Marketing your school is essential in today’s competitive educational environment. The good news is that there are so many effective ways to do it—you just need to get started. So, here are 51 ideas to get you moving in the right direction.
Invite them in: Create a virtual video tour of your school. Make sure you film it when there are students and staff present and viewers can see the activity and enthusiasm present. Include students, staff, volunteers, and support staff, and show their smiling faces and grab some quotes that reflect the values your school represents. This is also a great video for the marketing area of your school’s website. (You could also do this with static pictures.) You DO have a marketing area, right? Let a tour bring your school to life for those prospective visitors.
Put that website to work: Your school website is the communications and marketing hub for your school, so make it count. It should be mobile-friendly (responsive), accessible to those with disabilities (ADA compliant), current, informative, engaging, conversational, and easy to navigate. It should have the forms and instructions available to register, the answers to all the most common questions (ask your office staff if you aren’t sure what those are), calendars, and contact information. You should have information for both your prospective site visitors (a robust marketing area) and the parents of your enrolled students (current engagement and customer service). We can help you with this area, so reach out to us, but in the meantime subscribe to our blog and gets lots of great information twice a month. Also, check out these blog posts: “School Websites—The Swiss Army Knife of Influence & Communications,” “Does your School Website Help you Become a School of Choice?” and “How a Website can Help a Struggling School.”
Tell them a story: One of the most effective tools a school has is the ability to share its stories of its people and programs. You want your audience to see their children succeeding and thriving at your school, so give them real-world examples to envision. Be specific. Show successes. Describe dreams that come true. People relate to people, so give them something to relate to. Use these stories on your social media posts as well. See “Storytelling: Your Most Powerful School Marketing Tool” and “Telling Your School’s Stories.”
Gathering stories: Provide incentives to gather stories that you can share in your marketing efforts (website news stories, videos, social media posts, blog posts, local media human interest stories). Rewards can be as simple as a verbal recognition at a staff meeting or a candy bar for a student who shares the success of a fellow student, but make it part of your school’s culture to gather stories that represent your school’s strengths and values. Let your staff, students, and parents know you value the story-sharers among them, and you’ll have plenty of great stories to share. See “Telling Your School’s Stories” for ways to gather stories from your staff.
Highlight your families: Invite families to tell their stories, and share them on your school website, linking to them from your social media. It’s as simple as asking families for answers to a few questions that will provide social validation to other prospective families. Let your existing parents help prospective parents make the decision to select your school! See great examples at St. James Episcopal Day School or see video stories at Santa Fe Christian School. Do this also with students, staff, and alumni as well!
Highlight your programs: Create an area on the marketing pages of your school website where you tell the stories behind some of your most effective programs or projects. Do you have certain programs you do every year (often you’ll have one or two in each grade)? Take a picture or two and tell the story behind it. Why is it effective? What do the students learn? How does it broaden their educational experience? Why is it so effective and yet fun? These stories are a great way to highlight your school's strengths and what makes you stand out.
Post those testimonials: Collect testimonials from parents, students, staff, and alumni at every opportunity. In addition to a page on your website to be used as part of your marketing and enrollment information, these can be used as graphic elements throughout your website, in social media posts and memes, and in other marketing collateral you create. Collect these via a form on your website, during parent/teacher conferences, or from social media channels, and keep some handy forms for parents to leave comments in the front office.
A day in the life: To help prospective parents get a real feel for what it is like to be a student at your school, walk them through a day in the life of “......” (select a student at the various grade levels). It can be as simple as a slideshow with captions or a video. Select a student from the elementary grades, one from the middle school, and another from the high school to show the variety of opportunities. Be sure to include lots of smiling faces, quotes from the student and others they interact with, and how the student you are shadowing feels about his/her day. If yours is a boarding school, consider a “week in the life” of a student as well.
Community-wide events: Can you establish a once-a-month event to which you invite your targeted prospects? For preschool or kindergarten students, what about a day to visit and get a preview of your programs (parents get to see their own child interacting)? For upper grades, invite a parent to let a current student be their guide as a “Day in the Life.” Provide a campus tour with coffee and donuts and be sure any feeder school parents are aware of the event. Create a “story time” on a Saturday in your school’s library and get creative with a variety of programs (stories, art, visits from local professionals or businesses). Have a unique offering, then expose other students by holding a “friend day” and letting students invite a friend for the day. Use social media and your website to publicize your events.
Horn tooting infographics: Create a page or section on your website (and create a digital version you can use on social media or as a flyer as well) that highlights your school’s best qualities. You can use a simple Infographic program or pre-designed icons to keep it simple and clean, but a simple image and a few words announcing your strengths can be quite memorable. Some common stats are: grades served, student/teacher ratios, college placements, technology use ratios, average test scores, diversity percentages, scholarship percentages or amounts awarded, community service percentages, enrichment offerings, athletic programs, groundbreaking programs, and after-school programs.
School blogging: The goal of a blog is to connect with other people interested in your topic. Your purpose would be to connect with parents, students, community members, and those ever-important prospective student families. There are many advantages, see “The School Marketer’s Dilemma: to Blog or Not to Blog,” with the time commitment being the biggest challenge. However, it can integrate well into your annual marketing goals, be used on all your social media channels, be linked to on your school website, help you keep rumors at bay, help the media cover your good stories, help you brand your school, and help your target audience get a real feel for the human interest side of things.
Rhyming campaigns: Use rhyming or alliteration in your next marketing campaign theme for memorability. Studies show that people see rhyming phrases as more accurate than non-rhyming phrases. It could be because they are more memorable, likable, and repeatable, but regardless of the reason, it seems to help. Can you come up with an accurate but rhyming title for your important marketing effort? Sometimes it is as simple as some alliteration in a hashtag like #WelcomeWednesdays, but give it a try and see the benefits of adding this element to your next marketing event.
Bystander effect: The more people who are around, the less likely someone will take the lead and take charge (diffusion of responsibility). This applies to a marketing campaign where it is obvious you are sending your request to lots of people (everyone thinks it is the responsibility of everyone else to respond). So, send your requests out individually (like survey requests, community feedback, parent requests, etc.) when you want to be sure your message is valued and especially if you want people to respond to it.
Hand-written notes: Because nearly every communication these days is digital, sending a handwritten note will really stand out. There are also ways to do it right that include sincerity, specificity, brevity, being personal, and proofing your note. Learn more on our “Telling Them Thank You” blog.
Every penny helps: When seeking donations, does the wording matter? Yes! Richard Wiseman, the author of 59 Seconds conducted a study with Barnes & Noble to identify the best of the following phrases: “Please given generously.” “Every penny counts.” “Every dollar helps.” “You can make a difference.” And the winner was “Every penny counts” with 62% of all contributions. “Every dollar helps” came in last place with only 17% of the total. Why? Putting a small amount in the box might have made them look cheap, but the “Every penny helps” title encourages even the smallest contributions. The box asking for a dollar didn’t encourage lesser amounts and people don’t want to look cheap, so fewer people contributed and gave nothing at all. The color of the box mattered (the red box did better, maybe because it appeared more urgent).
Inbound marketing: Parents put lots of research into selecting the best school for their child. You want your school to be part of that process. This will not only establish your school as an expert—establish your credibility, but it lets parents know you are there to help. You can do this by creating content to help them make the best decision for their situation. It can be an eBook with questions to ask themselves or the school's admissions department, checklists for parents during the selection process, college preparation tips, parent or student guides, and other resources parents can download for free. They provide their e-mail information, and your school can then nurture that prospective parent with additional updates and information over time. Admissions information. Tip: keep the information you request on your “free download” form to a minimum (name/e-mail) or they won’t fill out the information. For some example topics of content, here are some title ideas:
- Questions to Ask When Selecting a School for Your Child
- Selecting a High School for Your < insert son/daughter/child>
- 5 Steps for Selecting the Best School for Your Son
- Choosing the Best Private/Independent/Public School for your Family
- Top 20 Questions About Life at
- Big Benefits of a Small School
- How to Match Your Child’s Interests to the Right School Choice
- Preparing Your Child for Kindergarten
- Beyond Grades: the Importance of Leadership and Community
- Athletics: More Than Trophies
- Arts: Educating the Whole Child
- How to Prepare Your Child with Life Skills for Future Job Markets
- Top 3 Things You Should Know When Choosing a Preschool (elementary/high school/etc)
- Preparing Your Student for the College of His/Her Dreams (career of their dreams, etc.)
Lead nurturing: When a school gets a request for information about enrollment or tuition or attendance boundaries, don’t let the contact end there. Create what is called a “nurture campaign” that will continue to inform this prospect with additional tips and information. It will help your school stay relevant and front-of-mind so when they are weighing their options, your school stays on top. This could be a series of e-mails with tips and information, links to additional downloadable topics, or videos that highlight areas of interest. There are many programs to make this process easy, like MailChimp that offers a free version or GetResponse with a low-cost version.
Webinars: Private schools will sometimes do webinars during the year to educate and engage prospective parents. We’ve seen topics like: “How to afford a private school education,” “Helping your child study,” “Helping your child transition to high school,” “Guidance for the college-bound student,” “Kindergarten: The Next Step,” and “Helping without helicoptering.” What a great way to engage parents, whether prospective or already enrolled! Adding value will set your school apart, which is the whole idea for marketing your school.
