Introduction to Inbound Marketing for Independent Schools
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Presentation by Leigh Fitzgerald & Scott Allenby
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Introduction to Inbound Marketing for Independent Schools
- 2. INTRODUCTION TO INBOUND MARKETING FOR INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS. Leigh Fitzgerald and Scott Allenby present
- 3. Leigh Fitzgerald Inbound Marketing Specialist, HubSpot @LeighFitz
- 4. Scott Allenby Director of Communications and Marketing @scotteallenby
- 5. Agenda 1. What is Inbound Marketing? 2. Step 1: “Attract” 3. Step 2: “Convert” 4. Step 3: “Nurture”
- 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.
- 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.
- 11. Cold Emails (SPAM) Interruptive Ads SEO Blogging Social Media INBOUND Customer - Centric TRADITIONAL Marketer - Centric vs.
- 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
- 13. 1. Attract
- 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
- 19. 2. Convert
- 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
- 22. CTAs on Proctor’s Website & Communications
- 23. CTAs on Proctor’s Website & Communications
- 24. CTAs on Proctor’s Website & Communications
- 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!
- 28. 3. Close
- 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
- 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.
- 33. 4. Questions?
- 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!