Boot Strapped Marketing
This is number five in this series. These four articles precede this one if you want to catch up with how we got this far:
- Bootstrapping a Registered Training Organisation
- Bootstrapping an RTO - The budget toolbox
- Bootstrapping an RTO -The budget toolbox - Part two
- Ready, set, wait ...
Getting listed on training.gov.au feels like a huge achievement. But, what’s next? It’s really not a business until there are some paying customers. We were starting at ground zero.
Marketing is an area that a business owner needs to get their head around. I found previously a good amount of my time when running a business was spent marketing or thinking about marketing. This is an area that I was perhaps least prepared for when first starting out in business but I fast realised it is an important part of ensuring the sustainability of a business.
When starting out we needed to find students and like most businesses, this started with friends and family and their contacts. This got us a few First Aid courses and then out of a random call, we were asked to do some training in a small country town in rural NSW. Since then we have delivered courses throughout NSW and south-eastern Queensland to a growing number of groups as well as offering online options for those that need that mode of learning.
Over time we have built a client base that gives us a steady return of repeat business.
What hasn’t worked
We have had a few attempts at marketing online. With almost zero results. Full disclosure, we have been spectacularly unsuccessful in our paid marketing attempts. Because we are bootstrapped and didn’t have much capital we had to think of alternative ways to get in front of our audience.
Google Adwords was too expensive for us. The competitiveness between RTOs advertising nationally recognised qualifications and bidding for keywords is taken by groups with a much bigger budget than hours. I had a couple of goes at placing a few google ads but I can’t say if we ever received a single client from this avenue.
At times we have tried placing a few Facebook ads. Again the results have been breathtakingly disappointing. I also tried to make a few funny videos to advertise in the hope they would go viral. Again no joy with hardly any virality and no obvious influx of customers as a result of my creativity.
Our business qualifications initially did nothing. We tried to almost give them away, and still, they did nothing. Not a single enrolment even when we reduced the price to below cost. We quickly realised we needed to rethink our approach if these qualifications were going to pay their way.
Marketing will look different for every business depending on whom you are trying to reach. But, some of the principles below I think are true for any business. Over the years I have found lots of marketing organisations that are happy to spend your money but I have rarely found any of their strategies work for an RTO.
We are a fee for service RTO, therefore, we face some stiff competition when coming up against government funded training or providers with VET Fee help. It means that we must offer a value that stands out from the competition. What is good about this model is that when a student pays for their course they are invested in the value they want to receive from it. There’s much more ownership in this delivery model.
Get active in the community
Our most successful marketing move was to put a post in a Facebook group. I don’t know why the moderator didn’t kick us out but they let our post stay. From this post, we received dozens of inquiries that were the real beginning of our business. After this lucky break, we have continued to grow. From time to time we still put a mention in that group about what we offer but we rely on that less and less.
Our professional development courses provide us with a great way to get in touch with prospective students. We offer these at a very competitive price and they provide us with an ongoing source of revenue that continues to grow.
This part of our business has a twofold benefit. The system is automated so for most students we don’t need to provide much support. Therefore it doesn’t cost us much to run. Every day we have a steady stream of enrolments in these courses. As time has gone on we have expanded our range of courses. In addition, it provides us with an ongoing list of students who may be interested in our other offerings.
What we have found works with business qualifications is partnering with organisations to provide outcomes that add value to their employees. We have a group at the moment that chose to build their team by providing the business qualification. This has proved to be a great way to provide training with this cohort demonstrating increased capability in their workplace. This is a win for everyone. It's very satisfying to see what we do make a practical difference.
Choosing to add other qualifications to our scope came because our students were asking if we delivered them. In our first year, we added the Cert III and Diploma of Childcare to our scope. We found with these that the market was already there and our student numbers have grown at a steady rate.
Build an email list
Our list of contacts is growing consistently. As I mentioned one way we do this by providing affordable professional development courses that have placed us in the middle of a key market that we are engaged in. Our courses are very reasonably priced and provide an important service to many child care educators who aren’t on a big salary. I have three children who are currently working in the sector and am very aware of the workload and pressure they experience without a salary level to justify the importance of their role.
We also continue to build a list of our current students. A lot of students need to do a particular unit and because there’s an imperative to get it done it means we have a high completion rate. We also make sure we have good marking turnaround and prompt delivery of their statements. All of this has led to a growing number of students.
In time these will need to renew their currency or gain new skills. We are starting to see many of these students return to us for professional development or upskill with some of the other qualifications we offer.
Our email list has grown to over 5000. This isn’t too bad considering we started from scratch, wondering where our first students would come from. This number is increasing as our business grows.
I mentioned in a previous post that we outgrew Mailchimp’s free tier quite quickly. Mailchimp is a great way to start but once you go over that free tier the costs can add up quite quickly. Sendy has proved to be a great option and gives us a lot more control over our costs in this area.
With Sendy you pay a one off fee for the software, it has a range of integrations that can automate the collection of email addresses and then provides all the feedback about open rates, click throughs and other data that Mailchimp does. Our open rate is currently around 30% which is quite spectacular.
Sendy offers an affordable way to stay in touch with previous prospective and previous students. My daily email limit is 50 000 emails for free which I don’t expect to exceed for quite a while yet.
Word of Mouth
Word of mouth continues to be our key marketing strategy. We constantly have inquiries from students starting with, “my friend told me about your course”. This demonstrates the power of providing a service that people appreciate.
Word of mouth is wonderful because your customers are essentially doing marketing for you! They are promoting straight to their network, usually in person or on social media, which makes word of mouth not only cost-effective but highly valuable. According to a Nielsen report, 92% of people trust word of mouth or referrals from those they know, above all other advertising. This means when someone sees a friend or family member raving about a particular brand, they’re much more likely to buy.
https://referralrock.com/blog/word-of-mouth-marketing/
Most forms of advertising are accountable to the law of diminishing returns. That is they become less effective the more you use them. This is evident in a number of strategies I have used over the years. The return on the marketing investment is reduced to the point where it becomes no longer economical. For example, as more and more people are in the Adwords ecosystem the cost goes up but your ad is displayed less and less. As more ads are shown the impact of your small piece of text is less and less.
Word of mouth advertising is the exact opposite of this. Positive reviews, people talking about how you relate, and a good service message will continue to grow. Its impact is exponential both positively and negatively so it’s important to get this message right.
Conclusion
What I like about our business is that we have experienced sustainable growth over the past few years. I am sure that we could have pushed harder at times but growing in a measured way has allowed us to continue to support our students in the way we want to.
Our key marketing message is formed in how we do our work. We have made mistakes but we have sought to do the right thing by our students at all times. We are accessible, affordable, flexible and efficient. This message isn’t what we say about ourselves but is what others tell us we are known for.
Hubspot’s blog has a comprehensive list of marketing approaches. I suggest you take a look and see which ones best fit your organisation: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/marketing-types
Some of these approaches may be able to be utilised as the business matures. For example, unless you are already an expert in the field it’s hard to be seen as an authority. Over time and with consistency this authority can emerge though. Viral marketing approaches are a little like trying to win the lottery, you might get lucky but there lots of cute kids, crazy dogs, and other amazing things waiting to capture people’s attention already out there.
We even looked at newspaper advertising for our first aid courses in remote areas. It was totally out of our reach to even consider this approach. We worked out that we would be paying at least 68% of our student fees if we got a full class for every ad that we had. These were tiny one column ads not full page feature ads too!
Costs so far
$500.00 for the first year of marketing
You can read the other articles in this series here:
- Bootstrapping a Registered Training Organisation
- Bootstrapping an RTO - The budget toolbox
- Bootstrapping an RTO -The budget toolbox - Part two
- Ready, set, wait ...
If you would like to be put on the mailing list so you don't miss any articles please send me a message at [email protected].