Enrollment Diagnostic
Find out what's actually hurting your enrollments before you spend another cohort fixing the wrong thing.
If your certification program isn't enrolling the way it used to, you probably already have theories about why.
The website. The leads. The price. Admissions. The economy.
Maybe.
But what would it mean for your business if you were sure?
The Enrollment Diagnostic looks across your complete enrollment journey to find the most likely causes behind your enrollment challenges, the evidence supporting each one, and what you should fix before your next cohort.
Not every enrollment problem needs a Diagnostic. The Fit Call is how we find out whether yours does.
Suspected causes
- The website
- The leads
- The price
- Admissions
- The economy
Actually responsible
?
01The cost of the wrong assumption
“We think it's our admissions process.”
And perhaps you're right.
But what happens if it turns out admissions wasn't actually the problem?
Maybe your team spends the next few months improving sales calls while the real problem sits upstream. Or you redesign the website when qualified prospective students were already reaching the application just fine.
- Assumption“It's admissions.”
- InvestmentMonths of team time and budget.
- Possible wrong betThe real cause stays where it was.
The expensive part isn't having the wrong theory.
It's running another cohort as though that theory were fact.
Before you fix the problem, let's make sure you've found it.
Book a Diagnostic Fit Call02The outcome
What you'll know when we're finished
This isn't a website audit or a list of conversion best practices.
The Diagnostic gives you three things:
- 01
What's most likely hurting your enrollments
The causes best supported by the evidence across your enrollment journey.
- 02
Why I think that
The evidence behind each finding, so you're not replacing your team's best guess with mine.
- 03
What to fix before your next cohort
The areas most worth your time and resources now, rather than a 27-point wishlist of things you could improve.
So when we're finished, you should be able to say:
“Here are the most likely causes why our enrollments are down, here's the evidence supporting each one, and here's what we should fix before the next cohort.”
“But what if we already know what's wrong?”
Then you might not need me.
If you know what's causing the problem, have evidence to support it and know what deserves attention first, I'd rather tell you to keep your $1,950.
But there's a difference between suspecting something and having enough evidence to confidently put another cohort behind it.
The Diagnostic might uncover something your team hasn't considered. It might confirm what you've suspected all along.
Novelty isn't the product. Knowing what deserves your attention is.
03Method
Here's what I won't do
I don't start with the answer.
- I don't look for evidence that your website needs redesigning.
- I don't decide after a quick glance that your messaging is wrong.
- I don't assume admissions needs fixing because one downstream conversion rate has dropped.
- I don't turn your team's theories into conclusions.
- And I don't turn my own intuition into evidence either.
Your team's experience matters. Your historical context matters. My judgment matters.
But the evidence gets to lead.
So what do I actually look at?
Whatever parts of the enrollment journey are relevant to finding the problem.
Website & messaging
What prospective students encounter before they take the next step.
Traffic & conversion data
Where behaviour or performance has actually changed.
Cohort history
What's different now compared with stronger enrollment cycles.
Application & admissions
What happens after someone moves from interest to intent.
Pricing, payment & qualification
Whether changes further downstream are affecting enrollment.
Changes inside the business
What you've changed between cohorts and when performance shifted.
I'm not checking every box because it's on an audit template.
I'm looking for where the evidence starts to tell a coherent story.
04Process
How the Enrollment Diagnostic works
You don't need to arrive with perfectly organised data or a neat explanation of what's gone wrong.
That's rather the point.
We start with a free Fit Call
We'll spend around 30 minutes talking about what's happening with your enrollments, what you've already noticed and whether the Diagnostic is actually the right next step.
If I don't think you need it, I'll tell you.
I gather the evidence
Once we decide to work together, I'll send you a clear list of what I need before we begin.
Depending on your enrollment journey, that might include:
- Access to relevant analytics and conversion data
- Enrollment and cohort performance
- Changes in pricing, offers or positioning
- Your application and admissions process
- Changes you've made between cohorts
- Anything your team already suspects might be contributing
You don't need to diagnose any of it for me. I want the context and the evidence, not a polished explanation.
We have one deep-dive session
We'll spend 60 to 90 minutes filling in the gaps the numbers can't.
What changed? When? What has the team noticed? What happened differently in stronger cohorts? What have you already tried?
This is where I get the business context I need to interpret the data properly.
Then I go away and diagnose
This is where most of the work happens.
I map your enrollment journey, look at what has changed and weigh the possible explanations against the evidence available.
I'm looking for the patterns that help us answer:
- What's most likely hurting enrollment?
- What evidence supports that conclusion?
- What deserves attention before the next cohort?
We meet for your Diagnostic Readout
I'll take you through what I found, what I think it means and where I'd focus first.
You'll have time to challenge the findings, ask questions and make sure you understand the reasoning behind the priorities.
Then the Diagnostic is yours to take forward.
05Deliverables
What you receive
You won't get a 47-page audit filled with every tiny thing I happened to notice.
You also won't get a mysterious recommendation to “optimise the funnel.”
You'll get a focused diagnosis built to help you decide where to put your team's attention before the next cohort.
The diagnosis
What's most likely causing the problem.
The enrollment issues with the strongest evidence behind them, connected back to the part of the journey where they're actually showing up.
The evidence
Why those conclusions deserve your attention.
You'll see what supports each finding, rather than being asked to replace your team's opinion with mine.
The enrollment priorities
What needs fixing first.
A clear order of priority based on what the evidence suggests is most likely to matter, so your team isn't trying to improve everything at once.
The watchlist
What I'm not ready to call a problem yet.
Anything that could be contributing but doesn't currently have enough evidence behind it to justify becoming a priority, plus what we'd need to know before drawing a stronger conclusion.
And you'll see how it connects across the enrollment journey
Your Diagnostic won't treat your website, admissions process and enrollment numbers as separate things.
I'll map the relevant parts of your actual journey so you can see where the findings sit:
- 01First visit
- 02Evaluation
- 03Application
- 04Admissions
- 05Payment
- 06Enrollment
Your journey may look slightly different. That's fine.
The point is to give you a view of the system, not another isolated website score.
Before
“Apparently we have 14 usability issues and our CTA could be stronger.”
After
“This is where our enrollment journey appears to be breaking down. This is the evidence. And this is where we should focus first.”
No obligation to continue into implementation afterwards.
06Perspective
Why enrollment needs its own lens
A certification program isn't an ecommerce store.
Your prospective student isn't deciding whether to add a pair of shoes to their basket. They may be deciding whether to spend thousands of dollars, change careers, invest months of their time, explain the decision to their partner or employer, apply for a place and trust you with a meaningful piece of their future.
That changes the job.
Generic CRO asks
- Where are people dropping off?
- Which pages aren't converting?
- Is there friction in the form?
- Which CTA performs better?
Useful questions. But they're not the whole enrollment story.
Enrollment asks
- Where did the journey actually start to change?
- Are fewer qualified people reaching the application, or are fewer applicants becoming students?
- Did something change between stronger and weaker cohorts?
- Is the problem happening before, during or after admissions?
- Has the decision itself become harder to make?
- Which part of the journey deserves attention first?
I'm not trying to optimise a website in isolation. I'm trying to understand what's happening across the system that turns a prospective student into an enrolled one.
That's also why my background is a little unusual.
I've spent my career working across product, customer journeys, brand narrative and marketing, and now specialise that experience around one problem: enrollment journeys for certification programs.
It means I naturally look across the seams. Between marketing and admissions. Between what the data says and what the team believes. Between the promise on the website and what happens when someone actually tries to enroll.
Because sometimes the problem isn't sitting neatly inside one team's remit.
And that's exactly why nobody has found it yet.
07The economics
Is $1,950 worth spending on a diagnosis?
Possibly not.
If you already know what's hurting enrollment, have evidence to support it and know what your team needs to fix next, keep the $1,950 and go fix it.
But if you don't know, I'd compare the cost of the Diagnostic with something else entirely:
What might you be about to spend on the assumption?
These aren't quotes or predictions. They're simply conservative examples of what common enrollment improvement projects can cost once a team decides where it thinks the problem is.
- Website redesign$10K–$30K+
Small redesigns can cost less. Larger or more complex projects can cost considerably more.
- More paid acquisition$5K–$15K+
A relatively modest additional campaign budget across an enrollment cycle, particularly once management and creative are included.
- New messaging or creative$3K–$10K+
Depending on whether the work involves copy alone or broader research, positioning, design and creative.
- Admissions changes or training$3K–$10K+
Depending on whether the team is making smaller process changes or bringing in outside support or training.
The point isn't that you're about to spend all of this.
It's that putting $5K, $10K or $20K behind a plausible explanation isn't particularly difficult once a team decides what it thinks is wrong.
The Enrollment Diagnostic is $1,950.
Before you spend considerably more fixing the problem, let's make sure you're fixing the right one.
Put your own numbers on it
A rough sense of what even a small difference in enrollment conversion can mean for your program.
Total website visitors during the period you were actively enrolling your last cohort.
Revenue from new enrollments in that cohort.
The average revenue represented by one new enrollment.
This isn't a forecast or a promise that the Diagnostic will produce a particular conversion lift. It won't.
It's simply a way to see what a small conversion-rate difference represents using your own numbers.
Suddenly, $1,950 isn't really competing with doing nothing.
It's competing with the time, money and enrollment opportunity you're about to put behind whatever your team currently thinks is wrong.
Need to get someone else on board?
Good.
A $1,950 consulting engagement probably shouldn't survive purely on:
“I found this woman online and I really like the way she thinks.”
So if you need to take this to your CEO, founder, CFO, Head of Marketing or anyone else holding the purse strings, here's the practical version.
Copy this for your team
What are we buying?
An independent diagnosis of our enrollment journey to identify the most likely causes behind our enrollment challenges, the evidence supporting them and what we should fix before the next cohort.
Why do we need it?
We have theories about what's affecting enrollment, but we don't currently have enough evidence to know which ones deserve our time and budget first.
What does it cost?
$1,950.
What do we get?
- A diagnosis of the most likely enrollment problems
- The evidence supporting each finding
- Clear priorities for what needs fixing first
- A view of what isn't worth prioritising yet
- A Diagnostic Readout where we can question the findings and reasoning
Are we committing to more consulting afterwards?
No.
We can take the findings and implement them internally, work with another specialist or ask Hanna-Mari for help with the fixing phase.
What's the business case?
We're about to invest time and money trying to improve enrollment anyway.
The Diagnostic helps us make sure we're putting those resources behind the problems most supported by evidence, rather than the explanation that happens to sound most convincing in the meeting.
In short:
We're spending $1,950 to find out what deserves fixing before we spend considerably more fixing it.
08Afterwards
What happens after the Diagnostic?
The Diagnostic is designed to stand on its own.
Once you know what's most likely hurting enrollment, why I think that and what deserves fixing first, you have three options.
Option 1
Take it in-house
Your team can use the findings to decide what to work on next and bring in the right people internally.
The Diagnostic tells you what needs attention and why. Your team decides how to fix it.
Option 2
Take it to another specialist
Already have a trusted agency, designer, copywriter, admissions consultant or CRO team? Perfect.
Give them the relevant findings and let them work from a much clearer brief.
Option 3
Ask me to help you fix it
If the Diagnostic uncovers problems that sit within my wheelhouse and you'd like me to help solve them, we can talk about a separate fixing phase.
That might involve deeper research, strategy, experimentation or redesigning parts of the enrollment journey, depending on what we've found.
But you don't need to decide any of that before the Diagnostic.
There is no automatic upsell and no obligation to continue working with me.
First, we find the problem. Then you decide how you want to fix it.
Should you book an Enrollment Diagnostic?
Yes, let's talk if…
- Your enrollments have dropped, stalled or aren't where you expected them to be.
- Your team has several theories about why, but not enough evidence to know which one deserves attention first.
- You're considering making significant changes to your website, marketing, admissions or wider enrollment journey.
- Another cohort is approaching and you want to know where to focus before it does.
- You're willing to give me access to the information and people needed to understand what's actually happening.
- You want an independent diagnosis, not someone to rubber-stamp a solution you've already decided on.
Keep your $1,950 if…
- You already know what's causing the problem, have good evidence to support it and know what needs fixing next.
- You're looking for someone to implement a predetermined solution rather than diagnose the problem.
- You want a general website or UX audit.
- You don't have access to enough enrollment data or business context for us to make a useful diagnosis.
- You mainly want a long list of CRO best practices to work through.
- You need me to promise a particular conversion or revenue increase before we've looked at the evidence.
Not sure which side you're on? That's what the free Fit Call is for.
Book a Diagnostic Fit Call09FAQ
Questions you might still have
Before you spend another cohort fixing it, find out what's actually wrong.
You don't need another theory.
And you definitely don't need 27 more things your team could optimise.
You need to know:
- What's most likely hurting enrollment?
- What evidence supports it?
- What should we fix before the next cohort?
That's what the Enrollment Diagnostic is built to answer.
Enrollment Diagnostic
$1,950
Starts with a free 30-minute Diagnostic Fit Call.
Book a Diagnostic Fit CallIf I don't think the Diagnostic is the right next step for you, I'll tell you.