Why would a parent choose your school over a competitor?
I’ve written elsewhere about enablers and deciders. Introduced in an excellent article by James MacDonald, enablers and deciders are the key drivers of parental decisions when it comes to school choice.
Very briefly:
Enablers are what make your school a viable option for parents — offering the right curriculum for their child’s needs, for example.
Deciders are what actually triggers enrolment.
So, if two competing schools offer the same curriculum (i.e., have the same enablers in place), the deciders make the difference.
Deciders are things like the impression parents get when visiting your school, your reputation, and recommendations from their friends/colleagues.
Thinking about enablers and deciders encourages you to see your school as parents see it, to reflect on their decision-making process.
This is a great first step, but it doesn’t go far enough.
In a world where much of the admissions process is now done online, you need to think about how your enablers and deciders are being communicated to parents.
How do you sell your school to parents through a screen?
Tell Stories
If you were to rank the most important factors for parents when selecting a school, what would you include in the top five? Examination results? School reputation? Facilities? Sports offered? Teacher quality?
In fact, according to a study by MacKenzie, Hayden and Thompson (based on international schools), only one of these makes the top-five: reputation, coming in fourth. Ranked second was the impression of the school when visiting and, just making the top ten, recommendations from other parents came in ninth. The study, published before the current digital-is-everything era, is perhaps starting to show a few signs of age, but its core message still resonates — ‘look’ and ‘feel’ matter.
*As a side note you’ll be asking what came first. Remembering this study was based on international schools, it was education in English. Something to remember if you are an independent school looking to attract overseas students. I’m assuming if you are an international school, you have this well in hand.
So, how do you create a good impression online? If you are restricted to virtual school visits, and if virtual visits are easier for overseas students, how do you convey ‘look’ and ‘feel’?
Parent and student testimonials are an obvious example. Your website or virtual tours should include short video interviews with parents and students. And, whilst you want these to be positive, you also want them to be real. You want there to be a narrative. Choose stories where there is a difficult beginning and a happy ending – maybe a student who was struggling at their previous school, one who spoke little English on arrival, or one who didn’t make the first team but found a love for a different sport instead. Rather than being ‘salesy’, you want the stories to be genuine – authenticity sells.
Remember too that marketing isn’t just your slick website and your cleverly written advertising copy, it’s every e-mail you send to parents, it’s the timeliness of responding to parental issues, and the quality of those responses. Online, this means syntax and spelling matter.
If you are offering personalised virtual school experiences, it means getting the family name right (I know, sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how often schools make simple mistakes). It means prompt responses to e-mails, properly formatted, thorough and polite. It isn’t enough just to link to the FAQs because a parent’s question is answered there, answer it in the e-mail anyway and point to the FAQs.
And, ask questions.
At the very top of the admissions funnel, your CRM system (whether an actual platform or something less formal), should include a (very) quick questionnaire to find out more about the family’s needs. Imagine how powerful it would be if every time you followed up with a potential parent, instead of just forwarding on the prospectus, you were able to mention something specifically relevant to them:
“By the way, noticing that your daughter is interested in sport, we thought you’d like to know that we beat Hogwarts at Quidditch over the weekend; they are an old rival, and we’ve lost the last few games, so the students were delighted to win.”
Given the level of fees charged by many private schools, this kind of close personal attention should be the norm.
Consistency is key.
None of this is rocket-science. But then, marketing and admissions isn’t. For schools, effective admissions is doing the small things well – both online and offline.
Dr Denry Machin is an educational consultant specialising in international school start-ups and school marketing. His latest book, ‘International Schooling: The Teacher’s Guide’, contains essential advice for newbies and old-hands alike on the highs and lows of teaching internationally. denry@denrymachin.com