How to be a Smarter Education Marketer

How to be a Smarter

Education Marketer?

(An overseas education

consultant handbook)

What’s Inside!

02

Marketing Challenges 03

How to Get Higher Lead Volume and Better Lead Quality 05

How to Drive Better Walk-in to Lead Ratio 21

How to Drive Student Engagement through the Long Sales Cycle 24

Analyzing the Marketing Spend to Identify the Best Lead Sources 26

The Marketing

Challenges

CHAPTER 01

04

Business Process and Marketing Challenges 01

Traffic and

Leads

Walk-ins

Engagement

Admission

Challenges

1. Poor lead quality; lower lead volume

2. Getting relevant student walk-ins

3. Engaging Students through the complete sales

cycle till the final admission

How to Get Higher

Lead Volume and

Better Lead Quality

CHAPTER 02

1

06

1 Regular Lead Gen methods for Consultants

1

07

1. While buying leads, define strict criteria for the vendors, to avoid paying for junk leads as much as you

can

2. When you collaborate with 3rd parties like Ibibo and Shiksha, the landing page for lead capture is your

own, and the model is CPL (Cost per Lead), so try to get the most qualified leads

a) Have a long form with the most important fields – eliminate junk leads right at the beginning

b) Ensure that the leads fulfill a particular criteria – ask for marks, budget, preferred country and course

A Ensuring Better Quality while “Purchasing Leads”

1

08

1. Google Adwords – These are the people who are

looking for your service right now:

a) Better Keyword Targeting

b) Mark negative keywords in the campaign everyday

2. Landing Page

a) Must match the offer on the ads

b) Must have a phone number

c) If you get many junk leads, have SMS verification

to cut out the junk

d) Must have student/parent testimonials

B Ensuring Better Lead Quality from PPC Campaigns

1

09

Facebook Ads:

1. Use Demographic and

Interest Targeting

2. Use Custom Audience to

target people who

became leads, but did not

move to the next stage

3. Create Lookalike audience

based on your existing

student lists (email IDs)

B Ensuring Better Lead Quality from Facebook Ads

Lookalike Audience

Your lead list

08

The organic traffic that you

get would land on your

website ‘or’ your blog. So,

you need to have certain

elements on both.

Following are the elements.

We would discuss them in

detail.

C Ensuring “More” Leads and “Better” Quality Organically

11

The first thing here is to make sure that the traffic sticks. An accessible website would ensure that

whatever traffic lands on your website does not immediately bounce off

1. Have a responsive site – many searches happen on mobile, and you don’t want to miss out on

them

2. Ensure that the page load time is less, otherwise bounce rate would be higher

I) Website Accessibility

Why a responsive website is an absolute necessity

1

13

03 II) Credibility Factors

Credibility plays a role at two stages:

A) Level 1: On a visitor’s first website visit

(Before walk-in/conversion to lead). Following would help

1. Testimonials:

a) By students

b) By parents

2. Your website’s ‘About Us’ section:

a) No. of years in the business

b) No. of centers

c) No. of students placed

d) Affiliation with good universities

3. Your social media presence

Logo 5555555 [email protected]

Testimonials

Press

Your Story

Social Media Links

Scholarship Help

1

14

03 II) Credibility Factors

B) Level 2: After walk-in, when the prospect is evaluating and comparing you with other consultants. The

following factors would matter then

1. Reviews on external student forums

2. Alumni board forums on the website – Parents of prospective students / Students can interact with their

current/former counterparts

3. Continuous interaction with the students even after the admissions would ensure that they recommend

you to others as well

1

15

03 III) Have a Content Strategy to Drive More Organic Traffic

Your content strategy would

determine the volume and quality

of organic traffic and therefore

organic leads

An active blog would get 434%

more indexed pages, and 97%

more links on Google than an

inactive one.

82% of B2C marketers already

have a content strategy in place.

1

16

03 III) Blog Strategy – Student, Information and Tourism Blogs

A. Reading fellow students talk about their experience would be a much better credibility factor

B. Try to sell the travel appeal (if the destination has tourism appeal) and student preference of the destination

1

17

A IV) Getting More Traffic Organically - Local Presence

Create Google Plus pages

for all your different

centers, with Google

verified addresses to

show up in search results

when people from a

particular city search for

‘Overseas Education

Consultants’.

Have free listing on all

the local search engines,

like Just Dial, Sulekha.

You can opt for paid

ones as well.

In Google Analytics, set

Location Filters to find

the regions that get you

the best traffic volume

and quality.

Combine location filters

with goals to see which

region is getting the

best conversions. You

can invest more on that

source.

1

18

03 V) Offers for Conversion on the Website

1. Check your scholarship eligibility – Fill details and find if you are eligible

2. Preparatory paper downloads for exams like TOEFL/IELTS etc.

3. Newsletter subscription – subscribe to updates in overseas education scene, etc.

4. Live webinars/counselling sessions for parents of potential students and students, with

A) Current and former students / parents

C) University representatives

5. Quizzes

6. Help in drafting CVs etc.

7. Aptitude tests to find the best courses for individuals

1

19

03 How to ensure better quality leads from this organic traffic?

1. Have long forms, with proper fields, like marks obtained, budget, preferred destination/course.

2. Generally from organic you would get traffic that is not immediately “sales-ready”, for instance students who still

have a couple of years before they are eligible to go out for their desirable course.

Instead of ignoring them for the time being, keep them in the loop with your newsletters, etc, so that you are

on the top of their minds when they evaluate consultants a couple years down the line

1

20

VI) Conversion Tools on the Website

All the discussed offers can be downloadable/signed for elements that can be given away using the following tools:

1. CTAs can be as topbars

2. Pop-up forms

3. Image CTAs on Sidebar

4. Banner CTAs

5. Comments + Lead Capture integration

6. Live Chat + Lead Capture integration

7. Lead Capture Forms on the sidebar

Ensuring Relevant

Student Walk-ins by

Avoiding Initial Drop-

Offs

CHAPTER 03

1

22

01 Nailing Short-term Engagement

1. Turn-around time should be less. People are incredibly connected these days, and slower turn around time

might send them off to another consultant

a) To ensure faster turn-around, deprioritize spam and redundant leads by using phone / SMS verification

during lead capture

b) Set email/SMS auto-responders, so that even if phone follow-up is a little late, the lead is kept in the loop

c) Lead distribution should be automated (whether assigning to consultants or different centers – this would

make it fast and not prone to human error)

2. Students might have some common questions before the walk-in, like information about a particular course.

Have brochures with the most common questions ready to be sent across.

1

23

01 Nailing Short-term Engagement

3. If someone misses the walk-in, there are a couple of alternatives you can look at:

a) Follow-up by call: Do this if you have a larger counselling team, and lesser people missing the walk-ins.

b) Set-up a series of follow-up auto-response emails: Do this if you have a smaller counselling team, and more

people missing the walk-ins. You can send them periodic information about the course of their choice and

reminders about the coming walk-ins

4. After you start sending them engagement emails, tracking activities (like, website pages visited, emails opened

etc.) would help the counsellors deprioritize the dormant leads, and follow the active ones first

Ensuring Lead

Engagement during

the long sales cycle

CHAPTER 04

1

25

01 Maintaining “Long Term” Lead Engagement

1. Send your leads regular updates about overseas education scene in the destination of their choice – newsletter.

2. Hold intermediary counselling sessions after initial discussions, about type of course, desired destination

a) Use webinars

b) Online forum discussions

c) Offline discussion at your centers ‘or’ your education fairs

3. Help them find proper accommodations.

4. Consultation sessions with current parents / students and education advisors – hold online counselling and

webinars

5. Your student-run blogs can be a great way to maintain long term lead engagement

6. Be actively engaged with the already placed students. They would recommend you to their

connections

Analyzing the

Marketing Spend to

Identify the Most

Profitable Sources

CHAPTER 05

1

27

1 Find the best lead sources

Ask yourself these questions

a) Which sources are getting you the most number of leads – PPC, Organic, referral or anything else?

b) Is a particular location getting you better leads than others?

c) Is there a particular course/destination that gets you the most leads?

1

28

2 Find the best “lead to student“ sources

Find the lead quality from each of the sources. You can use an automation tool like LeadSquared for this (how

many actual “lead to student” conversions happened from a particular source).

1

29

For instance, in the above example, the student/parent referrals are getting the best “lead to student”

conversion, as opposed to the other sources, therefore you should invest more in building an alumni

network than on running ads, even though the number of “visitor to lead” conversions from PPC are higher

2. Also, analyze what locations/courses/destinations give you the best “lead to student” converts.

Invest accordingly!

LeadSquared marketing software helps businesses capture and engage all

their online leads till they convert

Liked this EBook? Share it with others

Sign up for LeadSquared Trial