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Your school has already been publishing some content to start capturing email addresses from potential students and parents. Perhaps you’re even seeing a boost in enrollment already. It’s working! It must be working – right?

The beauty of digital marketing is you can actually connect the dots all the way through your enrollment funnel. You can discover where it’s strong and where it’s weak. If you’re seeing enrollment numbers go up — that’s great. But you still don’t want to leave success to chance. You want to know what’s happening at each stage of your enrollment funnel. You want to plug the leaks, and fix the broken connections — before your lose momentum.

Breaking Down the Enrollment Funnel

Your enrollment funnel is made up of five stages. Prospects are people visiting your school’s blog, website, or social media pages. Leads are prospects who have made themselves known to you. They downloaded a special report and provided their email address. Or perhaps they liked your Facebook page. This is the top of your funnel. You’re getting people’s attention.

Not getting enough traffic yet? Check our our ebook, SEO Do’s and Don’t for Schools >>

In the middle of your funnel, you have inquiries, people who have actively reached out to some part of your school. These leads have signed up for a campus tour, or sent Admissions a question, or requested a meeting with an academic counselor. Their interest in your school is growing. They’re narrowing their focus. The more inquiries a lead makes, the more certain you can be that your school will make it to their short list.

Last is that slim percentage of prospects who ultimately apply to your school and, if accepted, then enroll. The bottom of the funnel is where you ‘close the deal.’ DePaul University in Chicago shared its rate of return through to matriculation in 2014 – less than 1%. For a school that brings in 2,500 students with each enrollment class, that means they start with 300,000 leads. 

The only way to find your funnel’s weak points is to first look at the numbers.

Identifying and Fixing Your Funnel’s Leaks

A healthy funnel is in large part about the numbers. There’s definitely a “quality” component too. But even that will only get revealed by first looking at the numbers.

You should already have some target numbers set for each stage. If you don’t, you can still look at the numbers as they are in your funnel. However, you won’t know if you’re on track to meet your enrollment goals without having set them in the first place. So go set some goals! 

The clue to look for is large swings in numbers between stages.

Let’s Start at the Top with Prospects

In digital terms, you can measure this as traffic to your website or school’s blogs. If you’re not generating enough traffic, you’re putting the rest of the marketing funnel and admissions team under a lot of pressure to squeeze out a full enrollment class from a smaller than desired pool of prospects.

If your site visits are low, perhaps you need more content geared toward someone who is starting to wonder about what school is like, or what to consider when choosing a school. Are you putting out enough content that answers the questions of people beginning their research? Is it closely tailored to speak to your personas?

If you think the topics are strong, then it may be a distribution issue. Do you merely publish a blog post and hope people find it? Take a look at your social media and paid advertising programs to see where they can promote your top of the funnel content better. Are you on the right social media channels? Are you posting the kind of information your personas want? Are you responding to people on those channels in a timely manner? Are you making it fun? Are you being helpful?

Mid-Funnel Problems

1) First mid-funnel problem: the email addresses aren’t coming in.

Let’s say you’re getting good traffic, but nobody is downloading your premium, gated content. Not good: you’re not collecting email addresses. If your premium content downloads are low, then you’re not gating the right content. Or perhaps the titles aren’t the most appealing. 

“You gotta give to get.” You have to give away a lot of great content to attract prospects. To turn them into leads, you need to make them an offer of content that’s irresistible. Say, a report on starting salary averages for common jobs that your graduates have been successful in finding a match for their skills, knowledge, and passions. Or a checklist of “10 things you need to know about any school’s graphic arts program” before you apply. Meaty content. Rich content.

Take a closer look at your gated content that’s converting poorly to determine if the topic isn’t right or your headline isn’t doing it justice. It could be that you’re asking for too much information on the download form. You can use progressive profiling to start by just asking for a name and email. Once you turn a prospect into a lead and get their email address in your database, you can gather more intel on them when they download future content.

In fact, this is one spot where you can identify some quality issues behind the numbers. If you see that people who downloaded a certain piece of content don’t return to download more, that may be a flag that this piece of content needs to be reworked.

2) Second mid-funnel problem: ‘One-and Done’ Downloaders 

If people are generally only downloading one or two pieces of your content and then disappearing, this drop-off will show up in the difference between the number of leads vs. inquiries. It’s usually not any one piece of content that’s not working. It’s more likely that not many of your leads are taking a more pro-active step to contact your school.

In this case, you should look at your lead nurturing process (we’ve got a guide to help here). Are you offering enough content and calls-to-action (CTAs) that gently nudge leads down the funnel. Do you have email drip campaigns that share alumni videos with a CTA to schedule a call with an admissions counselor or current student ambassador? 

Your nurture emails need the right CTAs that give them impetus and opportunity to make a pro-active inquiry. Analyze all your CTAs in emails and reports that are intended to move the lead along, first to inquiry then on to application. Which ones are working better than others? Learn from what works; discard what doesn’t.

Don’t Forget the Last Mile

Do your funnel numbers drop off after the application gets downloaded? Don’t ignore this critical last mile. 

Continue nurturing potential applicants with informative emails, posts, and other content that warms them up for admissions. Make sure you’re passing along all the great intel you’ve gathered on applicant to Admissions so they can approach him in the most effective way. Even after acceptance, both Marketing and Admissions can keep the nurturing going until enrollment.

At HubSpot, we call all this the waterfall. A strong flow of traffic should cascade down through each stage of the funnel to meet your enrollment goal. Obviously there’s fall off the farther you get down the funnel. But find the points in your funnel where numbers nose dive. Those are your leaks. Now — go fix ’em.

In the last six years, I’ve done more than 100 pitches all across this country.

I’ve enjoyed many victories, including raising $30 million in venture capital from institutional investors. But I’ve also suffered some defeats — it would be just awesome if I never see another rejection letter.

Needless to say, my successes and failures have taught me several important lessons that I’d like to share with you. You can use these lessons to help you craft a stronger overall pitch — whether that means pitching your business idea to a room of investors or simply pitching a blog post idea in a meeting with your coworkers.

Whatever the case may be, here are eight mistakes you’ll want to avoid at all costs.

8 Mistakes That’ll Totally Derail Your Business Pitch

Mistake #1: Not Doing Your Research

Pitches are won and lost long before the actual pitch even takes place. To avoid wasting your audience’s time (and your own), you should spend some time getting to know the people you’re pitching to.

If you’re pitching to a room of VCs, you’ll want to:

• Look at their past investments. Do they invest in SMBs? Generally, investors focus on companies of a certain size. Pitching your small or medium-sized business to a VC who only invests in larger companies is a mistake.

• Make sure your potential investor isn’t investing in one of your competitors. It’s unusual for investors to make two bets in the same industry or niche. If they do take a pitch, it might just be they’re trying to find out what the competition (you!) are up to. Avoid this huge mistake.

If you’re pitching to your coworkers, boss, or a different department at your company, you might:

• Customize your presentation. Find out what their goals are. Check out their latest tweets. Pull some information from their social profiles. Finding a way to incorporate some of their interests into your pitch will help you grab their attention and keep it.

Mistake #2: Failing to Address Concerns

If the people you’re pitching to address a concern, it’s not the end of the world. If they mention it twice, it might just be a coincidence. But hearing about the same issue three times? Uh oh, we have a trend.

If you hear the same objection three (or more) times, stop pitching immediately and address those issues. Continuing to pitch with known issues is just wasting the time and patience of your audience.

Mistake #3: Being Too Defensive

It’s important to think of every possible reason that people could reject your pitch. And while stopping to address concerns is important (as I mentioned above), figuring out how to address them in a non-defensive way is also crucial to your success.

When someone disagrees with you, your first reaction might be to say something like, “I don’t agree with you.” Saying this out loud, however, is one of the worst mistakes you can make when delivering a pitch.

Instead, put some thought into your response. Try to see things from their perspective before you start justifying your perspective.

Mistake #4: Being Boring

Most pitches are super boring and forgettable. That’s why for every successful pitch presentation there are probably 50 to 100 that fail to win over a reluctant audience.

When making a pitch, try to be more memorable. Use content marketing tricks to help your pitch be remarkable in some way.

Mistake #5: Projecting the Wrong Image

You can tell people a lot without saying a word. So always be intentional about what you’re projecting when you pitch, whether it’s through your body language or what you wear.

When I was pitching, my strength was software engineering, so I dressed the part. I didn’t want to project, through what I wore, that I was some kind of financial wizard with years of experience.

If you want to sabotage your chances, projecting the wrong image will surely lead to failure.

Mistake #6: Not Reporting on Your Progress

Your pitch failed. Your idea got rejected you. And you kept getting the same type of feedback. Eventually, though, you got past your own ego. You finally understood why you failed, and you decided to do something about it: you acted on their recommendations.

Now it’s a year later. Failing to follow up with investors or those you share your idea with to report on your progress is a mistake. Following up tells people two important things:

• You’re able to listen and valued their recommendations.
• You’re a dedicated, hard-working person who can get important things done.

Mistake #7: Relying Only on Formal Pitches

Let’s say you’re pitching an idea to an investor. Believe it or not, not all your funding will come from formal business pitches. In fact, you can raise quite a bit of money by talking to investors informally — and using just a little bit of reverse psychology.

For example, when meeting with an investor you might say, “Hey, I have this idea. I’m not really looking to raise money, but I need your advice.” Or, maybe you could say, “Hey, could you point me in the direction of an investor who likes to make big bets on proven idea with high risk and high returns?”

In both of these cases, the goal is to make the investor think, “Hey, I want to do that! What about me?”

Mistake #8: Not Addressing Deficiencies

Failing to be honest with your audience will only lead to rejection. If you know your idea has obvious deficiencies, be up front about them in your pitch.

By addressing any issues, you’ll basically inoculate yourself from any criticism. Or, at the very least, show that you’re open and willing to discuss them.

Think Before You Pitch

Now you know the reasons why your pitch will fail, and what it will take to help get it right next time — whether you’re standing in an office with your boss or on a stage before a panel of judges at pitch-off event, like the one taking place at INBOUND this year.

Yup, that’s right: Real startups. On stage. At INBOUND.

I’ll be there (speaking about content promotion hacks for Facebook and Twitter), and I can’t wait to see what the startups bring to their live pitches. I hope to see you up on that stage, or taking notes in the audience. I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be super valuable.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Inc.com and has been modified for republishing here.

Marketers spend a lot of time trying to nail down abstract concepts. They’re tasked with turning brainstorming sessions and comments sourced during focus groups into campaigns that sum up everything about a brand’s identity in a neat, tidy, and most importantly, interesting way.

But what if a consumer could walk into a room and fully experience your brand with all their senses? Pop-up events offer just that — the chance for consumers to get up close and personal with their favorite companies in a truly immersive setting.

In their simplest form, pop-up events are temporary retail spaces that give companies the opportunity to sell their products in an environment completely designed and controlled by them. Since they’re temporary, they offer a relatively low-cost and low-commitment way for companies to take creative risks, generate buzz, and introduce their brands to new audiences.

Consumers love the lure of exclusivity, and brands love the unmatched opportunity for experimentation. To inspire your next branded experience, we’ve curated a list of 15 innovative and visually stunning pop-up events.

15 Examples of Next-Level Pop-Up Events

1) COS Los Angeles

Experimental architecture firm Snarkitecture was inspired by mirrored surfaces and simple silhouettes when designing this temporary retail space for LA-based fashion label COS. The folks at Snarkitecture transformed an empty industrial space into two identical, monochromatic rooms — one white and one pale pink — leaving the focus on two racks of minimal clothing. The reflected space “creates an unexpected and altered world for visitors to experience and share.“

Image Credit: Snarkitecture

2) BarkShop Live

Shouldn’t your dog be able to shop for his own toys? Bark & Co, the ecommerce company behind BarkBox, certainly thinks so. For one week in June 2016, the dog-centric retailer set up shop in Manhattan, inviting dogs and their owners to try out their squeaky, bouncy, and chewy offerings in-person. The lucky pups in attendance were fitted with RFID-enabled vests, which tracked the toys they played with the most. Owners were then able to view and purchase their dogs’ favorite playthings directly from the event’s custom mobile app.

Video from Digiday

3) Glossier Summer Fridays Showroom

In Summer 2015, online makeup and skincare brand Glossier styled a floor of its Manhattan headquarters as a temporary retail showroom — the closest thing to stepping into its beautifully curated Instagram feed. The space offered Glossier products for sale, but as founder Emily Weiss explained, selling tubes of moisturizer and lip balm wasn’t necessarily the pop-up’s top priority. “It’s not really just a store,” Weiss said in an interview with Racked. “It’s almost like this is a giant mood board for the company we’re hoping to build.”

Created under the direction of set designer Marguerite Wade, the penthouse featured custom floral arrangements by Meta Flora and an installation by multi-media artist Grace Villamil.

Image Credit: Glossier

4) Fast Food Aid

Creative directors Ikkyu and Junya Sato of Kaibutsu design studio noticed that young adults in Harajuku had a serious fast food problem — and they decided to do something about it. To promote organic food chain Dohtonbori, they launched Fast Food Aid, a pharmacy-inspired vitamin pop-up that offers a selection of health supplements aimed at junk food lovers. And all it will cost you is a receipt from a fast food place.

After a guilty indulgence, exchange your receipt for a customized bottle of supplements that will replenish the nutrients missed at your last meal. Each canister is aimed at a particular junk food — ramen, pizza, hamburger, etc., — to make sure your system gets what it needs.

Although Dohtonbori isn’t actually selling anything for profit at the shop, its been able to educate visitors about health and wellness, hopefully driving them to opt for healthier food options in the future — like Dohtonbori’s own restaurant.

Image Credit: Fast Food Aid

5) Pantone Café

What does color taste like? If anyone knows the answer to that question, it’s Pantone. The world’s most well-known color company has been running a pop-up café in Monaco for the past two summers, selling a minimal menu of pastries, lunch options, coffees, and fresh juices — all branded with Pantone’s signature color swatches.

So does this mean Pantone is permanently branching out into cuisine? Not quite. The seasonal eatery is perfect Instagram-bait, and it has successfully generated a ton of buzz in the press. It’s a perfect example of a pop-up event enabling a company to take creative risks with its brand by stepping outside of its typical business model.

Image Credit: Pantone Café

6) Real Life At Work

To offer passersby a glimpse into its world, London-based ad agency Wieden+Kennedy invited graphic artist Emily Forgot to transform the front window of its office into an imaginative, cartoon-inspired pop-up workspace. Using exaggerated monochrome imagery, Forgot crafted a whimsical office scene from paper, complete with a typewriter and a clock that ran backward.

For a few weeks, real agency employees took turns “working” in the window. The whole thing was then broadcast live via webcam on the agency’s website for anyone who was curious enough to watch. The pop-up was a unique way for W+K to shrug off the stereotype of the ad agency that takes itself too seriously — plus it was a creative chance for the team to engage with the community.

Image Credit: Wieden + Kennedy London

7) Früt

How do you make inexpensive, packaged underwear appeal to high-end consumers? Just create a “luxury” lingerie pop-up with a fake, fancy-sounding name. CP+B Boulder helped client Fruit of the Loom open up an intentionally pretentious and ludicrously over-priced boutique for its underwear, complete with colorful intimates hanging from over-the-top tree displays. Früt sold only Fruit of the Loom undergarments, but shoppers who usually wouldn’t deign to buy the brand were lured in by the high-end guise.

Image Credit: Wieden+Kennedy London

8) Organic Valley Coffee Shop

In a clever shot aimed at the artisanal coffee movement, creative branding agency Humanaut opened up a pop-up cafe to promote its client Organic Valley’s new coffee creamer. The temporary Manhattan storefront adhered to all of the typical hipster tropes — a minimal logo featuring arrows and X’s, modern glass mugs, and trendy sizes — Lil Bit, Double, and Lotta. And they cast a real Organic Valley farmer as the shop’s folksy proprietor.

There was one catch: The shop only sold measured portions of half-and-half. You ordered your creamer at the counter from a barista and added your coffee separately. The spoof was a major success. Unperturbed by the irony, New Yorkers lined up to order shots of plain cream for $2 a pop. “No one had a problem paying $2 for a pour of organic half-and-half,” said Humanaut’s creative chief David Littlejohn. “In the end, the idea wasn’t as crazy as we thought it was.”

Video Credit: Organic Valley

9) 5-Minute Internship

Solve, a Minneapolis-based creative agency, wanted to re-vamp its summer intern hiring process to attract recruits who can really think on their feet. So naturally, they created a portable, small-scale replica of their office — complete with a receptionist-staffed micro lobby — and set off on an epic college-campus road trip.

Students at participating campuses were given a 5-minute challenge based on their area of interest — and those who performed the best were invited to interview on the spot. The pop-up event tripled the amount of applications the agency received to its internship position.

Image Credit: Adweek

10) The Picture House

Capitalizing on the Instagram food photography craze, Birdseye opened up a temporary restaurant in London where diners could settle their bill with an Instagram post — all they had to do was take a snap of their meal and add the hashtag #BirdsEyeInspirations. The event was a creative social media experiment that helped generate free publicity for the frozen food company’s Inspirations line of products. Branding agency Slice was behind the world’s first pay-by-picture pop up.

Image Credit: Slice

11) The Period Shop

For one weekend, Kotex launched a pop-up in New York aimed at alleviating negativity and spreading love for women during their periods. The store, which was developed by ad agency Organic, featured ice cream, manicures, chocolate, comfy clothing, and Kotex U products for sale. Women were invited to browse the brightly colored offerings and share their experiences. And it was all for a good cause, too. Proceeds were donated to a women’s homeless shelter.

Image Credit: Adweek

12) Birchbox’s Tour

Pop-ups give online retailers the chance to show off their goods in person, interact directly with their fans, and take their brand to the next level. Birchbox — which sells subscription boxes of curated beauty products — went on a national tour in 2015, opening up temporary brick-and-mortar stores in multiple cities. In addition to selling beauty products, they offered manicures and astrology readings to entice beauty-lovers inside.

Image Credit: Racked LA

13) Fendi Spring/Summer 2016 Flower Shop

The mobile flower shop that botanical designer Azuma Makoto created for Fendi is proof that not all pop-ups need to be large scale productions. The artist adorned a three-wheeled Italian vehicle with an intricate floral display and outfitted the side of the truck as an open storefront. The vendor/driver sold limited edition Fendi bags and vases of Makoto’s floral arrangements to promote the fashion label’s 2016 Spring/Summer collection.

Image Credit: My Modern Met

14) Arnsdorf

What’s a designer to do when they’re facing a tight budget? Experiment with creative materials. This pop-up retail space for Australian clothier Arnsdorf was created by using 154 pairs of neutral-colored pantyhose, and the effect is otherworldly.

Image Credit: Fast Company

15) The Poundshop

This design collective is a recurring pop-up platform for artists to offer their goods for affordable prices. “The aim of The Poundshop is to spread design to a wider audience by making it accessible through price and engagement,” the website explains.

The pop-up shops are just as visually interesting as the art they sell.

Image Credit: The Poundshop