Having clear goals in place for your enrollment marketing strategy will help guide your efforts and make it easier for you to track your progress and determine whether you’ve been successful.
Note: This article was originally published on the Pepperland Marketing Blog, and has been republished here with permission.
In this article, we take a look at:
- The higher education enrollment funnel and its significance to goal-setting
- Why SMART goals are important for higher education marketing
- How to set SMART marketing goals for your enrollment funnel and track your progress
As a higher education marketer, you might have noticed that your job has been a bit more difficult in the past three or four years. Tuition costs are continuously rising, forcing prospective students to become much more selective in their journey towards enrollment, and other colleges and universities are getting more and more competitive.
To move students down the funnel and hit your enrollment targets despite these challenges, you should have a strong inbound marketing strategy in place for your institution.
As always, the first step of any strong marketing strategy is goal-setting. This is especially important for higher education marketers who are tasked with moving prospective students down the enrollment funnel. Having clear marketing goals in place for your enrollment funnel will keep your enrollment marketing team working efficiently and effectively, with everyone on the same page regarding what needs to be done on a daily basis.
Your enrollment targets might seem daunting, but when broken down into smaller, more actionable steps, they will be more attainable. By setting SMART goals for your enrollment marketing efforts, you’ll increase the likelihood that you’ll meet your larger enrollment targets.
SMART goals are goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. They eliminate ambiguity and make it crystal clear where your enrollment marketing team should be focusing their efforts.
We’ll take a look at what the SMART goal-setting process should look like for enrollment marketers. But first, let’s run through a quick refresher about higher education enrollment funnels so you can understand the relationship between each stage in the funnel and your corresponding goals.
The Higher Education Enrollment Funnel
The enrollment funnel represents the different stages in a prospect’s journey during the college decision-making process. Depending on the stage they are in, students will be in need of different information from colleges and universities, meaning that marketing tactics will vary greatly from one stage to the next.
Typically, the enrollment funnel is broken down into six stages: Prospects, Inquiries, Applicants, Admits, Deposits, and Enrolls. Some universities use different terms for these stages, but the stages themselves are typically the same.
- Prospects: People who have anonymously interacted with content on your website but have not provided any contact information
- Inquiries: Prospective students who have provided contact information by taking an action (downloading a content offer, contacting admissions, etc.)
- Applicants: Prospective students who have submitted an application
- Admits: Prospective students who have met the admissions criteria and have been admitted
- Deposits: Students who have sent a deposit to secure their seat
- Enrolls: Students who have successfully matriculated
Depending on the stage in the enrollment funnel that you’re targeting with your marketing efforts, you’ll need to adjust your strategy accordingly. When setting your marketing goals for your enrollment funnel, it’s important that you consider where each of your goals will fit best within the funnel.
Now, let’s take a look at how you should be setting your SMART marketing goals for your enrollment funnel.
Why should you set SMART marketing goals for your enrollment funnel?
Not all goals are created equal; some are much smarter.
All higher education marketing goals should be SMART goals, meaning they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Let’s say that you tell your team that they need to convert more inquiries into applicants. Sure, they know what the overall goal of their marketing efforts should be, but some crucial information is left out.
How are they supposed to convert these inquiries into applicants? What specific actions are they expected to take? How will they know when they’re successful? And when should they have this done by? These are all questions that SMART goals answer.
To turn this broad and unclear goal into a more specific and effective goal, we can apply the SMART framework.
The SMART version of the goal might sound something like this: “We will increase our Inquiry to Applicant conversion rate by 5% for the 2021 academic year via a personalized email marketing campaign.”
After being given this goal, your team knows what they should be improving, by how much, how to do it, and when to do it by. Just as important, they have an indication of when they’ve been successful. This leaves little room for confusion and makes it easy for everyone to break this goal down into actionable steps and daily tasks. You’ll also be able to regularly check your progress against your goal and adjust your efforts accordingly.
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