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collaborations with reputable organisations or individuals( e. g. guest speakers / alumni). Include glowing testimonials from impressive graduates – all those things your potential student can relate to.
SUPERCHARGE YOUR TRAFFIC Once you optimise conversion, we recommend you rebuild your digital marketing strategy from the student outward, to supercharge your traffic. You want to make sure the right audience finds their way to your site.
Choose your target
4 You need to be as precise as a sniper, so create a granular profile of your ideal customer. You can reverse engineer one by looking at prior enrolments and seeing where 80 per cent of your revenue comes from. This goes well beyond demographics; you need to get inside their head – work out how this potential student thinks, feels and acts. Identify specifics, e. g. their income bracket, the number of children they have, any prior study, or how they handle risk. It’ s a big job that lays the foundation for really targeted communication and will pay off in the end – I promise!
Make sure your campaigns are laser-focused on these multiple audiences. Use different, targeted ads to attract individual markets and create different landing pages to capture and convert each one. What questions do these customers ask? Research forums and search engines to identify patterns. For example, mid-career mothers might seek flexible study, while a lower socioeconomic segment or potential MBA students might be more interested in payment plans. These are all pain-points that can and should be addressed for marketing success.
Rally the market
5 Don’ t hold off and wait for the market to come to you. You need to create an irresistible offer and provide value. Keep in mind that at any one time, a mere 3 per cent of your client base is in buying mode. Marketing tends to target this 3 per cent sliver, but rules were made to be broken. The windfall comes from increasing the potential market by firing up the remaining 97 per cent lying dormant. You can do this by becoming a helpful resource. Provide clear and easy-to-digest answers to their burning questions.
For example, you could publish a report on‘ Five Career Paths for Diploma of Adult Education Graduates’, then promote this report through smart placement. You might start on Facebook or LinkedIn, targeting people who have worked in education-adjacent roles. Whoever downloads the report is a warm lead for you to convert to a student over time.
Lure your leads
6 Not every lead will be ready to enrol right then and there, so these leads must be nurtured and persuaded with a series of irresistible offers. Get your leads in the practice of trading information for your valuable content. A day or two after a lead downloads the report, your next irresistible offer might be a free career consultation, creating value and an opportunity to build trust with the potential student.
It’ s also important to re-market. Re-marketing is the practice of targeting former visitors, for example through Google banner ads or Facebook feed ads, to re-engage them, remind them that they were interested in your campus or interested in bettering themselves. Education prospects shop around before committing, so nurturing and using the right channels to re-market to them as they’ re deciding is crucial.
Add value to up-sell
7 Repeat business is not often leveraged in education, but with 3.5 million Australians aged 15 – 64 years with two or more qualifications, 2 why not reward your loyal community? It’ s the high-value, low-hanging fruit that too many education businesses are yet to pick. Programs such as double diplomas are ideal, as are progressive qualifications such as bachelor’ s degrees to postgraduate diplomas.
Create a compelling, targeted offer. Just imagine how sweet a bulk discount, flexible classroom hours or an onsite teacher would sound to the training director of a Fortune 500. And don’ t forget to reward – what are you doing to reward your loyalists, those influencers within your community who sing your praises and refer you business? If you reward, I promise you they will work even harder for you. Some of the most effective marketing is persuasive word of mouth.
Never underestimate your website: it’ s a 24 / 7 sales tool that can work hard for your business – if done well. Understanding the customer and what the customer wants is key to creating not just a website that converts, but a marketing campaign that delivers. ■
Sabri Suby is the founder and head of growth at full-service digital marketing agency King Kong.
References at campusreview. com. au
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