How to Market a Charter School

Lou
Kotsinis

“We need help with enrollment.” 

This is what I’ve been hearing from almost every charter school we’ve spoken to in the last couple of years. And it makes sense. These days, students and families have many educational options to choose from, including public, private, magnet, hybrid and more.  

And while I think competition improves the overall quality of both education and outcomes, that’s no consolation to a charter school executive director who has to fill seats. 

Nothing “sells” a charter school better than the word-of-mouth referrals that come from a quality reputation, but even this can have limited reach. Parents and caregivers lead busy lives, and they may not be aware of all of the schooling options available to them. Add to that a hyper-competitive educational landscape, and even a great school can fall prey to being the best kept secret in the neighborhood. 

That’s where marketing comes in, giving a school an edge over its competitors, and helping them get in front of an audience who may not have known they are an option.  

Charter school marketing works. But it takes more than just handing out flyers, or boosting some posts on Facebook. It means tapping into the unique value you bring to your community, telling that story in a compelling way, and then spreading the word on a continual basis. 

A great example here is our client, Bronx Charter School for the Arts, who’s been executing this formula perfectly. We’ve worked with them for multiple enrollment cycles and after implementing this process, their results speak for themselves. In last year’s cycle they saw:

• A 203% year-over-year increase in website visits

• 8,780 views of their “apply now” landing page

• 756 “apply now” call or form completions

Bronx Arts consistently meets their awareness, conversion, and enrollment goals.

There’s no reason why your charter school can’t experience similar success. But it takes time, financial investment, and a willingness to put in the work. 

So with Bronx Arts as an example, I’m going to share three essential steps to successfully market your charter school. Make these part of your school’s DNA, and you can’t go wrong:   

1. Start with this Question: “Why Would Families Want to Send Their Child Here?”

One of the things I love about working with charter schools is that each one has its unique history, character, and educational focus. Some charter schools focus on STEM, while others on the arts; some are dedicated to character development, while others emphasize bilingual learning. Underpinning all of these offerings is the notion that each school is dedicated to its community in some special way, and they bring with them their own educational philosophy, culture, and teaching methods. 

What I’m referring to here is your story. This is your school’s superpower, and the foundation of how you’ll get more students through the door. 

Your goal in developing your story is to answer the one question that will be top-of-mind for a parent or caregiver: Why should I send my child to your charter school? 

Framing things this way gets to the heart of the matter, requiring you to consider that parents and families have other options. 

To fully answer this question, you’ll need to look at things from your audience’s – i.e., prospective parents’ and students’ perspective. Namely: 

• What do we do that makes us “us” – what makes us special/unique/attractive?

• How do we meet our prospective families’/parents’/caregivers’ needs? 

• What special role do we play in the community? 

Let’s look at how Bronx Arts answered each of these questions, and how that resulted in a crisp and compelling story they’re able to tell continually across multiple channels.

Getting to “Bronx Arts Hustle.” 

Before we did any formal “marketing” with Bronx Arts, we spent time helping them develop the positioning, language and content that would feed all of their outreach. Using the three-question framework above, our goal was to position Bronx Arts as the option for families interested in an arts-based education for their child. 

What makes us “us”? 

There are many things that makes Bronx Arts stand out, but chief among these is its dedication to, and specialization in, the arts. 

The moment we walked through the door, we felt the school pulse with a passion for theater, music, art and all forms of creative expression. From the school layout – each corridor was named after a famous artist or performer – to its rich arts-based curriculum, we felt inspired. 

But what really sold us was Bronx Arts’ teaching staff. We spoke with dance instructors that had recently come off national theater tours, art teachers that lived and breathed design, and music teachers that moonlighted as professional musicians. Dedicated, energetic and highly-skilled, these individuals were the engine of a great school. 

All of these factors made it clear that if you wanted an arts-based education for your child, in or near the Bronx, this was the place to be. 

How are we meeting families’ needs? 

Yes, parents and caregivers want their kids to have a great education. They want them to be safe and nurtured. In short, they want a community. If it takes a village to raise a child, school is part of that village.

Bronx Arts gives parents a sense of reassurance that not only are their kids going to learn, they’re going to be loved. From the executive director down, Bronx Arts is a close-knit community, and a safe haven that welcomes all. This nurturing environment allows kids to be themselves, and draw on role models for guidance. Knowing that their child is in this sort of environment gives parents one less concern.

What role do we play in the community?

There’s something about being from the Bronx – the swagger, the history, the culture – that makes Bronx residents unique. Bronx Charter School for the Arts knows this, and they’ve leaned into it; they draw strength from their neighborhood and its shared values. They are the embodiment of what it means to be from the Bronx. 

Based on these inputs, we worked with Bronx Arts to develop a tagline that gets to the essence of what they represent: 

Creativity. Community. Bronx Arts Hustle.

2. Make them Feel What It’s Like to Actually Be There.

When I try to describe Bronx Charter School for the Arts, the word that best defines how I feel is “magical.” It’s not an exaggeration. There’s such a positive energy to the place that it makes you feel a sense of joyous possibility.  

The way to actually experience this magic is, of course, to visit the school. But it’s not feasible to expect every prospective parent or caregiver to do so. 

This is where charter schools need to harness their digital tools – email, social, but particularly, their website – to capture their school experience. But they can’t just do the obligatory photos and quotes. They have to capture the essence of what it’s like to be there.  

How? Start by putting yourself in the shoes of a family member or caregiver. What do they want to see? Things like: 

• Good schooling

• A safe environment

• Specific courses of study

• Teachers and admin staff

• A ‘day-in-the-life of’

The types of content and experiences you’ll share will be based on your school’s unique character, values, and academic focus. The goal, though, is to capture these in such a genuine and high-quality way that by the time they compare your school to another, there’s no comparison.

Here are a few of the elements that Bronx Arts employed to give parents and caregivers a glimpse into life at the school:  

• Amazing branding, vibrant colors and typography that meshed, art, education, youth and potential. 

  

• Beautiful, custom imagery that showcased students and teachers and their pride in Bronx Arts

• And – the most impactful element – an amazing video loop that we placed on their website’s home page that perfectly captures the dynamic between teacher and student, and the inspiration that comes from that relationship.

Taken together, these elements effectively give parents an inspiring glimpse of the experience their child will have, well before they head over to the application page. 

You’ve heard the phrase, “be so good, they can’t ignore you.” That’s the goal here. 

By definition, your school has its own brand of “magic” – defined by your teachers, educational philosophy, culture and overall vibe. Your job is to harness all of these wonderful things in such an impactful way that prospects are sold on the spot. 

3. Define Your Audience. And Then, Get In Front of Them.

I began this post talking about how even great and deserving schools run the risk of obscurity if they rely on word-of-mouth alone. But even if you have a great story, a great website and have captured the greatest, most magical experience in the world, if you’re not getting in front of the right people, and on a continual basis, you’ll be treading water. 

If the goal is greater enrollment, then it only makes sense to get your school in front of the largest audience of “right-fit” individuals possible. 

There are tons of marketing tactics to achieve this, but the one that will get you there the quickest, and that is both highly measurable and scalable is digital advertising. 

Whether that means display ads on relevant third-party websites, ads that appear within the user’s search engine results, social media ads that show up on user’s feeds, or a combination of each, a digital ad campaign can be tailored to audiences and run for specific periods of time – i.e. enrollment season – and can be tweaked along the way to account for what’s working (and what’s not). 

How do you define “right-fit?”

One of the benefits of running a campaign like this is that you can rely on demographic data within each platform of choice to send ads to potential parents or caregivers that fit within your “ideal” prospect, such as location, age range, gender, and interests.

Employing this process with Bronx Arts, we were able to introduce them to thousands of individuals who may not have not been aware of the school, while reinforcing the Bronx Arts name to many others who were already aware – and who would then share that outreach to others. 

An Enrollment Campaign that Produces Results

We used a combination of display ads across the Google Display Ad Network:

We then combined these display ads with a series of social media ads that focused on specific elements of the Bronx Arts philosophy and curriculum:

Individuals who clicked on the ads were not sent directly to the school’s home page. While engaging and beautiful, that page is designed to receive an interested but general audience. Instead, we sent these individuals to a custom-designed landing page focused exclusively on enrollment:

Via the landing page, individuals who clicked on ads were moved along a funnel, rather than asked to make an immediate decision. The landing page provided information, resources and additional content to help parents make an informed choice before they tooke the step of going to the website to learn more or apply.

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So, that’s the process. It’s intensive, but doing this deep work will produce results, while engaging you to improve and refine the quality of your school’s communications and brand. 

You’ve probably noticed that while talking about how to market a charter school, I’ve left out things like outdoor advertising, print, PR, collateral. All of these things have their place in a marketing effort, but the quickest and most efficient way we’ve found to move the needle is via digital marketing. Take these steps, and if we can help, we’re only an email away. 
 

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