Over the years of working with Christian schools around the country, we have worked with schools from early childhood only to PK12 schools. In doing so, I have worked with schools in a variety of ways. Sometimes it has been a few short months of social media coaching, graphic design or website projects, or our longer year-long consulting projects.
One of the things I really enjoy doing is spending a day with a school during a School Marketing Workshop. As a matter of fact, one of the first ways we ever helped schools was with a one-day workshop back over a decade ago which resulted in the school’s first enrollment growth in a long time.
Recently, I had the opportunity to work with Cornerstone Christian in Sweetwater, Texas. We did a one-day workshop on a Saturday and it was so much fun! Stephanie Baker, Director, said this:
“We loved your presentation…. It was very informative and helpful. It was just the booster shot that we needed to get started and it was presented in such a way that gave us a clear starting place.”
You might wonder what all can really be accomplished in a single day workshop? Here are the key components we covered at the School Marketing Workshop in Sweetwater:
- Came to an agreed definition of school marketing so that the entire team could rally around one idea of what marketing is, allowing this definition to act as a filter for future projects, spending and focus.
- Discovered the 3 most important areas when developing a relationship with a future family. These are 3 key components to the above definition and help focus a school on marketing the right way.
- We examined the full scope of school marketing, looking at the very early stages of new awareness all the way to cultivating family referrals. There are many steps in this process, and while complex, it is not complicated. We examined the 3 Rs of school marketing: recruitment, retention and referrals.
- We also explored the differences and essential elements of having a system, a strategy and a tactical marketing plan. We looked at the differences in those terms and how each one builds upon another.
- We went through a pretty extensive exercise in determining what an “ideal family” looks like in terms of marketing. If you do not have a clear focus of who you are marketing to, it’s easy for your communication to be for the masses, and thus, likely resonate with no one. We explored the components of a targeted ideal family category to help focus our communication, brand, and marketing messages.
- We looked at the 6 most common lead generation tactics. Lead generation is necessary as your school enlarges the pool of potential families. Most of the time, the challenge in marketing a school is that too few people even know you exist. Expanding this pool to more possibilities is a strong key to enrollment growth.
We spend several hours brainstorming as a large group, then in table groups to determine specific action steps. While a good part of the morning of a School Marketing Workshop is understanding strategy, we do spend hours working together on at least a workable tactical action plan.
So that’s an overview of how a School Marketing Workshop could help your school.
Use the contact form here to ask about details. Typically the workshop is around $2000-2500 along with some travel expenses.
Let’s talk! Sign up at our contact form here to get started.
Randy Vaughn
Randy Vaughn, Christian School Marketing Consultant
