By Vivek Sharan, Founder & Director, Ignify solutions.
We all have witnessed some of the toughest time in History with this Pandemic. We all have put up a strong fight with Covid and will soon defeat it. Pandemic has taught us to be innovative with alternative teaching learning methodologies in action, we also need to secure our revenues and growth with new strategies and deep understanding of lead generations and conversions.. We now need more Admissions through higher No of leads and higher Conversions.
The glaring question which every institution is asking is what do I need to do to get more admissions? Should we spend more on branding? Should we change our marketing Plan ? Should change my admission team and hire a fresh team who can bring new ideas?
To answer this question we need to understand the problem in details. Educational institutions have majorly depending on a minimum and self basic sales and marketing process. They have always believed that with a good infrastructure, excellent academics and visionary team of teachers they will be able to get sustainable admissions. The institute does not emphasis on building the right platform for leads to land, Nor does the institute focuses for a well audited process for admission SOPs for their institute. Admissions are still considered seasonal and so is the focus on the admission team members of institutions who have multiple roles to justify apart from admissions.
The pandemic has definitely brought a big challenge to all Institutions big or small. However also opens up new roads for us to explore and build more channels for technology to step in.
The role of technology will be right from building lead and branding platforms like website with a strong pull to hold parents and students with engagement. The social media platforms need to act as catalyst to your admissions. Its time to have visuals – promos , stories everywhere to showcase. Its time to be vocal and demonstrate the strength on every platform and by all stake holders – Parents, Students, Faculty, Management to announce, excite and pull enquiry to the institution. The Institute needs to focus building both inside and outside sales channels to seek more and more parents / students as walk in. The referrals for inside sales can boost with the help of teachers , management and admission team which can contribute to an excellent admissions. Having the entire admission process and experience on virtual platform will be big boost.
The need of data analysis, Competition study and activity will be another strong strategy to seek more focused enquiry generation. Decide upon your offer, freebies to attract as well as hold your existing students and parents with the analysis.
Admissions will go up when your enquiry channels works well and equally when you convert this enquiry well. The need of a strong dedicated admission team trained on the admission conversions will bring the desired results.
Follow up with your enquiry with multiple reasons and ways to engage them will help you secure more than your competition. Also the management need to build and robust admission team monitoring plan to ensure all leads channels convert to enquiry and all enquiries convert to admissions.
