Language School Marketing
Sales Triple in 5 Months
We tripled our revenue in 5 month.
Shannan Murphy, Operations Manager
JIC In Brisbane
Background
JIC In Brisbane is a private educational institute that sells short courses in Japanese-language instruction. Their marketing challenges are typical of many small businesses:
- A tightly-defined target market (people interested in becoming proficient in Japanese language) that is nevertheless thinly-dispersed over a wide area.
- A relatively high entry price for customers (language courses start at $400)
JIC In Brisbane had a couple of problems: Dwindling lead numbers and stagnant student retention had translated into dropping revenue, with no obvious reason for the decrease. Customer satisfaction seemed good, although staff were finding it hard to convince prospects of the value of their offering. Marketing Results was approached with a number of tasks:
Objectives
- To increase student numbers and revenue
- To understand the marketing processes at JIC better (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats
- To systematise the sales and marketing process to reliably generate more new student enquiries.
How the objectives were achieved
- Development of a marketing strategy: “To establish JIC as the hub of Japanese language and culture in Brisbane.”
- Defining and measuring benchmarks: Tracking where sales leads are coming from and the Return On Investment of each marketing method.
- Improving the sales process: Rewriting the information pack for new students to sell the courses more effectively. Standardising the sales process and working as a team to generate incremental improvements.
- Analysing customer data: E.g. segmenting clients by entry level and other factors. This revealed that beginner-level students have a 19% higher value per client than other students. Developed strategies to target prospects in that higher-value segment.
- Tactics to acquire new customers: This included targeted direct mail to 3 separate in-house lists (existing students, previous students and previous enquirers); an active customer referral program; an email newsletter; designed website as a sales and community-building tool.
- Standardising the above to act as a staging point for future improvements.
The above steps were rolled out over 5 months, with high involvement by JIC In Brisbane staff, who took responsibility for working with their new marketing systems.
Notes on Strategy:
JIC In Brisbane faced two main challenges: (1) A low number of leads (prospects) and (2) a low conversion rate of prospects to customers.
A long-term solution to these problems had to be found at a strategic level. We decided to position JIC In Brisbane as the hub of Japanese language and culture in Brisbane, with more customers and revenue a logical result of this strategy.
This involved providing prospects with free information and resources of interest to them (e.g. information on Japanese-related events in Brisbane, job and travel information, free language exchange events, reports and articles on how to study Japanese more effectively etc.)
By implementing this strategy, they offered greater value to clients, generated goodwill and established themselves as experts within their target market. The result is a much larger pool of prospects, and a higher conversion rate from prospects to customers. Benefits have compounded over the year as this strategy has gathered momentum.
Key Results
- Revenue increased by 185% in 5 months. Current enrolments are steady at around triple their former level.
- “Autopilot” marketing systems that are less time consuming and produce consistent, predictable results.
JIC In Brisbane Operations Manager Shannan Murphy says…
“We tripled our revenue in 5 months…”
In October 2003, we asked Marketing Results to help us with some marketing challenges. We were frustrated because although we had great confidence in our language courses, we just weren’t able to get the message out to the right people on a budget. We were relying on “walk-by” traffic for most of our business, and it just wasn’t enough. We were also trying other things such as flyers and newspaper ads, but with not much return.
So we started working with Marketing Results, and the figures speak for themselves: In only 5 months, our revenue jumped by 185%. Now, almost a year later, we continue to work together to maintain these results and work on new projects. Whereas before we sometimes had empty classrooms, now our courses are full to capacity and my job is a lot easier.
When we started, they helped us to measure our sales process, which allowed us to see for the first time where our leads were coming from and what they were costing.
Then we worked together to build a new sales system to help communicate what we offer to customers. Before, many enquirers would ask for information and we’d never hear from them again. But now we have a better system and sales materials, which have had a big effect on sales conversion. Marketing Results totally rewrote our info pack and transformed it into an effective sales tool, with an excellent balance of information and sales.
The other thing that has been a huge success is our website, JapaneseBrisbane.com. To be honest I was a little skeptical that we could get business over the internet, because we had a website before that was doing nothing for us, but now our new website accounts for about 80% of our new student enquiries. And when customers contact us via the web, most of them say something like, “I’ve seen your website, the courses look great, when can I start?”
So you could say that we are delighted with the return from working with Marketing Results. On a number of occasions, they’ve worked to incredibly tight deadlines to help us take advantage of sudden marketing opportunities, such as a PR piece that was published in the Brisbane Courier Mail on October 11, 2003. We had more calls the following Monday morning than we normally get in a week.
If you’re looking for practical marketing help for your business, I thoroughly recommend Marketing Results . We tried them for 3 months, got the results, and we continue to work with them now.
This Marketing Case Study has been approved
by JIC in Brisbane.
