When you want to increase your application volume for your private K-12, you must generate more new leads. Continual engagement across various customer journey stages can help guide students and families to the application stage, giving you more admission and enrollment opportunities in your next season.
Build an Enrollment Funnel
A marketing funnel helps businesses categorize different levels of audience understanding and how that affects them completing a transaction. For private K-12 schools, your audience will comprise of prospective students and families, and a complete transaction will be enrolling in your school.
Because there are many steps between discovering your school and enrollment, the funnel can help your marketing teams create content that moves families and students through each phase of the customer journey for higher success rates of submitting an application and getting enrolled.
Understanding and establishing your school’s enrollment funnel is essential because each phase reduces how many people proceed. Optimizing your funnel and content can help you generate better leads for your school and receive more applications for a stronger enrollment class.
In marketing, the funnel includes the following stages:
- Awareness: In this phase, your audience is just discovering your school. They have a specific need and are looking for solutions. For your school, they are looking for private schools for their child or themselves. Content in this part of the funnel should aim to educate people about your school and its values. You want to establish yourself as a credible and quality choice without being too persuasive and sales-oriented. Focus on building your brand and keeping individuals interested.
- Consideration: During the consideration phase, your audience knows more clearly what they want and compares options to find the best choice that aligns with their interests. Your prospective student might want various things from your school, from a quality and rigorous academic program to clubs and activities. Here, you should highlight what makes your school different, how you can prepare students for the future, and how you’ll meet their specific needs. Show them what your school offers that they can’t get anywhere else.
- Conversion: This stage marks you successfully convincing your audience that your school is right for them. Your prospective students will become part of your current student body as they enroll in your institution and families pay tuition for the year. This stage marks the completion of the transaction, but you should still target content toward them. New and existing students still have unique needs and concerns you can address, allowing you to maintain your audience and keep students throughout their education.
- Loyalty: In the final stage of the funnel, your audience becomes valuable marketing tools. They become loyal to your school alone, transforming them into powerful advocates you can use to target and convert those in other stages of the funnel. Parents and students can supply testimonials or become ambassadors for your school that you can post online and leverage on campus. They may even promote your school to friends and family members.
You have two separate audiences to consider as a school — students and families. Older students can conduct school research to find schools that meet their criteria, but they might vary from those of parents researching themselves. Students might care more about social aspects and what their friends think, whereas families will focus more on education quality and their future.
5 Digital Content Lead Generation Ideas for Private Schools
When developing your next school marketing campaigns, implementing lead generation strategies and strengthening your digital content can help you grow each funnel stage. With more people engaging at each step, you can create more competition for your school and increase enrollment for results that align with your goals and interests.
1. Diversify Blog Content
Your blog content can serve several audiences across each funnel stage. When trying to generate more student leads, you can reach more students and maintain interest with search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and organization techniques. Strong SEO skills will help boost your search engine results page (SERP) results, allowing your school and content to rank above others so more people can easily discover your school.
Many successful blogs target niche audiences and interests and provide navigational tools to help audiences find what they are looking for. Consider adding categories like academics or activities to your blog to help students and families learn more about your school and efficiently move through relevant topics.
2. Leverage Video Content
Video content and YouTube channels are excellent ways for students and families to continue exploring your school and better visualize learning with you. While your blog can cover ranging content, the visual nature of videos can expand your content options. You can offer virtual campus tours, show student and faculty presentations, and highlight school events.
Students and families can better understand your school’s culture and programs, helping them make informed decisions and feel more connected to your campus. This content type is also great when you want to target out-of-state students.
3. Use Online Forms
You need continual engagement to get parents and students to move along the funnel. Online forms are great ways to receive the essential personal information you can leverage to reach out and target audiences later. You use online forms in several situations and environments, allowing you to obtain information about audiences across your marketing funnel.
You can place contact forms at the end of blog pages, encouraging readers to reach out for more information or subscribe to email lists with pertinent dates and announcements. Additionally, you can deploy them at in-person events by having students and families sign in using tablets or computers. Online forms allow individuals to choose their engagement level while allowing schools to continue contact and maintain interest.
4. Create Opportunities to Talk With Students, Alumni, and Faculty
Online chats are powerful tools many businesses use to connect customers with employees. Individuals with specific problems might seek out competitors if they can’t find the answer on your website. Instead, chats give your audience a chance to stay on your site and get an answer from a reliable source.
When approaching the enrollment season, you can deploy online meetings and ambassador programs to connect prospective students and families with individuals knowledgeable about your school. Families can ask specific questions and get more information from your ambassadors while continuing engagement with your school. Your ambassadors might even exit conversations with vital information about your audience that you can leverage in future campaigns.
5. Deploy a CRM
A customer relationship management (CRM) solution helps organize customer information and automate operations to strengthen relationships and engagement. With this software, you can better understand your audience and how they prefer to interact with your institution, supporting lead-generation campaigns for schools.
A CRM can help schools organize student and family information, providing individualized pages and centralized databases so you can identify individual and overall needs. This solution will automate features and increase organization for quicker and more impactful interactions with students and families, strengthening your relationship with them and creating more positive experiences. When trying to increase leads, tracking your engagement and interactions is vital for successful campaigns and enrollment seasons.
Implement a Comprehensive CRM Solution for Schools With Ravenna
Ravenna can help you strengthen relationships and increase leads across every stage of the education marketing funnel with solutions for everything from admissions and application management to enrollment and tuition collection.
You can request a demo today to find out how Ravenna can help increase online engagement with prospective students and families.
