Accounting is boring.
If you’re a marketer, you’ll probably agree with me on that.
But there is something that we can learn from the accounting function:
Cadence and consistency.
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- Every month I reconcile my expenses, send out invoices and check if the numbers are healthy
- Every quarter My accountant files a VAT return and at the same time checks if I overlooked anything
- Every year My accountant files an annual report, which I review and compare to previous years.
Of course, filing accounts is a legal requirement. But being on top of financial numbers is also critical for any organisation to survive.
But:
Being on top of marketing numbers is just as crucial
Financial people often see marketing purely as an expense to minimise.
We, marketers, see it as an investment.
After all, you can’t run a school without students.
And students don’t show up spontaneously.
I recently spoke with an accounting-focused business school.
They were hesitant to invest in marketing, be it training, campaigns or website improvement.
In order to give them an idea of the ROI to be expected from working with me, I asked for their website conversion rate.
It turned out that they were not tracking any marketing related KPIs.
No wonder that senior leadership regards marketing purely as an expense to avoid!
Realistically, as an education marketer, you probably need more budget.
I know that many of you are trying to do your magic with far too few people and resources to achieve the goals you’re supposed to achieve.
But if you can’t describe the process by which budget leads to visibility, traffic, conversion and eventually enrolments, it’s going to be difficult to make the case for the budget you need.
So start by tracking and communicating your marketing KPIs.
Simple things like:
–Â Visibility:Â search impressions via Google Search Console, showing up in AI answers via tools such as Peec.ai, Post and video views in social media
–Â Traffic:Â Website visitors
–Â Conversions:Â Enquiries, Chats by student ambassadors, brochure downloads, Open Day visits
–Â Applications
–Â Enrolments
This is the path that prospective students follow up until enrolment. When you have numbers, you’ll know what needs your attention.
Until you can treat marketing like a (somewhat) measurable process, you will always feel like things are out of your control.
How to get started?
What can you do to start taking control?
Read Chapter 4 on data and analytics in my book Successful student recruitment with Google Ads. It’s a good, short primer even if you don’t intend to run Google Ads campaigns
Take my course Effective online marketing for education or enroll your team. In the course, we will dig into what a realistic tracking setup would be and drive home the need to be data driven
Engage me for a student recruitment audit. I’ll dive into what you have now, and together, we will chart a path to make the marketing process measurable in a way that makes sense, even to non-marketers.
That’s all for this Field Note
See you in 2 weeks!
This article first appeared as a Field Note
In the Field Notes, I share one practical idea you can try on your site or in your campaigns. Every two weeks. Get it in your inbox by signing up here.
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