Even before the pandemic hit, private school enrollments were falling, with just 5.8 million students, compared to 50.8 million in public schools. And the COVID-19 crisis has performed its own disruption on registration and enrollment. With parents hesitant to send students and campuses trying to figure out new practices, private and prep school recruitment and enrollment are uncertain right now.
But you know that the benefits of a private school education are just what many new students need. Beautiful campuses, individual care and attention, tailored programs to suit different learners — these features are exactly why students should be enrolling now. So, when you're marketing your private school, you need a set of strategies to tell the story of your institution's benefits, values, and atmosphere.
3 Marketing Tips for Private Schools to Boost Enrollment
When you have a clear and ambitious goal, such as increasing enrollment numbers, you need a methodology that's air-tight and allows you to test and reiterate to get results. Here are three strategies for revamping your private school advertising campaigns:
1. Develop an all-encompassing strategy.
The problem with much private school marketing is that teams pick and choose trendy advertising ideas and then don't properly give them a chance to work within a holistic marketing plan. When learning how to market a private school during this unique time, you need a strategy that combines many channels, methods, and devices — both digital and traditional — so you can speak your message clearly to those who need to hear it, wherever they happen to be online.
2. Get hyperpersonal.
In a time of lower enrollment, you need to work a little harder to engage potential students and parents. People are spending more time than ever online, and they're visiting numerous channels and platforms throughout the day. Targeting your private school's advertising to your audience based on geography is a great way to combine the power of real-life data and the online journey.
With geotargeting and geofencing, you can send out specific messages to people in your ideal locations and then track conversions, so you're constantly narrowing in on your most effective targeting strategy.
3. Create a balance of SEO and SEM.
Both organic and paid search strategies are valuable parts of your marketing plan. With SEO, you can craft compelling content that's seen as high quality, relevant, and valuable to search engines. You can then use SEM to take advantage of your great content. Bid for keywords and get rewarded for your practical, media-rich stories with top placements by Google and other search engines.
Managing SEO and SEM is also an important way to take action toward your specific enrollment goals. With the right analytics strategy, you can track your KPIs and make sure your ad campaigns are working to increase enrollment.
How CMG Local Solutions Can Help Improve Your Private School Marketing Campaigns
We're experienced in working with private schools across the country, and we know that your institution has its own unique culture and values. To attract the students that will find a home in your school, you need a personalized marketing plan that combines digital and traditional methods. We specialize in just that.
When we worked with Journey Prep School, for example, we gave them a holistic plan that included radio advertising, events, SEM, social media marketing, native advertising, and targeted display advertising. They wanted to reintroduce their unique identity in the market and experiment with campaigns to find the most successful messages and strategies. Using our Premium Analytics, we gave the school a direct line to how their marketing plan was working, and they brought more than 17,000 new users to their site.
If you want to find out more about how CMG Local Solutions could help your private school achieve amazing marketing results, connect with us today.
