Tutor Doctor: What Are Your Most Effective Lead Gen and Marketing Tools?

We asked Frank Milner, President of Tutor Doctor, which marketing tools his brand is finding most effective right now for lead generation and recruiting so far in 2021.

As was the norm in 2020, a swift transition to virtual helped tremendously when it came to connecting with prospective franchisees and consumers. As an education franchise known to specialize in in-home tutoring, the top questions we’ve received are about how we’ve pivoted to safely interact and serve our clients during the pandemic and shelter-in-place restrictions.

As a result, we’ve structured our virtual discovery days to offer real-time updates on what innovative strategies we’ve been workshopping, and give prospective franchisees the opportunity to interact and ask questions to our home office, education, and training and field support teams. Just like our approach to customizable tutoring, our virtual discovery day is unique to the individuals who take part in it.

We’ve also seen more prospective franchisees using the chatbot tool on our website. Last year, four deals showed initial interest through the chatbot. Similarly, but through the consumer lens, we’ve been able to connect with new clients through the live chat feature on our website. In 2020 alone we saw lead conversion rates triple on our U.S. website and we are rolling out this service in the U.K.

In an effort to continue innovating to meet the ever-evolving needs of the consumer, we created an Innovation Squad — a group of on-the-ground innovators who reacted to events as they happened and devised solutions. Two those have been our Global Tutor Share Program, which allows franchisees to share tutors from across the globe for online tutoring efforts and is actively being built into our CRM for future franchisee benefits; and our Pivot to Profit program, which trains franchisees to build community relationships online and further grow their businesses.

While these programs are built to help the consumer and respond to further demand for services, they are also effective marketing efforts we can mention to potential franchisees interested in learning how we’ve adapted during the pandemic and how we will fare as the world returns to normalcy in 2021.