Today we’re all about cost-free ways of impacting positively on your pupil numbers. So many schools’ budgets have been blown to pieces by the pandemic and “we don’t have money to spend on marketing” is a common refrain.
Most schools are aware that they need to market their school in order to drive revenue through additional pupil fees, but they find themselves in a catch-22 situation. Schools don’t feel they can spend on marketing because their finances aren’t in a healthy position. But their finances are in trouble because they need to fill pupil spaces.
The first myth to bust here is that effective school marketing always has to cost buckets of money. There are plenty of improvements you can make to your marketing and admissions activities for little to zero cost.
Our Advice
Our advice is simple.
Take a magnifying glass to every part of your admissions process. Discover if there are any gaps in the experience being offered.
When someone has enquired at your school, they have indicated that they’re potentially interested. That is gold dust as, from a purely commercial perspective, it holds a potential value of thousands of pounds for your school.
Don’t let enquiring families go.
Vet every step of your admissions process. Check how phones are being answered. Are telephone manners impressive and is the engagement personalised to the enquiring family (most importantly, their child)? How are emails being responded to? Is data being logged efficiently? And so on.
It may sound simple. And the best bit is, it is. But the difference is game-changing.
Just securing ONE additional family through plugging these gaps, makes hundreds of thousands of pounds of difference to your school’s income. So we hope you agree, it’s worth it.
Don’t get hung up on the idea that all marketing costs money. Start by fixing the gaps that are going to drive an increase in admissions…that often starts with checking out your admissions process.
Begin today and let us know how you get on.
The Stickman team help school leaders, marketing, admissions and business managers to boost revenue via powerful and simple marketing strategies.
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Karen
Stickman Chief Cheerleader and School Marketing & Research Consultant
