Traditional versus Modern  

When we talk to prospects we like to understand how they are marketing their school before we talk about our service. We hope they have a good online strategy in place already but if not, we will show them how. 

For a lead generation website system like ours to work, you need to be marketing online and pushing traffic to the website. Standard websites do not convert, essentially they simply present information, like an online brochure. Our sites are designed specifically to convert visitors to leads and use a raft of methods to achieve this, and are extremely different to a standard brochure style site. However if you are not marketing online no website in the world can bring you a great rate of leads. If there is no traffic, there is nothing to convert and the few people who come to your site organically, just by virtue of where you show up in search engines,  will be all you have to work with. Of course there are offline ways to market but are they effective and if so, what do you need to enhance them?

Standing in the street, handing out flyers for a free class or your latest offer needs a solid online backup because the first thing that people will do if they are interested is to check out your website when they get home.  We are not discounting flyers and traditional marketing as a method which can garner success, but it absolutely needs to be done in conjunction with a strong online presence and online marketing in tandem. Adding your website url to the flyer or using a QR code that people can scan and take them to your site is essential, and that is where we come in. People need several points of contact with a company or service before they will actually make that decision to sign up and having a site specifically designed to convert will give them a familiarity with your service that is enduring, and enhance that process to a great degree, especially  when they then also see your online marketing. So this all needs to work as a system, rather than individual parts at different times or in isolation.The final push is in having a website designed to convert those prospects and standard websites will not do that.

Marketing online is essential and we recommend this is not only done on one platform. People use the internet in very different ways, and different platforms reach different individuals. We know that some people have never done this though, and whilst that means our websites will not work for them as well as they could, we are more than happy to guide them through the process of learning how to successfully market their school digitally.

So why more than one platform? 

If you restrict yourself to just a social media platform, like Facebook for example, you are potentially missing a huge audience.
Whilst Facebook ads can be very successful if run correctly ( see our tutorials here for this) Google ads are potentially just as, if not more, powerful, and should not be overlooked. 

When you initially advertise on Facebook you are seeking out an entirely cold audience and there are several stages you need to go through retargeting to warm that audience and nurture them as leads. You are, hopefully,  targeting people using demographics, who you THINK may be interested in what your school offers. For example parents in a set age range in your area. This audience needs to be warmed up and nurtured to be aware of your school first and then guided down the sales funnel to finally engage and convert. The difference – and it is huge – with Google Search ads is that you are targeting people ALREADY looking for what you provide. People searching for “Martial Arts in my area”, “karate classes in {your town}”,”kids sports in {your town}”, “after school activities in {ÿour town}” 

The variations are endless but the concept is the same, this audience is already interested, already warm, already actively looking for what you provide! And if you aren’t there, and your competitor is, then that is going to be their new student right there, not yours, often multiple times a day!

 Of course just because people are not actively searching for your service does not mean that they may not become interested if exposed to it it, which is why we advocate Facebook ads also, as Steve Jobs once famously said ” A lot of times people don’t know what they need until you show it to them” So in essence this is why you need to cover more than one platform and results will vary between them, you need to cover all bases in your digital marketing to avoid losing your market share to those who are doing so. 

“So I need to run Google ads? Well, that is all well and good” we hear many school owners say, “but I haven’t a clue how to; I tried once and couldn’t get it to work; it’s really hard to understand!” Google ads can be pretty scary to anyone, even those who are skilled in advertising on Facebook. The interface is more difficult to navigate, the set up can be a little clunky, understanding the bidding and cost per click system can be off-putting and can cause ads not to run. There are many reasons to put off mastering them and Facebook is essentially easier to understand, more user friendly and sometimes a little cheaper. 

But as you can see it is essential that Google ads become part of your digital marketing campaign strategy, if you are to get the best from your time and budget.

 In the following articles we will be releasing soon we will help to guide you through the process of setting up and running a successful campaign on Google.

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If you have not yet mastered any digital marketing, and would like a series of articles to help with that,  then check out our blog starting with the basic foundation of all digital marketing “Defining Your Customer Avatar”