The publicity of each educational center can vary enormously depending on the focus and its target market. Marketing for Continuing Education centers can not use the same advertising as a regular school, since they are not aimed at students who are looking for an education by semester or a traditional method. Since according to Peter Drucker «The purpose of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits perfectly to him and it is sold by itself«.
In the specific case of the centers of continuing education, it must be very clear who they want to attract and the resources to use. Some of the most common objectives are: increase the number of students enrolled in the courses, improve the positioning of the same courses in the market, increase the quality of the service, innovate in the pedagogical strategies in the courses, improve the dropout rates of the activities, etc. And once the clear objectives are established, the next step is to elaborate metrics, how it will be measured if that goal is being achieved or not.
Finally, once the goal and measurement parameters have been established, what is next? Continue to select the means by which the general strategy will be carried out. The media must be chosen based on effectiveness and not the cost or popularity, since it is useless to obtain a cheap medium that does not attract enough prospects or give the right positioning. At this point, it is recommended to obtain the ROI of each medium, that is, the cost of acquisition or return of the investment. This is obtained by dividing the total cost of the advertising medium by the number of prospects that arrived at the institution thanks to that medium, and thus selecting the ones with the best conversion percentage.
Inbound Marketing is an ideal methodology to boost your advertising strategy. In recent years it has gained a lot of strength thanks to the fact that more and more agencies are implementing it, and most of the customers that try it have excellent results. Inbound Marketing could be defined as a set of CLIENT ATTRACTION strategies, which guide the prospects until they become loyal customers. All this based on a defined process consisting of:
Attract
The first step of the process is to attract, it’s about turning strangers who do not know your business into visitors to your website or microsite. Normally for the traditional advertising and marketing agencies this is where their work comes from, they announce you by some means and measure the impact of your ad and until then, you do not know at the end if the investment was good or not. This does not happen with Inbound Marketing, since the above is only 10% of the process.
Convert
The next step is to turn that visit into a prospect or «lead», in this way we already have their data and the context in which they left them, which means that we can contact them and start the sales process already knowing at first hand what was the thing that interested him. In the case of continuing education institutions, this step is essential to keep growing and if applied correctly, have the advantage that it can work all year, not seasonally as traditional institutions.
Close
The next step is where many people have problems, it is about closing prospects and turning them into customers. They can send a lot of information but have fewer closures than they could have, and this is mainly due to the sellers not following the prospects properly. There are marketing automation tools that allow you to do this very easily; and Inbound Marketing is the best option.
Delight
Finally comes the Delight step. The Delight consists of creating a unique experience for each client, providing an excellent post-purchase service. The best institutions dominate this step perfectly since it is much easier to sell to a client than to a stranger. If he is already your client, means that he has already trusted you and that it is very likely that he will do it again in the future. Take advantage of this, do not lose contact with your clients.
As you can see, Inbound Marketing may seem simple, but we recommend consulting with an expert before applying a strategy directly. However, it is a strategy in which you will obtain a large number of prospects at a low cost, since it makes use of many digital tools. And if your company is a center of continuing education, you can take many advantages over traditional media.