教培营销-inbound for schools portrait

1、GETTING STARTED WITH INBOUND FOR SCHOOLSINTRODUCTION:Launching an inbound marketing program can seem abit overwhelming at first. So many channels, so many metrics. There is a process to it all, and this ebook is here to give you a strong boost as you start your schools inbound marketing strategy.HOW

2、 MUCH EFFORT DOES THIS INBOUND STUFF REALLY TAKE?To do inbound right, you should expect your team to invest at least 10-15effort hours each week on inbound activities. Best of all, the more work you put into inbound marketing, the more productive your future efforthours become.This isnt simply a mat

3、ter of your team becoming more proficient atinbound (although thats part of it). Inbound strategies and tactics, such as SEO-optimized blog posts and lead nurturing email triggers, age well. Once you set them up, inbound tactics continue to work for you generating traffic and moving leads down your

4、funnel even as your teamhas moved on to executing new campaigns.Expect your team to invest 10-15hours per week on inbound activities.GETTING STARTED WITH INBOUND FOR SCHOOLSAs you put more inbound elements into place, they all start to worktogether to amplify their power. Older, high performing blog

5、 posts improve the ranking potential for future blog posts and drive traffic to newcontent offers.So the sooner you get started with inbound and the more time you put into get started right, the faster you can expect to get more out of it.WHAT IS THE ROI OF INBOUND?When youre doing inbound right, it

6、s ROI is tangible and quantifiable. Ittakes some work putting the numbers together, but its completely worth it. When you see in black and white just how much ROI your school could be getting with inbound marketing, youve got all the ammunition youneed to get buy-in and budget from other departments

7、.To start understanding your ROI, quantify your input by clarifying whatit costs your team to execute specific inbound tasks. Blogging, for example, must be a part of any inbound program looking for long-term success. Determine how long, on average, it takes to write and promote a blog post. Lets sa

8、y you average two hours per post and the resourcesused have a $50/ hour rate. That means each post costs you $100.HOW TO CALCULATE THE ROI OF INBOUND:FIRST, CALCULATE THE COST OF A SINGLE BLOG POST.EXAMPLE: 2x $50= $100 PRODUCTIONHOURLY COSTCOST OF BLOGHOURSOF RESOURCEPOSTGETTING STARTED WITH INBOUN

9、D FOR SCHOOLSNext, quantify your output. The bottom line output is the lifetime value ofeach enrolled student. The average annual tuition for a private school is$9582. By tracking your inbound performance metrics, you learn that each blog post attracts 700 new visitors to your website, which in turn

10、 generates 30 new leads. These 30 leads ultimately convert into one new enrolled student. Youre spending $100 and getting nearly $10,000 for each year that student is enrolled at yourschool in return.Alright, there are few more costs along the way to getting that blogposts 30 leads to convert into a

11、n enrolled student. But youthe room you have to maneuver. As you do more inbound,able to calculate your overall student acquisition cost (SAC) attribute values to different inbound tactics more precisely.can seeyoull be andHOW TO CALCULATE THE ROI OF INBOUND:NEXT, CALCLATE THE VALUE OF YOUR EFFORTS:

12、EXAMPLE:Say, each new post brings approx.700 new site visitorsof which, 30 become leadsand approx 1 in 30 leads typically enroll and become students.$10,000 - $100= $9,900VALUE OF ANCOST OF ASTUDENT ENROLLEDBLOG POSTACQUISITION STUDENTCOSTGETTING STARTED WITH INBOUND FOR SCHOOLSUNDERSTANDING YOUR FU

13、NNELYour ROI doesnt rest just on the dollar value each student represents.Your ROI also depends on your school meeting its target enrollment numbers. To do this, your inbound efforts need to keep your lead funnelprimed, generating the right number of people at each stage of the funnel.Your funnel st

14、arts with visitors at the top, becoming prospects and leadsin the middle of funnel, and ultimately resulting in applicants and enrolled students at the bottom.Build your target funnel numbers from the bottom up. If 20% of yourapplicants become enrolled students and you need to enrollstudents, your t

15、arget applicant number is 5,000.2,000Use this formula to build out your target funnel numbers all the way upto website traffic numbers. Setting target numbers for each stage of the funnel is critical to gauging the success of your inbound program.HOW TO SET TARGET FUNNEL NUMBERS:Next funnel stage po

16、ol # of people you need in the previous funnel stageAverage conversion rate(% that typically move from the previous funnel stage into the next pool)EXAMPLE:2,000 enrolled students20%10,000 applicantsGETTING STARTED WITH INBOUND FOR SCHOOLSCalculate out your actual funnel numbers and conversion perce

17、ntages,using the past few years data, as one of the first steps of your inbound marketing setup. Knowing how your funnel has worked in the past before you start with inbound provides a baseline by which you can gauge the effectiveness of your inbound campaigns. It will also help you identify opportu

18、nities at the jump. If you convert a minuscule percentageof inquiries to applicants, you know this is an area ripe for improvement.Prospect v Lead: Whats the diff?When youre setting up your target funnel numbers, make sure youre straight on the difference between a prospect and a lead. A prospect is

19、 someone whos shown interest in your school. You probably have their email in your database, orat least theyre following one of your social media profiles.A lead is a prospect who fits one of your personas and is showing high-intentbehavior. High-intent behavior is any action or collection of them,

20、that indicates this prospects interest is accelerating. Hes downloaded three reports in two weeks or has spent 20 minutes a day on your blog for three days in a row.Prospects becomes leads when youve collected enough data about them tosee that they share a lot with one of your personas and are showi

21、ng high intent. Theyre someone you want to focus on because theyre just the sort of student youre looking for.Not all your prospects are leads. There will always be people interested in yourschool who arent good fits. If you cant pick out your leads from your prospectpool, youre wasting effort marke

22、ting to the wrong people.GETTING STARTED WITH INBOUND FOR SCHOOLSFIRST THINGS FIRST:To lay the groundwork for a high-ROI inboundprogram, start with three building blocks:BUILDINGBLOCK#1:UNDERSTANDTHEDIFFERENTINBOUND TASKS AND ALLOCATE YOUR TEAMS EFFORTHOURS TO EACH OF THESE TASKSYour team will have

23、ongoing tasks, like writing blog posts and newsletters,and managing social media. Ongoing tasks also include overall research and planning youll use to guide what topics and channels you focus on.Youll also create discrete campaigns that require building unique marketingassets, like a special report

24、 and its companion landing page and lead nurturing workflow.Behind both types of inbound activities, youll build email communicationsthat provide customized nurturing for prospects and leads based on their specific interests and where they are in their enrollment journey. Because email nurturing ser

25、ies can be automated, they are real game changers in terms of hitting your funnel numbers and optimizing yourROI.GETTING STARTED WITH INBOUND FOR SCHOOLSThe last major task group is measuring and reporting. Identifying, collecting,and analyzing key metric data is critical to ensuring your efforts pa

26、y off.So you may determine that you want to breakdown your teams efforthours like this:Email communications: 20%Ongoing tasks: 40%Measuring & reporting: 20%Discrete campaigns: 20%As you start seeing the returns in your reporting, you might decide to re-allocate these percentages to reflect where you

27、r opportunities are. In fact, you may decide on a different time allocation from the get-go. You know your team, their strengths, and your marketing priorities. Set the time allocations that suit your schools needs. And keep revisiting it because as you learn more about what works, youll be able to

28、optimizethe mix still further.BUILDING BLOCK #2: BUILD YOUR PERSONASYou must know who youre trying to reach, and where and how to reachthem. Researching and building your personas keeps your content andtactics on point so youre attracting the right kinds of prospects. Without them, youre wasting you

29、r teams effort with un-targeted content.GETTING STARTED WITH INBOUND FOR SCHOOLSBUILDING BLOCK #3: SET BENCHMARKS SO YOU CAN SET GOALS AND MEASURE PROGRESS.Weve already talked about some important benchmarksand metricsyou want to calculate, such as funnel stage targets, student acquisition cost (SAC

30、), and attributing a lead value to different inbound tactics. Youalso want to identify the metrics that underlie these targets.Example: You need to generate X amount of traffic to start the cascadedown funnel. How much weekly and monthly traffic does your site currently get? From which sources? Once

31、 you benchmark these numbers will your current rates, you can gauge how publishing two to three new blog postseach month changes them.Start by creating a report showing what you can already determine, suchas traffic numbers, how many inquiries you get each month, how many new subscribers you get to

32、your newsletter, email open and click through rates, social media engagement numbers, and so on. These areyour benchmarks.Benchmark trackable metrics acrossyour digital channels to determinethe amount of new traffic youll have to drive to hit your enrollment goals.GETTING STARTED WITH INBOUND FOR SC

33、HOOLSMOVING ON TO BABY STEPS:Your persona research tells you who youre talkingto, what they care about, andgoing online. That means youreyour content.where theyreready toplanThe simplest, quickest place to start is with a blogand newslettereditorial calendar. Set up a spreadsheet that timelines publ

34、icationof new blog posts, listing the title/topic, main keyword, and publication date covering the next three months.Thats it. Get started. Dont let chasing the perfect get in the way of doinggood. Blogging is your inbound dynamo with growing, cumulative benefit the longer you do it. So get your blo

35、g rolling while youmove forward with your other baby steps.Then, put together a comprehensive content map that lists questions,concerns, topics, and keywords most relevant to each persona at each stage along their enrollment journey from attraction to inquiryto application to enrollment.Using your c

36、ontent map, create a more detailed content calendarthat includes premium content offers that will be the foundation of discrete campaigns. Have at least one piece of content per personafor each enrollment journey stage.GETTING STARTED WITH INBOUND FOR SCHOOLSLets say youre a business school with two

37、 main personas: recent collegegraduates and those returning to school after several years of working full- time. That will be a total of eight pieces of premium contentfor your content calendar. Here are just a few samples:Report “Head Straight for the MBA or Get Into the Workforce Whats Right for M

38、e?” for recent graduates in the attractionphase.Video interviews of current students about their reasons forreturning back to school (and of course, why they chose your MBA program) for leads who are currently working and are inthe inquiry stage.Online calculator “Online Course Load: Estimate Weekly

39、 TimeCommitment” for leads who have shown interest in getting an online degree while they work that are in the enrollment stage.GETTING STARTED WITH INBOUND FOR SCHOOLSSo the first thing that should strike you is that you can use one piece ofcontent for more than one persona where theres another sha

40、red interest,such as the preferred medium or area of study.The less obvious, but critical point to notice is that a comprehensiveinbound program needs workflows that push people from offer to offer.The connective tissue that keeps people moving through your funnel are these automated workflows, part

41、icularly email lead nurture series.When youre starting out, stick with creating a single workflow that nurturesprospects youve attracted into your database into leads that submit applications. Once youve had success with your first workflow,then setting up new ones becomes easy.Using automated tacti

42、cs like smart lists to segment and trigger personalizedemails, you strengthen your schools relationship with prospects, continue to learn more about them so you can target them even more effectively in the future, and stay pro-active when it comesto meeting funnel goals.Usepersonalized email automat

43、ionsto build relationships with prospects while moving from one piece ofcontent to the next.GETTING STARTED WITH INBOUND FOR SCHOOLSYOUR FIRST SIX MONTHS WITH INBOUND:Arent you excited? The work you do in these first sixmonths of inbound should set you up for booming success. The smartest education

44、marketers plan it out so they dont get frustrated and instead, stay focused on the most important tasks.Weve put together this timeline of key tasks for your first six monthsto help create an inbound infrastructure to grow with you.CREATING YOUR PERSONAS:Write up a separate persona for each of your

45、target markets.IDENTIFY YOUR BENCHMARKS AND GOALS:Use them to quantify your efforts impact and set SMART (specific measurable achievable realistic time-bound) goals.CREATE REPORTS TO HOLD TRACKED DATA:DO KEYWORD RESEARCH, INCLUDING LONG TAIL KEYWORDSSET UP YOUR CMS SO YOU CAN START COLLECTING PROSPE

46、CT DATAUse your personas to identify the most critical data points you want to collect about prospects, e.g. expected enrollment date, program ofinterest.OPTIMIZE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILES.MONTH 1: BUILD YOUR FOUNDATIONGENERATE A LIST OF CONTENT TOPICS:Address key issues for the different personas

47、at each stage of their enrollment journey.SOURCE EXISTING CONTENT:Source content your school already has that align with your content topic listCREATE AN EDITORIAL CALENDARSTART PUBLISHING 1-2 BLOGS PER WEEKREFRESH WEBSITE BASED ON KEYWORD RESEARCHOUTLINE YOUR FIRST CONTENT OFFER CAMPAIGNCREATE AND

48、PUBLISH YOUR PREMIUM CONTENT OFFERInclude its landing page, form, and email nurture series.INCREASE NUMBER OF WEEKLY BLOG POSTS AND TRACK URLSSET UP WORKFLOWS TO NURTURE VARIETY OF LEADSANALYZE TRAFFIC NUMBERS AND SOURCES.ANALYZE EMAIL ENGAGEMENT NUMBERS:Rework and resend underperforming emails.LOOK

49、 AT FUNNEL NUMBERS:Are your prospects and lead numbers at rates needed to translate into applicants and enrolled students?Consider whether you want to add social media or PPC ads into the mix ifsome numbers are low.IDENTIFY WHAT SOURCES ARE GENERATING THE MOST PROSPECTSAND LEADS.MONTH 4: ROLLING & REPORTINGMONTH 3: START YOUR ENGINESMONTH 2: OUTLINING YOURACTION PLANPREPARE AND PUBLISH SECOND PREMIUM CONTENT OFFER:For example, a webinar geared towards moving leads towards applying.EVALUATE & REFINE METRICS:Incorporate weekly metric review i