Blackbaud K-12 User Conference Breakout Sessions
Introduction to Inbound Marketing for Independent Schools - Leigh Fitzgerald, Hubspot
Scott Allenby, Proctor Academy
7. The way people search for information has
changed dramatically.
If schools want to connect with their
audience today, they have to update the way
they market.
8.
9. At its core, inbound is
about building
relationships with your
audience by providing
them with value
10. Q: How?
A: By creating authentic content and
personalized interactions throughout the
admission process to attract and engage
both prospective parents and students.
12. Inbound Marketing
Funnel - Education
Web
Traffic
Prospective
Students
Inquiry
Application
Blog Keywords/SEOSocial Media
Calls to Action Forms Landing Pages
Segmenting Email Nurturing
Email Nurturing
Attract
Convert
Nurture
Close
14. Step 1: Define Your Target
Audience
Create personas to better understand your target market.
• Fictional People
• You can have multiple personas
• Negative Personas
• What to consider:
– Demographics
– Geographic Location
– Common Questions
– Professional Background
– Goals
15. Developing Your Personas -
Proctor Academy
Tell each persona’s story using a five
chapter format:
• What is their job and demographic information?
• What does a day in their life look like?
• What are their pain points?
• Where do they go for information?
• What are their common objections to your school?
High Level
Ski Father
Learning
Skills Mother
9th Grade
Girl Mother
Upper Classman
Male Athlete
Off-Campus
Program Father
16. Step 2: Identify Keywords
(SEO)
● Know who YOU are in order to effectively
target keywords
● Answer Questions
● Keyword Process:
○ Identify opportunities to shift from Paid Search to
Organic
○ Create list of “topics”
○ Expand on those topics
○ Long-Tail Keywords
○ Remember variations
○ Monitor competitors
17. Keyword Process - Proctor
Academy
• Identify programs
that are most
marketable for
your school.
• Identify ranking
opportunities with
high search
volume and are
‘easy’ to rank for.
• Develop content
around those
keywords.
18. Create Content
• Develop content
unique to your
school’s
differentiating
programs.
• Use keywords to
consistently address
your personas’ Pain
Points.
• Blogging
• Social Media
20. Start the Conversation
• No family is ready to apply to a school on the
first visit to the website
• Start the conversation early
• Process to Convert Traffic on Your Website:
– Calls to Action
– Forms
– Landing Pages
21. Conversion Points
• What are we asking our website traffic to do?
• Develop an “offer”
• Examples
– Download sample curriculum
– Frequently asked questions
– Misconceptions of a (blank) school
– Register for an on campus event
– Schedule phone consultation with admissions or
financial aid counselor
25. CTAs on Proctor’s Website &
Communications
• Leverage CTA’s to drive
customers to the next actionable
step in the admission process.
26. Landing Pages
• Calls to Action link to Landing Pages
• Remember:
– Clear Action Oriented Header
– Explain off in 1-5 Sentences
– Use bullets, numbers and bolding in the copy
– Include relevant image
– Form fields that are important (relevant to what
you’re giving away)
– Above the fold
– No menu navigation or links
27. Redefine Your Forms for Inbound
• What information
do you really want
to capture?
• How does each
form on your site
allow you to
leverage
information for
future
communications?
• Reduce barriers to
entry!
29. Segment
• Create the correct segments based on what
you know
– Persona
– Age of Child
– Interests
– Town/State
• Determine the next logical step in the process
for that parent
30.
31. Developing Email Nurturing
Streams
• Identify how someone would enter a
‘workflow’
• Identify how someone will be removed from a
‘workflow’
• Determine the next logical step in the process
for that parent
• Remain personalized
• Stay helpful, not salesy
32. Examples of Nurturing – Proctor
Academy
• Segmentation based on:
– Status - parent/student
– Interests - academics, arts, athletics, snow sports, off-
campus programs
– Admission Stage - inquiry, visit, interview, apply, accepted,
enrolled
• Development of complex workflows based
on segmentation.
Goal: To provide the right content to the right
people at the right time through the right
medium.
34. Biggest Inbound Challenges for
Independent Schools
• Content creation
– Do you have a dedicated person/team who can generate
top notch content on a consistent basis?
• Data management
– Your communication through segmentation is only as good
as your data - who is managing your data?
• Institutional Agility
– Is your school ready to make really tough decisions on
which programs matters and which don’t? You can’t be an
expert at everything…
35. Next Steps
• Inbound Marketing Assessment
– Review SEO strategy
– Get specific suggestions on how to improve your
website/online marketing
Leigh Fitzgerald
lfitzgerald@hubspot.com
857-829-5702
@leighfitz
Editor's Notes
Started teaching at independent schools right out of college and have held a number of different roles – dorm parent, advisor, varsity coach, academic support specialist, teacher, and now Director of Communications and Marketing.
There’s been a fundamental shift in how people search for information.
Over 100 BILLION searches done every single day
93% of online experiences start with a Google search
Prospective families are doing far more ‘shopping’ before they even contact or inquire with a school. What messages are they getting and how are you able to understand what your prospective families are looking for BEFORE they step foot on campus.
Who are you trying to reach? What is that “ideal” prospective parent/student? Private School Pat, or Public School Peg? Are you dealing with competitive parents looking at other schools, or parents who are considering public?
Suggestions on defining persona - look at data of current parents, ask admissions to describe ideal prospective parent, surveys
Key to understand you will market to each persona
Must know your own customers before you can market to them
Ask yourself these questions – what does their day look like, where do they go for information, are you providing information where they want it at the time they want it?
MOST important – make sure you understand EACH OF YOUR PERSONA’S PAIN POINTS!
Want to proactively deliver content to each persona before that pain point becomes a barrier to entry
80% of people will click on organic results over ads
Recurring asset - once you rank highly, you’ll continue to attract traffic month over month
SEM is rented space - once you run out of budget you run out of traffic
Questions - think about your persona
Long-Tail - be specific! ‘private school’ is not a keyword you should go after
Directly related to the development of your personas
If you know who you are marketing to, you can know what they might search
If you know what they might search, you can intentionally create content to address those pain points
Each blog post is a new indexed page on your site = opportunity to rank for a new keyword
Think about social media and blog content as serving a specific purpose.
How do you split your content between current and prospective families? Is content for retention of current customers or attracting prospective customers?
Be intentional with your content strategy (including social media) so you can build your SEO and directly address the needs of each of your personas.
Corny joke - proposing on the first date
Get rid of those Ghost inquiries and applicants
Begin a very personalized relationship right from the beginning
Don’t have the site act as an online brochure packed full of information that you HOPE parents will find to answer their questions
Calls to action will be asking out visitors to DO something
Address questions and concerns by creating something valuable
Have to GIVE something to GET information
My contact information is something I’m going to hold very close to my chest until you give me something I’d like to EXCHANGE it with
You probably have a lot of things that can be re-purposed into content that people can download
Obvious CTAs would be directly related to your admission site, but where else does your Inquiry button reside on your site?
Consistently test the effectiveness of your CTAs – is the design working? Is the page placement working? These little tweaks make a difference.
Do you have CTAs on program specific pages on your site?
These serve as entry points for prospective families into your school based directly on a specific interest – an even more qualified lead than a general inquiry because they have already made it to a specific page and indicated an interest
The same strategy for CTAs and conversion points should take place through your email marketing campaign
Direct prospective families toward your next desired next actionable step.
If you know what you want your family’s next step to be, lay it out in front of them. Do not be afraid to shepherd your flock of sheep where YOU want them to go by providing valuable content to them with a specific driver.
You may want to rethink your inquiry form – is it an opportunity to gain valuable information or do families see it is a barrier to entry at your school?
Figure out what information you really want to capture and eliminate the other information gathering until later in the admission process when people are going to be more willing to give that information.
Reduce barriers to entry!
The point is….
What do we want someone to do next? Don’t push to apply right away
What questions can we help answer depending on their lifecycle stage
Nurturing is by far the most fun stage of the inbound marketing process for school marketers – it allows you to slice and dice your prospective families into segments to which you can speak directly.
Figure out which personas you are going to market directly to – understand their pain points – understand their stage in the buyer’s journey and provide the right content to the right people at the right time through the right medium.
These were the biggest challenges we faced at Proctor when instituting our inbound strategy over the past twelve months. Don’t embark on the journey without the right people in the right positions to do it right!
These were the biggest challenges we faced at Proctor when instituting our inbound strategy over the past twelve months. Don’t embark on the journey without the right people in the right positions to do it right!