As the new school year is drawing closer and closer, schools are striving hard to increase enrollment for themselves. Moreover, parents are now becoming more enlightened when it comes to selecting schools for their children; they now go beyond just picking an institution that will cater for their educational need, but that can additionally cater for other needs like social, safety, emotional, cognitive and self-realization needs. While we have addressed some of the common mistakes that could cause low enrollment in schools, this blog will focus on tactics that you can employ to increase enrollment for the coming school year.
1. Inbound Marketing Strategy
The way you market and reach out to parents is crucial. If you are still into the act of invasive marketing- intruding into their private spaces with unsolicited mails and messages, you are definitely pushing them away. The best way to market your school is by pulling in parents with relevant information, which is referred to as Inbound Marketing. Here are some of the inbound marketing strategies that will help put your school on the front line, and boost your enrollment rate:
- Content-Filled Website
We now have millennial parents that will first seek for information online before even inquiring from their friends and family members. As a school, it is important for you to own a website, so that those searching for your school online can easily access the website for any information that they are seeking for. It just does not end at having the website like that, you must have relevant informative contents about your school; pictures of your facilities, testimonial videos and tour videos around the school. Having these will help establish your school as a trustworthy brand in the eyes of the public.
- Optimization
If you want to gain an online presence and establish that, you need to optimize your website for a unique keyword that will work for you. Imagine a parent is searching Google for your website and after scrolling through 5 different pages without any successful result, they give-up. Assuming you have a keyword that once it is used to search for your school in Google and other search engines (yahoo, Bing), your website shows up among the results on the first page. You then have a high click rate, which might in turn lead to the increase in application rates.
Inbound Marketing goes beyond more than these two, learn more about how Inbound Marketing Strategy can help your school.
2. Attraction
What exactly is that thing that makes your school stand out among others? Why are parents sending their children to your school? Why are the students and teachers proud of the school? Knowing the answers to these questions can help you capitalize on the major thing that attracts parents to your school. If you are looking to outshine other schools and stand out, you need to select a program that you are sure that attracts parents to your school. Some of the programs and facilities that attract parents:
Faith-based curriculum
Boarding facilities
Extra-curricular activities
Project-Based Learning
Other additional Languages
Whichever program you pick, let your goal be to stand out using that particular program. This will then make your school be the best choice for parents that desire that unique outstanding education that you provide for their children.
3. Set-Up Parent Community
Parents are looking for schools that they can trust, and that can as well cater for the educational, social, safety and emotional needs of their children. A school cannot achieve all of this alone, which is why they must involve the parents by setting up the parent community. It is then left to you as a school to use this opportunity and reach out to the parents when there is need for them. One way by which parent community can help increase enrollment is through the use of word-of-mouth. Parents that enjoy the services you provide for their children will definitely speak of your school to their friends and family members. With this, you can get referrals from the parents and hence have increased enrollment in your school.
4. Different Payment Options
Parents have different budget set aside for the schooling of their children. While it is profitable to pursue parents that are wealthy, providing a flexible payment option might overcome the challenges of paying that some parents might have when it comes to paying for their child’s education. Creating different payment options might cause the increase in enrollment in your school. Some of the payment strategy might include:
Giving sibling discount for parents that have more than a child in your school.
Giving parents the chance to pay installments, rather than paying immediately. For example. #50,000 per month might work for some parents rather than paying an upfront of #200,000.
By doing this, the parents will not be chased off by the pricing, rather they focus more on the value you are providing as a school.
