Our consultants have spent years in the trenches developing programs and courses that have reached their intended audiences. Their skills in enrollment management have made this a possibility. SMS can assist your institution in:
- Adjusting your current enrollment procedures
- Developing updated enrollment procedures as needed
- Documenting the changes
- Training staff regarding the process
SMS has a number of packaged services that most clients find valuable. Two of our more popular packaged services are:
Executive Recruitment Mentoring & Development
- Marketing Plan Development and Refinement: Our personnel are very experienced in marketing adult and online programs. SMS will develop or refine an institution's marketing plans, enhancing them with time-tested, market-proven methods and strategies for generating learners for your programs. These methods and strategies have been tested at a number of both leading institutions and those just starting programs for adult and online degrees and have consistently seen results. Through this process, you will have a well-developed plan for overall areas of marketing.
- Leads & Placement Mentoring: In coordination with the Marketing Plan, this service is used to help admissions and marketing decision-makers understand the best places to drill for student leads and place the institution in the market. In many ways, this is an accountability step for the marketing plan as it will help institutional leaders follow-through on carrying out the marketing plan. Through the process of a bi-weekly conference call, our consultants will walk your team through the process of placing ads and buying leads through companies that are leading the field. Our consultants in this area are very skilled in both higher education and general marketing.
- Recruiter’s Bootcamp: This service is a two-day, application-oriented workshop with your recruiting staff, training them in effective methods for recruiting adult and online learners or for traditional undergraduate learners. The leaders of the workshop are experienced recruiting personal having served at the line-level and at the administrative level of recruiting services. This can be done with either the director of recruiting for the program or with the entire team.
- Recruitment Mentoring: After attending the Recruiter’s Bootcamp, the mentoring services offer a bi-weekly follow-up service to coach, review plans, numbers, tactics, and to make sure the institution and its personnel are making effective progress on recruiting and marketing efforts. This can be done with either the director of recruiting for the program or with the entire team.
- Organic Web Marketing: The newest SMS marketing service, organic web marketing, is a service that is designed to help the institution generate its own leads through its website. While results may vary, one client has implemented this system and has been able to reduce its lead purchase through third party sources from $2.5 Million to roughly $200 Thousand while seeing lead conversation rates jump from 2 – 5% up to 18 – 20%. Through this service, SMS will train your team how to implement the same strategies at your institution and begin to work develop your own lead generation system of your own adherents.
Virtual Vice President of Enrollment
SMS has several individuals with extensive experience in marketing for adult and online and traditional programs that would be able to help lead your team on a temporary or long-term basis. Typically, our Virtual Vice President of Enrollment would spend several days to a week per month on site at your institution and then have regular meetings via telephone or Skype with the team to assure that they are moving forward appropriately. They are available by e-mail for discussions as well. They would serve at the direction of the president and would implement the initiatives in the project.