STEP ONE – Sales Process Analysis
The first step of my growth system is to analyse the sales process. This is particularly important in edtech and how are we pitching our product or services to the clients. Are we pitching a call? A demo? A form? A purchase? The process of how we sell impacts everything else when it comes to growth so it needs to be carefully examined. How long is our sales process? How do we manage our pipeline? What is the feedback on our sales process? Have we modernised the sales process and reduced barriers to entry? This and more needs to be considered when ensuring it’s a sales process that will work to convert leads at a high rate.
STEP TWO – Acquisition Strategy
The second step of my growth system is to analyse the acquisition strategy for new leads. Where do our leads come from? What haven’t we tried? What do our outbound email and call scripts look like? Are we running ads? What platforms are working for us or not? What are our conversion rates and ROI? Are we leveraging our team’s personal brands on LinkedIn to connect with decision makers? Most edtech companies are relying too much on one or two acquisition strategies and haven’t perfect enough routes to market to reach decision makers. These strategies are often not regularly refreshed and updated to reflect changes in the market and in how decision makers buy.
STEP THREE – Website Analysis
The third step of my growth system is to analyse the website. The content, structure and sales process on the website massively impacts the conversion rate from all other marketing and growth activities. I also look for barriers to entry, value adds we can use, analyse competitors and add key missing content needed for better conversions. There are dozens of factors here that impact conversion rates and additions we can make to double even triple conversions.
STEP FOUR – Lead Nurturing
The fourth step of my growth system is to examine the lead nurturing of prospective clients. This is the most common overlooked but also can be the most impactful. Lead nurturing involves the response times, frequency of emails/messages, the method of communication, use of automation and deliverability of communications sent to prospective clients. Nurturing is required for most clients before they convert often taking weeks or months but most edtech companies don’t put in the effort required. What are we saying to the leads? How are we giving them a reason that they should trust us and work with us while also providing urgency for why now is the time.
STEP FIVE – Organic Rankings & SEO
The fifth step of my enrollment growth system is to look at the organic rankings for key search terms for the company. It is crucial in particular to examine the rankings for search terms related to course names and related variations of course names. For example “CRM for universities, Highered CRM, Education CRM” etc. These rankings in particular relating to the service or product are of crucial importance as it shows the solution to potential clients at the point of purchase. Most companies are aware of these but not always every variation and related search terms which can be even more important. Additional search terms and their variations need to be targeted also “what are the most affordable CRMs?”, “What are the easiest CRMs to use?”, “Which CRM is best for small colleges?” etc. These search terms and their variations often number in the thousands and requires a very in-depth SEO strategy to rank highly for all of them. The use of PR and online presence is extremely important also for EdTech companies, what podcasts have our leadership been on? What websites and directories are we listed on? What publications have featured us? EdTech is a strongly reputation based market and it’s crucial we have both a lot of PR
STEP SIX – Social Media Strategy
The sixth step of my growth system is to examine the social media strategy being used by the company. Are we targeting the right demographics and interests? What is the budget per campaign and how many campaigns are we running? What platforms are we advertising on? What kinds of creatives are we using in the ad for each platform? Are we utilising our lecturing team? How are we using student content? Is UGC a central part of our social media ads strategy? These and other questions need to be asked and look at what we are trying to achieve from the content and ads. Many companies look for low cost leads instead of focusing on better quality conversions and having a strong nurturing sequence behind the leads we get through the ads. The use of video and graphics, the frequency of content, the types of content used on each platform and on the website and the system for creating content. The content created by the company is crucial and how we create conversations around what we’re doing, sharing social proof and giving reasons for new clients to work with us is a critical part of growing consistently.
