3 Marketing Techniques to Attract Families to Your School

Source: Marra, C.M. (2022). Reframing recruitment as marketing: Building connections with prospective high school music students, families, and administrators. Music Educators Journal, 109(1), 29-36.

Criteria for selection: Peer reviewed research from an arts perspective that has some interesting marketing strategy applications for schools looking to attract more families.

LEARN Brief and Infographic Credits: Dr. Jeannie Haubert, Ashlea Sovetts, MFA, Dr. Lindsey Yearta

Overview:

High school music programs often work to build their reputation well before the start of freshman year. Exploring lessons from these programmatic successes in the arts suggests models that could be scaled up to attract more families to schools and districts generally.  The author details their success strategies and argues that, to increase enrollment, schools and/or districts should shift their mindset from recruitment to marketing. They should be segmenting and targeting audiences; making sure the message is relevant to the particular group of stakeholders being targeted. Schools and districts should consider having enrolled students talk to prospective students, parents to parents, a student athlete to a student athlete. In other words, tailoring messaging to key groups is critical.

The author highlights three key marketing principles: perception (understand and influence how each stakeholder group views the school), salience (use relatable messengers to deliver the message), and the rule of seven (each stakeholder group should encounter the message at least seven times).

Key Insights: 

1. Traditional student recruitment methods are insufficient.
2. Marketing principles can enhance enrollment.
3. Social and emotional factors can drive enrollment numbers.

Action Steps: 

1. Schools and/or districts might shift thinking and processes around student enrollment to include an emphasis on marketing strategies related to perception, targeting, salience, and the rule of seven.
2. Schools might develop a marketing calendar with stakeholders to include parent nights, social media campaigns, personalized letters, etc.
3. Schools might target stakeholders throughout the year more, not just around enrollment windows.

(Not a sponsored link) K-12 Marketing Strategies to Increase District Enrollment

Full Study:

https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=5f8c5f43-4536-3afe-82f7-43c44e2aee96