Bringing Your Team On Board with the Advertising Plan
As the advertising plan is rolled out and the start approaches, what process would you follow to ensure that your team is on the same page as the advertising plan and understands their accountability?
I agree. We have closer to 45 students per year, but it is smaller than most schools. I was hoping to get some ideas on how to increase leads through effective advertising strategies, not just a numbers plan. The numbers are very important, but my CEO does not give me access to the Marketing budget so I don't have the ability to make these reports for myself. It is eye opening, but not the course I wanted to take. Thanks.
How do you allocate accountability with a smaller team? A team that the Admissions rep is marketing, and marketing admissions. It's even more important for everyone to work as a team in this situation.
What Comprises a advertising team for me is all departments coming together and voicing out their suggestions where there can be diversity, validity and transparency to the advertising plan. At the same time as they are part of designing it they own promoting it.
Then be transparent with steps and/or processes with every one so every one is involved in advertising plan and its implementation.
Rewards and credits to be shared with the team members so that they get motivated and/or reinforced to carry on further on board with team
advertising plan.
I believe the entire College as a team needs to be aware of the advertising plan. For every department on campus plays a major role in the success of the process of leads to active students to graduate students. When the advertising plan is created and numbers are shared, a team meeting should be held to ensure everyone is on the same page. More so, the Marketing Team and Admissions Team need to work extremely close together to make sure goals are being identified and met in the appropriate time.
I am still having a hard time equating the marketing/advertising outlined in this course for our school.
1. We are a very small school (only admit up to a maximum of 6 students per yer).
2. I am the admissions rep but my main duties are only to answer prospective student inquiries (which means that I do need to be knowledgeable about all aspects of our school).
3. I am not involved in the interview and selection process of students
4. There is a marketing and media director for our parent organization who is responsible for any marketing/advertising efforts for the parent organization and the school. This information has not been shared with me.
Any suggestions?
This has been a recipe for success at many institutions we work with. The more the team is aware of what the plan is and where the accountability lies, the more successful the execution is.
Great point! The more the team members understand the "why" behind things and how they can contribute the more invested they will be.
Total Team success is,among other things, tied to individual buy in. Therefore, each person needs to understand the big and small picture. Many tools, such as those mentioned i.e. charts, graphs, etc., are available to educate and inspire the rep force to success. Finally, the Rep's understanding of the plan is critical to individual and collective accountability.
Total Team success is,among other things, tied to individual buy in. Therefore, each person needs to understand the big and small picture. Many tools, such as those mentioned i.e. charts, graphs, etc., are available to educate and inspire the rep force to success. Finally, the Rep's understanding of the plan is critical to individual and collective accountability.
In order to ensure that the admissions team is on the same page and works together as a team, I would first schedule a team meeting to discuss our advertising plan in detail. We would discuss the plan/goal, the purpose, the vision and who is accountable and held responsible for each task within the plan. This will then eliminate any kind of confusion and will create a sense of responsibility. I think that when people have individual responsibility within a team environment, it holds that person (within the team) responsible. This would allow a big plan to succeed since the big plan is divided among the team.
The admissions team should be aware of the total plan vs. their individual contributions towards the team goal. Having the vision of the overall productivity, a representative will hopefully provide buyin to that end result. Nonetheless, a manager must check what is expected. I might add, "In God we trust, all others bring data". Setting the expectation is critical to ultimately controlling success.
To ensure that my team understands their accountability, I would set benchmarks such as the weekly run rate to make sure that we finish with a good show rate and do not miss our start.
I believe that the entire Admissions team must own the institutional goals. They must also understand that the lead that is contacting the school was paid by company dollars and should never be wasted. On the human side, there is a prospective student on the other end that is reaching out for assistance and information. That should never be taken lightly.
As we know, the entire team needs to know about the accountability system that they are expected to accomplish from lead goals to the student conversion numbers. Effectively and clearly outline from the start what the reps are expected to produce and their goals and their benchmarks for each month. Make any adjustments to lead flow to compensate for below goal conversions.
I do a combination of approaches. I believe in visibility and honesty. Therefore, I will share most reports with the team. They have access to how many leads we receive per month and from what type.
We take it one step further. I teach the team what the conversion trends are expected to be and then we discuss, as a team, ways in which we plan to hit them. For instance, we realize that CPLs are the lowest converting lead for us (converting at less than 2%). They are also the most challenging lead to reach. As a team, we decide to have phone blitzes for lists of CPLs and we also reach out to this lead pool via email. The reason for both avenues is that more people, nowadays, prefer to communicate online up front.
We then have weekly team check ins to see how our strategy is playing out and make recommendations/adjustments as necessary.
Creating a more team dynamic allows the team to feel ownership over the leads.
A regular review of the MMR for myself and a snapshot of it for the team gives everyone an idea of where we are as a team and a idea of our opportunities. This gives us a chance to create a plan to overcome the challenges.
I agree with Robert. Visuals are a great way to communicate your message. I find it especially effective when engaging the admissions staff. Coming from admissions myself, I appreciated straight-to-the-point meetings on results and implementation. I didn't focus well when I was handed a drawn out report with 10 pages of paragraphs to review.
As an additional/supplemental approach, simply asking questions and getting to know the reps' tactics and issues, we, as marketers, get an inside scoop on our targeted demo and their successes, approvals and challenges.
I'm noticing that people are processing things even more visually than ever. And while the reports themselves - and we use them here at our school - are innately visual - I think preparing a sample set of graphs that demonstrate goals vs. historical trends - might be a way to get folks on the same page quickly. It's a simple as the "thermometer" a charity like the United Way will use for a fundraiser. Driving home messages visually is a great way to get everyone on message.
