Great blog articles, social media posts, and other content attract potential students to your site. However, you don’t want the interaction to end there. Forms, calls to action (CTAs), and landing pages provide visitors with a next step to take. How can your education marketing campaign make these website elements work for your school?
This is the “convert” stage of the Inbound Marketing Methodology. CTAs, forms, and landing pages take the next step after you attract visitors with content. Implement these tactics to turn those visitors into students.
Use Forms to Capture Contact Information
A potential student visits your school’s website. What should she do next?
Think of a form as a way to maintain contact with potential students. You can use forms to capture names, email addresses, and other valuable information. Forms allow prospective students to sign up for a newsletter or to receive custom content via email.
Writing for Crazy Egg, online marketer Sherice Jacob recommends keeping your web forms as short and sweet as possible. Potential students won’t fill out fifteen lines of information — the have finals to study for and friends to meet for coffee.
Capture Valuable Information in Forms
Personalized content marketing has become one of the most effective ways to capture consumer interest and spread brand loyalty. You can use this same strategy for your school. Ask compelling questions that help you get to know your prospects.
For instance, you might ask about a prospective student’s major, sports interests, or hobbies. You can use this information to target that student with content that he or she will find most interesting or useful.
Make Your CTAs Stand Out
A web-based CTA only works if prospective students see it and feel compelled to click the link. Make sure your CTA buttons stand out from the rest of the content. Format them in different fonts, include bold graphics, and make the text larger than the surrounding copy.
Potential students won’t hunt for your CTA. That’s not how young people — or any consumers — use the web. If you want prospects to click on that button and follow through with the desired task, make it obvious.
Offer a Benefit in Your CTA
Potential students aren’t looking for ways to spread your brand message or interact with your school. They’re looking for information and resources that will directly benefit them.
Consequently, your CTA needs to appeal to those students. Give them a reason to grace your school with their time and energy. Offer a free download, for instance, or an answer to a question.
In other words, your CTA should represent a carrot. Dangle that carrot in front of your prospects and invite them to take a bite. You’ll see improved results immediately.
Create Landing Pages With Specific Purposes
You might use a landing page to highlight a particular area of study or a feature of your school that elevates it above the competition. Landing pages need a specific purpose if you hope to drive traffic and increase enrollment.
Think of the landing page as the deal-closer of your education marketing campaign. It’s the page that turns prospects into students.
You can create as many landing pages as you want. If they’re specific and targeted, you’ll increase your conversion rates and frustrate far fewer visitors.
Keep Your Landing Pages Tidy
Students have short attention spans. They click away from websites all the time because they don’t find what they’re looking for or because the page is so busy that they don’t know where to look.
You don’t want that for your school’s landing page. Make it as neat and tidy as possible, with plenty of white space and contrast. Use it as a funnel — direct your prospect to the end of the page where you set up a slam-dunk CTA.
For more help turning your school’s website into an education marketing powerhouse, contact us.
