My son recently celebrated a birthday and received many wonderful gifts from family and friends. Unfortunately, one of the gifts was a set of Legos that he had already received. Fortunately though, our friends were kind enough to include a gift receipt for Wal-Mart.
My wife and I agreed that our son could return the gift and select a new toy or game of equal value. He was so excited. We made the trek to Wal-Mart and exchanged the gift. We then made our way back to the toy and video game aisles.
My son quickly choose a replacement Lego set but before he made his decision he wanted to research his other options. We next looked at Lego sticker books and with the money he received in exchange he could select two sticker books. Finally, we made our way over the video game aisle and he immediately found the new Pirates of the Caribbean Lego DS video game. He was sold – he wanted the video game. There was an issue however, my son had lost the privilege of playing video games for two days and he was left with a choice – select another toy and play with it immediately or select the video game and delay playing with it for two days.
My son was left with his Wal-Mart choice.
Wal-Mart Choice At School
I remember back to 2008 when the economy slowed and our interest indicators (inquiries, applications, and visits) sank. We were left with a choice – select a traditional (outbound) marketing strategy or select an inbound marketing strategy for our school, using social media. The traditional marketing strategy would be more immediate. We would see the advertisements in the newspaper, hear them on the radio, see them from the highway on a billboard, and read them on the direct mail piece. The inbound marketing strategy would take time. The search engine optimization (SEO) benefits would take time to work. The positive effects from blogging would not happen overnight. It would take time to extend our reach on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
We were left with our Wal-Mart choice – continue using traditional marketing for, what we thought was, more immediate gratification, or conduct an inbound marketing strategy and delay our gratification because of the time it takes for those efforts to pay off.
We choose poorly.
We selected the traditional marketing strategy and sunk thousands of dollars into the campaign. After many months we came to the harsh realization – traditional (outbound) marketing doesn't pay. Our interest indicators were still poor and we couldn't trace one newly enrolled student back to our efforts. To say that we were disappointed was an understatement!
We eventually came to our senses and began our inbound marketing strategy using social media. The results speak for themselves. All of our interest indicators are up over last school year. Social media, as part of our inbound marketing strategy, is helping us in our enrollment efforts in ways that traditional marketing couldn't approach.
Learn from our mistakes and begin using the concepts of inbound marketing and social media for your school today! The positive results will not happen overnight – but they will happen. While we initially failed with our Wal-Mart choice, I am pleased to let you know that my son selected the video game he wanted and waited two days until his punishment was complete before he could play his new game.
Whoever said that youth aren't wise has never had a Wal-Mart choice.
