Enrollify eCourses are designed to translate the latest and greatest in marketing strategy and tactics into higher-ed-marketing-lingo...these courses are built first for enrollment marketers and second for everyone else. What a concept, right?
4 SURE-FIRE TIPS FOR GENERATING THE BEST LEADS THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA: 61% of marketers surveyed in 2018 said that generating leads was their top challenge. Lead generation can be used across any platform but given the oversaturation of advertisements in our culture today, social media marketing offers an effective way to appeal to potential customers in an organic, natural, unobtrusive way. That said, here are four techniques for generating new leads through social media: find people who are searching for products like yours and make them aware of what you have to offer; find people who are unhappy with your competition and present them with your alternative; connect with micro-influencers and have them promote your product; join niche-related chats that share your interests to target an audience ripe for the picking. The beauty of these approaches on social media is you don’t have to push your brand on people, but can offer your product or services as a friendly solution to their problem — a tactic that has proven effective time and again.
Why you should care: One of these techniques that can prove especially useful and effective for marketing to prospective students is finding people who are searching for “products” like yours. To do this you can use a social media monitoring tool to alert you when people search for relevant keywords such as “looking for” + “online mba programs” or “need a” + “undergrad completion program”. After identifying prospects who are searching for your programs you can either reply directly to them and invite them to check out your resources or programs or continue to retarget them in hopes of establishing a connection down the line.
DIVERSIFYING YOUR PPC PORTFOLIO: It’s no secret, Google owns the market on internet searches...but it’s by no means the only search engine out there. While these other search engines don’t have the reach of Google, they could offer you a cost-effective alternative for reaching some specific audiences. One example is through Bing’s pay-per-click (PPC) ads. PPC ads are the search engine marketing tool where advertisers pay every time an individual clicks on their ad. So how do Google and Bing stack up against each other? Well, Bing experiences 5 billion monthly searches, while Google has a much larger monthly search volume. With Bing, you can set age and location filters for your search ads, features that Google does not offer. Bing PPC ads experienced a 34% higher click-through rate and had a 56% higher conversion rate than Google AdWords. Finally, because Bing has fewer competitors bidding on keywords, the cost to fun PPC ads with Bing can be far less (up to 35% cheaper than Google ads). Here’s the bottom line — while Google PPC ads reach a far greater audience, it may be worth investigating how running some Bing PPC ads could benefit your marketing efforts.
Why you should care: Chances are you already have a Google Ads PPC strategy (if you don’t, contact us to learn how to get started), and while we don’t recommend deleting that account and switching to Bing, it is well worth investigating. Bing’s searchers are generally older, which presents the opportunity to reach unique audiences that might be more expensive through Google’s platform. For example, using Bing’s age and location filters, consider allocating a small budget to target the parents of undergrad students in your area or mid-career professionals who are looking to return to school to further their education. By taking advantage of these unique Bing features and their relatively low cost, you can identify and connect with new prospects through PPC ads.
IT’S ALL ABOUT THAT MAGIC (MARKETING) MOMENT: Professionals agree, digital transformation (or the adoption of primarily digital-based business practices and methods) has reached its saturation point. Now comes the moment for marketers to utilize all the tools they have been given to understand their customers with a new depth of granularity and use the plethora of channels they have to connect with them. This means that marketing has reached a point in history where “every individual customer has their own reality and every moment will soon represent an opportunity for marketers to play a role in shaping it.” There are lots of ways to harness these moments for connection including maintaining an authentic or “human” element to marketing and offering responsive content.
Why you should care: The prevalence of new digital technologies offers higher ed marketers a huge number of tools to take advantage of as these increasing personalized realities become the new norm. Prospective students expect a lot when connecting with brands online, and their potential undergraduate or graduate school is no exception. So how can you connect with your prospects in these hyper-personalized realities? Perhaps the most effective (and simplest) solution is to offer a human connection through authentic, innovative, and thought-provoking content that answers the questions your potential students really have. Making this personalized connection through your content will help create a meaningful bond with your brand, which will, in turn, encourage students to consider your institution when deciding where to go to school.