An educational institution cannot lose sight of what makes its business healthy: the good relationship between the number of students attracted and retained. For this, it is necessary to invest in a relationship with these two audiences, through effective and high-impact marketing.
This task can be challenging due to the huge number of clients that a school or college usually has. Thus, good doses of planning and optimization of communication are necessary. This involves everything from producing good content, generating leads and nurturing those leads.
Want to know more about it? Continue reading this post and find out what lead nurturing is and how to attract more students with a good nurturing strategy!
In this post you can see:
- What does lead nurturing mean?
- What are the benefits of working on lead nurturing?
- How to guide make a good flow of nutrition;
- How to capture more students with lead nurturing?
Good reading!
What does lead nurturing mean?
We call it that user who provided significant information (name, email, telephone) about himself in exchange for some content offered by his educational institution, such as an ebook or infographic.
When a visitor becomes a lead, it means that he has shown to be interested in the courses at your educational institution, in addition to having provided valuable information that will support your marketing activities.
Now it's your role to nurture it. But, after all, how to do this? Nurturing your potential students is the same as producing and distributing content according to the user's position in the sales funnel, that is, from your willingness to buy.
In summary, lead nurturing is the same as a relationship, with the advantage that you are sure that the user is interested in the conversation.
A student who spontaneously provides his telephone number and e-mail to an educational institution is interested in the subject of education and in maintaining a conversation with an institution in this field.
This type of user has much more value than a simple anonymous visitor, for whom the chances of maintaining an interesting relationship for both are reduced.
What are the benefits of working on lead nurturing?
Okay, now that you know what lead nurturing is, let's talk about your educational institution? After all, how can lead nurturing benefit your university and improve capture?
To answer your question, we have gathered the four main advantages of investing in this strategy.
- Strengthens the relationship with the potential student;
- Optimizes the sales process;
- Generate qualified leads;
- Reduces customer acquisition costs.
Now that we've listed each of these points, let's talk about them in more detail below.
Strengthens the relationship with the potential student
Did you know that communication and relationships are the keys to increasing your conversion rate? After all, you don't close a deal you don't relate to, do you?
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In fact, the longer your relationship with a particular company, the greater your level of trust.and more likely that you will purchase such a product or service.
But where are we going with all this? If a good relationship is essential, to build it you need to invest in nutrition!
In practice, a good flow of nutrition that delivers useful and relevant content according to your target audience is your way of creating a solid relationship with your potential student and can directly contribute to their buying journey.
Optimizes the sales process
And since we are talking about relationships, know that this communication between you and your potential client can generate countless benefits, including for your sales team.
By applying this nutrition strategy, it is possible to educate and raise awareness of your future students, making the lead walk through the funnel and, consequently, increasing the number of sales.
In other words, with this process optimization, your educational institution can not only communicate with its future enrollment, but also increase the volume of enrollments.
Do qualified leads
It's not enough to turn your visitors into leads. For them to be really ready to buy, you need to qualify them and at this point a good nutrition strategy can help!
The qualified lead is the contact that interacts with your educational institution and demonstrates a real intention to finalize the purchase, in this case, the enrollment. But, for your potential student to reach this stage, you need to work your nutrition flow very well during the stages of the process.
Reduces the cost of acquisition
The truth is that every company, regardless of its segment, wants to reduce its costs. But, what if we say that with lead nurturing it is possible to do this? I guess we have your full attention now, huh? After all, we are talking about an important subject: economics.
In fact, automated nurturing is more cost-effective than sending direct messages via email, as you don't have to involve your entire team to send one by one. That is, you save effort, time and spend less to keep in touch with your lead.
With so many benefits, I bet that now you must be wanting to invest in your lead nurturing, am I right? Therefore, in the next topic, we will give you five tips on how to make a good flow.
How to guide make a good flow of nutrition
Now that you've come this far, it's time to put your knowledge into practice and start investing in lead nurturing.
To help you with this mission, we've put together five steps for you to apply in your educational institution and start making a good nutrition strategy. Let's go?
First step: do good planning!
Everything starts with good planning and in the world of Educational Marketing, this is no different. To nurture your lead effectively, the first step is to plan your strategy.
So, before you go out there producing content, you need to invest in good planning and define some essential elements, such as: your goals, persona and a content calendar.
By establishing your goals in this planning phase, you can produce content and strategies linked to these goals. In addition, when defining your personas, you will know more information about your target audience, such as pain points and goals, and you will be able to plan your content more assertively.
Step two: segment your target audience.
When it comes to nurturing your lead, it's important to keep in mind that communication cannot be the same for someone in the middle of the funnel and for someone in the final purchase stage.
In fact, it is not possible to talk to everyone in the same way and feed your lead only with generic content. Such a practice can even cause the opposite effect and instead of attracting, it can end up pushing away your potential student.
So the second step to producing a good nurturing stream is to segment your contact base. With segmentation, you can nurture the right person at the right time with the right communication.
To segment your audience, you can group your lead according to their stage in the funnel or even by the content that the lead consumed.
For example, if he's been downloading a lot of Law e-books, why not nurture him with a course flow?! You can deliver content about the labor market in the area of law, what he expects from the course and other materials that will guide him through the best path until he can enroll.
Third step: deliver relevant content.
And since we are talking about content, you need to think about what you will deliver to your lead. It is not enough just to write a good email, it is necessary to add valuable content according to the stage of customer journey.
If your potential student is in the learning phase, introductory e-books can be great content. If he is in the problem recognition phase, you can deliver webinars and blog posts, for example.
Therefore, the tip is: invest in the delivery of relevant content that answers the main questions of your target audience. Remember your persona's pains and goals, and deliver content that talks to them.
By delivering quality content, you can be seen with more authority and as a reference in the educational market. Also, with good materials, you can build loyalty with your audience and guide them through their buying journey.
Fourth step: make a good copy!
When it comes to attracting potential students, it is clear that a good copy is essential in every process, including lead nurturing.
Copy in Inbound Marketing is persuasive text, written with the aim of making the reader perform some action, such as downloading an ebook or finalizing their registration.
Good copy needs to contain: mental triggers, clear and objective language according to the target audience, and CTA's. In addition, to build a good copy, you need to invest in attractive subjects, after all, they influence the opening of your email.
Also remember that throughout the text, you need to highlight the differentials of your educational institution and show how your university can contribute to solving the pain or need of that lead.
Don't forget to monitor your results!
Once you've activated your flow, it's time to keep an eye on your results. As with any strategy, lead nurturing performance needs to be monitored by your Marketing team.
It is through this follow-up that you can check if you are on the right path or if your strategy needs some modifications. Therefore, be aware of metrics of nutrition.
Be sure to check open rate, click-through rate and conversion rate. With this data in hand, you can improve your strategy and get even better results in your fundraising.
How to capture more students with lead nurturing?
And since we're talking about funding, let's get down to business? Your goal should be to turn these leads into classroom goers, after all, it's the full classrooms, not website visitors, that generate profits for the company.
A student takes months to decide which educational institution to attend.attend and, throughout this stage, you must be by his side, supporting his choice and directing him to make a decision that leads to enrolling in your institution.
With lead nurturing, you also build confidence in potential students and create an authoritative image for your institution. Two essential variables for converting a lead into a student.
It is important that this relationship is constant and that lead nurturing is carried out, regardless of the enrollment opening stage for your school or college.
To attract students efficiently, you must take this relationship seriously, through the numerous digital marketing tools available: social networks, blogs, email marketing and many others.
Did you like this content? We hope this article is useful in this process of attracting students!
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