How do school marketers show value to their Principals?
One of the most challenging parts of our role as school marketers is showing value for what we do, and we are expected to show value every single month.
Many marketers shoot themselves in the foot because they only show results by asking prospective families, ‘How did you hear about us?’, through enquiry forms and in-person events. We have found these methods of measurement especially inaccurate in measuring the success of digital marketing campaigns because it doesn’t take into account the journey that people take in discovering your school; reducing it to one singular touchpoint. Unfortunately, families don’t think like digital marketers. They don’t have the billboard they saw on top of their minds and don’t realise they clicked on an online ad in the last hour. Most likely, if they are known in the college, they will refer to this when asked.
So, how can we improve the accuracy of our marketing reporting? Here are a few ideas to help:
Tips for measuring your results
Differentiate your branding from your call-to-action reporting
Your branding spend is off-limits when you are measuring enrolment growth. You should have a portion of your budget set aside for branding. Educate your team that your branding spending lowers the cost of your overall marketing spending but cannot be attributed directly to each new enrolment. Branding will help you to not have to sell as hard because people have a more positive perception of your school.
Work closely with the enrolments team
The enrolments team doesn’t think like a marketer; they want to get the job done and get families into the college. They’re not necessarily looking out for exactly how each family heard about the college.
One of the tactics that I have implemented is to have an enquiry form online that is accessible on desktop and tablet so that when an enquiry phones in, they can submit that enquiry directly into your database. That helped me get more consistent information about the actual inquiries we’re getting.
Use the Google URL Builder
The Google URL Builder attaches additional code to the URL; it’s called ‘URL parameters’ and imports the information into Google Analytics to say exactly how people heard about you.
Add the URL parameters to every single digital campaign that you send out, so I’m talking about any emails that you send, any campaigns that you’re doing on Facebook, email blasts, and any online ads.
Absolutely everything online has a link; use the Google URL Builder to build up a list of campaign names and track how those campaigns are doing.
Understand the purchase decision life cycle
For those of you who are also parents, think about when you decided to join a specific school for your kids. Did you hear about that school for the first time and then enrol them within a month? Often as marketers, we have monthly reporting. We realise that we don’t understand the life cycle, and we need to change our approach to measuring our marketing and measure it over the long term. Measure every single touchpoint that a family has. Remember, it’s not going to be one thing that converts a family, it’s not going to be one billboard. It’s the perception in the minds that parents have about schools and that takes time; it’s an educational process. Marketing is an educational process.
Once you understand the decision-making cycle, it will change your whole approach to marketing your school. You’ll start to take the pressure off yourself and realise that your job is to interact with people in meaningful ways, and as many ways as possible, then naturally lead them towards an enrolment decision. After you’ve set up your parameters to measure all your online efforts, you remember that there are things you can also do to measure offline efforts.
You must constantly measure what you do, even if your Principal is not the sort of personality to ask for a monthly marketing report. Find automated ways to produce a monthly report and improve your results on a monthly basis; it’ll be amazing the results you can achieve. Put that information in front of the Principal and the college board so that they can see all the excellent work you’re doing because they will then increase your marketing budget for the following year.
Questions regarding this article? Please email me at mara@robertsdigital.com.au
