Marketer’s Guide to Tracking Leads Online (Simple Version)

Many graduate program sites now serve more of a business purpose than basic school and contact information.  The “adapters” in the grad school realm are now attempting to lead site visitors down a lead generation path.  As the recruiting field becomes more competitive, graduate program Marketing Departments are reallocating  their  spending  and putting more emphasis  on internet marketing activities.

To the novice, this practice can be extremely overwhelming.  How much should you bid on certain keywords?  Is it better to put more money into ads on a niche site than spend it all on search engines?  Is a low CPC always the best option?

These answers can all be obtained for free (almost).  Currently, Google Analytics is offered as a free tool to help marketers answer these (and other) common online marketing questions.  Microsoft has a similar product in beta, and Yahoo! recently purchased IndexTools, which will both serve similar purposes.

The set-up is simple: 1. Sign Up for an account 2. Enter your website(s) 3. Paste the provided JavaScript code onto the web pages you wish to track.  After completion of these three steps, you will be able to view out-of-box reports that will help you understand who your visitors are and where they are coming from.

Beyond the basic implementation, graduate program marketers can also set up goals in the Admin console.  By using goals, a marketer can assign a dollar amount to a “lead” and track it back to the referring source.  This practice allows for a better understanding of what advertising outlets are worth the cost.  You may be paying $0.50 per click on a search engine which gives you 5,000 visitors/month, but notice that only 5 of those 5,000 visitors filled out a lead form or submitted a contact request.  You may also notice that the site which resulted in  $15 per click converted to 150 leads during the same time frame.

In the epic, and seemingly endless, battle for prospective graduate students, marketing departments must be prepared and armed with knowledge of how to best obtain enrollments.