Digital Marketing Audits for Education

Are you having difficulties attracting prospective students online? Is your admissions team handling requests and applications as efficiently as possible? Is your overall digital marketing strategy in need of an overhaul?

Higher Education Marketing has provided comprehensive audits to leading language schools, college, universities, business schools, public agencies, and professional associations. Our audits are extensive research undertakings that span several weeks, examining every aspect of your institution from the smallest facet of your online presence to your overall strategic approach.

HEM tailors every audit on a case-by-case basis, focusing on your particular situation rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach. This allows our team to understand your specific needs and goals, and to outline actionable recommendations that will help improve your situation.

Depending on your needs, your audit can include any or all of the following components.

Conversion Tracking

Conversion tracking refers to your institution’s ability to fully and accurately monitor your lead generation and conversion processes. Because goal conversions (such as new applications, registrations, or requests for information) are of the utmost importance to your success, it is imperative that they are properly tracked and measured.

HEM will evaluate your conversion processes to ensure that they are correctly set up, configured and tracked. This can include reviewing your:

» Calls to action (CTAs)
» Google Analytics goals
» Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager Tracking
» Paid advertising campaign tracking

Student Personas and Competitor Analysis

Our auditing process involves a systematic, situational analysis of numerous factors originating from and surrounding your recruitment model, including your current commercial objectives, your competing institutions and their marketing resources, and your audience.

Generating accurate student personas involves targeted market research and will enable our team to better review and shape your brand’s voice to attract these leads. As such, our persona and key message research pairs well with other aspects of our audit process. We will define:

» The demographic characteristics of your key target audiences
» Their most pertinent motivations and goals
» Key pain points and barriers to enrollment
» Primary and secondary key messaging for your digital marketing initiatives

We can also identify and analyze your competitors, evaluating their digital marketing presence and activities in comparison to your own so that you get a clear picture of how well you measure up against your competition. This may include your competitor’s:

» Website positioning, UX, and overall strategy
» Content creation approaches
» Social media presence
» Paid advertising initiatives
» Inquiry follow-up processes

Both of these processes will also inform other components of our audit, as we examine different aspects of your digital marketing presence with both your persona’s needs and competitive position in the marketplace in mind.

Website UX

User experience (UX) refers to the visitor’s journey and impressions as they navigate your website. Your UX plays a significant role in your overall digital marketing strategy and lead conversion process. Our team will review your website for errors, navigational pitfalls, and other stumbling points that could harm your overall lead generation success.

This extensive process can involve:

» UX design analysis
» Responsive design analysis
» Positional analysis
» Navigation
» Review of calls to action (CTAs)
» Review of inquiry forms

Channel Analysis

Educational institutions rely on many online channels to connect with students and meet their goals. Our team will review the entirety of your institution’s various digital marketing channels and search for gaps and inefficiencies.

We will also identify underperforming or underutilized channels and make recommendations for how your team could better approach them, including ideas for content creation, new campaigns, and improved targeting.

This is often one of the most extensive and detailed parts of our audit process, and can include:

» Web traffic
» Website content
» SEO
» Paid advertising
» Social media
» Email marketing

CRM and Marketing Automation Audit

CRM and marketing automation play an increasingly crucial role in the day-to-day activities of many institutions, helping them to manage, scale, and measure their workload.

As part of our audit, HEM can review the current setup and implementation of your CRM and marketing automation functions to evaluate their effectiveness, pinpoint inefficiencies, and identify opportunities to improve utilization of your system’s capabilities.

This can include:

» CRM account review
» Marketing automation processes review
» CRM and marketing automation reporting review

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