Our visuals consist of: billboards, posters and bus/rail signs; no radio; and TV commercials produced by our advertising agent using our current and graduate students. It is my opinion that we should be using more print media opportunities. Our advisory boards consist of three individuals for each field of study offered at our schools. This is accomplished at each campus twice per year (officially) and quarterly (unofficially). The results of our board meetings have been excellent and have led to outstanding improvements to our programs and more job opportunities for our grads. Internet marketing would allow us to reach those individuals who are specifically seeking to further their education in a vocational setting. With the many search engines available, we could be seen on a much wider scale and in areas we may not advertise in.

The majority of our information is distributed via advertising (billboards, yellow pages, employment guides, mailers, etc.). This part of the business is handled by the President/Owner and the Director of Operations. Our new strategies would include the use of as many forms of publicity as possible in order to save advertising dollars. We currently ask the school directors to perform this task, but, in the future, we will get the admissions representatives involved as it would be to their benefit for increased enrollments.

Our PR department is non-existent, although we are beginning to lay the foundation for it. One of our campuses utilizes the local newspaper for publicity concerning their graduation ceremonies, community projects and graduate success stories. This does provide for a favorable image for the school and has been mentioned by prospective students. The major change that we will make is to model each campus after the previously mentioned campus.

I thought it a great idea to have a catalog on-line that the potential student can download. Anybody else have this already? Has it been a helpful tool for Admissions?

I find that great signage to be the number one way to stay on top of the minds of future and former students. PS- Please teach the author of the Quiz the difference between: Their, There and They're.

I am personally very active in the professional organization attending all board meetings, regular meetings, and serve as chapter representative at the state meetings. Since the school is very small, I urge students to participate in the professional organization and their community outreach programs. During the Hurricane Katrina, members signed up to do the transcription of the hospitals that were disabled by the hurricane. Recently the association participated in the Susan Komen Walk for the Cure for breast cancer. I do a graduate survey in addition to the TWC form to determine if the books and supplies the students are using are relevant. I ask the graduates to give the strengths and weaknesses of the program. As time permits, I will also begin to survey the students who did not finish the course for other than academic reasons to evaluate how to enhance the enrollment procedures and course information so hopefully retention will be enhanced. This course also presented the idea of alumni survey which I think is a great idea! It lets the school know what the students are doing and keeps them in touch with the school.

I have had an effective advisory board that seems to always bring a fresh approach to areas of concern for the school. I only meet once a year, print an agenda so they can think about their response, stick to the timeline and agenda, and then I feed them. The last part may be the most important.:-)

To get the word out about the medical transcription school, the website is mainly used. We also rely on word-of-mouth (which I consider the best advertisement) and informational sessions every 3 months. Having a column on the right for current happenings is a fresh idea to incorporate. Taking credit cards in the past was so expensive that I went to strictly to checks and money orders for payment. It has definitely hurt enrollment. Recently the credit card companies have sent out promotional material to take their credit cards online. This is worth the time to investigate. Have any of you found reliable, honest companies to take credit cards for your school?

All of my pay-per-lead providers are trying to increase their prices. I'm tempted to drop providers who demand increases. I know this may be irrational because pay-per-lead is relatively cheap in comparison to other marketing channels. I'm curious to know how the rest of you are approaching this issue. Thanks!

Creating a press release kit and press releases about newsworthy events will be a prime focus for this year. The module was loaded with marketing strategies. The school has 100% placement. This fact is probably not marketed as well as it should be. Stories about student successes is also an idea that has not been developed fully. Testimonials are used on the website as well as biography of the owner/instructor. Employer satisfaction is high for our program. This also needs to be developed in some of the suggestions in this module. I am a sole owner/instructor/marketing person. If there are others in this situation, how many hours do you devote to marketing in a week or month? How do you time manage and keep up the student teaching/grading?

The school teaches medical transcription online. Approximately every 3 months, we hold a face-to-face information session and publicize with the professional organization, potential students who have inquired about the program (if local) and local newspapers. These have been done using a PowerPoint presentation with question-and-answer session following. I have conducted these either by myself and with having a current student and graduate of the program. More admissions come when the current student and graduate also make presentations. At these sessions, they field most of the questions. The website for the program with the testimonials also is effective. Just one-time ads in the newspapers have been expensive and have not produced very good results. Of course, this is always hard to determine how effective since it could possibly have long range effect. Some changes after completing this module will be to get better demographics about the students, improve my contact list and keep it current,and plan an effective marketing strategy.

If we have start date in April, what would we do to gain more leads?

The conversion will go down if there are so many leads per rep. What other conversion issues can arise besides too many leads?

I'm still confused about the Question 4 - Quiz 2. What other information needed to calculate the lead and the enrollment goal? Thanks!

Currently, we have a student clinic which offers low cost services to the community. We have also done some Community Education classes. Given the nature of our profession, this is about the extent of services. We are in the process, however, of expanding our clinic into other area health services through externships. As far as evaluation and data collection, we have not instituted a formal process yet. We are working on setting up an online database which will greatly expand our ability to collect and analyze information.

If I read this part correctly the CPL of tv is less than that for radio. Does this hold true for enrollments as well?

Our school has a great banner that we hang on the street side wall of our building. This banner is also great to take to health fairs, etc. and helps bring attention to the rest of our display. We have an advisory board that meets periodically to offer advice, however, they don't seem to promote us throughout the community like they could. I think they just need to be more aware of some of the support they could provide. Also, we are working on creating an Alumni Association which would also include a board. We are a fairly new, and small school so haven't had many alumni. This is now increasing so it seems time to move into this resource. Thanks

In the past, we have participated in numerous Health Fairs in the community. We have an annual Open House and this year have a brief television spot on a local educational channel. As the Dean of Student Services the full responsibility for these events has been allocated to me. Usually, I have had alumni and students to help. We are very small and consequently, there is not a large population of "workers" to draw from. I have several ideas from this section on how to improve our brochures, flyers, and website. I would love to begin a newsletter, time being the drawback. Thanks.

With most TV ads we have checked the cost tends to run higher than with other forms of advertising because of the actual production of the ad and the cost of the medium itself. For a smaller school with one location would this be a reasonable investment or would this be more of an avenue for bigger schools with multiple locations?

Given the rates for newspaper ads vs. other advertising options are there current studies on the return per dollar for newspaper or print vs. other options?