Student prospecting: Understanding the Buyer’s Journey

Attracting the right people to your Registered Training Organisation’s (RTO’s) website is a critical part of your inbound marketing success. In order to achieve this, you need to have the right buyer personas in place that detail your potential customers’ challenges, goals, likes and dislikes.

Then you can use inbound marketing to guide prospective students through their buyer’s journey to become loyal customers who refer you to their fellow students. To do this, follow these three key steps:

Step 1: Create detailed student personas

Creating detailed buyer personas will help focus your RTO’s inbound marketing efforts and create more meaningful content. Personas help you get into the mindset of your student prospects to understand where they go online and what they like to do. To create your personas, take a detailed look at who your current student customers already are. Focus on their backgrounds, their demographics and look at their needs and challenges. Identify which blogs they read, which social networks they follow and where they like to do their research. Once you have a detailed picture of your ideal target market, you are ready to create content that’ll engage and guide them at each stage of their buyer’s journey.

Step 2:  Map content to your student’s journey

Today’s buyer goes through a three-step buying process starting with awareness, moving on to consideration and decision, before ultimately purchasing. This is known as the buyer’s journey. It is integral to the development of your RTO’s content and the nurturing of your leads.

• At the awareness stage create content that addresses your persona’s challenges. Your content should not try to sell anything. Instead, show that your brand identifies with the problems and needs your students are facing.
• At the consideration stage, your prospective student has identified their challenges and is looking for solutions. Now is your opportunity to provide additional information that shows how to meet these challenges, like a case study. At this stage, you should be driving prospects to your site and creating content that converts your visitors into leads. Don’t give your case study away for free; rather, offer it in exchange for their email address.
• At the decision stage, your prospective student is weighing the pros and cons of all possible solutions. You need to craft content that converts each lead and nurtures them through the final stages of their buyer’s journey.

Step 3: Keep your student engaged, post purchase

A happy student is your best ambassador. Now is the time to maximise value and encourage them to refer your RTO to their wider network. Keep them returning to your social media sites and your website with interesting content that adds value to their lives. For example, you could create a video showing how to balance studying while working, or the key steps to achieving a work-life balance while studying full-time.

You could also regularly email them with special offers, which they could pass onto their friends. The key is to keep your RTO’s brand fresh in their minds so they’ll turn to you when they need to further their education.

Lupo Digital is an inbound marketing agency that specialises in inbound marketing for RTOs. We build detailed personas to create the personalised content necessary to guide, nurture and convert students as they move through their buyer’s journey. We have a passionate, experienced team dedicated to bringing all the benefits of inbound marketing to RTOs. For more information on how inbound marketing works for RTOs, download our executive guide to inbound marketing for RTOs.