KEY #7
MEASURE THE VALUE BEFORE THE CLICK

What differentiates Our Kids from most other marketing tools is that Our Kids doesn’t just send traffic to your website. It also builds your brand—outside of your website. Families study your in-depth information on Our Kids. And they do this before they click through to you.

This matters when marketing schools. Building a brand is especially important for schools (KEY #3). So it’s important to pay attention to how campaigns build a brand. And if one campaign (like Our Kids) builds it in ways that another doesn’t, it’s important to account for that difference.

Here’s what this means in practice. Other marketers might use website clicks to measure the value of their campaigns. In effect, they reduce the value of their campaigns to a single denominator (website clicks). This makes it simple to compare campaigns. But this is misguided for schools because it ignores that campaigns might build a school brand in ways not reflected in website clicks. Or, more simply, it neglects that families look outside of a school’s website when forming a view of its brand (KEY #5).

So avoid the tendency to ignore what happens before a family clicks through to your website. What happens before the click is not just a means of generating the click. It’s valuable in its own right—and so should be counted.

In fact, Our Kids provides three kinds of value: (1) It builds awareness, (2) shapes perceptions (building brand understanding), and (3) funnels qualified families to your website. When evaluating the results of your campaign, reflect on all three kinds of value, and not only the third.

KEY #8
DON’T JUST COUNT LEADS. ASSESS THEIR QUALITY.

It isn’t enough to count the number of leads (referrals) from a campaign. You also need to assess their quality. Leads vary in quality—often by a lot. While some leads are likely to turn into enrolments, others aren’t. Likewise, some campaigns tend to send strong leads. Others tend to send weak ones.

You’ll find that Our Kids provides the highest quality leads of any platform. You’ll see evidence of this if you study your Google Analytics report. Pay close attention to the metrics of bounce rate, pages-per-session, time-on-site, and goal conversion rates. These show how engaged your leads are, and are strong indicators of lead quality.

A family who clicks from OurKids.net to your website is already well-matched with your school. They’ve spent time studying your info, and compared it with other schools (KEY #7). They’re attracted to what you offer. They’re committed and educated buyers and are thus more likely to enrol.