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Today nearly a quarter of all K-12 schools in this country are private schools—that’s over 30,000 schools. With 5 million seats to fill each year, these stats demonstrate the urgency for marketers attract their share of prospective parents, and nurturing them along to their child’s enrollment.

Every student goes through her own enrollment journey, but the inbound marketing journey phases are the same for every prospect. A key to inbound success is understanding each of these phases and what different inbound marketing strategies and tactics are needed in each.

Getting Noticed: Attracting Qualified Prospective Parents

Parents can’t enroll their children if they don’t know you’re out there. The first phase is getting attention for your school, but not just from anyone. You want to make sure you attract parents of students (prospects) who are looking for an alternative to public education, who have children who will thrive at your school, and who are going to ultimately help better your school.

To make sure you’re attracting the right prospects, you need to understand, deeply, who they are. These are your personas, which you’ll write up in detailed descriptions for fictionalized versions of your ideal parents. You may have more than one persona for your school. For example, parents looking to enroll their child in a private school right from kindergarten, might have different questions and needs than one looking to transfer their students in for 8^th grade.  One may be curious about after-school care, while the other might care more about whether or not their child has been adequately prepped for success

When you do research to build your personas, talk with your academic and career counselors, admissions folks, current students, local libraries, even other schools if possible.  You want to learn what questions and concerns your ideal parents have when they start looking for an independent school.

The information you discover isn’t just for your personas. It’s also the foundation of SEO strategy, to guide you in the selection of what keywords and phrases will generate the right kind of organic traffic to your website and blog. The right keywords help keep your traffic targeted.

Are you trying to increase awareness for your best-in-class soccer program for the state of Maine? Then search phrases like “youth soccer in Maine” and “Maine soccer leagues for children” may need to be part of your keyword list.

Do What Your School Does Best – Educate Prospects

You want to convert your website and blog visitors into prospects you can nurture. A visitor becomes a prospect when you start learning enough about them to push out personalized content. The best way to do this is offer them some remarkable content for which they’re willing to exchange their email address.

Remarkable content has to provide detailed, actionable answers to the specific questions prospects have when deciding whether to go to an independent school versus a public school, how to apply, or how to decide what sort of school or program best suits them.

Whether your school is co-ed or single sex, day school or boarding school, you’re driven by a unique philosophy, set of values, and approach to teaching. Your content is a vehicle to showcase what makes you different, and why students might be a good fit for the qualities your school is known for.

Return to your personas and what you learned about them during your research. You should see a broad range of concerns, questions, and interests you can dig into. Set out to create remarkable content that educates your prospects about their most pressing questions.

Getting Those Applications and Enrollments 

A prospect can spend a lot of time in the education phase. Use your content and its carefully selected topics to nurture prospects towards inquiries, applications, or enrollments. To do this, nudge prospects along with content that starts answering the questions they have about your specific independent school.

You’re still educating them, but now you’re educating about what they can expect at your school and why your school is a good option for them. This is also the time to start “closing” on your best prospects. 

Include calls-to-action (CTAs) on your blog posts, emails, and other content geared towards prospects in this phase that start building offline connections between them and your school. Strong CTAs for this phase include inviting them for on-campus tours and meetings with career and academic counselors and financial aid advisors. 

Making this pivot successful requires good timing and persistence. Identify behavioral triggers that indicate a prospect’s high readiness to fix their short list of schools. You can use email series and other automated workflows to drip the right mix of content and CTAs to move a prospect towards application and then on to enrollment.

Create Your School’s Best Ambassadors

Congratulations! Your inbound marketing program has resulted in a full enrollment class of exactly the kind of students you want.

Your work isn’t done.

These students and their parents are an invaluable resource. Use surveys to find what their preferences and interests are. Learn about what the specific motivators were that lead them to choose your school over others.  Do you need to refine your personas based on what you learned?

They’re also great content sources. Delighted parents and students can write blog posts, post at-school videos, and share your school’s content through their own social media profiles. So don’t forget to continue to publish remarkable content that appeals to their new questions and challenges now that they’re enrolled. 

The Never-Ending Cycle 

As you well know, there’s always another semester and new classes to fill. The more you execute on an inbound marketing strategy, the more you’ll learn about what works, what your best prospects respond to, and what can (and should) be discarded. Use this never-ending cycle of new prospects to keep improving the content and lead nurture flows you implement to enroll your new students.

As inbound marketers, we care about creating lovable experiences for our website visitors — but we also want to generate as many leads as we can for our sales teams. Most of the time we can do both without any problem. But when it comes to pop-up forms, conflict does emerge.

Pop-ups are everywhere these days. Over the past few years, pop-up forms have re-emerged as a popular marketing tactic for promoting content, driving blog subscriptions, growing email lists, and fueling lead generation.

Some pop-ups are fairly benign and you hardly notice them. Others are distracting, and quite frankly, downright poopy (see the example below). 

Pop-ups have become so prevalent that even Google has had to weigh in, announcing that they will begin to penalize websites that use what they call “intrusive interstitials” (we call them “crappy popups”).

So the million dollar question for inbound marketers is this: Should we be using pop-up forms? Before we dive in and attempt to answer this question, let’s take a step back and re-acclimate ourselves with the world of pop-ups.

What Is a Pop-Up Form?

According to Wikipedia, the first ever pop-up ad appeared in the late 1990s on the web hosting website Tripod.com. In their early days, pop-ups were primarily used by third-party advertisers, and they were particularly cringe-worthy. Do you remember the first time a brightly colored pop-up jumped out on your screen, alerting you that you’d won some sort of content or prize? I know I do. And as far as I can remember, I never collected any of those fabulous prizes.

Over time, consumers and web browsers alike got better at hiding or ignoring these types of pop-ups, and eventually, advertisers gave up. Nowadays you’ll rarely see a sketchy third-party pop-up — unless you find yourself on a particularly sketchy website. (Watch a webinar on how to advertise effectively in the world of ad blockers and social media here.)

For a time, pop-up forms largely disappeared from the internet. But then they came back. Only this time it wasn’t third-party advertisers that were using them … it was marketers like you and me.

Pop-ups come in many shapes and sizes, but the most prominent types are:

• Welcome mats: Full screen pop-ups that slide above page content
• Overlay modals: Center screen pop-ups that appear on top of page content
• Top banners: Small banners at the very top of the page
• Slide-in boxes: Small boxes that slide in from the side/bottom of the page

Here’s a graphic depicting what each of these four pop-ups looks like on a web page:

As more and more marketers have started using pop-up forms, a mini-industry of pop-up providers has emerged, offering bells and whistles that were never available before. Most notably, pop-up tools have proliferated the types of triggers that prompt a pop-up to appear.

Among the most popular pop-up triggers are:

• Page entrance: Pop-up appears when the visitor first gets to the page
• Page scroll: Pop-up appears when the visitor scrolls to a certain point on the page
• Element interaction: Pop-up appears when the visitor clicks on or hovers over a specific element
• Time on page: Pop-up appears when the visitor has been on the page for a specific amount of time
• Exit intent: Pop-up appears when the visitor scrolls towards the top of the page to leave

Now that we know a little more about pop-up forms, let’s get back to the core question: Should marketers be using them?

And in order to properly answer that question, we need to consider two slightly more specific but related questions:

1. Do they work?
2. Is it possible create inboundy pop-up forms that don’t, well, suck?

Let’s dig in.

Do Pop-Up Forms Work?

I’ll answer this one right off the bat: The answer is yes. Pop-up forms do work, and this is the main reason so many marketers are using them.

But how much better do they perform than traditional forms? In one experiment, AWeber found that a pop-up form converted 1375% better than traditional forms for driving blog subscriptions (see the images below). In addition, according to research conducted by SumoMe, the top performing 10% of pop-up forms convert at a whopping 9.3%. Now I don’t know about you, but an additional 9.3% conversion rate across my website sounds pretty good to me.

Source: AWeber

The numbers don’t lie: Pop-up forms work. However, is that worth sacrificing the experience that a visitor has on your site? The inbound answer is no. User experience trumps all else.

But what if you didn’t have to sacrifice performance for experience? What if you could create user-friendly pop-ups that didn’t suck?

Is There Such a Thing as an Inbound Pop-Up?

If you ask someone how they feel about pop-ups, they’re likely to offer an emotional response that loosely resembles a child eating vegetables (I call this expression “blegh”).

People hate the idea of pop-ups. Most pop-ups out there are annoying. What’s more, the pop-ups that annoy you the most are the ones you’ll remember the longest.

But here’s the thing: not all pop-ups are bad. Pop-ups can be used for good, and they can be a healthy part of an inbound strategy.

Just think about email marketing for a second. Email is another example of a channel that has been heavily abused. We’ve all gotten some crappy emails throughout the years. But as inbound marketers, we know to use email responsibly and to only send contextualized email that adds value to people’s lives.

The same goes for pop-ups. When used correctly, they can actually enhance the experience a user has on your website, as well as boost your conversion rates.

But how do we make sure that our pop-ups are helpful and not spammy? Here are some guidelines.

4 Tips for Crafting High-Converting Pop-ups (That Don’t Suck)

1) Offer something relevant and valuable.

The problem with most pop-ups is they get in the way of the visitor’s experience on a website, rather than enhance it. Oftentimes this is because what’s being offered in the pop-up is either not valuable to the visitor, or it has nothing to do with the page they’re on.

To boost engagement with your pop-up as well as enhance the experience that someone has on your site, be sure to offer something that is both valuable and relevant to them, given the page that they’re on. For example, if I were writing a blog post on social media, I would offer a free ebook on the same topic:

2) Think about the way people engage with your pages.

Another common mistake marketers make with pop-ups is having them appear at the wrong time, which adds to the annoyance factor. Be strategic about the timing and trigger of your pop-ups. Think about the way that visitors interact with certain types of pages on your site.

For instance, when someone engages with a blog post, they do so by scrolling down the page as they read the content. If you want to catch your visitors while they’re most engaged, then you should customize your pop-up to appear when someone has scrolled halfway down the page.

Similarly, you might find that people who stay on your product or pricing pages for more than 30 seconds are highly engaged because they’re taking the time to read through and consider their options. In this scenario, you could use a time-based pop-up that appears when a visitor has been on the page for a specific number of seconds.

To better understand exactly how your visitors engage with different pages on your site, try looking into Google Analytics data, such as bounce rate and average time on page. Better yet, use a tool like HotJar or Crazy Egg to record users on your site to build heat maps of where they click and scroll. This will give you a better sense of how people engage with your content.

3) Use language that’s specific, actionable, and human.

Most pop-up forms have a fairly basic layout. You get a headline, some body copy, and maybe an image. In other words, you don’t have a lot of real estate to work with.

This means it’s super important to nail the copy on your pop-up form. In order to do that make sure your copy is specific, actionable, and human:

• Specific: Specify exactly what a visitor is going to get if they click on your pop-up. Don’t tell them it’s a guide; tell them it’s a 10-page guide with actionable tips. Don’t encourage them to join your email list; ask if they’d be okay with getting two to three emails on a given topic per week.
• Actionable: Let visitors know exactly what you’d like them to do. Instead of “Click Here,” try “Download our Free Guide,” or better yet, “Get my Free Guide.” Craft a compelling call-to-action that will inspire your visitors to take action.
• Human: Remind visitors that there’s a real person behind the pop-up form. Use colloquial language to make your forms friendly. Instead of “Join our email list,” try “Mind if we email you twice a week?” Instead of “Subscribe to our blog,” try “We’d be happy to notify you whenever we publish new articles.”

4) Don’t ruin the mobile experience.

In an effort to improve mobile user experience, Google recently announced that they were going to start penalizing websites that use what they call “obtrusive interstitials” — in other words, pop-ups that mess with the user experience. Now I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t want my Google rankings to go down from using pop-up forms.

To ensure a user-friendly mobile experience and avoid being penalized by Google, be sure exclude your pop-up forms for mobile, or use pop-ups that don’t take up the entire screen of the page on mobile devices. Most pop-up tools already offer this type of functionality, but if what you’re currently using doesn’t, you may need to find a new solution.

Need a Free Pop-Up Tool?

So there you have it. To sum up: Pop-up forms do work, they can be inboundy, and you should be using them.

If you’re looking for a good free tool to get started with pop-up forms, we’d recommend that you try Leadin. We built it ourselves to help marketers generate more leads across their entire website without sacrificing the user experience.

What are your thoughts on pop-up forms? Do you think that inbound marketers should be using them? What pop-up tool would you recommend? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Marketing and ad agencies have a major talent retention problem on their hands.

According to a recent study from LinkedIn and 4A’s, there was a 25% net talent loss at ad agencies globally compared with competitive industries such as tech and commerce in 2015.

Advertising agencies also ranked dead last among competitive industries in terms of work/life balance and long-term strategic vision, and close to the bottom for compensation and benefits, strong career path, job security, and making employees feel their contributions are valued. 

It seems like agencies are failing across the board to fully support the wellbeing of their employees, and many agency professionals have had enough with the industry’s exhausting cycle of competition and burnout.

As Michael Farmer, a veteran advertising consultant, writes in Madison Avenue Manslaughter, “Through benign neglect of growing creative workloads, and reluctance to tackle clients over declining client fees, agency CEOs are presiding over the slow decline and over-stretching of a diminishing pool of burned-out creative assets.“

With this systemic problem hanging over our heads, is there anything managers can do on a daily basis to prevent team burnout on the ground floor? We’ve compiled a list of simple, everyday changes managers can make to help keep their teams engaged, motivated, and as protected as possible from the dreaded agency burnout epidemic.

How Managers Can Prevent Team Burnout

1) Ditch Multitasking and Help Employees Truly Focus 

If you find your team scrolling mindlessly through Facebook after lunch or staring blankly at their stuffed inboxes at the end of the day, it’s a pretty good indication that your team is suffering from a multitasking overload.

Mutitasking is deeply embedded in the fast-paced, high-stress agency environment, but the frequent stress and fractured attention span caused by constant multitasking might be fatally impacting productivity and morale. Basically, humans really suck at multitasking. Employees are frequently asked to split their attention and creative energy between roughly 200 various tasks on a daily basis, which means virtually nothing actually ends up getting any real attention.

The solution? Say goodbye to multitasking and hello to your new best friend: monotasking. Monotasking is exactly what it sounds like: focusing on a single task at hand instead of tackling your monstrous to-do list all at once. And it just might be the perfectly obvious antidote to your team’s steadily declining motivation and seeming inability to focus.

A 2016 University of California, Irvine study found that people who work online all day are more likely to expend their brain’s natural capacity for focus — thanks to the tendency to multitask. Once employees hit their focus wall, they have difficulty feeling engaged or motivated. That sounds a lot like burnout.

So how can managers encourage monotasking on their teams? Start by creating clear project schedules that help employees balance multiple accounts at once without constantly switching back and forth. Talk with employees about how they focus best, and tailor your expectations to better accommodate each employee’s unique needs.

Yes, there are always client deadlines to consider, but your team will actually be more productive and engaged if you can cultivate an environment that helps employees work without constantly switching gears.

2) Discuss Career Growth on a Regular Basis 

A disconcerting 54% of people who left the advertising industry said a major reason was because they felt there wasn’t sufficient opportunity for advancement.

In order to feel truly valued within an organization, employees need the room and support to better themselves and advance their careers. Without career growth, everyday tasks lose their purpose, and employees feel like work is just something to drudge through.

Part of the issue is organizational: Agencies need to offer employees more opportunities to advance. But managers can help employees better navigate the treacherous agency terrain by being more transparent about opportunities and how they can be achieved.

Talking about career advancement shouldn’t be something that only takes place on a yearly or even quarterly basis. The more frequently managers bring up career advancement and long-term goals, the more supported employees will feel in their career paths. Simply discussing where employees want to be in the future can have a major impact on how valued people feel, and can help bring a real sense of purpose to their work.

3) Encourage Recharge Periods

Much like the smartphone you can’t seem to stop checking, humans need to be recharged. It’s just not in our nature to be constantly tuned in, and when we try to marathon a ton of work at once without stopping for periodic breathers, we actually end up in an unproductive and unhappy state of “continuous partial attention.”

As Linda Stone, the former head of Microsoft University, writes on her website, “In a 24/7, always-on world, continuous partial attention used as our dominant attention mode contributes to a feeling of overwhelm, over-stimulation and to a sense of being unfulfilled. We are so accessible, we’re inaccessible.”

Managers can help by ascribing to a more results-oriented workplace philosophy which recognizes gaps in productivity are necessary and healthy. Taking breaks shouldn’t be demonized or looked down upon as a sign of weakness. In fact, managers should check in with their team members to make sure they’re taking adequate time to recharge.

The measurement of an employee’s performance shouldn’t be based on how late into the night they check their email or how many all-nighters they’re capable of pulling before they collapse. It should be judged primarily on the output of their work.

4) Don’t Overlook Small Victories

A study from University of Michigan Business School found that teams performed best when managers gave six times as much positive feedback as negative feedback. When employees received significantly more positive feedback on their work, they were more likely to feel valued, respected, and motivated to improve their performance. And these factors are all key in beating burnout.

In workplaces today, managers are more likely to point out negative feedback or withhold feedback altogether than offer employees praise for their work. “Criticism is vitally important,” Alexander Kjerulf, a Denmark-based workplace happiness researcher, told CNN. “We need to tell people what they do well and what they can do better, but many workplaces either give no feedback or only give criticism. This is a shame because we learn so much from being told what we get right.”

Managers dealing with stressed out teams should work hard to bring attention to everyday victories, letting their employees know their work isn’t going unnoticed.

5) Set a Positive Example with Your Own Behavior

Science tells us that stress can be contagious, but according to Harvard Business Review, the reverse can be true as well: “When any member of a team experiences wellbeing, the effect seems to spread across the entire team.”

Managers are in a unique position to set the tone for their team’s work by exemplifying positive behaviors in their own day-to-day projects and interactions. If you slave away at your computer for 12 hours a day and never take a break, your team members will see this as an example of what to strive for, and mirror your own unhealthy behaviors.

It may seem simple, but check in with yourself regularly to make sure you’re leading by example. If you’re feeling burnt out, chances are your team is feeling the burn as well, and it’s time to implement some changes.