Category: Enrollment Marketing

In this session, marketing expert Stephanie Ristow joined Ashley MacQuarrie and Michael Barber for a discussion about hiring contractors and marketing freelancers. Watch the video or read the transcript below to hear about payment models, how pay-for-performance models work, and what to look for in contracts.

Join the experts as they answer all your questions live on Thursdays on YouTube at 10am PT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET. Charter School Capital – YouTube

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Michael B (00:00):

We’ve got to start that introduction again everyone was on mute, and I just turned everyone off mute, so that’s great. We’re getting this rolling again. I’m going to welcome everybody to our weekly Thursday lives on all things enrollment marketers, on enrollment marketing. My name is Michael Barber, and I’m joined by fearless co-host, Ashley McCrory, our director of enrollment marketing from Charter School Capital. We also have a guest with us today, our dear friend, Stephanie Ristow from Ristow Marketing. Stephanie, will you take a moment just to introduce yourself?

Stephanie R. (00:55):

Yeah. Hi, I’m Stephanie. I am a freelance consultant in marketing strategy and demand generation. I’ve worked at big brands like Nike, Microsoft, and WebMD, but have been in house and on the agency side, so happy to be here.

Michael B (01:11):

Glad you would join us. We thought we would invite you in for a conversation that I know you are uniquely talented to provide some insights to us. So Ashley and I want to talk all things essentially. How do you go about hiring either a freelance contractor, a freelance marketer, graphic designer, or agencies? What are the pricing models that school leaders should be interested or hearing from these sorts of resources? I’ve got some opinions. I know Ashley’s got some opinions. I know you will have a ton of opinions here, so that’s what we’re talking today, all things, hey, if you’re going to go out and get a contractor, or an agency, or resource to help you. What are the pricing models that you should expect to hear from these individuals or organizations, the pros, the cons? How should school leaders think about them?

(01:57):

So we’ll start with this. We’re going to tee up this question to Stephanie first, and would love just an answer to, hey, you’re looking to hire a contractor or hire an agency. What are the different investment models that those resources will propose for you? What’s out there?

Stephanie R. (02:15):

Yeah. Absolutely. I think the first decision is deciding if you want the backbone of a big agency behind you, which you’re going to pay more for, versus that scrappier, what I’ve always referred to as my duct tape network of freelancers, where there’s a little bit more nimble movements on changes in strategy and the work that’s happening. Things are a little bit cheaper. But you don’t have six brains behind the work necessarily. So the first step is making that decision. I would say for some of those bigger strategic projects where you just want to pass something over and know that it’s being done, that’s where the agency is often the right pick, unless you’ve found a really incredible freelance partner.

(03:04):

The scenarios that are easily suited to a freelancer or contractor are those specific tasks that you need to get done, that are really easy to scope, so design, copy, development, where you know exactly what you need and you’re willing to play a bigger role in managing that vendor. And to answer your question about the different pricing models, there’s retainers, and that’s really where you’re paying for the time that somebody’s putting in. But the real value you’re getting is that off hour thinking time that they’re giving you as your retainer vendor. Right?

(03:40):

I have a couple of retainer vendors or retainer clients, and if I’m in the shower washing my hair, you better believe that I’m thinking about those clients. And I’m not billing for my time in the shower, so that’s the added benefit. The other option is hourly, so that’s really well suited for you’ve got a specific design project or specific development project that needs to get done. And then the third is project based, and this is the safest realm for somebody that’s using a freelancer because you’ve put out exactly what you need. It’s a really defined scope. They’ve come back to you with a really specific price. You know what you’re going to spend and you know that you’re going to have the output at the end.

(04:20):

That’s a little harder to get to because a lot of times when you have a project you need done, you don’t know all of the components that you need done. And part of what you want to pay for is somebody to figure that out for you. But if you are in that sweet spot where it’s a really specific project or set of assets that you need, those project based contracts are a really safe bet.

Michael B (04:44):

Yeah. Really good overview of the three different pricing and investment options there, models. Another one to add to that mix that I know school leaders have been aware of because they’re seeing this in enrollment opportunities is performance based. Ashley, can you tell us about performance based and what that means from an enrollment perspective?

Ashley M. (05:03):

Yeah, absolutely. So performance based is what it sounds like. If your vendor doesn’t perform, you don’t pay for their services, or you only pay a small portion. So that’s one of the models that we have here at Charter School Capital for enrollment marketing clients. We have kind of a blended model where the client has maybe puts in a little bit of a base fee, a little skin in the game, and then also pays a smaller performance fee. And then we have completely pay for performance, and so we would take … When our goal is to drive enrollments, we take a baseline count. And at the beginning, we take an ending count at the end. And we figure out what the net gain or loss might’ve been. And we always hope that it’s gain, and it usually is. And then the client pays an amount for that net gain of students. And if we don’t go students, if enrollment stays flat, or if it declines due to retention issues or something like that, then sometimes the client doesn’t owe a fee at the end.

Michael B (06:15):

Yeah. So a couple good models there, investment opportunities there for charter school leaders to think about. I want to talk about [inaudible 00:06:22] just a little bit, just to break it down for somebody that maybe has not experienced any of these pricing models. Let’s go to retainers first and just what that means. Would love a breakdown from Ashley on the definition of retainers from your head.

Ashley M. (06:41):

I think Stephanie did a really good job of defining it. But yeah, it’s just usually you would agree to a flat amount. And Stephanie, typically when we have used retainers for vendors that we might work with at Charter School Capital, we do put some thought into kind of how much time we would expect that vendor to be spending, and so we try to estimate those hours. But we know that some months, maybe they don’t work that many hours. And then other months are a lot higher. And it all kind of averages out. And then like Stephanie said, you do get that offline time. Or they might be more likely to be responding to emails after hours than somebody who is working maybe hourly.

(07:24):

And when we work with hourly employee, with hourly contractors, a lot of times they are billing for every percentage of an hour. So 15 minutes writing an email or responding to Slacks, you’re going to get billed for that. And so then sometimes maybe your retainer would be a better option.

Michael B (07:41):

Yeah. It’s good insights there to think about that compare and contrast between hourly and a retainer model, and how either an agency, a group of individuals, whether it’s a small agency or a large agency, and contractors might bill you just to understand the difference there. Stephanie, anything to add around retainers that you’d love to add to the conversation?

Stephanie R. (08:05):

Yeah. That retainer person that you’re bringing on, so say it’s 10 hours a week, or 20 hours a week, they’re really an extension of your team. So it’s kind of like you’re hiring a person on your team, but only for a portion of that time. A couple of things to think about as you look at retainer contracts with potential freelancers is: Is it a use it or lose it model or do hours roll over? Are you buying specific days on their schedule? So is it that Tuesday and Wednesday, they’re always available for your school? Or is it before noon every day, they have earmarked for you?

(08:44):

And then just what that availability looks like and how they’re going to report out on their time. So there are some instances with a retainer where you’re just getting billed 15 or 20 hours a week. You’re getting reports on what is getting done, but the two things aren’t connecting. And then you’ll see other retainer agreements where in that monthly bill, there’s very specific hour by hour. So it depends on the retainer, it depends on the nature of the project that you’re doing, but it’s important to get really clear on expectations for that as you enter that engagement.

Michael B (09:18):

Yeah, such good thoughts there. Ashley, one of the things that we touched base on before we had this chat was just how to think about investment levels if you are going to go on some sort of performance based [inaudible 00:09:30], how much investment a school leader’s going to need to make on enrolling a potential student, and would love some just thoughts there of ranges you’ve seen in the marketplace of what it costs to help put a kid in your school.

Ashley M. (09:43):

Yeah. Well, for our product, enrollment marketing, it’s a small percentage of the amount that a school gets for each student from the state, and so that can vary depending on the state. In terms, if you’re doing it on your own and you’re kind of thinking about a performance model with another vendor or just kind of thinking through how much you want to spend, I mean, the cost to enroll a new student can vary really, really wildly, depending on the size of the school and kind of how many students you’re enrolling, the costs in your area, the effectiveness of your campaign. So we’ve seen everything, we’ve spent as an organization anywhere from 100-ish dollars for each new enrollment, to up to almost $1000 for a new enrollment. And so it just really depends. And so it’s a good idea to try to keep track of what you’re spending from retainer vendors, from your search campaigns, and all of the different marketing campaigns that you’re doing, and try to add that up and try to figure out what you’re spending.

(10:51):

And the other piece of it is: If you’re looking just at net enrollments, what about your retention? I feel like we always talk about retention every week, but it costs a lot more to enroll a new student than it does to keep an existing student. And the last thing to kind of look at is, you look at that cost per new enrollment, but if you look at how long that student stays with you, and how much you get from the state over five years, eight years, 12 years, that really adds up. And so you’re only spending that new enrollment cost once.

Michael B (11:26):

Yeah. It’s such a good point to think about the long-term value that filling your school with kids has for your school, predictable revenue. And as you think about how much it costs, hard costs, whether you’re managing this by yourself or whether you’re working with an agency or a contractor, would encourage school leaders to think about. What is that long-term value that comes out of spending those dollars to help fill your school? Because it’s going to look increasingly like a better return on investment when you look at it at the grade level that they’re entering into your program. So if you are a K through five, and they’re coming in at third grade, what is the value to your school for third, fourth, and fifth grade? If you’re all the way through K through eight, and they’re a kindergartner or a first grader, the eight years of revenue that’s going to drive for your school, so just a really important point there from Ashley.

(12:22):

So we’re hitting up on time. I want to ask just one additional question around all of these different models as it relates to retainers, hourly, fixed fee, and whatnot is cancellation clauses, which can be interesting for as you’re working through with different partners because there’s going to be a variety of them out there. It always becomes a conversation I think when you’re a consultant, or whether you’re working at an agency, clients ask these questions. School leaders ask these questions. What should school leaders be looking for when it comes to cancellation clauses? And I’m going to turn it over to Stephanie first.

Stephanie R. (13:00):

That’s a great question. So the important piece to make sure you have in your master services agreement, or MSA, with a new contractor is that there is a cancellation clause in there that is very clear what should happen if for whatever reason, the partnership isn’t working. And I say that because it’s a partnership. Right? There’s benefits and challenges on both sides in any relationship like that, and so making sure that if your funding doesn’t come through and you can no longer afford that person, or the vendor’s no longer delivering, in any of these scenarios, you have a ripcord, and making sure that it’s really clear on both sides.

(13:38):

I’ve seen a lot of … So a retainer agreement, it’s pretty typical to have a 30-day cancellation, so either party can say, “It’s not working.” Or for whatever reason, I can’t continue doing this retainer. And within 30 days, it closes down. But in project agreements or hourly, you still have to have it figured out. What happens if you’re midway through this project and they are not delivering on your expectations? What is the pull out there? And so there’s the clause in the contract to make sure that you’re not paying for things that you’re not using. But then there’s also what happens to all of the assets and deliverables and the individual components that they’ve been building or using?

(14:20):

So how are they getting all of that over to you? What are the requirements there? And then also, if there’s any sensitive information, personal identification information, how are they destroying that on their end so that you don’t have student information living on some random person’s computer for eternity? So making sure that you’re covering the assets, the data security, and your own financials.

Michael B (14:48):

Yeah. Such good points there. Ashley, anything to add on cancellation clauses?

Ashley M. (14:53):

Yeah. I mean, we’ve seen schools sometimes where they’ve got all these different vendors doing little pieces of all of their different services, all their different marketing campaigns. This person’s over here doing video. This person’s running social media. And this person’s doing paid. And sometimes we’ve seen clients find that it actually makes sense even if there’s a breakage fee, where they have an annual contract and they have to pay some fee if they exit that contract early. We’ve seen clients kind of do the math and say, “It actually makes sense for me, for example, to take all these different vendors and work with somebody who does all of that,” and actually exit those contracts.

(15:29):

But I think Stephanie makes a great point, and that’s something to always look for. We have seen, unfortunately, times where clients, the vendor wasn’t super helpful in giving them access to their assets or their social accounts and things like that. And so you definitely want to, if you are ending a contract, make sure you kind of know what’s going to happen so they don’t just shut it off. It can be a headache.

Michael B (15:56):

Yeah. We should do a whole session, maybe that’s in a couple of weeks, around how to work with external partners, make sure that your Google Workspace is set up correctly to work with them. Make sure Google Analytics is set up correctly. How do you share things out of Canva? How do you share things from different resources that you may be doing with an external partner? So maybe we’ll make that about the conversation in a couple of weeks because we’ve got some great shows coming up.

(16:19):

Next week, we’re going to talk all things SEO. And then I think the following week, correct me if I’m wrong, Ashley, we’re going to talk all things … Oh, my gosh. I’m blanking on the calendar, but I think it’s all things mission and vision. Where are we going the week after next?

Ashley M. (16:36):

I think we’re doing something, I’ll double-check. I think it might’ve been around video, but yeah, we’ll check.

Michael B (16:40):

All things video. We’ll assume that it’s video. In the meantime, I just want to give a quick shout out for this beauty that is in my hands. Sorry, I’ve got to make sure I’m moving in the right way. This is our Digital Marketing For Charter Schools guide. We just republished this brand new edition of this meaty beauty right here. I’m going to drop in the link in our live chat, so you can go grab that if you feel like grabbing this lovely guide that our team has put together on all things digital marketing. It even has some work pages in the back for you to leverage all the good lessons learned. You can go grab that from the URL that I just dropped into our chat. And I just want to thank our guest today. Stephanie, thanks for joining us. Appreciate you being here.

Stephanie R. (17:26):

Thanks for having me.

Michael B (17:28):

Of course. And my fearless co-host, Ashley, thanks again for making this happen this Thursday. And we will see you all next week on All Things SEO. Take care, everyone.

Ashley M. (17:39):

Thanks.

In this session, Ashley McQuarrie and Michael Barber celebrate their tenth EM Live session. Watch the video or read the transcript below to hear their answers to the top enrollment marketing questions they get from school leaders.

Watch the video or read the transcript below for more.

Join the experts as they answer all your questions live on Thursdays on YouTube at 10am PT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET. Charter School Capital – YouTube

Read Full Transcript

Michael B. (00:23): 

Hi, Ashley. And welcome to our 10th episode of All Things Enrollment Marketing, our weekly series every Thursday, 10:00 AM Pacific and 1:00 PM Eastern. As mentioned before, I’ve got my fearless companion with me for the last 10 episodes, our Director of Enrollment Marketing, Ashley MacQuarrie. Ashley, how are you? 

Ashley M (00:42): 

Doing well. I can’t believe it’s already been 10 episodes. How are you, Mike? 

Michael B. (00:46): 

I’m well, thanks. Yeah, 10 episodes. We’ve done 10 since what, about mid-December. So we’re doing pretty well on trying to keep this a weekly series. But we thought it would be fun for our 10th episode as a little celebration to revisit the top three questions over the next 10 minutes, unless we see some in the chat, which as usual, you’re more than welcome to throw in any enrollment marketing questions for Ashley or myself on the chat. It’s usually below the fold on your mobile app. If you’re joining us from your desktop, it’s on the right-hand side. We’re more than happy to answer questions. 

(01:21): 

But we will kick off with our first, our top question, which is why EM and why enrollment marketing, a decision right now now that we’re in the first week of March is such important timing for school leaders to be thinking about? So would love your thoughts there, Ashley, on why as we transition into what, day 54 or 55 of the year, what should school leaders be thinking about when it comes to enrollment marketing? 

Ashley M (01:49): 

Yeah. Well, for a lot of school leaders, enrollment has just opened. Some of our schools just opened enrollment, opened enrollment yesterday, actually. Some of our schools have had lotteries that ran maybe a couple weeks ago. And so now schools should start to have an idea of where they’re at in terms of interest for their school for fall, whether they found that their lottery, they’ve had more interest than ever in their lottery, and now they need to make a plan for following up with those folks. Or maybe they didn’t get the level of interest that they want, and maybe the open enrollment isn’t driving the numbers that they would necessarily expect. And so now they really need to put a plan in place for how they’re going to get those numbers up over the coming months. 

Michael B. (02:29): 

Yeah. I mean, you make such a good point. And I think the other thing to think about as a school leader is if you are going to be doing this by yourself or you’re going to be doing it with a partner. As you think about, there’s a lot of partners out there. We’re one of those partners. We really like to make sure we’re working with schools, you know this, by April 1st because that’s a big deadline for us on a number of fronts. 

(02:51): 

You have to start building stories and getting to know the school. If you’re going to be working with a partner, there’s things that have to happen before you start this process. So just would be really curious for your thoughts. If someone’s thinking about working with a partner, what sort of decisions they need to be thinking about in order to select, “Hey, am I going to do this on my own or is a partner going to help me?” 

Ashley M (03:12): 

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, you definitely need to have a sense of your bandwidth, a realistic assessment of how much time you actually have available. I mean, you need to make sure that you have a team in place who can follow up on those leads. And you have to remember that any partner, us included, they can get started pretty quickly. But if they’re going to do a good job, if they’re going to help you really define the stories that you’re going to tell and take a strategic approach and not just sort of scatter ads out there and hope for the best, it’s going to take a couple weeks. 

(03:43): 

So if we start in April, April 1st, you may not actually have really campaigns running at full steam for about a month. So that puts you to May. And so that’s why that April date is so important, or really the earlier, the better because if you’re going to take a strategic approach and if you’re going to have all the pieces in place that need to be there, there’s some time to get up and running. 

Michael B. (04:05): 

Yeah, for sure. We’ve got a few more viewers that have joined us over the last few minutes, so just wanted to say hello to all of you that have just come in and mention it is our 10th episode. So we are celebrating that 10th episode milestone by talking about our top three questions that we’ve received over the last few weeks on our weekly EM series here on YouTube Live. 

(04:24): 

We started that conversation on why at day 54 or 55 of the year, what should school leaders be thinking about when it comes to enrollment. And Ashley very intuitively talked just specifically about, hey, as you’re thinking about building those lists, as you’re thinking about building those waiting lists as you head towards next year, now’s the time that you’ve got to be putting programs in place to drive that interest and whatnot. So just such good insights there. 

(04:49): 

I want to ask a question. This is not one of the top three, so I’m going to put Ashley on the spot, but I know both of us are capable of having this conversation. But as you think about budgets, Ashley, that’s the other thing that school leaders are thinking about as they get into that March, April, May, June timing. They’re starting to think about next year’s fiscal for budgets. And often, you and I have had conversations with school leaders about how they should be thinking about an enrollment marketing budget. 

(05:14): 

And I want to couch this question with a little bit of a sort of lead the answer, if you will, but often we see those budgets as a budget number that is lower than what they probably should be spending. And I know the conversation you and I often have with school leaders is you have to think about the money that you’re putting into enrollment marketing as what the value that’s going to come out of it, which hopefully, is net growth in the amount of students, amount of kids that you’re serving. 

(05:46): 

And so just would be really curious as how do you guide a school leader for this budget conversation that it’s not just about, hey, thinking about just a percentage of your annual budget, it’s about thinking about the value that an additional kid from a headcount perspective brings to your school? 

Ashley M (06:06): 

Yeah, yeah, that’s really the right way to think about it because that individual kid that signs on for 2023, I mean, they could be with you for years and years and you’ve only spent that budget once to bring them into your school. 

(06:20): 

So I mean, I think when you think about, we do often see schools that maybe don’t understand how much it costs to do these things. If you’re doing it on your own, then you’ve got to find these other vendors to run campaigns. You’ve got to find designers and website developers and all of that stuff. And all of that can really add up. 

(06:40): 

And the other thing to be aware of is that costs, especially digital ads, they fluctuate throughout the year. So you might start out spending a lot of money at the beginning and find that you’ve exhausted your budget by summer when costs go up and you’re competing with all the other schools. Election cycles can also drive costs up, Christmas shopping, all of that kind of stuff. 

(07:00): 

And so you do need to take that budget and kind of spread it out and look at it, okay, if I have this number and I need it to go for six months, is that enough? And you think about all the things that you want to do, and you can do some quick math on what are yard signs cost, and what are postcards going to cost? And you might find that it’s probably not going to be, it may not be enough. 

Michael B. (07:20): 

Yeah. And on the question of timing too, this gets back to timing is as you’ve named some of the things that you want school leaders to be thinking about, yard signs, T-shirts, polos, uniforms, all of these things have supply chains that have been very, very challenging over the last couple of years and continue to be. And so as you’re thinking about timing at this moment in March, now is the time to be making some decisions as a school leader because you have no idea potentially what those printing timelines are going to look like, potentially what those production times are going to look like for anything that you’d need to help start your enrollment marketing effort. So just some other things to think about. 

(07:57): 

Okay. Question number two that we’ve gotten quite a bit is if there were three things you would tell a school leader to focus on when it comes to enrollment marketing, what are those three things and why? 

Ashley M (08:09): 

Yeah. Well, I would start with, and we kind of talked about this a little bit before, I would start with story, your story, your presence. What stories do you want to tell on social media? What stories are the people that schools talk to, your school staff are telling when families visit them at the school? 

(08:30): 

So really define those and get sharp on what those are and what your presence looks like, what your messaging is. That carries over into the website. That’s kind of the second thing that you really need to work on. Your website needs to reflect those stories. It needs to reflect that image, and it needs to be functional, usable. And it’s something that takes a lot of time. So it’s something you want to start early on, again. 

(08:58): 

Other things that go into your website, like search engine optimization, we put that stuff in place as early as possible because we know that it builds over time. And so if we put that work in in February, we might start to see it starting to pay off in May. But if you wait to do it until May, it may not actually help you this year. It’s still worth the investment, but it’s something that builds. 

(09:20): 

And then the last piece is how people get in touch with you. So I love an interest form. Take a look at your forms, make sure that you have your online application that gets you the information you need is in compliance with your district, but also make sure that you have a short interest form for people to just take that first step and give you just a little bit of info that you can follow up on. Make sure that it’s real easy to figure out how to get in touch with you. And make sure that you’re following up and, hopefully, keeping track of those leads and that interest as it comes in. 

Michael B. (09:52): 

That’s awesome. So top three things, story, website, how you’re converting that person in an interest form. And you heard all the best practices here from Ashley. 

(10:02): 

In true celebratory style, it’s our 10th episode and we have the most concurrent viewers live that we’ve ever had before. So I’m really proud of that for the both of us because we’ve been plugging away on doing this every single week for the past few months. So we can have a little pat on the back for both of us there. 

(10:18): 

For those that are joining You, we do this every week, Thursday, 10:00 AM Pacific. Some weeks we do it on different days, and that will probably be coming a reoccurring theme because we’ve got some exciting episodes coming up where we want to do some live conversations at conferences and whatnot. But we do this every Thursday usually, 10 minutes on a Thursday, 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern, and all the time zones in between. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel. You’ll get alerts if you’d like to get those alerts when we’re going live. 

(10:46): 

Otherwise, feel free to hop in here whenever you want to and take a listen, maybe on your drive-in or you’re heading on the train with your cup of coffee in the morning and ask us questions here. We refer back to a lot of those questions, even if they’re not live. So if you’ve got questions and you’re watching this tomorrow or in a month or in a year, Ashley and I are around to answer those questions too. 

(11:06): 

We’re about 11 minutes in, so we’re going to try and keep it to our 10-minute threshold. But I have one last question. One question that we talked about with one of our designing partners, our design partner is Niki Blaker, was what’s the importance of brand? Why does a charter school need a brand? And I would love your thoughts there, Ashley, as succinctly as possible given we’re up on this 10-minute mark. 

Ashley M (11:30): 

Yeah. I mean, I’m just going to just steal what Nikki said. I’ve used it since we had that conversation, and it’s just is it the same school when they come meet you that they saw elsewhere? Does everything that represents your school from your signage, your building, your swag, your uniforms, your website, your social media, does it all look like the same school? That’s just so important. That’s really what brand is all about. 

Michael B. (11:53): 

Yep. Nailed it. I love that insight. Okay, we’ll wrap it up there because we’re at minute 12. Thanks, Ashley, again for taking the time to join us on our Thursday weekly discussion on All Things Enrollment Marketing. 

(12:05): 

Want to tell everyone that’s joining us live, we have nine other episodes covering a variety of topics. Ashley and I have talked about the importance of EM, timing that school leaders should be thinking about when it comes to enrollment marketing on episodes one, two, and three. We covered the top marketing tactics I think in episode four. We’ve had two of our enrollment marketing project managers, Betsy Roberts and Sarah Scheel on our episodes talking about the importance of signage and direct mail and how you nurture relationships with families. And either on episode seven or eight, and I’m sure I’m getting them confused at this point, we had our dear friend, Niki Blaker from Five Sigma, who’s one of our design partners, who talked about all things brand and creative. So we’re really starting to touch on some of the major things that school leaders need to be thinking about when it comes to enrollment marketing. 

(12:55): 

So it’s been a fun 10 episodes. Can’t wait for the next 10. On that note, Ashley and I, we will be back next Thursday right here in our home offices as you see here. The following Thursday, we will be in Sacramento for the California Charter Schools Conference. We are going to do this live right from the conference in our open-space initiative where we’re welcoming California school leaders into a discussion on a ton of different topics right next to our booth. We’ll be in booth 200. We don’t know timing yet, but we’ll put it up on our YouTube page. It’ll either be Tuesday or Wednesday. So we will not have an episode in two weeks on our usual Thursday time. 

(13:39): 

But if you hit subscribe on our channel, you’ll get those notifications. And we look forward to seeing you all live next week, next Thursday, 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern. And then the following week we will be in Sacramento and maybe we’ll try and find a California charter school leader to come join us for the conversation because we know a couple of those people. Maybe we can get a charter school leader to come join us and sit in the hot seat with us. So we’ll look forward to that. As always, thanks to everyone for joining us and we’ll see you next week. Take care. Bye. 

Ashley M (14:09): 

Thanks. 

In this session, Ashley McQuarrie and Sarah Scheel joined Michael Barber to discuss how to keep families engaged after they’ve enrolled in your school. You’ve done the work, you’ve got them to the tour, you’ve done your ground game, and they’ve decided to enroll. Now what? It can often be months from the time that the families enroll to when they’re starting school. Here’s where staying engaged is key. The answer lies in ongoing communication: social media, newsletters, and emails.

Watch the video or read the transcript below for more.

Join the experts as they answer all your questions live on Thursdays on YouTube at 10am PT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET. Charter School Capital – YouTube

Read full transcript here:

Michael B (00:15):

All right. Hi everyone. I’ve got everybody off mute, got everybody on the screen, and we are rolling. Welcome back to our every Thursday conversation on all things enrollment marketing. I know it’s Tuesday. It is not Thursday. We shifted this conversation last week due to some personal challenges with the crew that you see in front of you, so we appreciate your flexibility. And I’m really happy to be joined by two of my colleagues this morning, a new face, Sarah Scheel. Welcome to our Thursday Live, Sarah, thanks for joining us.

Sarah S. (00:46):

Hi, I am excited to be here.

Michael B (00:47):

Sarah’s a project manager on our enrollment marketing team. And we’ve also got my fearless companion, who’s back like she is every other week, Ashley MacQuarrie. Ashley, welcome back, and thanks for being here.

Ashley M (00:59):

Thanks, Michael.

Michael B (01:00):

All right, we’re going to hop right in to some topics. We’re going to talk specifically, kick it off this morning with a question around how to keep per perspective families engaged with your school. We’ve had some discussions about this topic, about, hey, you’ve got a relationship with a family. You’ve driven them to some sort of form, they’ve converted them. How do you keep having those conversations so eventually they decide to enroll in your school? I’m teeing that question up to start over to Sarah.

Sarah S. (01:28):

Yeah, thank you. I think this is a really exciting part of the process, right? Because you’ve done the work. You’ve got them to the tour, you’ve done your ground game, and they’ve decided to enroll. And sort of now what? We know that can often be months before school starts from the time that the families enrolled to when they’re starting school. And we often know that families will enroll in more than one school sometimes. So this is where I think is an important part to keep staying in front of those families and be engaged with them. And one of my favorite ways to do this is ongoing communication. And this can be social media. I know we all know Facebook, but I got to say it. It’s free. It’s easy. It’s a great way to share, in real time, what’s going on at the school, photos. Newsletters, and emails, I love this one. This is a way I think you can really bring in new families to your school community and kind of peel back that curtain a little bit, right?

(02:37):

Because these families, maybe they’ve done a tour or they came to an open house, but they haven’t really begun to engage with the school community yet. And you don’t want to overthink what’s in the newsletter. It could be a message from the principal, it could be, here’s an activity that we did,” or here’s like a service that we have for you. We have a really low counselor at a student ratio or something. And just let them know what they can expect when they come to your school. And I think that this could apply to existing families as well, right? It doesn’t just have to be for new families. And I think that it’s a great way to have them feel like they’re part of your community when they maybe haven’t had the chance to do that yet.

Michael B (03:28):

Ashley, any additional thoughts there you want to add?

Ashley M (03:32):

Yeah. I think what Sarah said too about not ignoring your current families and this be a great tool for your current families as well. That ongoing communication through the spring and summer can really help. You never know, sometimes your families might be considering a switch, and so reminding them kind of your importance to your community and all of the things that you offer through the spring and the summertime, I think can also help with retaining maybe returning families, in addition to those families who are choosing you for the first time.

Michael B (04:03):

Yeah, for sure. Can you talk about specifically how to leverage community events like open houses and their importance to keeping families engaged? And I’ll turn the question to Sarah first.

Sarah S. (04:14):

Yeah. I’m glad you brought that up because I think that being present in your community is really important. And this can be the open house, but it can also be out and about. Does your community have a summer concert series that lots of families are at, or is there an opportunity to get involved with a fun fair that comes to town every summer? Meet your families and potential families where they are and be a member of your community. And I think people will really be… They’ll be impressed by that, and they’ll recognize that. And they’ll think, “Oh look, they’re out here and this is so exciting. I’m getting a chance to have this in-depth conversation that I didn’t get to have earlier,” or maybe get that teacher in a one-on-one. Same for open houses.

(04:59):

I know as a parent, any opportunity that I get to step into my child’s school or classroom, it’s always so eye-opening and I appreciate it so much because you’re not attending the school, you don’t get to go every day. So yeah, I think that it’s very important to have those open houses and to look for opportunities to get out and be part of your community.

Michael B (05:22):

What are some of the ways, whether they’re at a community event or whether they’re at an open house, that you can build that relationship with a prospective family? Sarah, would love some thoughts there from you.

Sarah S. (05:35):

Yeah. I think it can be really effective to have some kind of activity, something to sort of draw people in. And depending on the age group of the students in your school, you can come up with a fun kind of themed activity for those ages, a STEM activity, if a STEM school or prize wheels. It doesn’t have to be anything over the top, but just something to get them to come up and be engaged. And then once you’ve got them there, really important to have some kind of takeaway. Is it a piece of swag? Is it a flyer that you’ve created? And a way to capture leads too. Have a pen and paper, have some way for those people to leave more information to be contacted if they want to, and give them something to take away.

Michael B (06:21):

Yeah, such good thoughts there, for sure. One question related to open houses. We talk a lot about open houses as being a way to drive prospective families, but I would imagine it’s probably a great tactic to have current families there, and also just open up the school at those moments where you are bringing in perspective families to also invite back current families because there may be improvements that you’ve made to the school, there could be something you want to show off, but also those conversations that could happen with current families across perspective families. Can you talk about how you can… And I’ll turn this to Ashley first and we’ll come back to Sarah. Have you seen schools bring in current families to open houses as well? And how have they’ve done that?

Ashley M (07:03):

Yeah, and we use open house kind of interchangeably to talk about both prospective families and current families. But we know a lot of schools, when they talk about open houses, they’re talking about that event that happens after school has started and the fall, and it’s the first opportunity for parents to chat with their kids teachers and learn about what’s going on. But we’re kind of talking about these opening up the school and just welcoming the community in. And absolutely, getting returning families to participate as well, I think is a great idea. Parents want to hear from other parents. I think another tactic we see what schools actually use for tours that I think you could use an open house. We were talking their PM, or a writer on our team who said that when a school has a student lead a tour of the school, it makes them just feel-

Michael B (07:49):

That’s good idea.

Ashley M (07:50):

… so excited about the school, and yes, I want my kid to go here. And so if there’s a way to incorporate students into your open house and have them talk a little bit about the school or have them lead a little walkthrough of the campus, I think that’s a great idea, because the kids are going to resonate with it. The parents are going to love it. It’s adorable. Why not?

Michael B (08:08):

Yeah, for sure. Any other thoughts there, Sarah, about making sure you’ve got current families that at open houses to foster those relationships with prospective families?

Sarah S. (08:17):

Yeah, no, I agree with everything Ashley said. I think that, like we said, open house is kind of a loose term. And it could be an art show or a ice cream social or any kind of event that brings families together, because we also know that word of mouth is so important. And if you’re a new family and you’ve been invited to attend a ice cream social in the springtime at your new school and you get a chance to meet other parents, who’s not going to love that? And it’s a really easy way to bring the new families in and have them feel like, “Oh, they can meet people and it’s a social event. And like I said, it just keeps coming back to that building community, having parents feel like they’re involved in the school and that they’re not just sending their kids off to a vacuum. It’s a community and they’re part of it, and they’re invited to be there. And it can look different for every school. These are just some ideas that come to mind.

Michael B (09:11):

For sure. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate those thoughts. Okay. I want to want to tee this up to the viewers that we’ve got live. If you’ve got any questions for Sarah or Ashley, we’d love to have them in the chat. Feel free to drop them in there. If you’re on YouTube on your desktop or your Mac or laptop, the chat’s on the right hand side. If you are on a mobile device, it’s usually below the fold. So tap right in there and if you’ve got any questions. Otherwise, I’m going to ask my token ending question that we have wrapped up with a couple of guests, why enrollment marketing is so important for schools. I’m going to tee this up to Sarah first and say, tell us why enrollment is so important, or if you’ve got one tip that you want to make sure you leave school leaders with, we’d love to hear that as well.

Sarah S. (09:59):

Okay. Well, I think that enrollment marketing is important because I work really closely with schools and school leaders, and it’s a busy job and there’s a lot going on. And sometimes enrollment and marketing isn’t always top of mind, but like we talked about, building that sense of community and outreaching to new families is so important, but it’s also easy to let it go by the wayside. So I think having a dedicated team that’s going to help you with that and constantly every day be thinking about how can I drive students to this school is going to make it so much easier for a school leader to do their job and focus on what they do best, which is teaching the students.

Michael B (10:39):

Yeah, it’s such an important point about making sure you’ve got that focus on your students, on your mission, bringing that mission to life each and every day. And enrollment, just like education and marketing in general, is having changes that are happening. Any number of changes that are happening on a daily basis and having an expert that can help guide you is going to likely save you money, likely save you time, likely save you frustration, and hopefully make sure that there are kids in your school that were not there before. So I turn this back over to Ashley for her thoughts on, hey, why EM? Or if you’ve got, and I used an abbreviation there. I shouldn’t. Why enrollment marketing, or one tip that you want to leave our school leaders with this week?

Ashley M (11:25):

I think what Sarah said, and what you said actually, you need new kids to keep your school alive. You need new kids. And also, you need new families and students who can really breathe new life into your school community and keep it thriving and vibrant. And a lot of schools, you might be able to get by just replacing your graduating class every year without doing a lot of work. But if you want your school to grow and you want to serve more kids, you’re going to have to get out there and meet them where they are and give them the kind of messaging and information that they’re looking for to choose your school. It’s not just going to happen organically necessarily.

Michael B (12:06):

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well we’ve gone 12 minutes, so we’re over by two. I want to be respectful of all our viewers’ time and my colleagues’ time, Sarah and Ashley here. So we’ll wrap it up. I just want to let you know we’ve had some great conversations. This is episode nine of our series. Already can’t believe we’ve done this nine times. The weeks are flying by. I think I noted in the team chat yesterday, day 53 of the year already, just insane to think we’re that far through the year. But we’ll be back on Thursday. Ashley, and I’ll be back on Thursday for episode 10. We’ve also got some great EPIs past episodes with one of our graphic designers, Nikki, on all things branding. I would encourage you to check out that. We had our friend Tony Solorzano join us, one of our client services reps who engages with a lot of our school leaders on the efforts we work with whim.

(12:55):

And he gave just such good advice for school leaders to think about as it relates to enrollment marketing. So I would encourage you to check out episodes one through eight. There’s tons of great knowledge there for you to have at. Otherwise, we will see you in two days on Thursday at a different time. We usually do this at 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern, but we’re making up for last week’s episode because of some personal challenges. So we appreciate you coming back to all of us that joined us. And hey Sarah, thanks for taking the time to join us this week. We really appreciate it.

Sarah S. (13:25):

Oh, I loved being here. Thanks for having me.

Michael B (13:27):

Awesome. And Ashley as always, thank you again for being here. We’ll see y’all on Thursday. Thanks. Take care, y’all.

Ashley M (13:33):

Thanks.

Sarah S. (13:33):

Bye.

In this session, Ashley McQuarrie and Tony Solorzano joined Michael Barber to discuss what school leaders can be thinking about at this time of year to increase and steady enrollment. They spoke about retention, socioeconomic shifts, and social media. Join the experts as they answer all your questions live on Thursdays on YouTube at 10am PT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET. Charter School Capital – YouTube

Note: In this week’s transcript below, you’ll see that YouTube had an issue with sound for the first five minutes. The speakers were able to recap what they covered once sound was restored.

Read full transcript here:

(Technical difficulties from 00:00 – 04:56)

Ashley M (04:57):

… even worked with last year. Some of them are already seeing interest, and interest in their lottery already is up way over where it was this time last year before we were working with them. That’s something that I’ve been hearing from some of the returning schools who have just started back up. So the groundwork we laid early in the season or last season is still paying off for them longer term.

(05:22):

And then the other things that I’m hearing are just kind of what we hear every year, which is word of mouth used to be enough, but it’s not really anymore. Or maybe they’ve worked with marketing agencies in the past who aren’t specific to schools and they haven’t seen the results that they would like. Those are some of the common things that we hear.

Michael B (05:45):

Got it. I want to just welcome everyone in. We’ve got a few viewers that just let us know, it sounds like YouTube had a little glitch with some of our audio, so they heard Ashley’s answer to this question related to what are you hearing from school leaders. But I want to turn it back to Tony really quickly because I thought your answer was super insightful. And let me just lay the groundwork just in case we have new viewers. This is our weekly enrollment marketing series, all things enrollment on YouTube. You’ve got my fearless companion who’s here every single week, Ashley MacQuarrie, our director of enrollment marketing. And although you didn’t hear Tony’s fabulous intro, Tony works with charter school leaders across the southwest on helping them with challenges related to money to run, money to buy, and kids to fill their schools. Tony, so I’ll point this right back to you for just a quick second and ask, what are you hearing from school leaders as it relates to enrollment this second week of February?

Tony S. (06:41):

Yeah, again, it’s that enrollment is down across the board. It doesn’t matter if it’s a more rural school, if it’s a [inaudible 00:06:50] school, if it’s a traditional elementary school in a city center, it’s just been tough to recapture the enrollment loss that we’ve had during COVID. One interesting fact that I heard from a school just a couple of days ago that I was chatting with is that they’ve noticed their third grade is the lowest grade that they have at the moment. And if you think to, okay, great, we’re about three years into this pandemic, those would’ve been kindergartners in first-graders that are now making their way through the system, and those students have yet to totally return back. So just kind of a interesting little tidbit that I’ve seen.

Michael B (07:28):

This question is for both of you, I’ll point it to Ashley first and then, Tony, would love your perspective. Does it feel like it’s a retention challenge or are these students going elsewhere? Are they making different choices? We’re obviously dealing with challenges of kids even getting to school in many markets because of any number of personal challenges that they may be facing. But what might be driving this shift in enrollment from a decrease? And I’ll ask Ashley first for perspective there.

Ashley M (07:57):

Yeah, I think a lot of it is retention. It’s funny what Tony said about hearing about that third grade class. It reminds me of what we heard from schools last season who said, our second grade class is where we have the lowest enrollment because those were kindergartners two years ago. So it’s just a trend that we’re seeing and then it’s kind of continuing.

(08:17):

Definitely a retention. We hear a lot of [inaudible 00:08:22] especially in higher cost of living areas. The communities have changed, people are leaving [inaudible 00:08:28] more expensive metro areas, and those schools maybe are suffering. Sometimes it does go the other way where we see schools in lower cost of living areas [inaudible 00:08:40] a lot, but certainly schools who serve a higher students with greater needs and maybe more economic challenges, they’re seeing more of the retention challenges because those families just are struggling.

Michael B (08:57):

Tony, any thoughts there?

Tony S. (08:59):

Yeah, I don’t think this is a secret or any major revelation, but I always see the retention issue taking hold at school levels where we start to change teaching methods, meaning going from an elementary to a middle school or a middle school to a high school. Oftentimes I hear of our school struggling to maintain students even if they offer K-8 or K-12, when they get to those pivotal times in a child’s life, the family may look for an alternative.

Michael B (09:32):

Yeah, that’s great insights to see where the shifts are happening from kids leaving metro markets, kids and families making different choices as to what type of education they want. And I think it just speaks to a lot of the conversations that we’ve had, Ashley, about how enrollment is a year long effort. This isn’t something that you can think about from a seasonal perspective, although even as us, we approach that conversation with school leaders as it being seasonal because it is to obviously hit attendance numbers on a yearly basis, but that school leaders have to think about enrollment marketing all throughout the year, and they have to continue. The more they can cognitively decide that this is something I’m going to invest in all throughout the year, the better impact that they’ll have related to ensuring that they’re hitting their attendance goals or heading in that growth direction that they want to go. Just some thoughts there about why we have to make sure that we’re making these investments every single day of every single month, rather than thinking of it just seasonally.

Ashley M (10:34):

Yeah, I mean, totally. You’re right. You’re spot on. I mean it’s a year long effort for sure, and even multi-year. I think it’s really important, what we hear sometimes with schools is they focus on those entry grades, they focus on kindergarten, they focus on sixth grade, they focus on ninth grade if they’re a high school. And a lot of times we don’t have much of a challenge in filling those younger grades because those are natural entry points. But what we see a lot of times is maybe third, fourth grade, they start losing students. Seventh grade, we see a lot of student… We’ll see that grade decline even as the overall school goes up sometimes. And then maybe eighth, ninth grade, especially if a school doesn’t offer sports, for example. We see high schools sometimes lose those students.

(11:20):

So it’s really important that you focus on getting those new students at those early entry grades. But those are sometimes easier students to get. So don’t ignore trying to both get new enrollments of maybe transfer students who are coming in at a higher grade, or make sure that your returning students really understand why they chose that school, why it’s the right school for them, the benefits of staying at their same school rather than switching.

Michael B (11:45):

Great. I want to turn the conversation to some tactical questions, and we’ve got about a couple… We’ll stay on for an extra minute or two, just because of the audio challenges at the beginning. I was looking at some data from a couple of our schools, Ashley, you allow me to poke around performance and some of the metrics we get from schools. And it feels like really one of the things that I took from just casually looking for 15 to 20 minutes yesterday was that video is really having an impact this year on the enrollment efforts for schools, particularly from places like TikTok, places like YouTube and whatnot. I would just love your perspective of what do school leaders need to think about when it comes to video and making sure that they’re in the places where kids and/or families may be looking for this sort of content?

Ashley M (12:36):

Yeah. I think videos, we’ve just seen a huge spike in the amount of traffic that we can send from video. I think, previously, it was we started out kind of testing the waters, and now we have to dive in because it’s really working. It’s not necessarily a huge driver of conversion, but in terms of awareness, so if you’re between, do I want to spend on a billboard or do I want to produce a video and maybe put that on YouTube just to reach a big audience? I would maybe invest in video more and more. And then TikTok. Yeah, I mean we tested that last year. We ran a very short-term campaign, maybe a month or two on TikTok versus 10 months, 12 months of social media ads. And in just that short time, more than 10% of our website traffic from social media came from TikTok. Still 90% from Facebook, but in a month, that we were really surprised to see how many people engaged with TikTok and then clicked over to the website to learn more.

Michael B (13:36):

Yeah, I think the interesting thing is how do schools think about that? It might be beneficial for us to start unpacking, if the challenge is conversion on a landing page, maybe we also think about how we bring in video. So you continue that sort of conversation right on the landing page, and how do you convert that interest is something I’m really excited to see how the team’s going to handle in the coming months and years.

(14:03):

I’m going to make one last plug for any questions. We’ve got a few people that are live with us today on YouTube, so if you’ve got questions, you’ve got 60 seconds to drop into the YouTube chat. Again, on the right-hand side if you’re on desktop, or below the fold if you’re on your mobile phone. And we’ll wrap up with one last question for both of you. And that’s, you’re having a conversation with a new school leader about enrollment marketing and its importance. What’s the one sentence that you give to that school leader about why they should be investing in enrollment marketing? And I’m going to turn it to Ashley, because I know she has these conversations almost every single day with school leaders. So we’ll let Ashley say her answer first.

Ashley M (14:48):

Well, I mean, I think it’s worth investing in enrollment marketing because for every dollar that you invest in driving a new student, if you retain that student, I mean, just in terms of money to run your school, it pays off, I mean, 10s, 100s. In terms of keeping that student from kindergarten through 12th grade, you invest in attracting them once and they sustain your school for years and years. So I mean, I think in terms of dollar and cents, it just makes a lot of sense.

Michael B (15:25):

Tony, would love your answer. And I do have a really great question that just popped up, so I want you to all just stick around for a minute or two while we answer that question. But to Tony, what’s the one sentence? Why invest in enrollment efforts?

Tony S. (15:37):

Yeah. Because if you are not investing, somebody else is. And they’re then reaching the students that you want to reach as well. And unfortunately, it’s the sad reality that there’s a lot of competition out there, and there’s only one way to ensure that your name gets out there early and often, and that’s to invest. It’s more than one sentence.

Michael B (15:56):

Great answer, for sure. Okay, let me… That is more than one sentence. We’ll let you go a little bit because this is your first time on our YouTube live series. We’ll let it slip this time, not next time though. Okay. I have a question for you, and this question’s actually really good for Ashley, and I’d love Tony’s perspective as well, because we have done this for school leaders. So as someone is starting their charter school, they’re in that phase of getting their charter and they need to generate students that are interested. Have you done any type of advertising to increase parent and student engagement interests? In other words, priming the pump to get an idea of if there is an interest in a school, specific type of school, specific type of curriculum. My head immediately goes to someone who we’re big fans of, and that’s Dr. Ramona Bishop at Elite, Solano. We worked with her to really sort of prime the pump. Would love your thoughts on what’s impactful for new schools that haven’t launched yet to drive interest in their school?

Ashley M (17:02):

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s kind of twofold. I mean, with that kind of thing, it’s less really about conversions and more about awareness and engagement with your community. So I mean, we see that just getting out in the community, talking to as many parents as you can, inviting parents to share what they’re looking for, what’s important to them in their child’s education. Having some early cheerleaders to go out and talk to their friends about this potential school option. And then probably just some higher level awareness about a new school option with a way to capture, yeah, I’d be interested in learning more. But it’s still important to have the basics, like a website that is really clear on what your core values, what you offer, has those stories to get some interest from parents so they have something to look at.

Tony S. (17:56):

And I’ll quickly put my-

Michael B (17:58):

Yeah, I mean, I think that… Oh, go-

Tony S. (17:58):

Oh, go ahead, Michael.

Michael B (17:58):

Go, Tony. Go. Go.

Tony S. (18:00):

I’ll put my board governance hat on for this one and say, and don’t neglect how you structure your board as it relates to getting the word out into the community. Your board of directors will shift as you age in a charter school. So that early stage is a great opportunity to have those community influencers and those parents with a large reach on that board to help spread the word as you kick off into those pivotal year zero and year one time periods.

Ashley M (18:27):

That’s a great point. Yeah.

Michael B (18:29):

Yeah, such a good point. All right, we’re over time. We’ve been a little bit more generous on the 10 minutes because of the audio, so we’re going to wrap it up for today. I’m going to drop into our YouTube chat ways you can connect with Tony, dropped in your LinkedIn URL, Tony, for you. So if you get a few connections, you’ll know it’s coming from our conversation today. But please feel free to connect with Tony if you’ve got additional questions or want to talk with our team. From here, I just want to let you know we’re taking a little break next week. We will not have our weekly series next week. We’ll be back the following week with a couple additional perspectives on all things enrollment marketing. As always, we’re thankful you’re here and appreciate the time. And Tony, we appreciate you joining us today.

Tony S. (19:14):

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Michael B (19:16):

Thanks everyone. Have a good week.

Join the experts as they answer all your questions live on Thursdays on YouTube at 10am PT / 12pm CT / 1pm ET. Charter School Capital – YouTube

In this week’s session, Michael Barber spoke with experts Niki Blaker and Ashley MacQuarrie about logos, colors, and what to keep in mind when it comes to  design and charter schools. “If you think about the most successful logos, they’re really simple forms,” she told this week’s viewers of YouTube Live, “What matters more is how the logo functions across all your materials.”

What about colors? How should charter schools choose them? How might different colors be suited to a performing arts school versus a STEM-focused school? Watch the video below or read the transcript for more tips!

Read Full Transcript

Michael B (00:26):

Well, hi, everyone. Welcome back to our Thursday EM Live 10 Minute Chats on Thursday mornings or afternoon, wherever you are in the world on all things enrollment marketing. My name is Michael Barber and I’m your host. As usual, I have my colleague as usual. Ashley MacQuarrie is here today with us who’s our director of enrollment marketing, and we have a special guest. Will special guest number one, please introduce theirselves?

Niki B (00:54):

Hello, I’m Niki Blaker and I thank you, Michael, for the introduction. I work with Charter School Capital on all things brand and design and it’s such a pleasure to be here today.

Michael B (01:06):

Well, we appreciate you being here, Niki. We are big fans of yours. We work with Niki across many of our enrollment marketing clients on all things brand and design. A couple of weeks ago, we got a lot of questions about brand and design, so what we are going to do is dive right into those questions and hear from our guest speaker’s perspective on this. First question, Niki, we would love if you tell us how you define brand.

Niki B (01:35):

Absolutely. A great brand comes from a place of truth, of the authentically what your school represents, what the process and approach is for your teaching. When you create that brand manifesto, I know so many schools spend a lot of time talking about their mission and vision and values and that being the driving force, but sometimes the connection isn’t made to how that looks like. Creating that visual brand is really an extension of those values and kind of putting a picture and a story to all those mission statements and the hard work that you’ve put into defining who you are and how you come across to your parents and students.

Michael B (02:24):

I love that definition and appreciate you pontificating on the idea of brand because it is something that I think gets a little bit fuzzy and many of us have our own definition, so it’s good to hear how you approach your work.

(02:37):

Our next thing is tell us the top three things. You’ve worked with what? 60 or so schools at this point? I’d love to know the top three things, if I can pronounce anything this morning, for any charter school leader to know about creating a logo. This was a question that came out of National. For those of you who don’t know, we had Niki at the National conference at our Digital Rebrand Bar and there were so many questions about logos and Niki, I would love to hear what your perspective on what you’ve heard from school leaders at National, what you’ve heard from in the past, but those top three tips for school leaders when it comes to creating a logo.

Niki B (03:14):

Absolutely. The first one is simplicity. This one is really tough because I know both schools and businesses try to communicate a whole lot in the logo, but really if you look at the most successful logos in history, they’re surprisingly simple. You think of the Nike swish and nothing else.

Michael B (03:36):

Okay, hold on y’all.

Niki B (03:37):

That’s the first one.

Michael B (03:38):

I hate to tell you this, but for whatever reason, the stream went down, so we’re just going to start from the top and start over, so I apologize. Y’all ready?

(04:17):

Hi, everybody, and welcome to our Thursday series on YouTube live across all things enrollment marketing. I apologize for our late start this morning. That is my fault. We had a little issue with our streaming software, but we are happy to be here just a few minutes after the top of the hour. As always, I am joined by my colleague Ashley MacQuarrie, our director of enrollment marketing for our Thursday series on all things enrollment, and we have a very special guest, our dear friend, Niki Blaker. Niki, can you introduce yourselves for us?

Niki B (04:46):

Absolutely. Thank you, Michael, for having me. I’m really excited. I’m Niki Blaker. I’m a brand strategist and designer and I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to work with charter school in both their marketing and enrollment marketing team, so thanks for having me today.

Michael B (05:04):

We appreciate you being here. You’ve been a constant companion of ours on these conversations related to enrollment and have worked with us not only across what, 60 or so schools at this point, but also you were one of our guest speakers at our Digital Rebrand Bar at the 2022 National Conference. We got a lot of questions several weeks ago about design and brand, so we decided we would ask if you would come in and talk with us about all things design and brand so that’s why you’re here. I want to start us off with a broad question about brand, and specifically for Niki, tell us how you define brand.

Niki B (05:42):

Absolutely. When I think of a brand, I think of what is the exposition of where you’re coming from and your truth and your authenticity, of what you represent and what you provide to others? When you do the work to put together your mission and vision and values or your educational approach, basically it’s starting to think about what does that look like? It’s not so much a separate thing, but really the evolution of painting that picture of what your values are.

Michael B (06:18):

I love that definition and I appreciate your perspective because all of us have our own definition of brand and I always love different perspectives on that definition, so thank you for that. Okay, this is a question for both of you. We’ll start with Niki. But in your experience, and I know we got this question quite a bit at the National Conference, but what are your top three tips for creating a logo for a charter school?

Niki B (06:45):

I’ll name the three first. First is simplicity, then being relevant, and then the third one, being versatile. I can speak to those, but I don’t know if you want to go to Ashley first.

Michael B (06:58):

Ashley, what are your top three tips and then we’ll get Niki to pontificate on her three.

Ashley M. (07:04):

Oh, man. I mean, I think this a little bit plays in with simplicity, but just some space to breathe, I feel like. A lot of times, logos have a lot going on and I think you can have a lot of elements that speak to different aspects of your school, but you just still need some of that white space. The other thing is sometimes I see that a logo can’t really be, I just was talking to a school about this the other day, it can’t really be translated to a single color, maybe because the way that it has different colors kind of overlaid and it makes it difficult for them to use it, for example, just in white on a dark background. That just came up, so that’s something. Then, I would say just readability, legibility. A lot of times, we’re using these on banners and people are driving by, so think about where your logo’s going to appear and make sure that it’s legible and if it has the name of your school, that you can actually read it. But I’m not the designer, so I’m excited to hear what-

Niki B (08:04):

No, I’m really glad you said because I know you work with this all the time, so it’s nice to see what you come with when you are experienced with it and you hit exactly the right point. With simplicity, it’s so hard. You want to tell the whole story in one logo, but if you think about the most successful logos, they’re really simple forms, just like the Nike swish. You don’t have an image of a shoe, it’s not literal. You think about really you only focus on the logo so much, it’s really about the execution and how it is with across all your materials.

(08:40):

Sometimes the logo isn’t the most important part. It’s a small memorable mark, but it doesn’t have to tell the whole story. Then, the same point with versatility. It’s so difficult to think all the use cases you’re going to have for it until you start having to create those things. Will your logo work just as well on a one-inch sticker that you’re passing out to a nine-foot sign? You have to think about the scale and how the elements in the logo will work properly. Again, like you said with the colors, if you’ve got a lot of colors in there, is it easy to make a shirt and screen print in a full color? Can you reduce it to a two color and still have that work as well? It’s easier to think about all the possible use cases before going into the creation of that logo.

Michael B (09:34):

On the topic of colors, I want to spend some time here because this becomes both a philosophical question about colors, but it also becomes a technical question so I want to start on the philosophical side of the house first. Niki, this was a question that was prompted from a YouTube Live we did about, let’s see here, about two or three weeks ago, I think, and that viewer asked, “Hey, tell us the best colors to use.” I would just love to hear from a philosophical standpoint first your thoughts on colors and color usage.

Niki B (10:10):

Well, the toughest part to swallow about this is you’ve got to take personal preference out of it. Just because you happen to like blue and blue is your favorite color does not mean that blue should be in everything. It all goes back to going back to your brand values and your brand personality and thinking about what colors best represent those.

(10:31):

For instance, are you a dual language immersion school that emphasizes different cultures? Well, think about bringing the colors from those different cultures to represent your school. Or do you offer more rigid academics, mathematics? Well, think about the colors that would represent that line of education. Those would look very different. One might be more colorful and a little bright and bold while the other one would be more streamlined and it wouldn’t work the other way around.

Michael B (11:03):

One of the things you touched on at National was the idea of using a color wheel to figure out complimentary colors. Can you talk about that for a second?

Niki B (11:11):

Absolutely. There are 64 million colors out there. Where do you even start? Sometimes it goes, you know, go back to basics, to what you learned in elementary school, red, yellow, green and what works with those colors. There’s so many tools online that let you create that color palette so that you can create something that is a little bit more cohesive. Just going back to the basic color theory and understanding how the colors work together really help. It’s pretty simple. If you like Google Color Theory, you will find so much information, but I’m happy to provide some URLs after this of some resources that let you pick color palettes that work really well together.

Michael B (11:59):

For sure. Yeah, if anybody wants those resources, you can just drop your question into the YouTube screen or on your app and we will make sure we get answers to you. We’ll DM them your way. Okay, so we talked philosophical approach to colors. Now I want to get a little bit more practical. Part of the whole point of this series is just to demystify everything related to enrollment so that we give people actionable advice. One thing I know, if you are a non-designer, you don’t understand what some of these terms mean, like CMYK and RGB. Can you just explain the key difference between different types of colors and why they’re applicable and why you need to have it as a part of your brand?

Niki B (12:39):

Absolutely. If you want to get super sciencey, for digital work, we use RGB because when you’re looking at your screen, those colors that come to our eyes are developed by light, by using red, green and blue. But when you’re printing an ink, ink does not work the same way, that uses a four-color process of cyan, yellow, magenta and black, which is where the CMYK comes from. Those have different values. Sometimes they don’t translate exactly from one to the next. Sometimes you’ll find that you have a certain color on your screen and if you give that same exact color to a print, it may look a bit muted. You have to do a little bit of conversion to get the match to work. When you are building your color palette, you want to take into consideration the values for the screen and how it converts properly to print.

Michael B (13:37):

Such good insight there and I know anybody that doesn’t have a design background is sometimes like flummoxed when they get these requests from printers and whatnot. Now you really understand why you’re getting those requests because we’ve got to be able to process that color correctly to make things happen on screen printing or business cards or yard signs or banners, whatever those things may be.

(13:57):

Okay, I’ve got one more question, but I do want to allow any of our viewers today, we’ve got about 14 or 15 live viewers with us right now. If you have any questions, please feel free to pop them into the chat window on YouTube Live and we’ll get to them. But my last question is this. As always, we face challenges as marketers or designers working with charter schools. Would love to know from both of you, what are the challenges that you see all the time when working with existing schools brands? I’ll start with Niki. Let’s go Niki first and then we’ll come back to Ashley.

Niki B (14:36):

Sure. One thing I could speak to and specifically to logos, since we were chatting about that, I know schools don’t always have the resources to hire a professional designer. A lot of times, there might be a volunteer or a parent or student that designs the logo and I am all for that. Yeah, I love that process.

(14:56):

But sometimes what happens is because of the tools used in creating that logo, you then find some problems down the road. For instance, if a logo is created in Canva or Photoshop, it’s not in the format that’s called a vector, which means it’s not easily scalable. You’ll then find that you can’t use it on a signage because it will look blurry or pixelated or you can’t make edits to the logo, like changing it so it’s black and white very easily. That has been one of the things I’ve done with the enrollment team, is recreating logos into a vector format and still keeping the same design and spirit of the same logo with some small fixes. But that is a pretty important consideration when creating it to just double-check the tools using when you’re creating that logo.

Michael B (15:53):

Such good advice. Ashley, what are some challenges you’ve had or the teams had when working with existing school brands?

Ashley M. (16:00):

I think this relates to what Niki said. I think a lot of these, our schools, maybe they have volunteers who have helped with their branding or helped with flyer design and things like that. I think consistency starts to become a problem because somebody designed this logo, but we don’t know what font it was, and we don’t actually have those RGB or CMYK colors so maybe the next person who uses it just uses their little eyedropper tool or just makes a guess in Canva. Well, this blue looks close enough and then, now you have all these different iterations of your colors and everybody’s using different fonts and everything that comes out that represents your school visually looks a little bit different and nobody really knows what to use, and so it can start to look a little bit muddled and that’s when we bring on somebody like Niki to say, help! Please recreate the logo with fonts that we know that we can use and file formats that we can use and also help us define, okay, these are the fonts we use, these are the colors we use, this is the tagline, and distribute that to anybody who’s creating anything for you. That’s something that we often come to Niki for.

Michael B (17:16):

For sure. Let’s wrap up with tools questions. Niki, you mentioned one tool. You actually mentioned several tools, so Canva, Adobe, there are others that are out there. I would love to hear just your thoughts, your feedback on obviously those respective tools, the experience someone would need, level of experience to use those tools because there’s pros and cons, right? But just give us an idea of why use Canva? Why not use Canva? Why use Adobe? Why not use Adobe? Would love your thoughts there.

Niki B (17:50):

Absolutely. I mean, the nice thing with tools like Canva is that they’re accessible to everyone. That’s probably the lowest learning curve, and I have nothing against it. They’re so great for social media graphics, digital ad banners for a lot of things online. I think some of the limitations with Canva come when you have things like print materials because you don’t always get that resolution or some of the things that print vendors require, like bleeds and crop marks. Those aren’t things that Canva can really provide.

(18:29):

That’s when you take the next step up to the Adobe suite. I know that is challenging. I mean, this is why I have a background in design and learn how to use the tools. I think someone opening InDesign or Illustrator, they see so many features in there, you don’t know where to start. I think it’s a balance between doing things yourself and then realizing when you should outsource things to a professional. One thing I like to do to help with that is create templates, editable templates. The things that need to be done in a professional format, good, but then I can assist with creating templates in Canva, having that foundation, and then you can update the text and details without worrying about the technical output of it.

Michael B (19:24):

It’s such a good point and there’s pros and cons to both, but I think you nailed it on the head, if you will, that one of the things schools need to do is carve out some budget to work with a designer to get their brand-related files in the right place so they become more usable, whether they’re using a Canva or they’re doing it internally on their own.

(19:46):

I’ll also throw in a tip here as someone who has led any number of brand teams and been exposed to, I mean, I don’t know how many brands I’ve worked on in my entire 16 years of career, but organize your files and make sure, I know, both of you are laughing at this, but like it is, and there’s an appropriate laugh because we’ve all seen it in our careers, is as you’re getting logo files, name folders, logos, put them in the right places. That will help so much.

(20:15):

Of course, many of our school leaders are on Google Drive, so it makes it easy for you obviously, to have a top-level brand folder, be able to segment your assets into folder, move old stuff into archive folder, so people don’t use an old logo or an old ad, or maybe an image that wasn’t supposed to get used or is 10 years old at this point and doesn’t really represent your school so that’ll be my tip of the day.

(20:40):

On that note, we are well past our 10 minutes of time caused by yours truly for a little streaming issue this morning. But I just want to give a big shout and a thank you to Niki for joining us today and all your continued work on the schools and the school leaders we work on. Ashley and I very much appreciate it, as do our school leaders appreciate the amazing work that you do for them to drive kids into their schools.

(21:07):

With that, I will say thank you to both of our guests, Ashley MacQuarrie, our director of enrollment marketing at Charter School Capital. I will say thank you again to Niki Blaker who works with us across a number of our schools for our enrollment marketing platform. We will hopefully, see you next week. Next Thursday, we’ll have another guest from our team on to talk about all things enrollment marketing along with Ashley and myself so thanks again for joining us and we’ll see you next week.

Niki B (21:35):

Thank you.

Michael B (22:00):

Out. All right, we are out.