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Marketing Ideas to Boost School Admissions

July 18, 2024 | read
Boost admissions Blog header July 2024

While an independent or private K-12 school’s mission is to provide an exceptional education experience, these institutions also need to generate revenue and earn a profit. Like any enterprise that wishes to thrive and achieve long-term success, independent and private schools must attract customers (students and their families) who are willing to pay the tuition.

Private school administrators must craft effective independent and private school marketing strategies to reach prospective students and make their institutions stand out in a highly competitive field. Any marketing plan to increase student enrollment should include built-in flexibility to adapt to the evolving expectations of today’s families and your progress toward goals.

9 Effective Marketing Strategies to Increase Independent and Private School Admissions and Enrollment

The following tips can help you develop targeted strategies to draw more students to your K-12 school.

1. Maintain Consistent School Branding

Branding consistency helps improve brand recognition, so potential students and families can better remember your school and how they feel about it. When you want to increase your school’s enrollment, strong brand consistency can help keep your school in your audience’s mind.

Your branding standards apply to various brand elements, like your school messaging, colors, logos, and font. Your consistency needs to apply everywhere you post content, from your website and internal platforms to your social media pages, apps, and newsletters.

2. Evaluate and Upgrade Your Website

Like most businesses today, independent and private schools need a strong online presence to reach prospective students and families. Your school’s website should convey a professional image and perpetuate your institution’s brand identity. It should also be fast, responsive to mobile access, easy to navigate, interactive, and contain essential information regarding your curriculum, special programs, activities, and faculty.

A website can enhance your credibility and create a positive impression for prospective students and families. Integrating lead-generation software into the site can help you connect with interested families, current students, and alumni.

3. Stay Connected Through Social Media

Establishing a social media presence is essential for developing a following and promoting your school. Use social media marketing to post the latest news and information and communicate with students and families. Try to update your school’s status at least once daily to keep the content fresh and remain engaged with your audience.

If you’re unsure which social media platforms to use, survey your current students, their families, and your staff to determine the sites they most frequently visit.

Once you know what social media platforms you want to use, consider investing in paid advertising solutions to help reach your target audience. Coming up with creative school admission campaign ideas can help increase admissions. Consider your marketing strategies, tactics, slogans, or statements that have worked in your other marketing channels and incorporate them into your paid social efforts to increase applicants.

4. Brand Your School With a Mobile App

Mobile apps are great ways to communicate with current and potential students and families. Apps often allow push notifications, which enable individuals to see alerts on their lock screens for better visibility and reactions. School apps also have more advanced features to increase user experiences, like virtual school IDs and supply lists for back-to-school.

Like your other online pages, your app should follow strict branding standards that match your other public resources. By highlighting the branding features that make your school unique, you can help your app stand out against those of other schools. This option can help increase brand recognition and benefit families with students in multiple schools. When your app is visually unique, users can better locate it amongst the many others on their devices.

5. Use Word-of-Mouth Marketing

When choosing the perfect school, families greatly benefit from talking to others. Whether they receive a recommendation from friends and family members or talk to other families at your school, word-of-mouth marketing can powerfully impact your admissions and enrollment season.

Your school can foster these opportunities by offering ways for your interested families to interact and talk with current ones. Consider hosting open houses or ambassador programs to boost communication and conversation between families.

Some individuals prefer to do online research and referrals, so you can cater to these families by setting up a space where people can leave reviews or testimonials for your school.

6. Create Leads With Digital Marketing Campaigns

In an increasingly online world, having a strong online presence can strengthen your admissions and enrollment seasons. The right digital marketing campaign can make your school more competitive, so interested students and families can better find your school and online resources for more leads and conversions.

Some powerful digital marketing campaigns can include the following ideas:

  • Implementing search engine optimization (SEO): A school blog can be an excellent resource for families and students, helping them transition to an independent or private school or address other pain points. SEO is a set of guidelines that helps increase your page’s search engine results page (SERP) ranking. Aspects like keywords, headers, and linking practices impact your SERP ranking.
  • Launching email campaigns: Email campaigns can efficiently share information with your target audience. You can remind them of important upcoming events, like admissions deadlines or information sessions. Informative email campaigns like newsletters can update families with campus events, keeping them connected to your school community.
  • Developing strong landing pages: Your main information pages will likely get more traffic from interested students and families as they try to learn more about your school. Before the admissions and enrollment season, dedicate time to updating these pages with SEO practices to prioritize efficient information transfer, appealing visuals, and accuracy.

7. Stage a Community Event

Getting people in the door can generate interest in your school. Encourage families to visit and learn more about what you offer by hosting regular events like open houses, holiday parties, and bake sales. Administration and faculty members should attend to provide mingling opportunities and allow families to get to know your staff.

8. Establish Regular Communication With Families

In business, word-of-mouth advertising is an effective—and inexpensive—marketing tool. You can apply the same principle to your school’s marketing efforts by reaching out to your current students’ families via newsletters, email, and other communication platforms to keep them informed and excited about what’s happening at your school. They’ll likely provide a favorable review to their friends, family members, and business contacts searching for an excellent private school for their children.

9. Communicate School Safety Measures

Families want to send their students somewhere safe. Your technology can support and communicate this need to interested families looking for a secure school. Apps can alert families of potential problems for quicker reactions and contact. Your online site might outline the measures used to keep information and data safe, especially financial and personal data.

How to Increase Admissions in Schools With Ravenna

You can also attract more families to your school by providing a quick and straightforward admissions experience. From a centralized application platform to advanced relationship management, Ravenna equips schools to streamline the admissions process and enhance the family experience.

Nettie Reynolds

Nettie Reynolds

Nettie Reynolds serves as Senior Content Strategist for VenturEd Solutions. Prior to this role, Nettie was the Director of Development for Saints Peter and Paul Catholic School in New Braunfels, TX. She is a committed parent and supporter of private schools.

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