Fueling Your Student Enrollment and Retention Plans | California Charter Schools Conference 2017

Fueling Your Student
Enrollment and Retention
Plans2017 CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOLS
CONFERNECE

Copyright © 2017 Charter School Capital Inc.
INTRODUCTIONS
Kim Brater
VP, Marketing
Charter School Capital
kbrater@charterschoolcapital.org
Kirt Nilsson
COO
knilsson@charterschoolcapital.org
Michael J. Barber
Founder
barber&hewitt
michael@barberandhewitt.com

WHY ARE WE HERE
Fueling Your Student Enrollment and Retention Plans

WHY ARE WE HERE
Enrollment issues:
1. Need to attract and retain students. Nobody
just shows up when you open the doors.
2. Budgets are tight, resources strained, and
priorities many.
3. The thought of marketing yourself and your
school can be confusing at best, and daunting
at worst. But, it doesn’t have to be…

AGENDA
• Define student enrollment and
marketing in the context of charter
schools
• Discuss enrollment strategies and
tactics to drive goals and objectives
• Slides are available here:
CharterSchoolCapital.org/California2017

WHAT DOES GROWTH LOOK
LIKE?
Fueling Your Student Enrollment and Retention Plans

CHARTER SCHOOL GROWTH CATEGORIES
# of Students
Start-up
Survival/Establish
Growth
Flexibility/Stability
Sustainable Maturity
Efficiency
Time (years)0 2-3 5-10
100%
Students as a
% of mature
targets
10-25% 25-90% 90-100%

DEFINE GOALS UPFRONT
“First have a definite, clear practical idea;
A goal, an objective.”
-Aristotle
• How many students?
• What type of students?
• How much retention is needed?
• Team should understand these goals

DEFINE & REFINE
ENROLLMENT METHODS
• On the spot / event
• Online
• Normalize the enrollment process

DEFINE & REFINE
CONVERSION METHODS
• All conversions methods should be
seamless
– Phone process
– In-person process
– Online process

MARKETING & CHARTER
SCHOOLS
Sustainable Student Enrollment
11

MARKETING IN THE PUREST
SENSE
Marketing is communicating the value of
a product, service or brand to customers,
for the purpose of promoting or selling
that product, service, or brand.
Source: Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia

ENROLLMENT & MARKETING
• Students are not required to attend your
school
– Why would parents choose us?
– What makes us unique?
– How are you going to find these students?
– How are you going retain students?

MARKETING FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS

So, how do we generate
AWARENESS & NEW STUDENTS
with LIMITED TIME & MONEY?

THE PROCESS OF PROMISE AND
YOUR SCHOOL’S BRAND

THE PROCESS OF PROMISE
Define what makes your school unique,
distinguishable, and compelling.
Define the values that will connect your
school to your students, families, and
community.
Your uniqueness & values build to the
core essence of who you are.
1
2
3

WHAT MAKES YOU UNIQUE
Define what makes your school unique,
distinguishable, and compelling.
What makes your school different? Program
focus? Students served? Educational
philosophy?
Which aspects of your organization can’t be
easily replicated?

WHAT MAKES YOU UNIQUE
• Who do you want to serve?
• Why should students choose your school?
• Why would parents want to send her kids
to your school?
• What are you providing to families and the
community that isn’t already offered?
• How are you different? Better?

DEFINE YOUR VALUES
Values define who you are, how you work,
who you want to serve and why, they help you
know when to say yes and no.
More than anything, your values are the
benchmark of the legacy you want to leave
behind.

YOUR SCHOOL’S ESSENCE
Take what makes you unique and your core
values, and then craft your essence.
Your essence should be embodied in everything
people see, hear, touch, taste, or smell about
your school. It articulates a higher-calling, a
clear positioning amongst your competitors.
Your team should be able to convey this
whenever needed.

NOW SHARE YOUR VALUES / PROMISE

Now we know who we are, it’s time
to craft our messages.

CRAFTING YOUR MESSAGE

AUDIENCES & GOALS ARE KEY
Audiences:
• Students
• Teachers
• Parents
• Leaders
• Community /
media
Goals:
• Awareness
• Increase
enrollment
• Fundraising
• Student
retention

COMMUNICATION METHODS MATTER TOO
Methods:
• Face-to-face
• Social media
• In-school
• Web
• Media

MESSAGE / CALL-TO-ACTION
Leverage what makes you unique, your
values, and promise to craft messages for
specific audiences, goals and the
communication methods.
Ensure appropriate call-to-actions are
leveraged.

Next up,
What do we look like?

SCHOOL IDENTITY

SCHOOL IDENTITY
Identity consists of the visual elements the define your school
including:
– Logo
– Color palette/system
– Visual style/guidelines
– Signage
– Templates (letterhead, presentations, etc.)
– Name badge (everywhere)
– Business cards
– School lapel pins
– Shirts
Share your story (your promise) with your design resources.
Identity should reflect your story.

IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT OPTIONS
$ $$ $$$
99designs.com
crowdspring.com
Volunteer
Independent designer
Small agency
Large agency
Design firm

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
• Identity done well can position your school
for growth opportunities.
• Bad identity can turn away potential
parents / students.
• Pay attention to the demographic and
geographic influences on identity and
design.

START-UP PHASE

BEFORE YOU EVEN START
• Establish an advisory team
– Find people who believe in your promise/values
– Make the ask
– Find broad advice (parents, community leaders,
business leaders, former charter leaders)
– Identify creative ways to compensate them
• Ask for help
– Seek help from your contacts
– Connect and seek mentors/advisors that can
compliment your skills

YOUR PEOPLE ARE YOUR
GREATEST STRENGTH AND ASSET
• Students, teachers, parents, and the
community are your greatest assets
– Run workshops with groups to help them tell
the school’s story and its values.
– Have them tell your story. Often.

LEVERAGE NON-PAID
MARKETING CHANNELS
• Social
– Primary: Facebook, Instagram (we are visual people)
– Secondary: Twitter, Snapchat
– Tertiary: LinkedIn, Pinterest
• Email
– Multiple vendors offer free services for education/non-
profits
– Easy, opt-in communication with stakeholders, fans,
friends of your school
• Website
– www & blog

WEBSITE AND/OR
BRANDED EMAIL OPTIONS
• Tons out there. Here are a few we like:
– G Suite for Education (lots of additional
productivity tools)
– GoDaddy
– Squarespace
– Wordpress
– Pagely

GROWTH PHASE

LAYER PAID CHANNELS
Search Marketing – Organic
• Best for giving your website maximum
visibility to those who are searching
for your school on search engines.
• Organic listings are free. Rankings are
determined by the search engine to
produce the best user experience.
• Relative content, easy navigation, etc.,
all play into a positive user experience
which, in turn, improves your search
rank.
• Create a strategy to include top-quality,
relevant information on your website to
match what users are searching for.
This is called Search Engine
Optimization (SEO)

LAYER PAID CHANNELS
Search Marketing – Pay-per-click
• Best for giving your website maximum
visibility to those who are searching
for your school on search engines.
• Advertisers bid in on search terms
(keywords) users are likely to use to
find their school.
• Paid listings use a “Pay-Per-Click”
(PPC) system where the advertiser
pays for each click on the their ad.
• Once the user clicks on the ad, the
goal is that they visit the page and
complete a desired action, such as
filling out a contact form, donating, or
applying for enrollment.

LAYER PAID CHANNELS
Display and retargeting (“banners”)
Best used for creating brand awareness and bringing users back
to your website to complete a conversion.
• Display ads appear next to content on various websites in
text, image or video format.
• Display campaigns can be set up to target audiences in a
variety of ways (time of day, on certain websites, etc.).
• Retargeting: Showing display ads to users who have
previously visited the website, leveraging their familiarity
with your brand to encourage them to complete a
conversion.

ENHANCE NON-PAID CHANNELS
• Social
– Display and retargeting advertising available through these
platforms.
– Target your audience based on location, industry, job title,
etc.
• Email
– Begin to segment audiences
• Website
– Enhance content created for your site
– Begin to develop content calendar that shares your
school’s stories

SUSTAINABLE MATURITY

MATURE YOUR MARKETING PLANNING
• Quarterly/annual marketing planning and
budget
– Identify goals by audience/target
– Develop strategies and tactics to target
audiences
– Identify budgets by channel
– Ongoing measurement

BRING YOUR STORIES TO LIFE
• Leverage video and other visual storytelling
mediums
– YouTube is the second largest search engine
– Snapchat and Instagram Stories offer other visual
storytelling opportunities with different audiences
• Help your school stand out and connect with
your audience by creating videos worth
sharing.
• Use video to explain concepts and visions that
are difficult to put into paragraphs.
• Create a YouTube channel where all of your
videos will reside for your audience to view.
• Share your videos through social media or
blog posts.

LEVERAGE MORE SOPHISTICATED
TOOLS
• Audience segmentation and relationship
management (Salesforce, Base, Hubspot)
• Marketing automation (Hubspot, Eloqua,
Marketo)

CREATE REVENUE GENERATING
MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES
• Community sponsorship
– Street signage
– Digital signage (if applicable)
– Annual banquets/benefits
– Sponsored content (i.e. emails sponsored by
local service business)

RETENTION MATTERS TOO

RETENTION, RETENTION, RETENTION
• Live up to your brand and promise
• Develop your retention framework
– See DePaul retention framework
• The “4Ps of Student Retention” framework is an integrated
approach to improving rates of student retention. The
framework includes: shaping the profile of new freshmen
and transfers with a goal of improved degree completion;
ensuring students’ initial and continuous academic progress
toward degree completion; improving and integrating all
processes and services related to student enrollment; and
ensuring that all students’ experiences are consistent with the
promise of DePaul’s mission, purposes and brand.

RETENTION, RETENTION, RETENTION
• Talk about your accomplishments, always
– Build your case all the time
– Promote to parents and advocates
• Seek feedback
– Online surveys
• Foster word-of-mouth
– Engage parents and advocates in “About Us”
sessions
– Help them advocate for and sell your school

THE BUDGET QUESTION

AVERAGE MARKETING BUDGETS
5-15%
of annual budget

BUDGETS FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS

CHARTER SCHOOL MARKETING BUDGETS
Budget = time + sweat equityStart-up
Growth
Sustainable
Maturity
Budget = limited dollars + time + sweat equity
Budget = dollars + time + sweat equity

THANK YOU
Digital Marketing 101 for Charter Schools
Kim Brater
VP, Marketing
kbrater@charterschoolcapital.org
Kirt Nilsson
COO
knilsson@charterschoolcapital.org
Michael J. Barber
Founder
barber&hewitt
michael@barberandhewitt.com

Fueling Your Student Enrollment and Retention Plans | California Charter Schools Conference 2017

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