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.

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 and Ashely McQuarrie discussed social media, website best practices, and pay-per-click ads. You can watch the recording here, or read the transcript below.

Michael B. (00:18):

All right. Hi everyone. Welcome to our weekly Thursday series on all things enrollment marketing. I’m Michael Barber and I’m joined by my colleague Ashley MacQuarrie. Ashley, how are you?

Ashley M. (00:28):

Hey Michael. I’m good. Hi everybody.

Michael B. (00:31):

So good to have you on today. Hey, we do this every single week. For those of you that have been on this journey with us last few weeks, we’re here every Thursday for 10 minutes talking all things enrollment marketing. Want to let you all know that we’re taking a little break on the enrollment marketing topic next week. We will have Dr. Charlotte Polands here. She’s an expert on teacher retention, specifically teacher retention for black and brown school leaders. So we will have her here, answering all your questions related to a webinar we’re doing on Tuesday. If you need more information, just drop your question to the chat. We’ll make sure you’ve got that URL.

(01:06):

But we’re going to spend the next nine or so minutes back on our main topic of our weekly Thursday chats around all things enrollment marketing efforts. And Ashley, I know our team, your team did two webinars over the last two weeks. One for the Texas Charter Schools Association and another for the Illinois network of charter schools. I would love your perspective, what did you hear from school leaders? What questions are they asking you on these webinars?

Ashley M. (01:31):

Yeah, yeah. One of the questions I’ve been hearing is what social media accounts should charter schools be on? And that’s a really common question. I think especially when a social media channel like say TikTok starts gaining traction, is like, do I need to be doing that? And I think the answer, what I shared in the webinar this morning was it really just depends on your community. It’s always going to go back to where is your community and what do they want from you.

(02:00):

So it may be that you have families who are really active and engaged on Facebook. Maybe you have older parents or even grandparents who are really involved in their children’s education, their student’s education. And maybe they prefer to get their information from you on Facebook or maybe you’re actually speaking primarily to students themselves. And so they may very well be on Instagram. If you’re speaking to high school students, they may also be on TikTok. And so that could be something to begin testing the waters. I think what I shared is we’re here on YouTube. YouTube is the most popular social media account for kids and adults. So if you were going to pick a new platform to really start paying attention to, I would say schools can get a lot of value from posting video content on YouTube this year.

Michael B. (02:48):

I think it’s such a good point you make, I was actually, we had a little community meeting in my neighborhood yesterday and definitely some diverse voices at the table in terms of ages and backgrounds. And one of the things that was a common theme was that all of us, depending upon age or demographic or background, use different platforms to communicate. So when someone was like, “Oh, we should have a Facebook community group.”, there was someone sitting there that’s like, “I’m anti-Facebook I’ve not been there for a couple of years. I’m on Instagram.” To which I’m like, “That’s still Facebook.” You have to be the marketer in the room that’s like, “That’s still Facebook.”

(03:25):

But I think it’s such a good point from an enrollment perspective to understand, hey, depending upon who is helping your kid make a decision on school, they could be in different places. And as school leaders, we’ve got to figure out like, okay, if we’re trying to attract the student audience, we’re probably going to be in a different place than if we’re trying to attract a parent and/ or a grandparent audience. And so it’s nice to hear that that’s reflected also from an enrollment perspective. And we got to give a quick shout out to Bruce in the background here. Your pup just made a little appearance, such a cutie pie that cannot go acknowledged. We are a dog company for sure. And so just give a little shout out to Bruce.

Ashley M. (04:09):

[inaudible 00:04:10].

Michael B. (04:10):

Yeah, okay. Let’s get back to questions. I know there was another one that came up related to search marketing efforts and would love you to hear what that perspective and question was during these conversations.

Ashley M. (04:22):

Yeah, we’d been talking about really the value of SEO as well as the value of some paid search efforts like pay per click, Google campaigns. And the question, and we get this question a lot with all sorts of things from websites to social, is do I really need to hire a vendor to do these things for me? Can I do SEO and PPC on my own? And the answer is if you have the bandwidth and the know-how, certainly. If you’re a large organization that has the ability to invest in somebody in-house who can do that marketing and has the expertise, because it’s always a really rapidly changing technology. And so the tactics that we’re using are often different.

(05:03):

So if you have somebody who knows how to do it, can keep up, you could probably do it in house. If you’re a one person show and you’re trying to do it all and you have so many other things, more important things really like educating kids, then you probably do want to invest in a trusted vendor. And that’s really why we created this enrollment marketing program because we know that school leaders have more important things to do than mess around with paid search and try to figure out SEO keywords.

Michael B. (05:36):

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think that the good news is, if there’s any good news is that to their credit, Google and Meta and Twitter and other places and TikTok have done an extraordinary job over the last decade or so making these platforms as user-friendly as possible so that the average individual who doesn’t have a lot of technical knowledge could hop in and create these campaigns. My lesson learned is that usually if you’re not engaging an expert, you can use these platforms really, really well, but what you will end up doing is probably spending more. And I would love your perspective on that is just how you’ve seen as we have approached schools, there had to have been old accounts that you’ve hopped into and optimized and what the impact when you have an expert involved in that management does for a school.

Ashley M. (06:26):

Yeah, yeah. We do sometimes work with schools who have played around with search campaigns and sometimes they’ve reached large audiences. But something that I’ve heard often is yeah, we tried this and we didn’t really see anything or we reached a lot of people, we got a lot of interest, but none of it actually turned into enrollment. So maybe they weren’t quite reaching the right people. And if you’re paying per click, you want to get the right people clicking. So yeah, I’ve seen that sometimes schools are spending money and they’re getting a lot of views or they’re getting a lot of traffic, but it’s not really turning into anything. And our goal is always if we reach 50 of the right people that actually end up taking an action and enroll, that’s better than reaching 500 people who don’t take any action. So we don’t-

Michael B. (07:18):

Yeah. I agree. Don’t you’re going to overspend and not target the right audience for sure.

Ashley M. (07:24):

Absolutely.

Michael B. (07:25):

After that, staying on the pay per click opportunity for schools, one of the things I know we’re always advising school leaders on is landing pages and what they can do. Because search half the battle when you’re running paid media campaigns, when you’re investing dollars into display ads or search ads is making sure that when someone gets to your website, they’re going to convert. Any best practices there that you could share for school leaders?

Ashley M. (07:49):

Yeah, I mean really a landing page should give just a high level overview of your school and your differentiators and what you offer as well as really easy to take next step, how to get in touch with you. So we always include an interest form with just the bare minimum of information you need from a family to follow up with them. So it’s usually name, an email or phone number. Sometimes we don’t even require both, we just require one because we work with schools where they’re like, sometimes our parents don’t have email addresses, everything’s on the phone. So just keeping it really simple, we don’t include a lot of other links on our landing page because we want them to only take one action and that’s just fill out the form and get in touch.

(08:33):

So we don’t necessarily want to include links to other pages on the website because we know sometimes they’re not going to come back. And the other thing that that’s really valuable, again going back to video is including a video on your landing page is a really good idea. And then just lastly, making sure that if you’re running search ads or social ads, that the copy on the landing page is very similar to the copy that’s in your ad so that people know that they’re in the right place because they clicked on this ad that said one thing and they’ve landed on a page that says the same thing and they know how to take the next step.

Michael B. (09:08):

Yeah. Such good advice. I’ve got a follow up question. I’m just going to ask people if you’ve got any questions for us today, we’re here every single week on Thursday at 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern. Would love any questions. Otherwise I’ll end with this for our chat today as we’re getting up to that 10-minute mark on those landing pages, I know it’s important to provide a hierarchy to get someone to do what you’re doing. Can you talk about how we think about that hierarchy?

Ashley M. (09:37):

Yeah, so we are always using our story arcs to develop the content on our landing page. And we’re keeping it pretty simple. So we’ll typically have just a high level overview of the school and who they serve, and then some bulleted list items about what they offer and then some other kind of call outs. We like to include data about their graduation rate, for example, or a small class size ratio, any sort of numbers that we can include, especially if we can include them visually on the page, we find that helpful. And then, like I said, maybe a video and some testimonials so that social proof, but we also always keep that form at the top. We want that form to be right at the top, what we call above the fold. So before you even start really scrolling, you see that form and you can take that step even if you don’t explore the rest of the page.

Michael B. (10:39):

And one tip I know your team has shared with school leaders, because I’ve heard it in presentations from them, is if you ever have a concern of what bullets should we include, what questions can we answer? Best tip you can tell is like go ask your front desk admin what are the 10 questions that you get from perspective parents when they’re calling or from forms you may be getting on your website or for conversations that you have during open houses. Those are literally the best insights because you help answer those questions right away on that form. And that helps generate some sense of trust and hopefully leads to that form getting filled out and maybe a kid that joins your school. So if you’re ever wondering what sort of questions and bullets you can answer on that sort of landing page, that’s a great place to start.

Ashley M. (11:26):

Yeah, absolutely. You can just remove their questions right off the bat so that they feel confident in just filling out that form and taking that step and they don’t need to get other questions answered first.

Michael B. (11:37):

For sure. Well, that takes us up to 11 minutes after the hour. So we’re done with our 10 minutes this week. We hit some good questions. As a reminder, we will be back here next week with Dr. Charlotte Polands on all things teacher retention, which will be a follow up YouTube live from our webinar that’s happening on Tuesday. That webinar is at 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern. And then we’ll be back here on Thursday on YouTube live, taking your questions on all things teacher retention.

(12:03):

We have close to 350 school leaders joining us for that conversation. So hopefully you’ll be there. If you have or would like to sign up to join us or get the recording, just head over to charter school capital.com. And then Ashley and I will be back with one of our colleagues, Nikki, one of our graphic designers that works on our school’s branding and design efforts. Nikki Blaker will be with us on Thursday, February 2nd, to answer all your design and brand questions. So we look forward to seeing you there. So until next time, I’m going to say bye to Ashley and bye to you all and have a great week.

In this session, Ashley MacQuarrie, Betsy Roberts, and Michael Barber discuss the importance of “Ground Game”—all the marketing you do that isn’t online. They offered great tips for your school’s signage, banners, and yard signs.

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

VIDEO EMBED:

Read the full transcript here:

Michael B. (00:00):

Can you take a second to introduce yourself to everyone on YouTube?

Betsy R. (00:03):

Hi everybody. My name is Betsy Roberts. I’m an enrollment marketing project manager. This is my third season with CSC and I’m very excited to be here.

Michael B. (00:12):

We’re excited to have you. We asked for your presence here today because we want to talk about something that you are incredibly good at and that’s ground game. So we’re going to get into some questions today over the next 10 or so minutes that focus all on ground game for charter schools as they’re thinking about enrollment marketing. And feel free to pop in your questions into the chat. As a reminder, we’re here every week, Thursdays 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern, talking all things EM. Let’s hop right into the conversation this morning. Betsy, tell us what ground game means. It sounds like a fancy term, but I would love for you to define it and how you talk to it with charter school leaders.

Betsy R. (00:50):

Yeah, we in enrollment marketing department, we use the word ground game as all the stuff besides everything that we’re doing electronically through the website or through SEO and through digital ads, et cetera. So flyers, postcards, banners, billboards, tchotchkes for signing up, enrolling out of school and kind of everything in between. I mean, it depends what your grade levels are and what people are looking for, but it’s to help with your branding, your marketing and get your message out there.

Michael B. (01:30):

For sure. So there’s a lot of things that schools can be doing when it comes to ground game. Can you talk about the top five or six that you think have been impactful for schools as you’ve been working with school leaders for the past several years?

Betsy R. (01:45):

Yeah, one of the main things that we like every school to have is just a postcard size, little quick facts about their enrollment marketing process, who you are, where you are, [inaudible 00:02:00] that your free public charter school always needs to be highlighted, has your website, has contact information and usually it’s colored. We love pictures of students on there, double side with the top bullet points of your school. And to be able to have that when people walk in or if you’re out somewhere meeting with an elementary school if you’re a middle school, just to have something to hand a little takeaway. So I think that is the main thing that we like all our schools to have is to be able to hand something to somebody so that if they’re going home, they have something to reference.

Michael B. (02:44):

Such a good point. Ashley, do you have anything to add there?

Ashley M. (02:47):

Yeah, I think Betsy’s right on. And we actually really like the postcard. We think of postcards as coming in the mail, but I’ve heard schools really request a postcard, like a thicker card stock because they might give it to their kids to take home. And if it’s a flyer, like a piece of paper, it’s just going to get shoved in a backpack, postcard, something eye-catching, more likely to stick it up on the fridge versus an eight and a half by 11 flimsy piece of paper. So I think that’s great. I think the other piece of ground game too is how you’re appearing in the community. I mean, your signage, a lot of times charter schools that we work with, they might be in more non-traditional spaces that maybe you wouldn’t expect a school to be in. So we do a lot of banners and yard signs and just different things to attract the ye and let people know that you’re a school, that you’re enrolling.

(03:38):

Those quick facts Betsy talks about, often the grid level, maybe tuition fee, something like that just to grab those people when they are walking around on the ground around your school.

Michael B. (03:50):

And one of the things a few of us had the chance to talk about was the importance of signage. The other day we were all gathered having a little meal together and there was a lot of hot debate, a heated debate I should say, about signage. Can you talk about some of the struggles you’ve seen schools have with signage and some of the recommendations our team has made? Because it’s such an important part of having a presence when you’ve got a physical location.

Betsy R. (04:17):

Yeah, that’s so true. When we come in, we like to be really objective and look at the school in a way that no one’s ever seen it before. So the people who work at the school obviously think, “Well, no, that’s school because we see it every day.” But if you look at it as someone who’s never seen it before, it’s like, “Well, is it a school or is it a church or is it a youth center? It’s really hard to tell because it’s not really being explicit.” So we go in and we like to make sure that the signage is very clear. Where’s the entrance? Where’s the parking? Where’s the front desk? Where can I find somebody to talk to? All these things are very, very important as far as getting more kids into seats at your school. You need to be very present in your community so they know who you are, who you’re serving, that you’re a free public charter school, the grades of your students, and how to get in there.

(05:17):

So yeah, like Ashley said, we do banners, we do feather flags, we’ve done yard signs out front. We’ve done directional signs. We’ve had a school that had people walking right past their entrance and into the school next door because that one looked like a school and they were right next door to each other and their enrolled kids were going right into somebody else’s front door so [inaudible 00:05:44] to point out, “This is where you go to check in for this school.”

Michael B. (05:52):

That way finding is so important. You’ve got to make sure you’re leading that experience. That’s something Ashley and I have talked about in weeks past. The experience of enrollment is not just driving awareness, it’s how you go about getting those kids and parents to the school, how you make sure that their experience when they get on property is a positive one. And I’m sure if the signs aren’t great, you’re not leaving the best impression for potential parents and students alike. So important.

Betsy R. (06:22):

So true. If you have a tough parking situation where it’s kind of a mess and no one knows what direction to go, a parent might be like, “Well, I don’t want to have to deal with this at drop off and pick up every day.” So you need to make sure all of those things are working. So it’s part of what we help provide at CSCs enrollment marketing department.

Michael B. (06:43):

None of us are designers, so I’m going to say that out loud, because you have three strategists slash PMs here. People that help the work, make the work happen. But we’ve all worked with designers with different schools, and our team has designers that we work with on a regular basis. Can both of you give me some insights from our designers that we’ve worked with about certain specific things when it comes to signage and it comes to those ground game elements that we want to be cognizant of, like contrasting colors that we need to be able to create that contrast so people’s eyes can see those things, or certain colors that are like, “Absolutely not, we shouldn’t be doing that.” Any thoughts there?

Betsy R. (07:22):

Yeah, I mean, I feel the school colors as far as the branding is very, very important. That’s something that we do in Auditive when we take a school on, is to make sure that their colors are in brand and that they’re consistent. But yeah, definitely large enough to see. Most of our outdoor banners, if it’s in front of somewhere where it’s going to be cars, very, very few words. Basically the school, the grades, the website. So if it’s a banner for someone walking by versus driving by, we take all those things into consideration. I’m definitely not an expert when it comes to colors. That’s why we have such a broad team behind the project managers. We have SEO, we have advertising, we have digital marketing, and a great graphics team.

Michael B. (08:18):

We’ll have to bring some of those team members on board. Maybe that’s our topic for next week that we can talk about. Ashley, I saw you sort of lean in to start some thoughts there. I would love your two cents as well.

Ashley M. (08:28):

Yeah, I was going to say just what Betsy said towards the end there, fewer words. So we’re always looking for ways that we can keep it really simple, keep it really actionable. So we almost always put [inaudible 00:08:42] grades, but also look at the logo. Sometimes the school’s logo maybe has elementary school or maybe has immersion school, something like that that’s a differentiator, but might be really small, too hard to read. So we might look at that and we might use more a simplified version of the logo and put the elementary school piece or the immersion piece, whatever that is, except that it really stands out because you might not be able to see it in that little logo. Or if the logo’s big and really legible and it has high school right on there and you can see it, then we don’t necessarily need to put high school in the text of the banner.

(09:14):

So we’re looking for ways to make it really clear, to use fewer words. And we do use those kind of accent pop colors more sparingly for the things that really need to stand out. We often don’t put necessarily a phone number or anything like that on a big sign because we know that somebody … it does, to Betsy’s point, depend on whether they’re walking or driving by. But we know that somebody who’s driving by is not going to have time to grab a phone number. So with a lot of times those big signage things, we expect to see maybe an increase in organic search terms of traffic for people coming from just Googling the name of the school. So we want that name of the school to be really prominent because that might be how they get to the website rather than remembering a URL or remembering a phone number.

Michael B. (10:00):

Such good points I’ve learned from this conversation from the both of you; it is school name, grades, it is website. Those are the things we’ve got to repeat over and over again. Does it have that information? Maybe that’s our takeaway for this week when it relates to ground game is school name, grades and website. We’re right at our 10. Go ahead Nancy.

Betsy R. (10:19):

Sorry.

Michael B. (10:19):

No, go right ahead.

Betsy R. (10:19):

I was just going to jump in on the logo thing is that a lot of schools that we’ve worked with have logos that they can’t really use anymore because they’re so old and they’re not scalable digitally to be able to put on banners. So our graphics team has recreated so many logos that schools are excited to be able to use.

Michael B. (10:40):

Yeah. If a school doesn’t have an SVG, they need an SVG logo. It’s fancy term for saying something that you could make as big as possible and as small as possible, and it looks clear and crisp regardless if you’re on a website or on a signage or a T-shirt or something like that. You need to be able to scale that logo up and down. Before we wrap up, I’m going to just ask if anybody has any questions, now’s the time. Otherwise, I’m going to ask my last question for the day and that is this. Hot topic related to ground game is clothing and uniforms, whether it’s your school leaders and your teachers that are wearing them or kids and parents potentially. Any thoughts on what schools can do when it comes to uniforms and/or clothing that they’re giving out to help increase that ground game opportunity? I’ll start with you, Betsy. Any thoughts there?

Betsy R. (11:34):

Yeah, several schools, typically schools with lower income families, we give T-shirts out once they enroll and we see those shirts get worn a ton, which is wonderful. We had one school in Arizona that serviced people from the nations, the reservations, the indigenous population there, and the kids that went back to their nations after school wearing the shirts, everyone’s asking about the school. The kids are wearing them on their social media pages. So in that case, it turned out to be like wildfire where the pictures of the shirts were everywhere and we weren’t expecting the T-shirts to get us so much attention that all the high school students were posting pictures of them in their shirts. So you never know which direction it’s going to go. You just have to think about your audience and how it’s going to benefit you, but also benefit your students.

Michael B. (12:37):

Agreed. Any last thoughts there, Ashley?

Ashley M. (12:40):

Oh, I think Betsy covered it. Yeah. A lot of our schools don’t necessarily have branded uniforms. Sometimes they do, but we do see a lot of impact from those T-shirts that students can wear or that they can wear on their free dress day or wear out in the community. And we do just always encourage schools to retain those higher value articles of clothing, swag items for when students enroll. It’s a great thing to include in a welcome packet. We also, to Betsy’s point, with the students in the nations, we also see the opposite. We’ve seen schools in colder areas, rural Ohio, wanting hoodies and things like that because a lot of their kids don’t have winter jackets even. And so you can look at different ways to both make a difference in students’ lives and potentially address clothing insecurities. And also getting your brand out there and it can serve two purposes.

Michael B. (13:35):

Such a good point, such a good point. We’ll leave it there for today on the conversation of ground game because I feel like that’s just such a nice little period to put on that conversation about what branded and related elements and clothing can do, not only for enrollment, but also serving the students in particular areas of challenge. Okay, we’re going to call it a day. I wanted to let everyone know we’ll be back next Thursday and perhaps we’ll touch on a topic we touched on here, which was design. Maybe we can get one of our designers to come join us for our conversation next week and talk all things brand color, fonts and whatnot. So we’ll tentatively say that’s what we’re going to chat about next week. And then I want to let everybody know we’re going to take a little break from enrollment marketing on the 26th of January.

(14:18):

We’re having a webinar on all things teacher retention, what’s happening in the marketplace, strategies and tactics for school leaders to retain teachers. That’s happening on Tuesday, January 24th, 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern. You can find all of that information on charterschoolcapital.com in our resources area. Just look for that upcoming webinar. And we will be having Dr. Charlotte Pullens join us on our YouTube live that Thursday, January 26th. So we’re going to take a little break from our conversations on EM and talk teacher retention, which is another challenge that of course school leaders are facing. So we look forward to seeing you next week on the 19th. We’ll talk design tentatively and then on the 26th, we’re going to welcome Dr. Charlotte Pullens for our conversation on teacher retention. So tune in, subscribe to our channel, hit that subscribe button, and you’ll be notified when we’re going live every Thursday, 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern. Thanks for taking the time to join us.

In this session, Ashley MacQuarrie and Michael Barber discussed enrollment marketing tips for January.

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 (00:09):

All right. Hi, everyone and welcome to our Thursday Enrollment EM Live. We’re welcoming you all back from a few weeks of vacation. I have my colleague here, Ashley MacQuarrie. Ashley, how were your holidays?

Ashley M (00:24):

They were nice. Yeah, it was good. Some crazy weather here in Portland, but yeah, it was good. Relaxing. How about yours?

Michael B (00:32):

Yeah, they were good as well. I feel like the whole country had some crazy weather the last few weeks, so we will chalk it up to the winter months, and hop right into some EM questions. As always, before we hop in, we are here every Thursday, 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern, answering all your questions related to enrollment marketing.

(00:52):

We are going to kick it off with of course a very cliche first of the year question. Ashley, it is the first week of January, as we all know. What should school leaders be thinking about related to driving enrollment efforts? Would love your thoughts there.

Ashley M (01:06):

Yeah. So for a lot of our schools, it’s lottery season. A lot of lotteries have opened up, or are opening up in this period. I can think of a handful of schools with mid-February lotteries. So that is really where a lot of schools’ focus is right now. And even for schools that don’t have a lottery, it’s really all about driving those pre-interest forms for those early planning parents.

(01:29):

So what I would focus on is how you’re going to communicate with those families once they express interest or enter your lottery. A lot of times we see that they get a lot of interest early on, and then that interest tends to fade and drop off. So how are you going to make your lottery families really feel like they won the lottery? How are you going to communicate with them throughout the spring and summer? And so we’re putting together ideas like sending welcome swag bags or yard signs, or putting in place writing communication plans for emails and things like that that are going to go out throughout that the spring and summer to keep families engaged.

Michael B (02:12):

I think it’s a great insight there. When we think about enrollment, it’s not just about obviously driving interest in the school, it’s also about maintaining interest in your lottery parents and your lottery list. It’s in maintaining that experience when someone has requested more information, what do we do with that individual? How do we drive them to become a student? Which leads me to my question number two. We had this question I think the last time we were together from video guy Jared, who’s an avid viewer of our live streams, and I believe is starting a school. But I wanted to circle back to this one. But what’s your ratio for student leads? In other words, what’s the average conversion rate from ads, is sort of a part one question there. So how many impressions to actually driving conversions across the site? And then conversion to an enrolled student. Would love some thoughts there from you?

Ashley M (03:06):

Yeah, so those numbers really vary really wildly. We work with schools in really small rural communities and then also really big metros. We work with schools where they draw from a very narrow radius around the school, and then others where parents are willing to drive 10, 20 miles. So it definitely depends. I would say 100,000 to 200,000 ad impressions in a season somewhere around 10 to 100,000 website impressions is typical. And then from there we typically see anywhere from a one to 5% conversion rate from an interest form, so completing our form on our landing page, or calling. So turning into a lead from viewing the ad or viewing that landing page. And again, that just varies really wildly because there are some really competitive areas and there are some areas where we just have not a lot of competition, and also not a lot of opportunity to reach a large audience.

(04:09):

And then from there we’ll often see anywhere from a 10 to 50% conversion rate from inquiry to applicants. So actually filling out that application. In our program in enrollment marketing, we support the schools in whatever way we can in converting those interest forms to applicants. But it really is on the school to be doing that outreach and calling and following up. And so it does depend. Some schools are absolute rock stars on it and have these systems in place that make it really, really effective, and others struggle with that and maybe don’t have the bandwidth. And then additionally, you have really competitive areas where a lot of families are applying for multiple schools, and so that can make it more challenging to actually convert that family into an enrolled and retained family. That’s just some ballpark numbers that we’ll typically see.

Michael B (05:05):

That range that you mentioned, the 10 to 15% from request for information to applicant, that’s a huge range. Are there things that schools are doing better that drive that? Because obviously if you’re going to be spending the money on driving interest, you should be really caring about that experience when someone does raise their hand and get them to that apply step. What are things that the schools that are in that 50% or higher of that range, so that 40 to 50% range? Are they do anything differently to get someone to convert from interest to applicant? What do you see there?

Ashley M (05:43):

Yeah, a lot of times it comes down to having a dedicated enrollment person. Somebody whose whole job is following up on those leads, chasing them down, reaching out to parents, doing tours, things like that. That is huge. But a lot of small schools … We sometimes see schools where the executive director is the one following up on leads, and they have so many other things on their plate. Or maybe it’s even a teacher or an operations manager who has a lot of other things going on. And so that’s just an issue of bandwidth. If you are a school where you don’t have a dedicated person, then having really strong systems in place that allow for automated email messages and things like that to move those families through the funnel, making it really easy for families to submit their forms online, submit their documents online versus having to come get a packet, having events where people can come and enroll on site, that can all help. But it really just does come down to manpower a lot of times.

Michael B (06:49):

Yeah, it’s such a good insight. I got to go out and visit the team over at [inaudible 00:06:54], which is a client of ours, and Dr. Bolock and her team. And they have invested in someone whose whole job is worrying about and leading enrollment efforts. And certainly I would imagine when you’ve got a person whose sole purpose is to make that experience better, those numbers are going to go, hopefully, in the right direction. So such a good insight there.

(07:16):

I want to ask, you and I had a quick sort of sidebar before we started this question on this idea of applicants to actual enrolled students. It’s going to vary widely, so there’s really not a number we can give there. But I do want to go back to this conversation that you mentioned. It’s that enrollment marketing is not just about obviously driving that interest. It’s also about how you get that kid into your school applied and into your school. Beyond what you’ve mentioned already, are there things when someone has applied, getting them actually into the school, are there schools that are doing things differently that help drive that applicant to actual student?

Ashley M (07:55):

Yeah. Communication is a really big thing. I think with older grades, some student-centric outreach and marketing can help getting the kids themselves excited. We’ve seen that be effective for high schools, and it really is just ongoing communication, and having events and opportunities for them to engage. Because we see a lot of times that the families will apply in the spring, and then oftentimes not hear from the school until the first day of school and then the school just hopes that they attend on the first day. Or sometimes parents don’t even realize when the first day of school is. So just making sure that you have these touchpoints all along the way to keep families in the loop. Email and text messages, and we’ve even seen visits and events and things like that be effective. It just really depends on the school and on the families that you serve.

Michael B (08:58):

Okay. Yeah, great thoughts there as well. Again, I think we’re touching on a theme today that enrollment is way more just about way beyond just driving that interest rate and generating that interest. And it’s about how do you go from that interest into actually getting a kid into your school. That experience really matters as you’re closing that loop from interest.

(09:17):

Okay, I don’t know about you, but I have had all over my social media has been people’s ins and outs lists for 2023. And so we’re going to pick up on this cultural theme and listen to some insights from you on what’s in and what’s out for enrollment marketing, as we head into 2023 and beyond.

Ashley M (09:36):

Yeah. I would say focusing, going back to converting, but retention. Retention is huge. This year, 2022, we really felt the impact of inflation, of movement and high cost of living areas, home values, fuel prices, all of that stuff was felt by our schools. Both in retaining those interested families, and also retaining their current families. And so just really focusing on communicating with your families to understand what’s going on so you’re not surprised so that you have an understanding of how many families you’re going to need. And then just really doing whatever you can to retain your current families, and converting those interest forms. So that’s a big one.

(10:29):

The other thing that I would say is focusing your efforts. Scaling down. We saw a decrease in importance and an effectiveness of some of the mainstay social media platforms this year. And I think that’s going to continue. Facebook and Twitter. And we’re seeing more effectiveness from trying and testing, in small ways, some of the newer options out there like TikTok, more YouTube, Spotify, things like that that are emerging. So I would say focusing on what works, and on a small scale, trying and testing some of these newer things. And what’s out is maybe the importance a little bit of advertising on some of those more old school, at this point, social media networks.

Michael B (11:19):

I love that. Great way to end our first session of the year. We’re going to wrap it up there because we’re going to be about two minutes over by the time we wrap up. But I think our theme of the week, if you will, was all about this idea of experience. Again, not about just driving interest, but how do you go about converting from those requests for information forms into an actual student. And as Ashley mentioned, numerous, numerous times, retention, retention, retention. That’s going to be a theme, especially as we head into somewhat of a murky economic environment, I will say.

(11:54):

So with that being said, I’m going to say a big thanks to Ashley for joining us once again, and to all of you that are joining us live. We appreciate you being here. We will be back at every week for the foreseeable future, answering all things enrollment marketing. Also, we’re going to have a couple of different topics on Thursdays throughout the year, so we’ll let you know as those topics adjust. We have a great webinar coming up at the end of January, which we’re just about to announce around teacher retention. So look for information on that. And we’re going to welcome our experts on teacher retention into our YouTube live series at the end of January. But for now, it’ll be Ashley and I as well as some additional guests we’ve got, we’re starting to get lined up for the year.

(12:38):

So as always, we look forward to seeing you every Thursday, 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern, right here on YouTube. And if you would be so kind and want to find out, or at least get notified of these lives, you can smash that subscribe button on YouTube and your YouTube app will notify you when we go live. So would love to see you here more often. Bring your questions next week. And as always, Ashley, thanks again for joining us.

Ashley M (13:01):

Thanks Michael.

Michael B (13:02):

We’ll see you next week.