Finding a quality prospective student can feel like finding a needle in a haystack.
It’s hard to know where to even start looking and even harder to know what marketing strategies to use and when to use them.
Trust me, I’ve been there before (plenty of times!)
A lot of clients can get clicks on their content but hit a brick wall when trying to attract qualified, potential students to their website.
But there is a way…
Read on to discover:
Leads are a beautiful thing! Some are great and some are real stinkers.
They can be sourced from anywhere - job fairs, emails, Facebook, Google, live performances or even blogs (like this one).
Having lots of leads is great (and don’t get me wrong- quite a feat) but that’s not the be-all and end-all.
Leads do not always equal enrolments. Close but no cigar.
So, don’t stress if you don’t have a whole lot of leads coming through just yet.
So, why is lead-grading important, you ask?
When you split leads into groups, you’ll:
Let’s talk C-class leads - they’re probably the most common (behind getting no leads).
They are underqualified and most likely just scanned your content and didn’t read any detail.
They are most likely to be non-visa holders or people with a passing/hobby-level interest in your field. Or, as I like to call them- time wasters!
B-class leads are warmer, they likely have a heightened interest, but they still aren’t quite qualified enough. Maybe they are underage or don’t have the academic track record needed to attend your school.
No matter, they still play an important role in helping support the algorithm on Facebook direct for your content to better leads.
And finally, the crème de la crème, A-class leads. This is what we all want.
So, now’s the time to ask yourself, do I want a whole lot of C class leads, or should I focus on getting those A-class leads who are most likely to enrol?
The first step in the process is to capture the lead’s name and contact info. This is broad and will probably attract 60% C- class, 30% B-class and 10% are those ever so sweet A-class leads.
The next step is where the magic starts…
It’s important… it’s major…it’s… actually super simple.
Step two is to ask more detailed questions.
Ok, ok it’s deeper than that, these questions need to be targeted and very specific.
This helps you find qualifying details like: Are they the right age to attend your school? Do they have the funds? The academic skill? Etc etc.
You can find out all the necessary qualifications you need to find your model student.
I have some clients who get thousands of leads a week but they don’t have the resources to go through them all (not many do).
But by implementing this quick two-step qualifier to their website, they had access to only the top quality, A-class leads without the headache of making thousands of sales calls.
Dealing with only A-grade leads saved a lot of time because potential students flew through the enrolment process within a couple of days.
This also cut sales calls in half - less wasted time on the phone. Plus, the client could finally stop playing the dreaded role of “pushy sales-person”. A role everyone hates!
Facebook and Google ads are a wonderful beast. They can be your best friend or your relentless opponent.
The Facebook algorithm is optimised for conversions. Which in theory is great, however, the feedback loop of the algorithm can also decide who to show your content to based on engagement.
So, if low-quality leads are interacting with your content the algorithm will optimise and show your content to more people like that. Not good.
If these C-grade leads keep getting through your pipeline, imagine how many dead-end sales calls your team would have to make (or already are making) a day.
10? 50? 100? No thanks! I’d rather be putting less effort into A-graders.
This means having to manually push back against the Facebook machine which can be a really time-consuming task.
On the flip side, there’s a way to actually send a signal back to Facebook to identify your A-grade leads and then optimise so your content is pushed to more top quality leads.
Not only are you getting more leads, you’re getting people who are more qualified.
The team and I do have years of tedious experience with the Facebook loop and we are happy to help.
Drop us a line here, if you need a more in-depth playbook.
The role of a ‘Thank You’ page is more than you think!
More than just an obligatory, routine ‘thank you’, under the message banner you can add some lead qualifiers or further education.
You could put a series of video testimonials to build up your S.A.L.T framework to solidify your school as their only choice.
Like we have done here for a client:
If you don’t have those testimonials ready to go at the moment, that’s totally fine! You can always add another question page and go through the next steps to qualify your lead.
Or you could put up a calendar form so your lead can book a call so you can make contact quicker.
Hot tip - I found that anyone booking a call is 75% more likely to make contact with you than someone who doesn’t book a call.
Your thank you page has so much more potential. Explore it!
Give it a try and let me know how you go with it.
Thanks for reading, catch you on the next one!
--- Steph from the LiveSwitch team
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