According to a report by Technavio, the distance education market in India is expected to grow by USD 3.11 billion during 2020-2024. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8% during the same period. The market is mainly driven by the increasing number of working professionals, rise in the internet penetration rate, and growing demand for online courses.

This representation would provide for an exciting picture to any business enthusiast looking to take advantage of this growing market. However, the true picture is a far more difficult reality. With growing EdTech startups that have great funding and exceptional market reach, other competitors in the market are finding it increasingly difficult to attract audiences and this is especially true for consultancy services who have partnered with various universities or colleges to drive their educational services in the distance learning market.

This case takes on a profound study of how the right marketing strategies can enable lead generation even when faced with extraordinary competition. A Top educational consultancy based in Bangalore and with over 10 centers around India and with over two decades of experience in the education sector, having provided their exceptional services to thousands of students over these years, were faced with the grim reality of marketing exposure that is necessary to forge newer tools and techniques to attract the most potential clients.

Background

Our client has been a leading college admissions counseling agency providing comprehensive, tailored services to help students get into their top choice institutions. Their team of experienced college admissions counselors worked with students and their families to provide the indispensable guidance and insight they needed during the pivotal moment in their educational journey. They hand-pick one of the exceptional admissions counselors to provide them with all the right resources that point to success. With their personalized college admissions counseling services, students were enabled with a speedy and simplified approach to submitting the most competitive application.

Post 2020, they received multiple requests from partnering universities and colleges for recruits to their Distance MBA courses. MBA distance learning is a type of MBA program that allows students to learn from home or any other location without having to attend physical classes or lectures. Distance learning MBA programs are usually self-paced, meaning students can complete the program at their own pace. Most programs involve online lectures, assignments, and exams. The curriculum of a distance learning MBA program is similar to that of a regular MBA program.

Lead Generation Data

Having conducted a preliminary market study, our client engineered several strategies focussed on Distance MBA applicants from January 2020 to March 2020 - the strategies included devising creative brochures effectively advertising the course and various outbound marketing techniques to convey the details to potential students. The outcome was vastly underwhelming and even more so considering the earlier success they have seen.

• They managed to only acquire 750 leads spread out in January - 188, February - 325, March - 237.
• The conversion rate was a greater striking concern with rates beings calculated at 28.2% in January, followed by 35.75% in February and 16.59% in March
• The Final calculation of qualified leads and their output produced a very disappointing figure with an average of only 10.8% conversion being successful over the three months.

Clearly something was not working. The quantity of leads seemed pretty standard but that itself was found to be an inaccurate deduction as competing firms including EdTechs were raking in leads in the thousands and even if the quantity of leads were taken to be satisfactory, the company was not making enough conversions to entertain the demands of the colleges and universities which needed large numbers for their distance MBA courses.

Lead Generation with Emarketz

Emarketz entered the scene in April with the sole purpose of scaling up the company's lead generation process and enriching every possible avenue to engage more audiences and target effectively with the potential returns better than ever.

Overcoming Challenges - Lead Conversion in Focus

With our detailed discussion with the company's sales and marketing team ( and from the lead generation reports as presented above) we understood the gross deficiency of conversions and honed multiple strategies to actively resolve this problem.

In a market like distance learning, it is not uncommon to have to rifle through multiple leads before hitting targets but with our active measures which included operations like creating engaging landing pages with click-to-action (CTA) in our pool of inhouse directories/websites. The team at Emarketz also employed multiple inbound marketing measures to ensure that the conversion rate would no longer be an issue by preventing unqualified leads.

“The focus shifted from merely calculating leads to counting on admissions” This was the demanding criteria that centered our approach to improving the lead quality and quantity.

IMPACT GENERATED

Our marketing mission with the company began in April and over the course of the next three months, our analytics brings you the picture on the extensive transformation in lead generation with many of our quality upgrades still driving their MBA Distance Learning lead generation efforts.

The team at EMarketz were able to produce 4X the leads and increase the conversion rate by 3X. That is, EMarketz generated 3,010 leads as a total output (past three months from all sources) as calculated on June 28th, 2020, and the overall conversion rate climbed to 31%. That calculates to a total of 934 students successfully admitted to the counseling. The overwhelming improvement in the conversion rate was only energized with the multiple branding and website enhancements that the team had performed for the company.