Think about the first impression that a prospective parent has with your school.
You may be envisioning them walking up your steps, admiring the flowers that your PTO planted over the summer. You can picture them being
impressed by the beautiful mural that your art classes created in the lobby. And you know that when they meet your awesome school
secretary, they will feel the love and welcoming attitude that you try to create at your school.
Most of the time, their first interaction or exposure to your school will be via their phone or their computer as they research you online. All the hard work that you did in making your front office welcoming and engaging will not matter if they have not been convinced that you are worth visiting in the first place.
If you do not provide a great “digital first impression”, it is very unlikely that they will ever come visit your school in person. Here
are three simple and free tips for schools to ensure that their
digital first impression is the best it can be.
The first step that almost all parents will do is to perform a Google search on you. This may be your school’s name, or it may be
characteristics like “school near me”, “best school in my town”, or “STEM school”. Put yourself in the shoes of your prospective parent and
try this. Think about what you are “known for” or what you think a parent would use to search for you and Google it.
Did your school show up?
If it didn’t, or you showed up, but on page 12, then you definitely need to improve your local web presence. If your school showed up, do this again with your browser in “incognito mode”. Your browser might know that you look at your school website often and will pull it up automatically. You want to mimic a parent who hasn’t been to your website before.
The first step in ensuring that your school shows up in a Google search is to ensure that you have claimed your site via Google My
Business. As the largest search engine, it is critical that you are ensuring that Google has the most accurate information about your
school to display when people are searching.
Google My Business is a free and critical, foundational step to complete to improve your local web presence.
Having an accurate Google My Business listing will improve your likelihood of showing up in search, will provide your information when
people use Google Maps and most importantly, will increase your chances of showing up on the coveted “Google 3 pack” which is the map that
shows the most relevant answers to the search query.
Why is this the 3 pack so important? It appears before any other organic search, so if you are just getting started in digital
marketing and don’t have strong SEO, this is a great way for you to leapfrog sites that do.
Being registered with local Google also allows you to accept reviews on Google. Having a lot of positive reviews on Google also will
improve your likelihood of showing up in a search, because Google will prioritize sites that have a lot of reviews
Whomever designed your website, should have registered it with Local Google.
But if it wasn’t done, here is a tutorial that I did
that will walk your through the steps. Don’t worry, it is very easy to do!
Wouldn’t it be great if every time a prospective parent was thinking about your school that they heard a chorus of happy, satisfied parents singing your praises? Well that is what online reviews can do for you.
Conversely, think about the experience when a parent is researching your school and the first thing, they see is a disgruntled parent
talking about how bad your school is?
Like it or not, online reviews are now a critical part of your school’s marketing mix. You may not be able to prevent people from leaving
poor reviews, but you can counter them by having several positive reviews from your parents.
This is a great activity for your PTO or Parent Ambassador program. At the beginning of the year, identify the review sites that you want positive reviews on. I would prioritize Facebook, Google, Greatschools.org and Niche.com.
Then, direct your PTO parents to try to place four to five great reviews every semester. You may even want to help them by saying, “We
really would like you to mention X in your review”. This way you can reinforce what you think is a key benefit of your school and hopefully
push any negative review down to the bottom.
Having a good presence on online review sites is important because they will generally show up before your school when parents are searching
for attributes like “Best school” or “Top STEM Program”. This is because these sites spend a lot more money on their local search engine
optimization (SEO) which makes their sites show up before yours.
It is important that when these sites profile your school, that their information is accurate. The best way to ensure that these sites have
the true facts about your school is to engage with them and provide them updated and correct information. Make sure that you are “claiming”
your site with them and updating the information about your school.
For a lot of parents, the first time they research your school is via these online review sites. They are pretty important.
We did an article about how to optimize your online reviews if you want to dive
deeper into this subject. .
For many school administrators, thinking about updating and improving their website can be a stressful and scary undertaking. For us non-techies, this is not a task that we relish. But your website is the cornerstone and most important thing in your enrollment marketing to get right. Every prospective parent will visit your website at least once when they are researching your school, so you can’t overlook it.
Once a year, review your website for accuracy. Are all your staff members correct? Are there broken links? Outdated information? Having a
poor website is going to impact your enrollment efforts in a significant way.
Right or wrong, parents are judging the quality of your school by the quality of your website. If your website is halfway finished or has a
bunch of broken links, they are going to assume that your school is run in the same fashion. They may not give your the opportunity to
explain why you haven’t gotten around to updating your website.
Next,
ensure that you have testimonials from happy parents on your site. You can take this information from your online reviews, or merely ask
parents if they would write you a testimonial that you can use on the website. Testimonials are a great way to “sell” your
school to prospective parents.
Finally, review the pictures and imagery that you are using on your site. Remember that a picture tells a thousand words, so your site needs to be heavy on pictures and lighter on copy. If more than 30% of the page is copy, you need to think about ways to decrease this and utilize images to tell your story.
Also, examine the photos that you are using to ensure that they are appropriately diverse and representative of the students that you are
trying to attract. People want to be able to envision their child at your school. If they don’t see kids that look like their kids, they
may have second thoughts about taking the next step of engaging with your school.
Finally, are you utilizing your website to identify leads? Having a great website is only part of the task. You must be able to identify
who is visiting your site so you can proactively follow up with them. Getting traffic to your website is great, but if you don’t know who
they are, and can’t proactively reach out to them, it doesn’t matter how many people visit your website.
I covered how to do identify website visitors in this blog post.
You only get one chance to make a first impression. And first impressions will rule a school in or out of further consideration. With many
steps in the enrollment process, it is critical to get your digital first impression right.
Every step should be designed to change a prospective parent into an enrolled parent. These are some easy things you can do to ensure that
parents are giving your school a chance at second and third impressions, and hopefully enrollment.
Nick LeRoy, MBA, is the president of Bright Minds Marketing and former Executive Director of the Indiana Charter School Board. Bright Minds Marketing provides enrollment and recruitment consulting to private, Catholic and charter schools. For information about how Bright Minds Marketing can help your school improve its’ student enrollment, send an email to nick@brightmindsmarketing.com or call us at 317-361-5255.
Get our best tips to maximize your school’s marketing efforts and increase enrollment.
Discover the difference
WORK WITH BRIGHT MINDS
531 West 83rd Place
Indianapolis, IN 46260
Get our best enrollment advice sent directly to your inbox.
Get our best enrollment advice sent directly to your inbox.