Many institutions are focused on paid lead generation instead of leveraging best practices for generating “free leads” by optimizing current organic traffic and converting them into inquiries that enroll! We recently mystery shopped 56 non-profit universities and colleges with a local or regional presence offering programs for graduate and non-traditional learners.
One major finding was that several schools were spending money on media but had not optimized their main site for organic (Free) inquiries.
The results of the shop were insightful. First we assessed an institution’s main website to assess if an institution was optimizing the site to convert on-page traffic with simple, cost effective response devices such as a Request For Information (RFI) form. Schools spend so much time and money on building and managing their respective sites, but 42% of the schools did not even have a simple RFI. In fact, one major finding was that many of these schools were spending money on Pay-Per-Click but had not even optimized their websites.
Also, 76% of the surveyed did not have a prominent Toll Free Number on the site to accommodate an inbound call while only 5% of all schools had Live Chat. For detailed analysis CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD. We typically see a net increase of 30% of inquiries when we execute a strategy on behalf of an institution.
A second major finding was schools are still slow to respond to inquiries.
We measured and analyzed overall admissions performance:
· Timeliness of Response (Within 5 Minutes of Submission)
· Quality of Response
· Type of Response (Voice-Voice/Email/Print & Text)
· Frequency of Response
Here’s a breakdown of the phone response times over a 21 day period:
· 30% of schools made one attempt
· 21% of schools made two attempts
· 21% of schools made three attempts
· 16% of schools made four attempts
· 12% of schools made five attempts
· 7% of schools made six attempts
In today’s competitive landscape which schools do you think are growing? Our view is those schools are taking a strategic, cost effective approach to optimizing their unpaid media and responding to inquiries will grow and out perform the competition.
How’s your response? Is timely, frequent & integrated? Are you capturing and getting the inquiries from your unpaid sources? We can help. Since 2008 we have helped non-profit universities increase total enrollment through strategic marketing and conversion support.
Please call us today at 877-434-1828 to discuss how we can help you increase inquiries and enrollment or email me at gswinhart@educationconnex.com
