In this session, Karen Shih joined Michael Barber and Ashley MacQuarrie to discuss enrollment marketing tips for start-up schools. They discussed how, at the start-up stage, focusing on building awareness is essential—things like deciding on brand elements and beginning to build an online presence.
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 the Full Transcript:
Michael:
Hi everyone. Welcome to all things enrollment marketing for charter leaders. My name is Michael Barber and I’m joined by my weekly co-host Ashley MacQuarrie. Ashley, how’s it going?
Ashley:
It’s going well. How are you, Michael?
Michael:
I’m good. Thanks so much for asking. We’re also joined by someone who I believe, Karen, this is your second time on our Thursday chats, correct?
Karen:
It’s my first time, actually.
Michael:
It’s your first time?
Karen:
Yes.
Michael:
I feel like you’re an alum. Why do I feel like you’re an alum? Oh, well, my mistake. First time joining us, Karen, can you just take two seconds and introduce yourself to our YouTube subscribers?
Karen:
Hi, nice to see you. I’m Karen Shih. I’m a project manager here at CSC on the enrollment marketing team. Nice to be here.
Michael:
Awesome. Well, we appreciate you being here even if it is your first, or maybe in my head, second or third time, whatever it may be, but thank you for taking the time to join us. We are going to talk all things startup schools today, and we look at schools in three different phases of growth, startup and then growing and sustainable maturity as the three phases of growth. And if you think of different years in terms of how long schools have been around, we’re talking our year zero through about year two ish when we consider startup schools. So all our questions today are going to be on startup schools, what they can do to help drive enrollment. I’ll start the conversation there. What are the tactics or the things that school leaders that are either starting their school or about a year or two into their journey as school leaders need to do? I’ll turn it over to Karen first for some thoughts.
Karen:
Thank you. So I feel like these startup schools have some really unique challenges. They don’t have name recognition yet. They’re moving into a new building, all new staff. So I think getting your name out there, getting some credibility is really important. And I think I would start with having a website and some social media presence and updating them on a regular basis to get your name out there.
Michael:
And Karen, before we started, you mentioned one creative idea from a school that we worked with in the past. Can you talk about some of the community engagement that’s required and maybe some creative ideas for how you can connect with people that are in… If your school is a physical location, how you can connect with your community to try and increase the number of kids you’re serving?
Karen:
Sure. Yeah. So this idea I was sharing with Michael is something one of my schools did. It was really successful. They went to apartment complexes that were near the location where the school was going to be and had pizza parties. So they would ahead of time post flyers at the apartment complex, of course with the support of the management at the apartments. And then they would have an information session where people could come meet the school leaders, maybe the principal, some of the teachers who were already engaged with the school, hear about what programs they were going to have at the school and what was going to be special about this school. And then they made it really easy for people to sign up on the spot. So having the paperwork you need, having an iPad there, just making it really simple for people to show that they’re interested or if they’re ready to sign up, do it right then.
Michael:
Yeah, such great ideas to think about. You’ve got to engage, especially when you’ve got a physical location, engaging that community that’s surrounded by your school. Ashley, I’ll turn these two questions over to you. We’ll start first with tips and tricks for startup schools that they can use for their enrollment efforts. Anything to add beyond what Karen said?
Ashley:
Yeah, and I think just what you kind of added, it’s just so important to get out in the community around your school. A lot of times more mature schools, they might find that maybe as the years go on, they’re attracting students from other areas, their community is changing. But as a brand new school, you probably want to just start with a radius around your location once you’ve identified that and just get out in the community and make people aware that there’s a school here now. I mean, that could be as simple as signage and yard signs, giving yard signs to families when they enroll, if they have a place to put them and we’re putting them around the neighborhood. Flyering or door hangers or a direct mail postcard to a really targeted area around your neighborhood could also be a good idea to just get that visibility.
Michael:
Beyond the social media profiles and making sure that you’ve got obviously, your website and those social profiles secured, even if you’re not using it right, probably a good tip I should say, for a startup school to at least go secure those profiles so nobody takes advantage of them in the future. But in thinking about what else a school leader might be thinking about when they’re starting a school beyond… The school flyers are always going to require logos and things like that as a startup school. So what are you thinking in terms of graphic design and brand? How much focus needs to be on those elements for a startup school?
Karen:
I think it’s really important to have something really solid. I would hire a professional to create that logo, I would say, and then have colors and fonts and use them consistently on your website, on your flyers, all your signage, everything that you’re doing. I think it helps build credibility for your school if you’re staying consistent and look really professional with those things.
Michael:
For sure. Anything to add there, Ashley?
Ashley:
No, I was just reflecting. I think for every new school that we’ve started with, they had someplace to start, maybe even just a logo that the executive director found or made in Canva, but I think we’ve done some of that brand work for all of them to help them really hone in on those colors. Or maybe they just had a really basic website and we kind of helped to build it out. So if you can get some help to do that, because I mean, I know a lot of times starting these schools, it’s just one passionate person at first. But to Karen’s point, it really can make a big difference. So even just defining your brand colors and building your brand guide in a tool like Canva could help you stay on track.
Michael:
For sure. So step one, as I’m hearing it, is make sure you at least start with just the brand basics. So logo, pick your colors, make sure that they’re working well. We’ve actually got a couple episodes ago had one of our graphic designers, Nikki, talk all about best practices. I’d encourage you to go take a look at that video. Next step, as Karen alluded to, make sure you secure that url, build a website, and then secure those social profiles as well, even if you’re not going to use them just so that you have access to them in the future. What about engaging your advocates? Even as a startup school, you’re going to have a board. Especially as you get into year one and year two, you’re going to have parents that could be vocal advocates for you or even community members that may be contributing to the school. I’m going to turn this question initially over to Ashley. How can you leverage those relationships to help drive enrollment for the first couple years of your school?
Ashley:
Yeah, I think those people are so important, especially in the first year because you probably don’t have students. We love student highlights. We love photos of students having fun and living out the school’s mission on site, but you probably don’t have those at least in that first year. So it’s really important to create content or create videos of the founder, maybe founding families about why they’re excited about this school, maybe board members, and really leverage why they’re passionate, why this school is being founded, and perhaps if the people who founded the school have a background with other successful schools, you can leverage some of that name recognition. I mean, that’s huge because that’s probably the best advocates that you have at that point.
Michael:
And question, I know obviously one of the big tools that parents use is search engines. And naturally when a school starts, or as it’s going through that startup phase, it’s going to get listed on places like Great Schools, on review sites. It’s going to have hopefully a listing on Google Maps. So Karen, asking you, how important is it for school leaders to pay attention to places like Great Schools or review sites like Google that are on Google Maps or Google Reviews? Do startup schools need to be paying attention to those? What’s some thoughts there?
Karen:
I’m glad you brought that up. I think it’s really important for schools to be checking them on a regular basis. Some of them, you can claim your profile and then you have the ability to curate what’s showing up there. For instance, on Google Maps, it’s called Google My Business, and you can add your own photos. You can add information about your school. You can have little announcements that pop up and that’s free, and it’s all things that you as a school leader can have control over. Sometimes people are going to make reviews of your school, and so you want to be up on those and maybe comment on them. If people are really positive ones, sometimes it might be a negative one, but you need to be aware of what’s out there and respond.
Michael:
Yeah, I think that’s such an important thing, is that response, right? Knowing what people are saying about you taking the time to respond. There’s plenty of research out there that I know all of us have seen that say no response is often worse in the eyes of someone who is looking at reviews than a bad response from a customer or parent or student in this case and then you actually taking the time as a school leader to respond in a thoughtful and hopefully approachable manner to potentially those negative reviews. And also positive reviews. All of these reviews should be acknowledged by the school, both negative and positive, just to build that goodwill so that when you are asking for reviews, people see that you’re taking the time to respond to them.
I want to ask a question that’s slightly out of left field and get some thoughts here. And it may be a quick answer. But when it comes to social media, obviously you have an enormous amount of kids that these schools are serving are on social media. They’re on the likes of TikTok, they’re on potentially Snapchat, and a fewer of them are probably are on Instagram depending upon what their passions are. Have you seen a school potentially leverage students to help drive word of mouth for their school, particularly for a startup school? Like any high school programs that are out there where they’re engaging potentially some of their students to help create content or act on behalf of the school and their social media profiles?
Karen:
I think that that’s something that happens definitely in high school settings. I think that there’ll be clubs and maybe classes at the school that are going to have social media accounts. And that’s a great way for kids leverage social media. Yeah. A lot of these high school students are really good at creating content and sharing it. So I think that’s a fabulous idea.
Michael:
Yeah, I wonder how high schools could take advantage of that content if it is positive or at least shows off the school in an impactful way to leverage that content for just helping get the message out about that school. So just an idea I would love to see more schools take advantage of because certainly all that content’s being created out there.
Karen:
Yeah, it’s so easy. I would recommend that the school follow all these other tangent accounts related to their school. And when they see something that’s really positive, they can share it in their Instagram stories, and then they can even create highlights in their Instagram if they have things that they want people to be able to see ongoing.
Michael:
For sure. Yeah. Such a good tip to leverage all of those little features that these social media networks have. All right. Well, we’re 13 minutes into our usual 10 minute chat. So I’m going to wrap it up and just say thank you to Ashley and Karen for joining me on, this is I believe our 15th episode. Every Thursday we’re here for 10 minutes at 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern.
Next week, we’re coming to you two days early because there are two members on this YouTube live that will not be available on Thursday. So you will see Ashley and myself on Tuesday next week. I believe that’s the 25th or the 26th. Let’s make sure I get my dates right. It is the 25th at 10:00 AM Pacific, 1:00 PM Eastern. We’ll be back here for another conversation on all things enrollment, marketing, and next week we’re going to talk about schools as they grow. So what do you do after startup? What are the more sophisticated marketing tactics or new channels or things that school leaders have to be thinking about as they transition from that startup phase into more of a growth phase?
And with that, I’ll say thank you one last time to Karen for joining us for the first time. And Ashley, as always, for joining us every single week. We’ll see you next Tuesday. Thanks everyone.
Ashley:
Thanks.
Karen:
Thank you.
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