Marketing Resources
How is your school using visuals, radio, and TV to reach students and prospects? What could you be doing more effectively? How can Internet marketing play a role in your publicity and public relations efforts? How can you most effectively utilize your school’s Advisory Board?
Sandra,
All good points, Sandra. Using internet marketing is an art and can reduce costs. It can also target the ideal prospective student who will benefit from your training. It takes some expertise and sharing about what works and what doesn't. Usually keeping things clear and simple works too. Thanks
Dr. Susan Schulz
I think Internet Marketing and Development is huge right now, not only to advertise to so many people that surf the internet nowadays but also to simplify and make our school more efficient. There's always new ways to add new forms, download files, upload promotional banners, to just name a few, but there's many creative ways this tool cam be pushed for many benefits for the school.
Antonio ,
Sounds like you have great signage. Ideally there is traffic and you measure results about people who visit your school as a result of the signs. Are they quality leads? It's always good to put new marketing strategies in place. We think each decision has to be well thought out, tested, and then evaluated for results. TV and radio often sound great. So far we have heard just a handful of success stories and only for certain schools. Following contacts is often the key to success. People don't always respond to the first contact. We find at least 3 contacts is effective as long as they are varied and timed appropriately. How do you measure results from search engine ad space and other social media? It is always a challenge as sometimes it works really well and other times not. Advisory Boards are great if you choose the right people to join them. Thanks, Susan
Dr. Susan Schulz
Our school relies on visuals such as banners and signs to promote itself at community events and trade shows. Our building also has visible signs that get attention from the busy road we reside on. We do not currently do TV or radio, but I am going to try some new things that I learned from this course. I can be working our current list of contacts for effectively and building the list. Internet marketing has been our main source of marketing for some time now. We buy ad space on search engines and work with social media. We currently do not have an advisory board but it is something I will look into establishing.
Lucy,
Sounds like you are exploring all media to get your school name out. It's great that you have an active Advisory Board. If members are chosen well you have the opportunity of gaining a lot of ideas. What is important is measuring results from all the marketing strategies. Look at the quality of your leads. Do they show up for admissions appointments and are they likely to enroll? Most important - is there a match between what they enroll in and their ability to graduate and get a job within a reasonable time? Your advisory board can probably refer the best leads. Great that they also provide extern sites. It might very well be possible to enroll all students from referrals. Wouldn't that be great and certainly reduce the cost of marketing and especially costly TV and billboards advertising. Thanks, Susan
Dr. Susan Schulz
Our school does a great job with signage, giveaways with our name on it, mailers, brochures and an interactive website. I think the next step will be to start reaching out to TV and radio to promote our offerrings.
Our advisory board is an excellent resource for many things. They are consistently sending us referrals, providing excellent feedback and industry information. They help employ our students and train them on externships. our advisory board is extremely valuable.
Paul,
TV and radio are often a challenge. We find it takes a lot of measuring and monitoring to ensure qualified students, who enroll, are attracted. Web based initiatives are a great way to reach a broad audience. It is also important to reach your targeted audience - those people who will want to enroll in your programs. Great that you are using advisory boards. Chosen well you get great advice at little to no costs. thanks, susan
Dr. Susan Schulz
Our college strategicly utilizes TV and radio to reach our demographic potential student base. We continue to drive people interested in our programs to our web site and use web based iniatives to reach a broader audience. We have moved much of our media efforts to closer to prime time to attract a better audience and give broader appeal to our branding and lead development. Our program advisory boards offer invaluable information for program inprovrmrnts and are a source of ideas for new program offerings
Gracie,
Press releases are great. It is always important to be sure they include interesting and verifiable news. You cam also send out calendar items, which also get a lot of attention. As far as print and other media, ask yourself what the profile of your ideal student is. Then ask yourself how you can reach that specific market. Some methods don't work for who you may want to attract. Involving advisory board members is always important. That's why we suggest inviting lots of qualified people to be members. Sounds like you are doing great. Good luck, Susan
Dr. Susan Schulz
We are sending out press releases when we have outstanding news and any news that is impacting the community and letting them know we are getting our name out there. We could do more print and media as far as making sure our local community knows we are still here. We could utilize the internet more by updating and incorporating some ideas from these modules such as posting resumes online, more blogging, etc. We could be more effective in having our advisory boards more involved and give them more benefits and incentives to become and stay involved.
Jonathan,
Great that TV is working for you. Maybe you want to share your secret. Sounds like you have figured out the formula to reach leads in good numbers. You have noted that now it is important to measure phone responsiveness, if they keep appointments, how qualified, and also how many enroll. We also think that radio can be effective for branding. Some stations provide an environment of being more informational than promotional. Alumni are a great way to increase all your numbers and reduce costs. MaxKnowledge offers a great course on what you need to know to set up and/or grow your Alumni Community. Thanks, Susan
Dr. Susan Schulz
Dr. Schulz-
TV has been very successful. We have 1(800) tracking numbers to measure calls we receive from our ads and for those that visit our website it is required that they mark how they heard about us. We also strongly rely on our admissions team to ask and verify how the lead was generated.
In addition to actual leads telling us that they saw our ads we have seen a direct correlation to our web traffic and when TV ads run. There is no doubt that TV will increase lead flow, but you have to be careful that you are not running ads on locations that don't match your demographic and wasting money.
Radio has been ok, it has become the branding platform for our college. Pandora is primarily for recruiting while radio stations better serve our branding focus.
I agree that Alumni are a great source of leads.
Marcie,
Radio and TV are not for every school. Radio and TV has to be watched carefully or else results will not warrant costs. Posters have worked when they include testimonials of happy grads. Imagine a large poster with a photo of the grad as a student and then in a career - with lots of verbiage saying why they are successful. It sells prospective students all the time. Post them throughout your schools and create books with happy and successful grads. Using your advisory board and also alumni have lots of benefits. You get great ideas and a lot of help - at no cost. You are right - there is a huge pool of people who know a lot about your school. Just ask them for their ideas and time. Thanks, Susan
Dr. Susan Schulz
Jonathan,
How are the TV and radio ads working and how do you measure success? Buying out specific shows might be the answer. How is it going? Pandora and Golden Services Live are great when used effectively. Marketing costs have to be watched. Few people realize that it is about quality enrollments and sometimes clever advertising is not the way to go. Alumni are a great source to address many issues in a career school. Alumni are very credible sources and appreciated by parents, high school guidance counselors, and Workforce staff. Not a surprise. If people are so successful as a result of their training they want other people to know. Alumni also increase retention and placement numbers. Alumni and students are a great source to get great ideas to reach your community. Thanks, Susan
Dr. Susan Schulz
Currently my school is not using radio or TV to reach prospective students. As far as visual marketing we do draft many posters to be hung at various locations and mailed out to prospective students as well as internet marketing and website advertisements. Internet marketing I believe plays a role in your public image especially if involved in social media. Our image online is our most public image because our school consists of mostly online programs. We need to utilize our advisory board more than we have in the past. This is vast pool of knowledge available to us in regards of networking and prospective companies and students that we are not taking advantage of.
We currently pay for TV and radio, but we buy out specific shows that meet our demographic. This cuts down on costs. We have also used Pandora that has allowed us to advertise to specific demographics in a target GEO target reason.
We use Golden Services Live for our internet marketing and they have helped us realize our full potential as a college. Our cost per leads have dropped and quality leads are up.
We have an advisory board that consist of alumni, local leaders and community leaders. They meet once a quarter and have been very helpful in showing us how we can best adapt our education to fit the needs of the communities we serve.
John,
Hi John, Offering non degree programs is a great idea, in our opinion. People seek training to get into the workplace quickly. But - degree programs take time. As you know, it's important to identify a ready market and then determine how to attract them with a goal of referral and word-of-mouth enrollments. It's the most economical marketing strategy and increases the opportunity to consistently reach qualified students who are likely to succeed. You have niche programs and thus saw that mass marketing of radio and tv was too broad and didn't have a good return. After you identify who is interested in your programs then it would be interesting to determine what demographic you are missing. Is it an age group? gender? people from a certain industry? Maybe career changers? Capitalize on your brand. You might have a ready market that needs a bit of prodding. Thanks, Susan
Dr. Susan Schulz
Our school offers lower priced courses that are more like seminars vs. degree programs.
Over the past few years the majority of our advertising has been direct response ie: we want to be able to track leads to determine ROI.
Both radio and tv advertising are very difficult to track. In our organization a low cost per lead is essential, therefore we no longer do any radio or tv advertising. We have focused more on internet and social which are much easier to track.
Laurie,
Yes, happy Alumni refer their friends and family and co workers. Alumni have proven to be most credible by high school guidance counselors and parents. Alumni are viewed as peers and thus believable. Alumni also increase retention and placement. See MaxKnowledge course with all the details. Susan
Dr. Susan Schulz
