both directions B to B, B to C it be, it was crazy easy. Um, but the name of the book was called successful cold call selling. And it was entire book written on nothing but opening the [00:23:00] call. It was a whole book on opening the call. That was it. And one of the, um, big ideas in that book, which is so true, and you you'll already all be doing this to some degree. Was it talked about how you need to break the preoccupation of whoever it is you're talking to and you need to uproot them, move them back [00:23:30] over to where they were when they completed that contact information and replant them there, and then you can engage them. 
Speaker 1:        So in that question, I was asking earlier about that person that you got on the phone right away, that person's in a high resolved place. They're hungry for the information they're hungry for your conversation, but that person that you've gotta do outreach, whether they're day old, a week old, six months old, [00:24:00] that person is not there anymore. They're putting the groceries a kid's tugging on their, you know, tugging on they they're somewhere else. So are we breaking their preoccupation with the moment and reengaging them and helping plant them? And are we asking leading questions that help get them back to that place? You, and it doesn't have to be anything profound. It can be something as simple as well. What motivated you to, [00:24:30] to contact us? You know, are you not happy with your income? You know, are you not on track for a great career? 
Speaker 1:        What what's going on? You know, those kinds of warm back, you know, questions. So I do encourage you to get the book successful, Coldwell selling by Lee Boyen. I do not get a commission on that <laugh> but, and I think you guys will get a lot outta that, nothing but opening the call. And I do want you to, to think about [00:25:00] what can you do to help your perspective student get back in contact with whatever their pain points are and not with their immediate what's going on when you happen to reach 'em. You know, I think that that one is really significant. 
Speaker 2:        And I, I just wanna add one thing to this. Um, cause I, I have a much more of a marketing perspective and I feel that there's, there's certain things in, in here that marketing could do to help admissions [00:25:30] first off is where the lead comes in. Have a very descriptive thank you page. So if I come through a contact form, if I come through a plan line, if I come through book a tour, you should have a page that loads says, thank you for your inquiry tells 'em what will happen next. So will reach out to you shortly. If's a online, you'll talk about the application book, a tour of someone going to reach out to confirm the tour for the normal inquiry. One of our informative admission reps will call you shortly to answer your questions for immediate answers. Put your [00:26:00] phone number there. 
Speaker 2:        So they have an urgency and then you put a secondary call to action within the thank you page. That way they have something to, to engage with. So hopefully they don't have a chance to go to your competitor's website and your rep calls in time because everyone is shopping around pretty much you're. You could be the first one or the third one. You, you want to always assume you're first and call as fast as possible, as well as keep 'em engaged on your website. So they don't have a reason to leave and go to a competitor. Um, and that, that holds true. So you have the [00:26:30] thank you page, which continues the message, which makes it easier for admissions. Cause it sets up next steps. Then you have the autoresponder email come out. That will speak exactly to the thank you page. It will be unique by source by lead type. 
Speaker 2:        The autoresponder will reinforce that this is what's gonna happen and all of that. So they are totally ready for what's gonna happen next. And then the person who calls 'em again, would customize that, reach out. So the whole process there, it marketing can help admissions by setting the next steps in place, letting people know what will happen, get [00:27:00] the buy-in on it. And you can even go as, and I love this. If you could find a way to do this, have some sort of agenda even be sent to this is why I'm gonna call you. Here's the benefit of the call, sell the call to them. Here's why you wanna do this. Here's why a rep's gonna call you and you're gonna learn these great things. So you could, uh, do a lot of split testing, there, lot fun stuff. Um, but it's all about just giving them as much information of what's going happen next. So they are ready for and able to prepare 
Speaker 1:        That is a great point Sterling. And you know, and, and think [00:27:30] about this. How many of us have some kind of talking points of phone script? And it does a really nice job of benefit selling the value of the interview, but then in our outreach, we're not doing the same, same thing. Only if we get 'em live, are we sharing, you know, that that benefit selling in the interview, but what about in our electronic communication to them? What about in our texting, in our email, in our, in our Facebook, whatever, however else we're reaching them. Are, are [00:28:00] we doing that? And, and my experiences, the answer to that is now we're not. So we're good at it. We, we are already armed. We know how we got the language. <laugh>, you know, we got the flow of it, but we're not executing. So take a look at your written communications and, and how can you leverage more of what you already and incorporate it into your written communications. 
Speaker 2:        And, and I'm [00:28:30] a firm believer of being as specific as possible, really values the student being vague. They, they don't know as much. They could go somewhere else. They lose interest. If you're specific, you're hitting specific. You're telling them what will happen. You're giving them a roadmap. It helps them a lot. It helps 'em focus on you and you'll be different than everyone else. If you give them all this, your auto responder will be engaging with links that are valuable. Your thank you pages engages them, maybe even a video on your thank you page to draw them into something that adds value the other websites [00:29:00] or the other competitors often you'll see you fill the form you hit submit and the pages refreshes. That's the worst. You don't even know if you've submitted or you don't even get a message. Thank you. Thank you for what what's gonna happen. Now <laugh> tell me what's gonna happen. You need to be as just descriptive as possible. Treat these people like five year olds. Here's what's gonna happen. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And so, um, yeah, that's a, that's a big thing I see love and I I'd recommend submit, leave all your competitors. What do they do for thank you pages you might able to learn. 
Speaker 2:        [00:29:30] I love that. See what they say? Yeah. 
Speaker 3:        You know, the one thing that I always talk about is I feel like there's two types of perspective students out there. I feel like there's the ones that are the self checker, right. That they wanna go out and they check out them. And then they, then there's the ones that wanna go through the whole and they wanna talk to the clerk and they want to have everything back. Mm-hmm <affirmative> they even want somebody to take, push their card out for them. So we have two different types of students and we have to look at that across the board. 
Speaker 2:        Exactly. And that's why if you respond in a way where you're [00:30:00] giving them to, or you, you help like try to get, go in a direction where they feel like they're in control. That's why I, that's why I like giving agendas and giving next steps. Cause it's, it's easier for you to take control of a process. If you're told, if you're informed, if you know everything, when you don't know, and it's just like, thank you. What's gonna happen. You, you, you have no control now. And I'm gonna go with the competitor's website. I'm gonna a lead there because then I might have more certainty that I'm going to get someone to help me 
Speaker 1:        Sterling. Can you talk to, what are some of [00:30:30] the other types of information that when a lead is being generated and marketing is handing off to admissions, that's valuable information for an to have. 
Speaker 2:        Yeah. So, um, I'm a firm believer. You wanna know what the call to action was. So sometimes on your website you might have like contact us and get questions. You know, I have three or four different call to that drive to one form. And the one form is just the same form. I want that to be more granular. I wanna [00:31:00] know what call to action. They click on and, and that should be past the rep because that is the accident drove them in. So as a rep, I could focus on that and go, okay, that is really what got their attention. So I need to make sure I talk about that and at least use that verbiage. And like, not only say it back to them, so they know, you know, I listen, but also that, um, it it's gonna be what resonates. So underst standing what call the action. 
Speaker 2:        They clicked on, understand the source is important. If someone came from paid search, they clicked on an ad [00:31:30] copy that you created. They clicked on a keyword that you chose. You control that whole journey. So the rep knows the a, they saw the rep knows the landing page. They saw the rep that same narrative and give a good user experience. If someone comes from the website like organically or through, um, direct load, you don't have any control over the page. They saw, you don't know exactly what keyword they typed in. So it's gonna be more broad, but it's good to know that knowing this is a website lead, this is a paid search lead because if it's paid search, then again, I wanna know [00:32:00] the keyword. I wanna know the ad they saw, and then I'm gonna continue that narrative and give them a better experience. 
Speaker 2:        Um, something else that's great to click is frequently asked questions. You you'll see on all of our websites. We put the check boxes for frequently asked questions that gets passed to the rep. So not only does the student go, oh, I see a pain point, click, click submit. Great. Now the student is higher rate of conversion because they see their need. But the rep, now these are their pain points. So not only am I able to prepare answers around that and work [00:32:30] with them, but I could use that in my emails. If I, even the autoresponder, if you have the technology set up, the autoresponder can say the questions, get your answers to these questions. If I have to leave a voicemail because I don't get through, I'm leaving the specific questions they want answers to on the voicemail. I'm calling because you inquired about our ABC program and you actually asked X, Y, Z. 
Speaker 2:        Well, I'd love to give you those answers. Please gimme a call back or email. And you know, so you start that process by dropping specifics. So the more information [00:33:00] about the journey the student took helps the rep, what the journey, what the student saw, what call action. They went after, um, what drove 'em in, um, that is all gonna help. The rep as the rep now knows their journey. If you know the keyword from paid search, that's even better. Cause I know what keyword drove. 'em maybe it's a keyword that tells you a lot about them or about their needs or something. Um, so yeah, any data like that is great. Um, outside of that, I don't like to ask too. I don't want the form to be longer. [00:33:30] The longer the form is the lower, the conversion rate, everything you add to a form hurts conversion. 
Speaker 2:        So every question you have on your contact form, you, it better be critical. There's no room for wasting on something. I don't like to ask what source you came from, because I'll collect that later. I, I, I don't want the source. If you enroll, I'm gonna ask you and find that out and that will be important. But at this point, I don't want to ask where you came from and have it compromised some percentage of my leads. So, um, limiting what you ask is more important than asking for more, in my opinion, [00:34:00] but if there's certain critical things like the frequently asked questions, you can add to that. That's great. If it could pull the data, when you fill a lead, where they came from and any of that data, if you know the actual page they came from, they came from a program page. 
Speaker 2:        You could feel a lot more certain, this person read about the program. They know about the program details. If they came from the homepage, well, that person hasn't gone to a program page or D become a leap in program page. So you're gonna have to educate them a lot more on the program. So again, knowing what pages they're on could give you a good understanding [00:34:30] of what type of information will be best to serve 'em to. So yeah, I wanna get all that as much as you can pass there. And then the basic information program of interest, and then frequently asked questions. <affirmative> that would be that that's ideal. Now we have our career quiz, which a lot of you have or seen before that you collect motivations, psychographic stuff, demographic stuff, learn so much more about them. That's awesome. Um, but I, I'm talking just in a basic contact, one like limited fields, what you can get 
Speaker 1:        And, [00:35:00] and my experience, I, I love what you're sharing here. My experience is that only a handful of schools have awareness of was it homepage versus was it program page and, and, and, and actually sharing that. And it's actually making it to an admissions rep. So <laugh>, that's, that's, uh, certainly that's a, that's a very, uh, untapped opportunity for most schools. Yeah, that [00:35:30] was good. Thank you, Sterling. Can you talk for a minute about, um, the, um, the intention and the resolve and how explore a might be different than explore B even though both became leads in your system? 
Speaker 2:        Yeah. I'm so one thing that's really big, and it's why I like paid search a lot. And you hear me talk about the difference between paid search and organic search paid search is, and I'm talking, not Facebook, no, not display advertising, I'm talking Google ads, or you type in [00:36:00] a keyword or you bid on keywords. Um, when people come to a website, they could come through different types of ads or even organic links. They could come from, um, like an, a paid ad, which is a keyword that they typed in. They could come from a paid ad display network, which is something that's passive. It pops up it's, uh, and they click on it. That's also Facebook advertising. And a lot of social media advertising, all display is it's like contextual in what you're doing. The ad pops up. [00:36:30] Um, when someone clicks on a contextual ad, all social media ads are contextual and some of Facebook, some of Google, if someone's on the Google display network or the, the, um, remarking network are contextual ads. 
Speaker 2:        When someone clicks on those they're passively brought in, they, they didn't sit down with intent. They were doing something else. I was looking at my cat, my friend's cat pictures, and I saw a little ad and it was interesting. I clicked on it. Those people, um, their [00:37:00] interest is the most fleeting. So I was pulled into this. Oh, this is interesting. Oh, landing page was great. Or your website was great. It's interesting enough. I fill out a lead form. I hit enter your thank you page, hopefully loads up. And it's interesting enough. And you call me in a minute. If you don't call me in that minute, because I was a passive person. It's the, the, the endorphins I get from submitting a lead, which is actually a thing that's scientifically proven. Um, they they're gone. And then I back to look at my friend's cat pitchers back [00:37:30] on Facebook, back into what I was doing. 
Speaker 2:        And now you're calling 10 minutes later, an hour later, a day later. And it's like, oh, you know, that, that moment has passed it. If you caught them in that minute, you could be able to work with that energy, be to get them to move forward. Book that appointment, keep 'em energized, tell them more reasons why your school's great and keep it going. But you lost that opportunity when people are search traffic, which is, I typed in a keyword, you know, school name or program name in city, whatever the keyword is, [00:38:00] that person sat down with an intent. I knew I wanted to do this when I sat down. So when I go to your website and fill a lead form and hit submit, I'm not as fleeting. I'm not just like, oh, I'm done now. Okay. I'm back to my friend's cat pitches. I'm sticking around on your website and probably going to a competitors. 
Speaker 2:        I'm probably doing another search. So that is way more intent driven. That person knew what they wanted from the start. That person is much stronger of a lead, but that person is more likely to go to competitor's websites, more [00:38:30] likely to fill out multiple forms. And that person still requires that fast contact because you want to be the first one to call them. Um, there's one stat. I use a lot. I heard it. Um, two came out in 2020 during the pandemic. Um, but it was that they interviewed students who inquired with multiple schools. 70% of them said they enrolled with the first school that called them. So if you have someone who's a filling out forms on multiple school websites, which is most students, you wanna be the first, because if you're [00:39:00] second, you only have, you have less than 70%. It's, it's actually not 30% because that's distributed between the other places. 
Speaker 2:        So, so being the first, you have a 70% chance of enrolling that student. If they enroll, if you aren't first, your chance is just a fraction of that. So that gives you way more urgency. Either way. If the person came through search or display for display, you give urgency fees. You don't want them to lose interest. If it's search, you have urgency because your competition could be calling them faster to you get on that right [00:39:30] away. So either way, the, a little bit different how you handle them, but they both require that speed to contact because, um, yeah, if you don't get it in time, they're both on to different things. And the reason why most people, um, don't make contact with all their leads is because you get ghosted. It's not that they don't want answers. It's not that they're that they, they enrolled somewhere else and they're ghosting you, or they got, um, introduced somewhere else. That's the most common reason.