10 Ways to Market Your School Online – #3 and #4

The inspiration for these Marketing Matters comes from an article that was available several years ago at NewMediaCampaigns.com titled “10 Ways to Market Your Non-Profit Online.” (The page is no longer available.) Since your school is a non-profit, I’ve tweaked them a bit so that these items relate directly to your school and what you need to do to market it effectively in today’s technology-rich environment.

3) Let people who care about your school show it through testimonials and storytelling

Because non-profits like your school are more likely to have passionate supporters, it’s important to let those supporters show their support. Have a section of your school’s Web site reserved testimonials and positive stories. For instance, Bethany Christian School (https://bcsftl.org/testimonials) in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, has its testimonials from current parents on its Web site as a drop-down menu from the “About Us” navigation link. These could be accessed with a button right on its front page header which says, “See what families say about us!” so parents don’t have to go looking for it.

The original article advocates placing a link after each testimonial/story to a form that allows any reader to submit his or her own testimonial or story. While this will allow visitors to easily become a vocal advocate for your school, you need to make sure you can moderate these comments first. After all, someone might post something that’s unsavory about the school, or you may get one of those folks who completes every form he can find on the Internet with a few letters – except for the email address – to get into your school’s social network or Web site, attempting to grow a contact list. Further, today, with spiders that complete forms automatically for this purpose, you need an authentication step to prove that the form is being completed by a real person. Otherwise, your list may grow with spam emails that have no intention of checking out your school.

And today, with the ability of mobile devices today, plan on using video to post video testimonials about your school. When testimonials are extemporaneous and come from the heart, they’re compelling. Doing so also presumes that you have the permission of the person being recorded. If you post a picture and comments from a parent without their permission, they may become upset that you’ve used their likeness and words without asking them first, which could bring legal actions against your school.

4) Improve your email subscriber list with an email sign-up form.

Too many schools have bought into the idea that the Web site for the school is a tool to increase enrollment, while the parent portal/app is for current parents.

Just as there are at least 3 elements to any system, you’re missing an important audience if you’re only gearing your site to interested parents – you’re missing your donors.

Sure, you have a “Make a Gift” button on your Web site – but that’s just like asking someone to contribute to your school without first becoming interested and engaged with it. And, if you’ve been a visitor to this SchoolAdvancement.com site, you’ll know that that is – fundraising…not Development.

Your site needs to market to BOTH parents interested in enrolling their children and potential donors interested in supporting your mission to achieve your vision.

And both of those conversations start with a little bit of information – not pages worth of data.

Make it easy for visitors to give you their email address if they’re interested in hearing more from your school. An up-to-date email subscriber list is one of the most important factors in getting high open and click-through rates in email marketing campaigns. This can be accomplished easily today with a pop-up plugin that asks for the information. The original article says to only ask for one or two fields of identifying information to reduce visitors’ potential hesitance towards signing up, but that’s up to you. If you only put a name and email field on your site, then you have no idea who may be signing up. A few more fields of required information will help determine if they really want to become more engaged with your school, or if they’re trying to get on as many lists as they can to help their Internet business.

It’s also important not to confuse this with an inquiry form in the formal application process. That form isn’t a “I’d like more information form.” In fact, there are some folks that aren’t calling it an inquiry form anymore. If you’ve used the BASIQS tool on this site, you’ll see that I’ve called it the INFORM form for a number of years. That’s an “Information Necessary For Our Record Maintenance,” and it’s a form that is sent to parents. The form that really should be posted to your school’s Web site is should be a form that a parent completes after they’ve checked out your Web site, your school’s ratings on third-party sites, talking with their friends, and asking services like ChatGPT “What’s the best faith-based school in my community?” as they look for educational options for their children.

And if you think parents aren’t doing this today, you are sorely out of touch with your target market.

To be clear, if a family really wants more information about your school to consider it for their child’s educational environment, they should be able to complete a form that lets them discover what is truly unique about your school, it’s activities, and ways that they can be engaged. To ask for all the the demographic information of all your kids at this point of the enrollment process is the equivalent of sending home the enrollment folder that gets put on a table while other stuff is piled on top of it.

This subscriber list isn’t just for families that “might be” interested in enrolling their children in your school. This form’s purpose is to engage members of the greater community – including alumni, businesses, community members (which include parents of alumni) and, of course, donors – with your school. From there, you can determine if the subscriber may want more information about getting a tour, making a contribution, or enrolling their children.