How do you find more prospective students? What is the difference between inbound marketing and traditional marketing? Do you know the first steps to take in implenting an inbound marketing campaign? This presentation will answer all these questions. It was presented by Ralph Cochran at the 2013 Association of Classical Christian Schools Conference.

1. INCREASING ENROLLMENT
THROUGH INBOUND MARKETING
Ralph Cochran
Director of Advancement and Stewardship
www.linkedin.com/in/ralphcochranwww.linkedin.com/in/ralphcochran/
www.linkedin.com/in/ralphcochran/

2. Inbound Marketing can bring the right
students running to your school!
Why should you care about Inbound marketing?
How will Inbound Marketing impact
your school?
Grammar and Logic of Enrollment Growth
Grammar and Logic of Inbound Marketing
Where to start in the jungle of inbound
marketing?

3. Is your enrollment growth flat?

4. Are you fishing for new students in the right pond?

5. Use Inbound Marketing Strategy to find the
next big catch of prospective students!

6. Growth in enrollment brings
financial strength to a school.

7. BRIDGE THE ANNUAL BUDGET “GAP”
BY ENROLLMENT GROWTH

8. Stable Growing Enrollment
• Results in Cash Reserves for Rainy days such as recent
recession
• Protecting mission and vision by limiting temptations to
compromise and water down school with non-mission
appropriate students
• Example: Christian School admitting non-Christian Foreign Exchange
students
• Most banks allow you to borrow money based on enrollment
not donations to calculate Debt Cover Ratios(DCR)
• Don’t let the “gap” rule you year after year through the need to
meet the goals of the annual fund.

9. Remember our starting point!
Faithfulness is the answer to enrollment growth
not the latest marketing tactics.

10. INBOUND MARKETING DONE WELL
INCREASES PROSPECTS
130
344
# Prospects
CASE STUDY:ANNAPOLIS CHRISTIAN ACADEMY
2012/2013 2013/2014(Projection for Fall 2013)

11. Grammar for Dashboard of Enrollment
• PROSPECT FUNNEL
• # Suspects(Search), # Prospects/Inquiries, # Visits,
• APPLICANT FUNNEL
• # Applicants, # Tested, # Interviewed, # Accepted, # Enrolled
• RETENTION FUNNEL
• # Likely to return, # unlikely to return, # 50/50 to return, # not returning
• CONVERSION RATES
• Prospect to Enrolled % (aprox. 20%)
• Visits to Enrolled % (aprox.30%)
• Applicants to Enrolled % (aprox.50%)
• Many variations of above

13. The math of Enrollment growth
• If you have 200 students and lose 20(not seniors) you
need 20 new students to have a net growth of 0%.
• If you want to have a 10% growth you need 220 students
which means you need 40 new students.
• You need to have enough prospects in your prospect
funnel to reach that goal of 40 new students.
No prospects = now growth or worse.

14. How many prospects do you
need to obtain 40 students?
• Answer:
It Depends on your historical conversion rates
• Example School Answer:
• 20% Conversion Rate from Prospect to Enrolled
• Result is 200 Prospects/Inquiries needed to obtain 40 Students
• Problem:
Most schools do not track the data so they don’t know the
story of their data.
Inspect what you Expect or you cannot expect any
change.

15. Enrollment Growth Secrets

16. Fill funnel and inspect/manage
prospects at every level

17. Are you fishing for new students in the right pond?

18. Using Inbound Marketing
to Fill the Funnel with prospects

19. WHAT IS INBOUND MARKETING?
Sharing is caring and inbound marketing is about creating and sharing content
with the world. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your dream
customers, inbound marketing attracts qualified prospects to your business and keeps
them coming back for more.
• Make marketing people love.
• By publishing the right content in the right place at the right time, your marketing
becomes relevant and helpful to your customers, not interruptive. Now that’s marketing
people can love.
Definition and graphics from Hubspot, Inc.

20. Inbound vs. Traditional Marketing
TRADITIONAL INBOUND
Interruption Relational/Listening
Pushing Pulling
Print, Radio, Direct Mail Blog, White Papers, Guides, Search
Engine Optimization (SEO),
Engaging Content
Sales Cycle
“Customer does X for business”
Buying Cycle
“Business educates, and nurtures
with content for Customer”
One Way Two Way
Buying Prospect’s Attention Earning Prospect’s Attention
Building Websites Building Communities

21. Inbound Marketing Methodology
The best way to turn strangers into customers and promoters of your school.
Graphic from Hubspot

23. INBOUND MARKETING DONE WELL
INCREASES PROSPECTS
130
75
228
344
120
263
# Prospects # Applicants # Students
CASE STUDY:ANNAPOLIS CHRISTIAN ACADEMY
2012/2013 2013/2014(Projection for Fall 2013)

24. Grammar of Inbound Marketing
• Content Creation
• S.E.O. (Search Engine Optimization)
• Keyword Optimization (Long Tail Keywords)
• BLOG
• Landing Pages
• C.T.A.’s (Call to Actions)
• S.E.R.P. (Search Engine Result Page)
• Paid Search (Google AdWords, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook)
• E-Guides, E-books, Forms,
• Analytics, Conversion Rates, etc….
• TIP GET HUBSPOT CERTIFIED
FREE HUBSPOT CERTIFICATION TRAINING

25. How we do Inbound and Traditional Marketing
at Annapolis Christian Academy.
• SIMPLICITY AND CLARITY
• BUILD AROUND BUYING PERSONAS
• INTEGRATE TRADITIONAL AND INBOUND MARKETING
TACTICS
• Direct Mail Example – Google Re-marketing
• WEBSITE DESIGN
• 85% PROSPECT FOCUSED
• 15% CURRENT PARENT FOCUSED
• FOCUS ON CONTENT THAT MEETS PROSPECTS WHERE
THEY ARE BASED ON BUYING PERSONAS

26. How we do Inbound Marketing at
Annapolis Christian Academy.

27. What Are Buyer
Personas?
Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal
customers. They are based on real data about customer
demographics and online behavior, along with educated
speculation about their personal histories, motivations,
and concerns.
Hubspot Slides
?

28. How Are Buyer
Personas Created?
Buyer personas are created through research, surveys, and interviews of
your target audience. That includes a mix of customers – both “good” and
“bad” -- prospects, and those outside of your contact database who might
align with your target audience. You’ll collect data that is both qualitative
and quantitative to paint a picture of who your ideal customer is, what they
value, and how your solution fits into their daily lives.
?

29. Annapolis
Buyer Persona Overview
Goal: To create content that attracts and pulls certain buyer
personas to the school. Use of Parent guides, Tips, Student
profiles, and other material helps educate and nurture prospects to
become leads, visit the school, apply, and enroll.

30. Affluent Alexis
BACKGROUND:
• Wealthy Housewife
• College graduate who worked for several years
after college before getting married and leaving the
workforce
• Married with 2 children (10 and 7)
• Nominal Christian who takes the kids to a
fashionable mega-church (with good childcare!)
about once a month
DEMOGRAPHICS:
• Skews female
• Age 30-45
• Single HH Income: $250,000+
• Accustomed to urban lifestyle; always has the latest
phone w/ data plan, tablet PC, SUV, etc.
IDENTIFIERS:
• Calm demeanor
• High expectations
• Somewhat disconnected from processes; cares
about results.

31. Affluent Alexis
GOALS:
• Ensure her children receive the very best
• Liaise for her very busy husband
CHALLENGES:
• Keeping a tight schedule
• Keeping up with her kids
• Understanding high philosophical,
theological, and pedagogical jargon
HOW WE HELP:
• Provide top-quality education for her
children
• Offer excellent communication about
school events and her children’s
individual needs through multiple
technological venues: email, Facebook,
website, Blackbaud, flyers, etc.

32. Affluent Alexis
LESS-THAN-REAL QUOTES:
• “It’s tough getting the kids ready in the morning,
keeping up with their assignments, and
managing to stay presentable.”
• “I don’t have time to get everything done in
each day.”
• “I’ve had to deal with so many disappointments
when it comes to others.”
COMMON OBJECTIONS:
• I’m worried your teachers, administrators,
facilities, and communications won’t be
adequate for my and my children’s needs.
• I don’t want to have to add any extra work to my
already busy life to learn any academic lingo in
order to understand your communications.

33. A WALK THROUGH:
HOW WE GET A PROSPECT WITH
INBOUND MARKETING
• BLOG CONTENT ABOUT SELECTING A PRESCHOOL
• HEADMASTER AND PRINCIPAL
• CREATE BOOKLETS/GUIDES USING BLOG CONTENT
• PARENT’s GUIDE TO SELECTING A PRESCHOOL IN CORPUS
CHRISTI
• HAVE LANDING PAGES FOR EACH CALL TO ACTION
• GOOGLE AdWords – CUSTOM LANDING PAGE FOR
EACH KEYWORD OPTIMIZIED AD. See example…
• Do not waste money by sending them to your homepage

34. Paid Search Strategy: Keyword “Christian Preschool Corpus Christi”
Keyword Optimized Local
Google Ad for Christian
Preschool in Corpus Christi

35. LANDING PAGE FROM
GOOGLE AD

37. Integrating Traditional
with Inbound Marketing
• DIRECT MAIL CAMPAIGN VIA POSTCARD MANIA
• 4 Post Cards Mailings 12,000-15,000 each
• Focus on giving away content and getting Contact info
• POSTCARD DESIGN FOCUS ON BUYER PERSONAS
• Each Postcard’s design has different focus on different buyer
personas.
• Preschool emphasis vs. Upper school emphasis
• CALL TRACKING AND RECORDING
• GOOGLE RE-MARKETING
• Display ads appear to follow visitors when they leave our homepage
due to cookies
• Results: Nearly 4000 suspects who visited our website are seeing our
display ads in places like CNN.com, Washington Post, etc..

38. Notice Call to Actions:
They meet different prospects in
their buying cycle. Some at Top of
Funnel – Download Guide, Others
at Bottom of Funnel RSVP to Visit

40. Google Re-Marketing Service

42. WHERE DO YOU START WITH AN
INBOUND MARKETING PLAN?
STEP 1
CREATE BUYING PERSONAS BY YOURSELF AND WITH A TEAM
– 2-4 PERSONAS
– Email me for a template
STEP 2
BUILD A CONTENT CREATION STRATEGY TIED TO BUYER PERSONAS
STEP 3
CREATE A BLOG
– Commit to 2 Blog post per Week (Use Staff)
– Stockpile Content
– Wordpress, Hubspot, etc…
– Build Content around Buyer Personas
– Don’t Talk over their heads.
STEP 4
KEYWORD OPTIMIZATION FOR CONTENT AND WEBSITE

43. WHERE DO YOU START WITH AN
INBOUND MARKETING PLAN?
PART 2
STEP 5- ADD LANDING PAGES AND CALLS TO ACTIONS TO WEBSITE
STEP 6- Use GOOGLE AdWords- Add it to your budget
– Use landing pages for Google Adwords not homepage
STEP 7- Plan an IDEAL BUDGET – View Marketing as an Investment
– 3-4 Tuitions per 100 students for Marketing
– The smaller the school and the more they need to grow the higher the
proportion for the marketing budget. Estimate a school of 200 students needs
a $35,000 marketing expense budget for both Inbound and Traditional
Marketing.
– Costs: Hubspot Software, Google AdWords, Database Software for Prospects
and applicants tracking (RenWeb, Blacbaud, Salesforce.com, etc..) Long Term
- Consider switching to Hubspot or other Social Media Friendly Website
company

44. May God Bless your faith-fullness
as you go fishing for prospects!

45. FUTURE WEBINAR
AND LINKEDIN GROUP
• Post Card Mania is going to offer a Webinar for
Integrating Traditional with Inbound Marketing on
August 5th.
• Linked In Group –
Enrollment Growth through Inbound Marketing
Strategies for Classical Christian Schools
• http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=5076092&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr
• Email me for details @
RalphCochran99@gmail.com