Inbound Marketing @ Educational Institutions - HubSpot

Inbound Marketing for Educational Institutions www.HubSpot.com Blog.HubSpot.com www.InboundMarketing.com

Part 1: Marketing Has Changed

Marketing Has Changed The Internet has profoundly changed the way people communicate and interact with each other. This change has also dramatically affected how marketers reach their target market, whether it be prospective customers, students, or donors. Ten years ago, organizations reached their prospects by using big advertising budgets to buy their way into people’s lives. The companies and schools that succeed today are leveraging new technology like blogs and social media to attract prospects and engage them more effectively.

1950 - 2000

2000 - 2050

vs.

Traditional Marketing = Outbound Traditional marketing methods focus on interrupting your way into people’s lives, whether it be with ads on TV, radio, or newspapers, or cold calling prospects or sending spam to their mailboxes or email inboxes. These approaches are like hitting people over the head with a sledgehammer to get their attention.

Marketing Today = Inbound Inbound marketing methods, on the other hand, are about attracting people to your organization and getting found by the people looking for the programs you provide. Inbound marketing techniques leverage blogs, search engines, and social media sites.

Inbound Marketing is a Process • Step 1: Get Found

Get Found

• Publish Content • Optimize Content for Search Engines • Promote Content via Social Media

• Step 2: Convert

Convert

• Target Your Offers • Capture Leads with Landing Pages • Nurture Leads to the Next Step

• Step 3: Measure & Analyze

Analyze

• Test, Test, Test! • Analyze the Results • Repeat What Works

Part 2: The Purpose of Your Website

What is the Purpose of Your Website?

What is the Purpose of Your Website?

Your #1 goal is to… Recruit students with all else at a distant second. Enrollment can be up to 75% of an institution’s revenue. What’s yours?

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Same goes for your website… if no one comes to it, does it matter?

What do you want people to do? • • • • • • •

Apply to college Give donations Schedule a campus visit Request info Download the viewbook Take a virtual tour Sign up for email updates or subscribe to content through RSS feeds • Connect in social media

But How?

More Inquiries!

Flickr: JasonRogersFotographie

Part 3: An Inquiry is a Lead

What is a Lead? • A lead, in a marketing context, is a potential sales contact: an individual or organization that expresses an interest in your goods or services. • In a school context, a lead is an inquiry: an individual who expresses interest in attending your school or donating funds.

Lead Practices • Lead Generation: a marketing-related activity that publicizes an institution’s offers and results in individuals expressing interest in attending your school or donating funds. • Offers include: complete an application, schedule a visit, download a catalog, sign up for a newsletter

• Lead Nurturing: the practice of establishing a relationship with your leads and helping them take the next step of engagement. • Tools include: blogs, newsletters, phone calls, open houses

• Lead Scoring: the process of grading or ranking your leads according to their importance to the institution. • Tools include: marketing software and/or a CRM (customer relationship management) system

What is the Value of a Lead? •

You must know how much you spend on generating leads to effectively measure the ROI of your marketing. Do you know the value of a lead at your school?

•

What is the value of a student? • V = Y * (C – D) • V = value of a student • Y = average years students are enrolled • C = cost of attendance • D = average discount for students

•

So what is an applicant worth? • A = V * CA • A = value of an applicant • V = value of a student • CA = conversion rate of applicants enrolling as students

Let’s do an example… • Step 1: Calculating Student Value • • • •

Average years of attendance = 3 years Annual cost of attendance = $30,000 Average discount = $10,000 Student Value = 3* (30,000 – 10,000)

• So a student is worth $60,000! • Step 2: Calculating Applicant Value • Conversion rate of applicants to students = 20% • Applicant Value = 60,000 * 20%

• So an applicant is worth $12,000!

A lead is worth $12,000

Inbound Leads Are Cheaper Outbound lead generation efforts like Direct Mail and Events are more expensive techniques than inbound efforts like SEO and social media marketing.

www.HubSpot.com/ROI

Part 4: How to Generate Leads with Inbound Marketing

Step 1: Get Found • Step 1: Get Found

Get Found


• Step 2: Convert

Convert



Analyze


Get Found > Publish Content

The first step to getting found online is to publish remarkable content. Content can be in the form of blogs, website pages, videos, or anything else you can think of.

Be sure to leverage both your staff as well as your student body. Think about what makes your school special, and make sure the content tells a story about why prospective students may be interested in your school.

Get Found > Optimize Content Once you have remarkable content, you want to help it rank in Google search results for relevant keywords. The first step to optimizing your content is to figure out exactly what those keywords are. Consider: • the volume of searches for that keyword • the difficulty of ranking for that term • the relevance to your institution To optimize your content for specific keywords, make sure to include the keyword in your page title, meta description, and links into your site. Build more links into your website as this is a major factor in ranking well in search engine results.

Get Found > Promote Content Your prospective students are online using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. You need to get involved in these existing communities and build relationships and share content and information.

http://wayne.edu/connect/

Step 2: Convert • Step 1: Get Found

Get Found


• Step 2: Convert

Convert



Analyze


Convert > Calls to Action •

Are your offers compelling?

•

Call to action best practices • • • • •

Action oriented & positive Simple & clear Make it pop with colors & images Link both text and images Targeted to audience

• Make it clear: What am I supposed to do here?

Convert > Landing Pages A landing page allows you to convert anonymous traffic into leads with names, contact info, and interests. Landing page tips • • • •

Keep it simple People scan – use bullets, bold, photos Show the value of the offer Shorter forms have higher conversion

Convert > Lead Nurturing

1

Read & subscribe to blog

2

Download ebook

3

Request info

4

Apply

If you do inbound marketing effectively, you will be attracting a lot of interested prospects to your website. But they may not be ready, at first, to complete an application or enroll right away. Lead nurturing is about building a relationship with your leads over time and helping them take the next step in the process.

Inbound Marketing is a Process • Step 1: Get Found

Get Found


• Step 2: Convert

Convert



Analyze


Why Measure & Analyze? • Understand what’s happening with your marketing efforts and overall institution

• Decide which marketing programs to invest in • Increase your inquiry pool to become more competitive and acquire better quality students over time

Website Analytics ≠ Marketing Analytics • Website Analytics • Hits, Page Views, Time on Site • Page Load Time, Visit Geography

• Marketing Analytics • Inquiries, Applicants, Students • Marketing Campaigns • Closed Loop Marketing

Measure Reach You may already be measuring the size of your email list, but your reach is far expanded with the use of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. To better understand the size of your database, be sure to track your leads (inquiries), social media connections, and blog subscribers over time.

Track Referrals To understand the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns – be they email marketing, SEO or social media engagement – track the traffic coming to your site from these different sources.

Measure the Whole Funnel Don’t stop at traffic. Measure what matters: leads (inquiries) & customers (students).

Track visitors. Track leads. Track customers.

Measure Conversions In addition to traffic, inquiries, and students, you also want to measure the conversion from each stage to the next. Measure and analyze these conversion metrics for your total funnel as well as by source, like social media and paid search.

Part 5: How to Get Started

Get a Free Website Grader Report

www.WebsiteGrader.com

Additional Resources • blog.hubspot.com – blog on inbound marketing topics including SEO, blogging, social media, landing pages, lead generation, marketing analytics

• doteduguru.com – blog on internet marketing and web development for higher education • inboundmarketing.com – online community for marketers discussing and learning inbound marketing • hubspot.com/free-trial – free trial of HubSpot inbound marketing software

Who is HubSpot?

HubSpot is an inbound marketing software solution that helps organizations get found online by the right prospects and convert more of them into leads and customers. The HubSpot software is a simple and integrated solution that includes tools for SEO, blogging, social media, landing pages, lead tracking and intelligence, lead nurturing, and marketing analytics. HubSpot is web-based, does not require any IT staff, and is designed to be used by a marketing person, not a techie.

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