SchoolAdvancement (TM) Helping Schools Advance Toward Their Vision

MARKETING

Click here for this week's free marketing tip, Marketing Matters ^(SM)!

ENROLLMENT

Click here to find out more about BASICS - a FREE TOOL to help bring more students into your school! Enrollment Estimators (TM) are now available for the 12-13 school year!!

DEVELOPMENT

Development Development

A monthly article to help you form a development mindset from a fundraising one. Click here for this month's artilcle!. If you're already developed in Development, and want to advance toward an Advancement mindset, check out Advancementality:. Every week, a new post is made to advance your ability to attain an attitude necessary for Advancement.

PRESENTATIONS

Access to presentations given throughout the year can be found here!

* "Miracle Marketing" - For those in the Diocese of Harrisburg, click here to view or download the presentation. For those in the Diocese of Buffalo, click here to view or download the presentation.

* "Retention: The First Step To Growing Your Enrollment"

For those in the Diocese of Harrisburg, click here to download handouts from the presentation.

For those that attendend the NYSCIRS Conference in Albany, click here to download handouts from the presentation.

For those that attended the Alliance of Catholic Schools of Lancaster County, click here to download handouts from the presentation.

For those that attended the West Virginia Christian Education Association Conference, click here to download handouts from the presentation.

The Goal of Marketing is NOT to Increase Enrollment

It's my hope that when you read the title of this Marketing Matters column, you've said, "What? Then what is?" And you're continuing to read to see if I've completely lost my mind. Of course the goal of marketing your school is to increase enrollment! But the problem is that you've skipped a couple of steps, and went right from "faceoff" to "goal" with no stick handling, passing, or defense from the other team. Of course, sometimes that happens...a slapshot at the faceoff goes right past the goalie...but it doesn't happen often.

As you know, when some experts speak of "enrollment" or "admissions," it's oftentimes lumped together with "retention," since retained students + newly enrolled students = total enrollment (and my book on Retention and retention strategies will be available soon!). However, if you judge the effectiveness of marketing efforts by the number of new students enrolled in your school, you're lumping the marketing process and the enrollment process together, which makes increasing enrollment that much more difficult.

Then what is marketing? Marketing is EVERYTHING you do before a prospective customer comes in personal contact with your product or service. In a school's case, it's EVERYTHING the school does before a prospective parent comes in personal contact with the school. Advertising, public relations, brochures, Web site, publicity - even driving around with a bumper sticker on your car - is marketing. Marketing's goal - to increase the number of inquiries from prospective parents - NOT the number of new enrollments. Once a prospective parent has made an inquiry, the marketing process is over, and the enrollment process begins.

Marketing is everything you do to educate your parent before they've personally entered your school. Enrollment is everything you do to get them from that point to paying the enrollment fee to reserve a seat in your school.

If a parent calls a school and asks for more information, a school usually sends their "enrollment packet" - filled with all kinds of papers that have to be reviewed, analyzed, signed and returned, as well as regulations regarding dress code and conduct. The usual response - parents put it on the side until they have time to deal with it. Guess what - most of them don't have time - don't get around to it - and don't enroll their children in your school.

That's if you've taken the time to respond to their request. Recent experiments in calling schools for more information resulted in only half of the schools responding, and less than 10% following up with the family after the information was received.

"But that takes time!" you say. Absolutely! It's one of the reasons you need to automate your tuition collection process so you can free someone to have the time to do these tasks that are vital to your school's continued existence.

Mistake number one is sending an enrollment packet when a parent wants more information. Maybe they picked up your brochure and called; maybe they visited your Web site and just hit "contact us" to send you an email; maybe they were speaking to another parent, and decided to stop in on their way to another appointment. The repository for ALL your information about your school today should be your Web site. Therefore, when a parent requests "More information about your school," ask them to schedule an appointment for a tour where they can get all the information they need and all their questions answered. If they can't commit to an appointment time, then refer them back to your Web site. If they say they don't have a computer, then send them something that's going to bring them into the school to experience it - tickets to the school play or an invitation to an open house.

Mistake number two is thinking that a request for more information equates to an enrollment. Parents are looking at all educational choices available to them today - public (which includes charter schools), private and cyber. A good number of parents have college degrees today, which makes them eligible to homeschool their child too.

Of course, mistake number three is just not following up.

The goal of marketing - get parents in your school to experience it. You can give them all the facts about the school you want, and break tuition payments down to hourly rates...but until they experience your school, affecting their affective domain and touching their emotions, any enrollment growth you have is just a lucky shot on goal.