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hello and welcome to our webinar today I am Sarah Holmes with Advanced 360 education and we're going to be talking about marketing and admissions optimization understanding why leads convert I've been with Advanced 360 education for a little over two years but previous to um being with them I was the director of marketing and admissions for a beauty school for 12 years I'm a beauty school graduate so I love this industry and I was so excited today to talk about beauty schools and how we can increase your enrollment and hello I'm Julie cerruto I am the senior creative and digital strategist at Advanced 360 education and like um Sarah I have 20 years experience uh being the director of marketing for a prominent Salon and Spa as well as Beauty School Organization um and beauty schools are definitely near and dear to my heart so it's an awesome opportunity to be able to talk to you today and share our secrets of how to convert please a little bit about who we are we're a data focused digital marketing and technology company providing end-to-end enrollment campaign strategies Data Solutions and campaign execution um we also have an admissions training we have a SAS platform really our goal is to get your school quality leads that actually enroll um as a former director of admissions I know how frustrating it is when you get a ton of leads in but they're not quality leads they have no intention of enrolling so you have your your staff take the time they're calling emailing texting these leads that are never going to amount to anything that's time that your staff and your team could be spending elsewhere so quality um lead is really important to us this is a little bit about um who we are on a bigger scale um our parent company and um yeah you can see um part of Conde Nas we have GQ we have Reddit we have turnitin um all of these a bigger agency yes with a hundred years experience in the space um and we have extensive access to first party as well as third party data um that help us build successful campaigns for our clients and I know Julie's going to talk a little bit more about that a few slides in but we really have um the opportunity to really hone in on your perfect demographic of a lead so over the next 45 minutes uh we're going to be addressing these critical topics such as audience targeting building a strategy that works engaging your leads to conversion and then um the importance of course of the admissions and marketing team partnership and I will say Julie we were very good about building the partnership Julie and I did work out of school together for several years and um you know coming into that scenario together and just being able to explain to Julie what the leads are saying what we want to see more of it was so beneficial to both of our departments absolutely okay so we're going to touch on audience targeting um you might hear that or or have um a feeling that uh the leads that nobody's interested in pursuing a cosmetology education or an esthetician career um but we're here to tell you that the leads are there we just need to find them and Target them correctly that was always in admissions my team would say oh they're not interested they're not interested and I'm like but they filled out a form they requested information there's some interest here exactly um so we know from our data um and working with a wide range of beauty schools throughout the country that there's basically uh three primary target audiences um of course you've got your traditional student um which we know are the 18 to 24 year olds which historically have always been the key group of who you want to reach right out of high school maybe has some college behind them but always have that passion for for beauty but what we're finding since covid um and you know our current economic situation that we're in with certain companies laying off employees and so forth you don't want to be remiss in forgetting about these other two target groups which are the the career switchers um in group one which would be your ages 25 to 34 year olds that you know maybe have been working um doing at Amazon let's say for example um that had great benefits for a while um but now have had a layoff but again have been somebody that has always had a passion for all things beauty and well-being um and just never had the situation in which they could go to school and pursue their dream and then we have the next group of career switchers which are those that are age 35 to 45 who maybe you know have been stay-at-home moms and they're excuse me their children are back in school full-time they're not having to learn um at home remotely and now they have that freedom of time um to go back to school or again they're a victim of a layoff or they just have been completely reevaluating where they're what they're doing and tired of the grind and want to finally do something that they love and are passionate about so those are or Julie what we heard in admissions all the time was I've wanted to do this forever but my parents or my significant other of my family said don't go to beauty school go and do this and then they're coming back to it you know five years later ten years later we heard that all the time in admissions they're like I had to go get you know a degree and I couldn't find a job with my degree so now I'm coming to visit this industry because I see all the job postings exactly um so what we want to ask are some point of questions that you should be asking yourselves uh what are your data sources where do you get information about your leads and your currently enrolled students and historicals uh one thing that's very important to know is that you should be looking at a lot of different data points you should be looking at your CRM you should be looking at your student records platforms you should be looking at the engagement behind your social media platforms um and in getting an understanding of who's following you and who you're converting and even surveying your current students right when they when they enter school and start their first class finding out um the basics of how they heard about you why they decided to enroll with your school versus another school in the area um what they how they spend their free time um what social platforms do they spend the most of their time on which will probably be Tick Tock let's be real and Instagram but um Gathering that information helps you really Advance your knowledge of who your audience really is and it's not just going off of well you know five years ago it was this well things change as we know and so keeping on the pulse of of who your current student student body is and uh what they do and how they think uh what's important to them is vital um to your point pull this information often so many times especially when we're doing admissions training with schools or we're doing marketing you know schools think they know their demographic and that might have been the demographic or the student population five years ago but things are very different so pull that information regularly and share it with your marketing partner yes exactly um and making sure that you um you are collecting more than the basics um yes as I noted you know how are they spending their free time where do they get their information how do they search for information all of those things that can definitely help um build a more sophisticated audience Persona um for your students and then um taking that and that helps you identify the right Solutions on where you're going to advertise for your different Target audiences I love that um so one of the things that um you know I'm sure you are probably already doing at some level is utilizing Facebook and Instagram otherwise known as meta um for reaching uh potential students and I think that because of the rise in popularity um in Tick Tock uh you know there might be some question about well does that mean that we really are wasting our money being in Facebook and still advertising there and we're here to tell you no it's not wasting your money um you should be present on both platforms and for different reasons look at Facebook and in this chart you'll see um the usage um is still extremely high on the Facebook platform and that is mainly because you have to think if you are targeting let's see your gen Z's who are now the oldest in that generation is 25 so they're definitely in that first primary target audience um they still will utilize Facebook as a way to communicate to their friends and family especially family members older family members about what they're doing what they're interested in and so forth and so being that they're using that platform as a way to communicate with relatives that maybe don't live close by and so forth means they are on the platform um and so you would be remiss to totally abandon advertising on Facebook and Instagram so Julie with that being said um isn't Facebook and I've heard you talk about this before Facebook is a great way to get the parent or um somebody who's a decision maker their approval so targeting those types on on Thea Facebook right yes absolutely absolutely because if their decision helping with the decision making possibly helping with the pay for it tuition contributing yes absolutely they can help help guide uh the prospective student into which school they attend and so forth and be influenced by our ad advertising efforts um we do as you see 34 is the usage across the U.S um we do know that Tick Tock as it's blowing up in popularity that now uh the ages of users are starting to go Rise um and similar to how Facebook was when it started you know was a definitely a younger demographic and now it has grown to to expand um over multi-generations in terms of users so um we just wanted to point that out just so that you are you're aware that it still has a very strong presence in YouTube you know number two YouTube is so important um our our students our prospective students are visual Learners so where do they go they go to YouTube they go and look up micro influencers or influencers on hairstyles and makeup applications so I think really you know looking at if it's within your budget being able to have some kind of um marketing on on YouTube exactly um and this shows uh just based on the audiences that we were discussing in terms of our targeting when you look at the 18 to up to 34 year olds 42 percent of these users um are in that that age bracket that we are targeting for potential Beauty School students um this chart will show how gen Z specifically are utilizing um the various platforms and what the projected growth will be up to 2025 so you'll find it very interesting in that you know Snapchat is one of those that um definitely shows um a large volume of usage um and it's still one of those platforms that you can advertise on it just has limited capabilities so we based on your budgeting um and your your available ad budget we tend to go more in terms of priority on Tick Tock Facebook Instagram before we move forward to recommending uh Snapchat Julie did these numbers surprise you or were you were you not shocked at all um I wasn't too shocked actually um we know that Tick Tock we expect that's going to continue to to blow up and Rise um and you know not surprised that some of these other outliers like Twitter with all that's going on in the news and the changes that are happening there um how that's going to kind of Flatline a little bit until we know exactly how the the new and improved if you will Twitter is going to play out um and same thing with Reddit um you know not uh not nearly as um popular of a platform as maybe it once was I always like to get your take on things you always have a good pulse on what's going on thank you Sarah um and then one of another thing one other point that we wanted to share about the Gen z uh generation is that they are not necessarily utilizing Google to search for information so you'll see in these three examples these screenshots they're using Tick Tock to find information um the how to's and just like Sarah pointed out about YouTube and how um being a visual uh creative individual they're gonna go to YouTube to get the how-to tutorials to um be their passion if you will um but they're also going to start you're going to see that they're they're utilizing Tick Tock for similar um similar content so Julie this might come as a shock to everybody but I'm not gen z uh I'm an elder Millennial but I do this so I go on Tick Tock there was a new pair of jeans that they only sell online because they're out of the country I wanted to buy them but I'm like oh are they gonna how are they gonna look on me I didn't go to Google and go to YouTube I actually went to tick tock Googled the jeans and then I looked for somebody doing a review with my similar body yeah and I do that with lipstick I do that with makeup so I'm catching on quick good for you I'm not quite up to speed like you but um I'm getting there slowly it's true though to you know you just go to tick tock yeah you you search whatever you're looking for and a ton of videos come up that's awesome all right so as as Sarah had noted about with YouTube um The Power video there's no denying it um so you definitely if it's not already in your advertising mix you we strongly encourage you to start producing and um serving video ads into your into your mix um and you can do that easily if you don't have a graphic designer at your you know beck and call you can definitely utilize platforms like canva that makes it very easy uh to design uh videos and um be in the right size specs that you need for for social platforms and such um so these stats here are important to note that 66 percent of people said they prefer to watch a short video to learn about a product or service not a not a shocker there um 18 would rather read a text-based article website or post again that's higher than I thought not a shop but nobody has time the last one that's huge saying 95 of the message they absorb because we know what's the attention span now three seconds or two seconds or something so that's that's really good yeah that's where your video has to be quick to the point and resonate um again like Julie pointed out earlier if you're not using video if you're just using static images you need to make the switch absolutely all right so moving forward to um building a strategy that works so let's take a look at how you are you know what is your strategy around digital marketing to reach your target audiences so um this example is is is what we work with our clients on um and in terms of initial conversations to help build those strategies and so as you can see with the different logos there we work with a multitude of different platforms and those platforms are determined based on what your goals are what your budget is and again your target audience because of course you need to be where they are otherwise you're wasting your money so um at any rate so this will this is just a great example of how we will you know identify how you know all the different nuances of your target audience that you know from your data that we talked about just a moments ago um and then how that matches up with the various platforms and Advertising Solutions right so um do you want to talk a little bit about algorithms or Sarah do you want me to take it oh um you know you can take this one I love an algorithm but I'll let you take this one Julie all right um so of course with the different platforms if you're looking at Social and um you know these these platforms are becoming more and more sophisticated every day in terms of how to monitor the behaviors of an individual's search patterns ads that they watch things that they react and engage to um and so um taking that a step further there's abilities to um also um identify um potential students through competitor conquesting finding out you know it could be using you know you might have a competitor that's doing an event an open house um where we could you have the capabilities to um Target those individuals um based on where they are at and if they are in the area or actually attending those events where we can serve um our clients ads and um get in you know kind of top of mind that you know you've got a person that is in market for looking at schools and maybe they have or they haven't considered your school but it's a way to get your message in front of them as they are obviously in market and making the decision of where they're going to go to school um so it's a it's a subtle way of you know nudging them and and getting um your school your brand uh top of mind um great great thing would be an ad with a scholarship if you have a scholarship available for a turn for a certain um time frame or something that would be a great ad to push you know because what's the question and I keep going back to admissions but you know can I afford it or how am I how am I going to afford it exactly the algorithms have gotten so good Julie it's a little spooky but it is it's good for what we want to do absolutely yeah you know Beauty School in San Diego then the ad pops up um so to be competitive in your Market we suggest that you follow these steps you know research competitors um regularly if you're not already um be following them on their social platforms um doing you know you can even go as far as submitting at um a lead uh to their website and see what um how they are working leads how fast are they working leads um what are the communications you know so that you get a sense truly of what your target audience and let's face it um no matter what age consumers are are Savvy and they are going to do their their research and um it's not uncommon depending again on your market and the level of options um out there um with the quantity of competitors you have that someone could very uh realistically reach out to two to three different schools in their um search and and just and to help with their decision making and so it's really dependent upon that experience that they have which each school that they reach out to so that is one tactic that um I strongly encourage um there's nothing wrong with doing a little Intel um behind the scenes to to find out because let's be real though they're probably doing the same for you and I'm sure your missions have could easily point out oh yes that person was shopping Us Secret shopping list so um and then of course going back to that sorry to interrupt you to that your competition anymore isn't just the beauty school down the street it's not just a beauty school in the next town it is other trade schools it's community colleges it's four-year universities what are they offering because as we all if you know if you listen to the news you know enrollment is down in all different verticals so not just vocational um but it's in University so they're a competition what are they using to get students in sometimes we get the best ideas for what to do in our school when we look at universities or community colleges so make sure they're on your radar as well exactly um and then of course we're gonna beat the horse here but dive deep into your data um and really understand what what you're what you're collecting and what that means the data doesn't lie it'll tell us everything we want to know we just have to be able to pull it and whether we like the data or we don't it is what it is and then we know who to go after exactly um and then consistently fine tune your points of difference uh messaging um time and time again I know from my own experience um I could come up with some really fantastic copy of points of difference for the school that I worked at um and then you know a month or two later I'm seeing oh wait a minute some of our competition is kind of taken up some of the same similar messaging and so coming constantly you know working with your admissions your leadership teams just to really continually ask the questions to develop additional points of differences that are going to be important to your target audiences and refining that messaging and Julie you were so good about your admission team you would meet with them weekly and you would ask them you know what are your leads wanting oh they're wanting lash extensions so this was years and years ago but you kept hearing loss extension so then you took it upon yourself to go to the Education team the Director of Education and get lashes put in your cosmetology program so points of difference and that in that sense too what are your leads asking for do they want a longer makeup program do they want more on you know hair extensions exactly exactly um so use your research and your ad budget to determine how much and where you want to spend um these icons uh to the right of the slide here um are areas in which we you know again dependent on your budget no matter how small or how large um will help guide you in terms of where you need to be and and um and going through that process so and you also have to consider that some of these Solutions are great for the sales cycle or the funnel if you will right so we know like with display advertising it's a great platform for remessaging to people that have visited your website and keep it top of mind um but it's also a platform that um in solution with ads that that's going to be um perfect for a general brand awareness campaign it's going to be great for um those top of funnel leads okay so they're just starting to think about you know hey maybe I you know I've always loved doing makeup and hair so maybe I should go to school and learn you know um and get my license yeah or when we hear from the schools that are like you know no we we've been here but nobody knows we're here or if there's a change of ownership or a change of you know who was overseeing if it turned into a Nevada school or or a tea spa or something like that the display is so important right um whereas as we've talked about already you know social media marketing on meta Tick Tock uh especially and video like YouTube that is an area in which you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck and search marketing you can't you you still need to play the Google game and still be present on Google with your paid ads um uh to definitely be be there um in that space because that leads that come from Paid search um and social tend to be more in market and and tend to uh convert faster so um and then just also I guess the last point on this slide that we want to bring up is that in addition to your advertising you also want to have a good plan for your organic content sharing so whether that's blog posts whether it's just posting regularly like a few times a week if not more on your social platforms um and uh your email marketing efforts and so forth just to keep your audiences engaged and website optimization so important let's make sure we're sending the leads we're getting you to a user-friendly great experience whether it's a landing page or it's a website we want to make sure that we're keeping them engaged and they're filling out the lead form um so we have several tips and tricks on that but I'm not going to give them over the webinar okay call me and um let's see as far as your creative we're going to move in now to more of a creative strategy which is um an area that I'm very passionate about um so with content um what you want to include in your ads um in terms of a mix of static and video assets um you want to make sure that it clearly communicates the skills your program is teaching um showing your students in action I know um we have multiple examples in my own personal experience is that ads that had in-action shots where somebody could visualize themselves in that space at that time are way more engaging than a stock image remember 10 years ago you know 12 years ago Juliet was all about the perfect Flawless you know image and now it's not it needs to just be raw and true because that's what people want to see what are we all about authenticity and like you said they can see themselves here that it's not too much for them I love it exactly or something that is as personal if you are using models maybe it's uh work that your students have done and it's their models from a photo shoot or something portfolio shoot that you did um that's aspirational that you can uh point out in your messaging um or ad copy for a social ad that this is you know Julie ceruto's creation that she did you know our recent graduate and and make it that uh aspirational so that gets people excited um that they're going to be able to learn that and experience that at your school um and you want to mix and match formal formats excuse me um so meaning that you know let's say let's take Facebook for example they have a lot of different options in terms of how you can um advertise so we know video okay um and in three different size specs you want the vertical to serve in stories you want um the 1080 by 1080 standard size for end feed for example but they also have Carousel ads that's another way if you don't have video let's say but you do have a lot of static images that you can tell your story through a carousel campaign um so as that is one of the examples and then with messaging um you wanna you we see a lot of ads out there that just show the image and then the ad copy but it's not really exciting it doesn't really grab your attention so we we prescribed to the the philosophy of putting in a very concise attention grabbing headline that can be catchy it can be um funny or a play on words if you will um and then you know you can um expand on that messaging of course with your your ad copy um when it's placed in feed ads and so forth um incorporate keywords um or phrases that your the potential students your target audiences use um that will translate well into your into your messaging um and then communicate your top points of difference we always want to communicate that whether it's visually or through your your headlines and so forth um to tell the story and tell um you know highlight those features and benefits that you offer that maybe not other schools do or you do better right and that's where Tick Tock is so good because it's constantly something different there's a new challenge there's a new you know an IT thing on Tick Tock so you know getting your students even if you're just growing like your organic Tick Tock getting your students on there and trying all that exactly um and then lastly a big believer in a b testing because through the data your research all of that you know you you build this beautiful setup creative to serve out there in your ads um but unless you have something to compare it to and it can be as subtle a difference of swapping out the um your call to action you know instead of learn more it's find out more or something like that um doing um a different image um maybe changing the headline a little bit um just little subtle differences but then that gives you the opportunity to really hone in your knowledge of what is resonating with your target audience what ads are converting people to leads um and so that you can continually shift and and optimize your campaigns with those learnings okay so these are some examples of creative that we have done for some of our clients in the past year um and one thing that we're we're pretty proud of is the fact that we create unique um ads for each client we are not an agency that serves the same cookie cutter ad for every client across the board um we dive deep into understanding each client's brand we want to make sure that we are highlighting those unique factors um and whether we're utilizing stock or what utilizing their own assets to deliver High performing we love feedback from the clients um no one knows your brand like you do if you're a school but um you know we will tell you our recommendations but we love your input if you you know don't have a ton of photos I know Julie you can work magic with a lot of things I've seen it but to your point Julie I love how you look at these ads and you can't tell that it was the same agency or company that did these right they all look very different it's so important especially if the lead is looking at several different schools in a certain Market want to stand out definitely and then these examples um are some of our recent videos um this one here and I'll go ahead and play it is a tick tock let's see of course oh there we go the audio didn't come through but the audio is great too it's not oh sometimes sometimes Zoom does that video is amazing okay let me see if I can adjust this that I don't know I apologize for that um and then this one is a the next two examples are social uh video ads foreign [Music] so and I again apologize that Sam came through on the last one it was great yeah I love that video Julie awesome um so that that track um for the the music um because it was a s'more spa massage focused ad we used um that kind of cool you know vibe to it whereas the other two that you couldn't hear definitely had a more funky um more upbeat sound right it it definitely matched the creative perfectly for for what we were going it's so important to note that you can watch these videos with your sound on or off right that is so important about an ad is you know maybe it's late at night and you know I always go back to me I was feeding my daughter late at night and you know wanting things that I could look at what I didn't need to have the volume on absolutely okay oh this is one of my favorite topics ad fatigue do you want me to talk first sure you go ahead I think you know a lot of times we see with um you know schools who maybe have had other partners that they have this ad and they have it on Facebook or Instagram and it's been on there for nine months it's been on there for six months you know this is when they're looking at us to possibly change Partnerships um ad fatigue is real um it's quicker more than ever you know people say what what does that time frame look like I don't know I I couldn't tell you Tick Tock it could be a week it could be two weeks Facebook and Instagram a little bit longer um people get tired of seeing our ad you know they they need new they need fresh especially because it's taking more hits of seeing an ad than ever right before it was just a couple now what is it 11 to 13. so we got to get really creative so make sure that whoever you're working with or if you're doing your marketing in-house you're watching for ad fatigue and you will start to see the click-through rate all of those go down absolutely all right so Sarah this is your area of passion I know I can't help but talk so thank you for humoring me during that um let's talk about leads okay so we just talked about marketing we're going to have amazing videos we're going to have great ads we're going to really hone in the data on our demographics now what looking at how and when to contact your leads it's really important um these leads did request information so they're absolutely interested in coming to school um so if you're like you know I called this lead a couple times I text them I emailed them and I never heard back from them they're not interested no we just didn't speak to the lead how they wanted to be spoken to so not all lead sources are created equal and what we mean by that is if a lead comes on from social look at the message of your Social ad what is the message whatever that message was that resonated to the lead so we need to take that over into admissions so make sure you're speaking to that if they saw an ad about oh the opportunities are endless you know own your own salon and then on the phone or you leave a message talking about shampoo sets and how you have a 90 stable or passing rate that that doesn't translate they're they're not going to see the value in that so that's really important um do you know higher leads want to be contacted it's it's really it's really easy the lead comes in I'm a big speed to lead which I'll talk about in a little bit so I'm gonna call them and leave them a message I'm going to send them a text message and I'm going to send them an email however they respond to me is how they want to be communicated with if they respond via text great I'm getting on text and I'm having a full conversation with them can I build rapport via text absolutely remember you call your D or you talk to your dentist or your students schools or you know everything via text why should we be any different there are tips and tricks on building Rapport via text message and that's one thing we do go over in our admissions training is how to build that rapport um optimizing your CRM is so important you need you a Julie cerrudo in marketing who makes you amazing email templates and text message templates so that you can go in and be more efficient with your time because your time is valuable right you have a goal to make so if if your marketing person can make some really pretty email templates and some great text templates that you guys have um tried out and they're tried and true make sure that that's happening um speed to lead Julie touched on a little bit earlier about how maybe we're not the only game in town maybe they filled out a form at my school and at Julie's school and then at the person down the street really does matter the first person who is able to get in contact with them it does you know I was talking and doing some training last a week with a school and they said it on average it takes them about a day or two to contact a lead that requested information um unfortunately that that's too long you're going to lose the enrollment because my team at my school at the admissions team I ran I wanted it right away and my team was good at building Rapport they were good at getting into your head and what your dreams are so you better believe that my team was booking the appointment and not the one who waited two days by the time two days came around you know they could have already came in for a tour and doing their fastball application exactly and I do believe that you know whether they pick up the phone whether they immediately respond to a text or email isn't really the point it's I mean obviously that's the end goal right but the fact that that lead understands like I matter you're reaching out to me in response you know everyone wants immediate gratification so you're clearly telling them you matter we want to help you get to your goals and if you've waited that you know one to two days before doing that you have just subliminally told them you're not that important you know how many times in admissions Julie I heard people say thank you for not giving up on me thank you for being persistent with me it's true persistency pays off so if you have a rep or if you are a rep that's like I don't want to stalk people I don't want to harass them you need to change your thought process because that's you projecting they know it's 20 22. people know when they go on a website and they fill out their name in a form they know they're going to get bombarded by us they know they signed up for that it's not like the days back when we go to the mall and fill out a form to win a car we didn't understand what we were putting we're like oh we're gonna win a car great I'm gonna fill out this form they know what they're getting themselves into they expect it so like Julie said if they're don't if they're not getting regular text messages and emails they're like what's wrong with me nurturing leads um so big to me so many times when we're coaching admissions team or I'm working with clients we see that a week or two we are full throttle we're calling texting emailing and then it just drops off why because in their mind they want the low-hanging fruit they're on to the next the new leads old leads there's gold in the old they're gonna convert you just have to make sure that you're giving them time you know some schools say oh my time to enroll meaning the time the lead requests information to the time they sign up is six days but more than likely it's six months so think of all those leads for five and a half months that have had no contact um if you're a bigger School make sure you have a CRM that has an amazing Europe campaign that you can be pushing out content but if you oversee an admissions Department please make sure your team is working old leads a lot of times I'd go into our CRM and I would just spot check I would just randomly look at dates and pull up and then I would talk to them and I really think one of my um reasons I was so successful when I was enrolling was because I would work a lead whether they were a year old or a day old just like they had just requested information life happens think about your own life you request information but then the dog's sick or this happens you know doesn't mean they're not interested it might just be a better time later exactly appointment follow-up um once the appointment is booked remind them again they get busy send them a calendar invite through Outlook if your CRM doesn't do that send them you know a morning up look forward to seeing you if you need directions click here um and I think what's really important is not to let someone feel bad if they have to reschedule or they know show again life happens you know we're so sorry that you weren't able to make it Julie but let's get you in tomorrow I can't wait to meet with you I know how excited and how passionate you are about this the ultimate tour experience that's what have I said a couple times here we're visual Learners we want to see we want to feel we want to smell so taking me on a tour of the school and showing me where I'm going to be doing shampoos where I'm going to be applying makeup I can smell the hairspray or the burning hair in the blow dryer or the nice Lavender in the spa side so don't rush the tour a lot of times when we go on on campus and do our admissions training they spend all this time talking talking in Admissions and then the tour is like whip whip whip no sometimes that tour is more important than what you talked about in the office and it's more exciting so have them pick up a blow dryer have them meet instructors if the instructors aren't aren't busy something that I always say would be like if I'm touring Julie Julie this is your instructor this is your classroom all the time we're hearing people say I'm scared that I'm not going to fit in am I going to fit in here make them believe that they're going to fit in anything you want to add to these no it's perfect and it is the formula for success I you know Sarah's expertise works just those Common Sense yet important reminders that you follow this process and you will start increasing your enrollments for sure and it's really important thank you Julie it's really easy for us in admissions to feel like Groundhog's Day right people come in we tour them they go to financial aid they enroll um before every tour or appointment or interview that I would see I would sit down and give myself a minimum of five seconds to mentally reset my brain to remind myself that this person who's coming in is so excited it took them a lot of guts to to book an appointment to come in to walk in they have a lot of people in their life that may be naysayers on them wanting to do this so reset that and make that appointment all about them exactly okay um best practices um I love this always give when you're text messaging give them two appointment options I have a 10 a.m tomorrow or 3 P.M tomorrow which works better for you okay I gave him a morning and an afternoon it's much better than me saying what time works for you then it's like oh what about this and then we're going back and forth give them give them two options building Rapport over text you know asking them about their dream you know how long have they wanted to do this um saying things like tell me more about that I do that with my in person but this can all be done via text as well so excited um to see your information Julie um you know is here something you've wanted to do for a long time tell me more about that um I am terrible at this in my personal life but at work I'm really good don't multi-message text back to back I do that all the time like send a text let them answer and respond to that then send your next if you send six questions in a row they get to pick and choose which one they answer and maybe it's not even when you wanted to answer to you or just filling up space yeah um ask open-ended questions right we don't want them to be able to answer us yes or no um do you like doing hair yes instead say what do you like about hair so just change that up so it's not so cut and dry let's get them talking um in admissions I can speak for myself I love to talk but it's really important in an interview or a chore that it's not me talking that the lead is doing the majority of the talking they're going to tell you what's important to them we just have to listen um be super of mindful of your texting times just because you're up at 7am or you're up at 11 PM doesn't mean your lead is so um just be mindful of when you're doing that um mindful too of maybe not everybody lives where you are so maybe you know like I'm on the west coast look at the ZIP code oh it's an East Coast so it's only five here but it's 8 P.M there so just be really um mindful of that make sure your lead forms always have an opt-in option right um that's automatically done opting into text messaging so important um I kind of thought that was just a no-brainer except a couple weeks ago we ran into a school that didn't have an opt-in option on their lead form so that's really um important one of my favorite things to talk about is mirroring your leads which I wrote a whole section on in our admissions training but mirror your leads if someone comes in and is quiet and is Whispering and you can tell they're shy normal Sarah isn't gonna work I can't be waving my hands around I can't be loud I'm gonna have to bring it down a notch okay you need to do this with your leads if they come in loud great meet them where they are I always stay in admissions we're like we're like on stage and we're just changing up the actors of who of the parts we're playing all day every day so really watch their their body language how they're interacting with you no one's going to want to come talk to me my loud mouth with my waving arms if they're shy so I just learned to really pay close attention from the moment I go and grab them from the relaxation area or the front desk how they walk I know what I'm working with perfect do we have another slide I can't remember you and it's taking a moment okay um yeah Teamwork Makes the Dream we are if Julie's not successful I'm not successful if I'm not successful Julie's not successful it's very self-explanatory stop pointing fingers again you know it's very easy to say oh well it was a terrible lead what made it terrible let's tell our marketing department so maybe we can change the radius if they were too far or if they wanted a program we don't offer great let's tell marketing so we can hone in on that exactly really important to to meet weekly with your marketing department Admissions and marketing what's going on you know you know Julie I'm hearing a lot about people saying we're giving away a hundred thousand dollars in scholarships and I've never heard that he's like no that's not us maybe that's like Beauty changes lives giving away the scholarship so it's just really good to be all on the same page um Julie and I loved doing when we ran a marketing and admissions Department we love sharing the ads Julie would share the ad so she said hey this is what we're talking about so someone calls asking about lash extension extensions you know why yes exactly um knowledge is power so it just helps tighten up that communication and collaboration so that you get you're just more effective at the end of the day yeah um in admissions We Are The Front Runners right we are so if we're getting again I spoke on this earlier if we're getting a lot of requests for something tell your marketing department it's really that simple that's how a lot of changes get made is by admission saying I've had 10 calls this week on hair extensions that must people really might must seem to want to do it so then marketing then goes and and you know digs a little deeper into that exactly exactly um and I think you know again it just it's just that I think that the key is if there's regular meetings everybody's on the same page even though they play a different role the goal is the same and so um marketing is there to support admissions providing them the tools they need to succeed but likewise admissions needs to provide good regular feedback on what they're experiencing and what's working what's not so that the two parties can brainstorm Solutions um and and move forward or the other side of that too Julie is like man I'm only enrolling I've enrolled 40 estheticians this week and only five cosmetologists and Julie's like oh well I did I didn't know that well great let me call our marketing agency and we need to focus more on cosmetology that's important exactly or if the leaf the uh forms are being populated with like broken phone numbers and maybe they're not all the numbers or the emails you know um while we have um Solutions in place to prevent Bots out there um to kind of derail forms and and such um there's still human error but there's but that's the type of information that is helpful so that we can troubleshoot solutions to help minimize the amount of bad leads that are being received and so forth um and then I think the other part of that relationship that's beneficial is you know when it comes to content marketing or event marketing um that you are collaborating at a level that talks about um you know what are those important topics that um leads or current students are going to be engaged with so that marketing knows um but also with events like we know for example um you know best practices for open houses um what works what doesn't and so um learning from the events you do uh to generate um more leads or enrollments working together to not only put that event together and promote it but also debriefing afterwards to talk about what worked within and so that you're learning from that and able to perfect those events going forward love it okay that brings me thank you again thank you all so much for joining us today we as you can tell we're pretty passionate about what we talk about um I would love the opportunity to work with you whether that's on marketing strategies or training up your admissions team um our first love is beauty schools and we want to help you increase your enrollments and there's several ways we can work together to do that so there is our contact information on the right hand of the screen please reach out um we are actually doing a free 20-minute um just Fishbowl session if you want to reach out um email me or call me and I'd love to sit and and kind of look at what your challenges are and how we can help you um do better and increase your enrollments yes absolutely we're here to help thank you all so much and have a great day appreciate your time bye