Tag: charter school enrollment marketing

In this session, Michael Barber and Ashley MacQuarrie discussed specific enrollment marketing tactics for schools over the summer. They talked about social media content, planning events, website updates and how to balance all these things with getting some much-deserved time away over the summer break.

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 the Full Transcript:

Michael B. (00:12):
Hi everyone, and welcome back to our weekly series on all things enrollment marketing for charter school leaders. My name is Michael Barber and I’m joined by my ever-present weekly co-host, Ashley MacQuarrie. Ashley, how are you doing today?

Ashley M. (00:26):
Doing well, thanks, Michael. How are you?

Michael B. (00:28):
Good to hear. I am well, thank you. We’re going to hop right in. We’re right on time today and going to give ourselves our 10-minute countdown timer and talk about all the things. We’re getting into what, we’re in the first week of April. It is May 4th for all the Star Wars fans out there. May the fourth be with you. We’re getting down to the last few weeks of the school year. Depending upon where you are in the country, you’ll likely be wrapping up the year in the next couple of weeks, maybe into the first parts of June if you’re in California or other states. So I wanted to turn the topic today to what should school leaders be thinking about as they’re heading into the summer to make sure they’re prepared for the fall? So we’ll start there. Tips and tricks that school leaders can think about right now as they’re heading into the last few weeks of the school year to get them prepared for fall.

Ashley M. (01:23):
Yeah. Well, something to think about is getting ready for the content that you’re going to publish maybe on your website or on social media during the summer leading up until the start of school, and making sure that you have what you need while you have folks on your campus. So with some of the schools that we’ve started working with a little bit later in the season, we’re making sure that we have video shoots scheduled, photo shoots scheduled, so that we can capture that content while there’s still kids and teachers on the campus. So that’s really important because if you don’t have summer school, we’ve had challenges where we’ve had to use stock photos through the summer or we use older photos, which isn’t-

Michael B. (02:02):
Such a good point.

Ashley M. (02:04):
And then stockpiling teacher profiles. We’ve said before on these that these are some of the best performing content that we see, but it can be hard to get that while teachers are hopefully unplugged through the summer. So trying to get some of that content, that Q&A content from your teachers just kind of ready or having them do a little short interview on video. And just capturing that so that you can roll it out throughout the summer and introduce folks on your social networks to the people that make your school special.

Michael B. (02:39):
Yeah, it’s such a good insight to make sure that you’ve got your photo shoots or video shoots scheduled before you break because any of that content, you’re going to want to make sure your school captures the essence of that school, and it’s certainly going to feel different if your students, teachers, and leaders are not there. When it comes to school leaders and potentially queuing up content for social media or for blog posts. Is it a good idea to preschedule things to help them maybe find some efficiencies through the summer? Do you see school leaders doing that?

Ashley M. (03:14):
Yeah, definitely. We’ve seen schools starting to adopt more of the social media scheduling tools or just using the built-in tools that Facebook offers for Facebook and Instagram. That’s definitely a great idea. And then just building out your content calendar so that you don’t have to think about it, oh no, I need to write a post today. Just start to plan that content ahead and think about summer topics. So what kinds of content would you want to publish around back to school prep or summer learning loss? Things like that. Educational type summer activities, that can all be great stuff that parents really like to see, and so starting to plan for that content now is a good idea.

Michael B. (03:54):
Yeah, such a good point. Question on timing as it relates to fall enrollments. If I’m a school leader and I haven’t spent a significant amount of preparing for the fall, is it too late? What should I be doing if that prep hasn’t happened yet? Things that have to get started, maybe things to think about if you’ve got a few weeks or a few months.

Ashley M. (04:18):
Yeah. Well, it’s not necessarily too late, but it is late. So definitely making sure, I mean, hopefully you have some pre-enrollment already of people who have expressed interest or a list of leads. And so you’re going to want to be following up with them consistently and have a plan in place for how you’re going to communicate with them through the summer, maybe plan events. I think events and getting people on your school campus or getting out into your community is going to be really important if you’re starting late. So a kindergarten roundup, an ice cream social, a movie night, meet the principal and teacher nights, anything that’s going to get newly enrolled families excited about their choice of your school and hopefully encourage them to bring their friends. I think that it’s just going to be more important that you’re on the ground working to generate that word of mouth in addition to the digital activities. You’re just really going to have to hustle a lot more at this point.

Michael B. (05:16):
Yeah, for the schools that we’ve worked with over the past few years… What are some trends that happen over the summer? Do you see schools’ website traffic dip? So what are the things that school leaders should expect to see from an enrollment trend perspective. That website traffic goes down? Does sort of the social media shares go down? How can they buck those trends if that’s the case? What happens from a enrollment ecosystem as we head into the end of May, beginning of June and into the hot summer months?

Ashley M. (05:48):
Yeah, definitely. I always prep our team and our schools of, your website traffic, everything is going to take a massive dive around the 4th of July. We see it just consistently the last week of June and the first week of July. Parents are totally disengaged, they’re not thinking about school. And honestly, our teachers and our staff and our school administrators are also just tired and they’re pretty-

Michael B. (06:14):
They’re disconnecting too, yeah.

Ashley M. (06:16):
It’s going to be quiet. And then it builds back up in July and we see that interest come back up, and then it really spikes in August. So August tends to be the biggest month in terms of website traffic. And it does also depend on the area, so it depends a little bit on whether your school goes back in the first couple weeks of August or maybe closer to Labor Day. It also depends on just the community that you serve. So there are some parents, some schools where they have more families who are really engaged in the spring and through the spring and early summer in that back to school. And then there are families where maybe they don’t even realize that school is starting so soon until they see the sign on the building that says, school starts August 4th or whatever. So you want to be engaging with both of those audiences. But it’s definitely not unusual to see really low traffic at this time of year.

Michael B. (07:16):
Yeah. Does that present an opportunity for work to be happening on the website, for school leaders to take a step back and maybe make some improvements? And if you have a couple tricks on what could be improved in a short amount of time, I’m all ears, and I’m sure our school leaders are too.

Ashley M. (07:35):
Yeah, it could be a good time to do some website work while traffic is low. If there’s development work that needs to happen or major updates, that could be a good time. I mean, ideally you will want to have updated your website or if you’re building a new website, you would’ve wanted to do that work sooner. But I think there’s swapping out photos, making changes, things like that. Definitely if you enroll year round, a lot of our schools are still enrolling ’22, ’23 students right up until the end of the school year. So making sure that everything is switched over to that ’23, ’24 language, removing those old forms that might have still been capturing year round enrollments so that there’s no confusion for families and making sure that everything is geared towards the fall enrollment. And then maybe just embracing the quiet a little bit and taking a break before the rush. Sometimes we see that our school leaders just really need that little bit of a lull.

Michael B. (08:39):
Yeah, I mean, we know some of the biggest struggles that school leaders have talked to us about that, and that is certainly mental health for their teachers, that is teacher and school leader burnout and wellness. And maybe that summer provides a little bit of a respite and maybe we shouldn’t be recommending that they work on things in that moment of respite, but certainly an opportunity to, if there is a little bit of time to put a fresh coat of paint on something, make sure things are working on the site, being prepared for those traffic spikes as you head out of July into August. Not a bad idea by any stretch of the imagination.
(09:16):
Let’s turn to social media for a second. Is there a right or wrong content calendar for social over the summer? I would imagine that if your website traffic is going down, I would imagine maybe the school’s engagement comments, like shares likely go down during the summer. Is that the case? And if so, do school leaders stop posting? What do you advise school leaders over the summer to either continue to do or discontinue during that time?

Ashley M. (09:46):
Yeah. I don’t think we see quite the same dip on social media because people are at home, they’re on their phones still on social media. I think it gets harder for school leaders to find things to talk about on social because you don’t have the events and activities going on. That sort of community building, here’s what’s happening on our campus content gets harder to come by. So it does become more about maybe sharing content that you have built up a bank or re-sharing content that’s relevant. Again, more evergreen stuff. Again, dripping out those school teacher profiles, highlighting your alumni who just graduated. So that kind of thing. But it gets a little harder because you can’t just say, we went on a field trip, here’s some pictures. That kind of stuff isn’t happening on campus. As far as right or wrong… Oh, sorry.

Michael B. (10:38):
No, no, no. Continue, continue.

Ashley M. (10:40):
I don’t think there’s a right or wrong schedule. I think whatever you can… If your calendar shifts a little bit in the summer and maybe you’re only posting twice a week, I think that’s okay. Whatever you can do to be consistent though.

Michael B. (10:52):
Yeah, for sure. And I think you sort of touched on a potential recommendation, which is make sure you’ve got that content either queued up or you’ve got enough to get you through the summer, because you certainly don’t want to be getting to certain times of the year and start to figure out, hey, we don’t have anything to post as we get through those summer months as well.

Ashley M. (11:15):
Yeah.

Michael B. (11:17):
Yeah.

Ashley M. (11:17):
The worst thing would be to just go silent, right?

Michael B. (11:20):
Yes. Yeah, I mean, you and I both have seen recommendations from all of the major social networks that say, to the best of your ability, don’t change your cadence because typically the social media networks will adjust their algorithms and your organic reach if your regular cadence isn’t consistent. So if you’re an everyday poster, continue that through the school year, continue that through the summer, I should say, and just keep that cadence up and make sure you’ve got that content prepared.
(11:55):
Well, hey, we are at now the 12-minute mark, so we’re going to wrap things up, but I did want to give a big shout-out to Ashley, we are on episode 17. We’ve been back here basically every week since mid-December, which has been just incredible to have her voice here. And also wanted to tease out that both Ashley and I will be at the National Charter Schools Conference. Charter School Capital is the diamond sponsor for that conference, and you will find both of us in the leadership lab inside of the exhibit hall talking all things enrollment marketing. We’re going to be having a little preview of what we’re bringing to the national conference over the next few weeks, so stay tuned for that here.
(12:38):
But did want to say a big thanks to Ashley for continuing to come back and answer all our questions and bring in her team members in here to talk all things enrollment marketing. So thanks for making it happen over the last few weeks, Ashley, we greatly appreciate it.

Ashley M. (12:53):
Thanks, Michael. It’s been fun.

Michael B. (12:55):
Always a pleasure. We’ll wrap it up there. You’ve got tips for getting you through the summer, and look out for our next episode right here on youtube.com/charterschoolcapital. We are here every usual Thursday, 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern talking all things charter schools and helping school leaders get where they’re going. So would love to see you here in the future. For now, take care.

In this session, Michael Barber and Ashley MacQuarrie discussed how to market your school at all stages of growth: the start-up stage, the growth stage, and the sustainable maturity stage. They discuss how, at the start-up stage, awareness is key. In the growth stage, it’s time to prioritize building out your website and utilizing the data you have to inform your marketing strategies. The maturity stage can be dedicated to highlighting your achievements, such as adding new grades or expanding our facilities.

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 (00:19):
Hi everyone, and welcome to our all things enrollment marketing, YouTube Live Weekly. I am Michael Barber and I’m joined by my fearless co-host, Ashley Macquarie. Ashley, how are you doing this week?

Ashley M. (00:29):
Doing well. How are you, Michael?

Michael B (00:31):
I’m doing well. It’s been a long week, I think for everyone. It feels like the post spring break, post Easter push towards the summer, and I’m feeling a little pace around the company, so it’s been a long but a good week. But I’m doing all right. It’s good to have you here again. We are going to hop right in. As a reminder, we meet every week here on YouTube and our YouTube channel to talk all things enrollment marketing. If you’re joining us, please feel free to drop your questions into the chat. It should be located if you’re on the app right below the fold, and if you’re on youtube.com on your browser, then it’ll be on the right hand side of the window over here. So feel free to ask any questions. We do this every single week. This is episode 13 or 14, which I mean, this year is flying by, but we want to get into it. We’ve got 10 minutes to talk all things enrollment marketing, and today we’re going to talk about, I think, a really fun topic.
(01:33):
What marketing tactics do you need to worry about at different phases of growth for your school? At Charter School Capital, we think of schools in three different phases of growth; startup, your growing stage, and then your sustainable stage. So your startup stage is that year zero school through year one. That growing or growth stage is two through about year five, and then your sustainable stage is five to 10 years plus. I’m going to ask Ashley some tactics that we should be thinking about as school leaders. We will start right at our year zero schools. Ashley, what are the tactics that schools need to be thinking about in their startup phase?

Ashley M. (02:12):
For a startup school, I mean if we think about our marketing funnel, it starts with awareness and then engagement, conversion, retention. And for a startup, you’re really thinking about awareness. Nobody knows who you are. You do need to be able to engage with leads as they start coming in and convert them to enrolled students so that you have students when you open. But the first step, you have to get your name out there. You need those elements in place so that you can get out into the market. You might need your logo, some basic branding, a website, but maybe you don’t have a ton of content on it, but it just kind of tells a little bit of your story and a way for people to get in touch with you. Then you’re really getting out in the community, finding your audience.
(03:02):
You’re probably getting crisp on your positioning, your differentiators, starting to develop your voice, and you probably did some of that when you applied for a charter or found your board members and maybe you would be leveraging those board members and really just getting out there. So big awareness tactics. We’ve done things like radio. If you have a building, then just making the neighborhood aware that, “Hey, there’s a school here now,” with some signage. And then just maybe getting out in the neighborhood if you think that your families are going to come from that area, then flyers and door hangers, maybe postcards, and then just getting out maybe at neighborhood events like farmer’s markets or block parties, things like that. You just have to get out there and make people aware that you’re an option now.

Michael B (03:50):
Should schools be worried about a big splash on social media? I mean, I know as a startup school you’re going to want to make sure that you go secure your handles right, but how much investment, whether it’s money or time, should schools be making in that zero to one phase within social media?

Ashley M. (04:09):
Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely important. You got to secure your handles for sure. So you are activating your social media and probably starting to post, but you may not have a lot of content to be posting. Certainly we’ve seen schools do some Facebook advertising to try to get some awareness and leads, but they’re usually a little bit less targeted. It is more just about showing ads to the people in your neighborhood who maybe fit the general demographics. Absolutely Google ads. We always do Google ads and social ads for any school, whether they’re what we call a year zero or a more mature school, but you may not be as active on social media as you might be later on when you have a school full of kids and you want to talk all about everything that’s going on in your school.

Michael B (05:00):
And also, probably good to think about if you’ve got a board member or a parent that’s thinking about joining your school, maybe helping allow them to activate on your social channel so it doesn’t feel like such a burden on your school as you’re thinking about all the other things of getting your mission and vision in place, creating the curriculum, hiring teachers, finding the facility, all the things you have to do in that startup mode.
(05:23):
Let’s move on to that growth phase. So year two to year five, more sophisticated team, likely you’re starting to grow your school. Enrollment is increasing. Where should our investment dollars start to go from a marketing tactics perspective? Are we reinvesting in the website to make it more sophisticated? Are we potentially investing in new things? Where do we go as we’re growing our school?

Ashley M. (05:49):
Yeah, definitely. Certainly building out the website more, spending a little bit more time on SEO. Hopefully when you built your website, you put in some kind of basic keywords, but now you’ve got some data. You’ve got people who are visiting your website. You have hopefully an audience on social media. You can learn a little bit about what people are engaging with online as well as now you kind of have families in your school, and so you know how they heard about you, you know how new families are finding you, and you can use that data to try new things in marketing or keep doing what’s working. So doing those kinds of things.
(06:31):
People may already kind of know about you, so it’s more about getting them to come meet you where you are. So it might be about doing a lot of in-person events and things like that at your school to get people in the building so that they can meet your staff, meet other families, leveraging your existing families for referrals, profiling your staff, and you can maybe do more sophisticated online advertising, like some remarketing. So reaching people who have maybe engaged with you online before and then showing the ads later elsewhere on the web. Or even doing re-enrollment type campaigns with maybe families who have left your school or families who applied but didn’t end up enrolling. You can start doing things like that that maybe weren’t an option when you didn’t have students yet.

Michael B (07:22):
Yeah, I think there’s so many good points there. I want to emphasize one you made and that’s continuing to invest in your website. I think one of the things you and I always see and our team sees regularly is just I think school leaders think you sort of put it on the shelf, you put it up, it’s good to go, stays there, and it’s going to continue to pay dividends, and that just is not the case by any stretch of the imagination. You also have to keep in mind that the parents and students that we’re serving these days, this is a sophisticated digital audience in some cases, right? Every time they go to a website that they perceive as better, easier, insert whatever adjective, they don’t just change their expectations of what your school’s website’s going to be for them, do they?

Ashley M. (08:09):
Yeah. No, absolutely. We’ve been asked that too. How often do I need to be completely overhauling my website? And if you’re in those years two to four, it might be about time. Certainly you want more content and you’ll want to be continually investing and improving in it, but by year four, it might be time for a brand new theme or moving to a more sophisticated platform that allows you to do more. The other piece of it is getting your processes in place. So early on when you’re just trying to get as many leads as possible and you’re just maybe a small team following up on them, that’s okay, that probably got some kids in the door. But in order to really grow, do you have a way to manage leads? Maybe you need to look at a CRM to help you manage leads as they’re coming in and make sure that you’re not losing kids along the way because of poor communication or poor processes.

Michael B (09:03):
Such good insights there. Okay. That’s the growth stage. We talked about startup to begin with. We went to growth. Let’s talk maturity. So your year five and above, you have likely leveled off at an enrollment number that is steady for your program. You might be thinking about adding a grade to grow enrollment, right? There could be a lot of things that are happening. As you get into that maturity phase, what do we have to be thinking about from a marketing perspective? What are some of the more sophisticated tactics that you’re seeing? Are we starting to talk about retention activities, those sorts of things?

Ashley M. (09:37):
Yeah, definitely. Definitely retention. That’s huge. You may have had had some classes graduate, and so you need to be replacing those classes. Retention too. Staff might be leaving at this point, and that can mean that that families leave with them. So that communication and continuing to provide that great school experience is really important. How’s your reputation? You might be needing to do a little bit more active reputation management, whether that’s online reviews and trying to get more positive reviews and referrals, or maybe doing some proactive PR about what you’ve been doing. A lot of times at this stage, maybe there are exciting changes, like adding a grade, moving to a new building or expanding your building. Those can be great things to market around because that’s exciting.
(10:27):
But the key here is if you’ve been around this long, people probably know about you, and so it’s less about, “Hey, we are an option,” and more about, “Here’s why you should choose us.” Because they’ve already heard about you, but maybe they haven’t engaged with you or maybe they’ve kind of written your school off or haven’t really considered you, so how can you get in front of them and convince them to enroll in your school?

Michael B (10:52):
Yeah, such good insights there. So we talked about today, let’s do a little recap. We are going to wrap it up at our 10 minute mark, which would be the first time, I think in 17 episodes or 14 episodes that we’ve wrapped in 10 minutes. I want to try and stand on this promise of being only 10 minutes. But we talked about different growth stages and what school leaders should be thinking about when it comes to marketing tactics, that startup phase, that growth stage, and that maturity phase. As always, Ashley, appreciate the insights from you.
(11:21):
I want to mention to everyone, please go ahead and hit that subscribe button. You’ll get a notification when we go live. We’re here every Thursday at 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern for about 10 minutes on all things enrollment marketing. If you’ve got questions on digital marketing, if you’ve got questions on enrollment marketing, if you’ve got questions on growth stages of your charter schools and what you should be thinking about as a leader, we have some great guides at charterschoolcapital.com that can help you get you where you’re going. So feel free to stop by our website and hop in there to find those guides right in our resources section. With that, we’ll see you next week and thanks again for joining us, Ashley.

Ashley M. (11:59):
Thanks.

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

Read Full Transcript

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.