Episode Summary

Welcome to the SchoolCEO Podcast. Todays’ topic is enrollment marketing in K-12 education. Enrollment numbers affect funding, which affects everything else. One strategy to improve enrollment is understanding the customer journey, which is the series of steps families take to learn about your school.

The customer journey has five phases: Awareness, Interest, Decision, Retention and Advocacy. The Awareness Phase focuses on getting families to know about your school through events or online presence. In the Interest Phase, families compare schools, and you can engage by offering tours and showcasing student experiences.

Next, in the Decision Phase, it’s important to make the registration process easy. The Retention Phase aims to strengthen relationships with existing families, keeping them engaged through programs and communication. Finally, in the Advocacy Phase, committed families promote your school.

Throughout this journey, it’s important to assess where resources and efforts can be better allocated to enhance engagement at every stage.

Episode Notes

Today’s focus is on a vital topic in K-12 education: enrollment marketing. Enrollment numbers impact funding and nearly all district operations. A key tool for improving enrollment is understanding the customer journey.

This episode will explore the customer journey to help boost student enrollment. These phases are Awareness, Interest, Decision, Retention, and Advocacy. Each phase requires different marketing strategies and each one is important to success.

Featured in this episode are Stephen Houraghan, Alycia Burns, Danny Meyer and Jonah Berger.

Danny Meyer is the author of Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business. 

Jonah Berger’s most recent book is Magic Words: What to Say to Get Your Way

Episode Transcript

Heather Palacios (Host):  Welcome to SchoolCEO podcast. Today, we're going to talk about a crucial topic within K12, enrollment marketing. Nearly every aspect of a district's operations from staffing to program offerings stem from one key factor, enrollment. After all, in most cases, your enrollment numbers determine your funding, and your funding determines just about everything else. Enrollment marketing is a complex problem that can't be solved with a simple answer.

But one strategy can help the customer journey. In this episode, we'll dive deep into what the customer journey is and how this private sector framework can help you move the needle on student enrollment. But before we begin this conversation, let's zoom out and talk about brand advocacy. Zendesk defines brand advocacy as when an individual positively promotes your business, usually by word-of-mouth or on social channels. I, for example, am a huge brand advocate for one of the most well known coffee roasters in the country and even the world, Onyx. The best part is they're based right here in my home state of Arkansas. Whenever someone asks me about coffee or wants a recommendation for a local coffee shop, I always mention Onyx. So to get in the headspace of where we're going in this conversation, I want you to think about your favorite brand. You know, the brand that you will bring up over a dinner party conversation or that brand you'll recommend to friends and family at the drop of a hat. For me, like I just mentioned, that's Onyx. As you're thinking about this, I want you to ask yourself, how did you go about discovering this brand and ultimately becoming an advocate for them? Because brand advocacy doesn't just happen overnight, Heather, it's a series of moments and positive experiences that happen over time. It's a journey.

Stephen Houraghan:  Let's say that you want to go on a journey. Now you don't know where you want to go, you just know that you wanna go on a journey. Well, you need to take a few steps before you get to wherever you want to go. So you might decide to research a few destinations. You might talk to some friends about destinations they've been to. Then once you've decided on a destination, you might go and book your flight, book your hotel, even book a taxi to get to the airport. Then you might start to prepare for your journey. You might go and get supplies. You might get your house cleaned and sorted before you head off, and then you'll actually go on your journey. So you'll take the taxi to the airport, you'll catch the flight, and then you'll finally arrive at your hotel. So what this represents are all the steps that you need to take to go on that journey and get to your end destination. And if you know the steps that you need to take, it makes it a lot easier to plan out that journey. And better yet, if a business knows the steps that you need to take, well, then they can make it easier on you. They can help you along that journey, and that is exactly what customer journey mapping is all about.

Heather Palacios (Host): Today, we're going to be looking at the customer journey through the lens of enrollment. We've taken the private sector definition and reworded it so that it applies to schools. Our definition is the series of steps families move through as they learn more about your district or school. And these steps can be broken down into five phases, awareness, interest, decision, retention, and advocacy. I'll define what each of these steps means here in a second, but essentially, the customer journey is telling the story of how families join your district and how your happiest families become advocates for your schools.

We like this framework for a couple of different reasons. One, it's extremely customer centric. It's focused on what families are thinking and experiencing throughout their entire journey with your schools. Two, unlike other marketing models, the customer journey continues after someone makes a purchase or, in our case, enrolls. And that's important because a family's journey with you doesn't end with registration. It's actually just the beginning. Let's talk about each phase of the customer journey and different things you can do to market your schools during these phases. 

But first, I want to tell you a little story about a walk I took with my two year old daughter, Kairi. A few months ago, we were walking through our local park on an unusually cool summer day. At a bend in the path, we saw something that surprised us.

Small painted rocks lined each side of the walkway. The rocks were decorated with painted rainbows, dinosaurs, houses, and unicorns. As my daughter picked up an itsy bitsy spider rock and handed it to me, a couple of thoughts ran through my head. My first thought was a parenting one. It was evident that an elementary school class had painted these rocks and left them there as part of a school project. I wanted to know which school in my neighborhood undertook this project because when Kairi’s old enough, I'd love to send her to a school that does fun outdoor activities like this one. Activities that help beautify our local park. The second was a marketing thought. I felt like this was a missed opportunity for that school to make a positive brand impression on all the local families walking this trail. After all, if the school had placed a small sign next to the rock or painted their school name on one of them, then families could easily make the connection. And that simple connection could have been enough to sway a prospective family into choosing that school someday. This story is an example of what marketers call awareness marketing, and it's the first phase in the enrollment marketing customer journey. In the awareness phase, families are encountering your district's brand for the very first time. And like me, they're probably not actively shopping around for a school, but they will be in the future. Your objective during this phase is to simply get in front of families through touch points and reminders that your school exists and that you're doing great things in the community.

Hosting local events makes a great touch point like an annual fall fest or an open house. Twin Peaks Classical Academy in Colorado is a charter school, not a community school. That means visibility is key to attracting enrollees according to principal Alycia Burns. How do they do it?

Alycia Burns: We've been doing community events, so they're a low cost way to get ourselves in front of the community. So we're at Oktoberfest. We're at farmer's markets. We're at all the holiday parties and parades and things like that, and we put up our tent and we hand out stickers. We have signs up all over town in families' yards. They're they're proud to be a part of our school, and they love that.

In today's world, it's also important to create brand awareness online. Optimizing your website for SEO or placing Google Ads can help you make a first impression when it's not possible to do so in person, And it can reinforce your brand awareness for those who have already interacted with your school or district in the real world. So what happens when families are ready to start shopping around for a school? This is what marketers call the interest phase of the customer journey. Unlike in the awareness phase, these families are now doing the serious work of comparing schools. These families could be new to the area, have a child reaching school age, or they could be unhappy with their current district. These families already know you exist, so the best way to carry your marketing forward during the interest phase is to make more unique and personalized connections in person and online. Invite these families for a tour around your school so they can get a better sense of your culture and what it feels like to be a part of your community. And think about how you can grab families' attention on your enrollment page by showcasing what your alumni are up to or sharing student testimonial videos. Just research how effective is video marketing on Google, and you'll find multiple recent statistics that all point to the same truth, that videos on a web page increase conversion rates, some sources state, by even 80%.

Here's a video from Twin Peaks, which lets viewers feel like they're actually at the school. 

Audio from Twin Peaks Social Media Video: The atmosphere at Twin Peaks is really amazing. I love how everyone's so kind to each other, and the community is really amazing. 

By this point in the customer journey, families have made their decision. And, hopefully, they chose your school. But before you start celebrating, families still have to take that one final and crucial step, submitting their registration form. The decision phase of the customer journey is all about making the steps seamless for families. Purchase, or in our case, registration, moment simple and easy. For example, last month, I decided to splurge and buy myself some Blundstone shoes online. It only took me about fifteen minutes to find and purchase the shoes I wanted on their website because they made the buying process really simple. I could choose from different colors, read reviews, and select my size using their size chart all from one page. And when it came time to check out, I was given multiple different options for how I could pay. What if the enrollment registration process could be this easy? Obviously, fifteen minutes is an unrealistic goal for schools to attain, but ecommerce stores can teach us a lot about the importance of user experience and the big role your website plays in the registration process. Ask yourself, is my enrollment page easy to find on our website?

Are we making it easy for parents to find the information they need there? An FAQ section on your enrollment page can come in handy, for example. Do you have a dedicated team to answer registration and enrollment questions? And are they well equipped to answer phone calls and schedule in person meetings? What this phase really boils down to is providing radical hospitality, both in person and online. Here's Danny Meyer, author of Setting the Table.

Danny Meyer: I think that people who think that hospitality is just for restaurants are completely missing the boat. I think hospitality is probably the single most powerful business strategy that doesn't get taught nearly enough in business school. What we've learned in our business is to understand that service and hospitality are completely different topics. Hospitality is a dialogue. If you feel like I'm on your side, hospitality is present. If you think I did something for you, hospitality is present. If you think I'm customizing an experience for you, hospitality is present. We believe that the way you make people feel is what they remember more than anything.

Once families are officially a part of your school, the big question is, how do you make them wanna stay? That's what the retention phase of the customer journey is all about. The goal in this phase is to deepen relationships with your existing families, and you can do that many different ways. Hospitality continues to play a big role here. After all, hotels don't ignore their guests just to attract new ones. You can invest in extracurricular programs or provide exciting course selections to keep students engaged and parents happy. You should also keep in touch regularly through newsletters or other avenues by which you can tell families all the great things you're doing and reinforce that sense of community. Here's Alycia Burns at Twin Peaks again.

Alycia Burns:  For us, it's really important that we we build those relationships with families, build those relationships with kids, and most importantly, making kids feel like they belong here. So a lot of our focus is around what can we do to make kids feel like they're a part of a community. We started a house system. We're now in year three, I believe. And our our kids had a lot of say. They they named the houses. They chose colors. They chose logos and and things like that to help build that sense of community.

Those houses she's referring to are similar to the houses in Harry Potter. Instead of Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, students at Twin Peaks belong to one of three houses, Rober, Adamus, or Aram, each with its own colors and school crest. And it's a really fun way to make the students at Twin Peaks feel like they belong. The last phase of the customer journey is called the advocacy phase. And in this phase, families don't just want to be a part of your district, they're committed to it. They're those parents and guardians who rush into the comment section of your Facebook post to defend you against keyboard warriors. And when friends say they are looking for a new school, they recommend yours. They're your biggest cheerleaders. Your job in this phase is really simple. Find ways to elevate your advocates' voices through family engagement committees, PTAs, community leadership programs, etcetera.

Because word-of-mouth is still the most effective form of marketing. Here's Jonah Berger, a best selling author and customer behavior expert.

Jonah Berger: We all think it's about advertising or marketing. Just Just throw more advertising dollars, you know, on web ads or throw more advertising dollars on newspapers or television, but that's not really the way to go. If you think about how you've learned about most products you've bought recently, whether it's a new restaurant, a new movie, or even a new music artist, you probably found out about them from a friend, not from an ad. And if you did find them out from an ad, you probably weren't willing to go check it out until you heard good support and a good recommendation from someone you know.

So let's circle back around to the prompt I gave you at the beginning. What's your favorite brand and what was your journey to becoming an advocate of that brand? That journey probably wasn't as clean cut or linear as this customer journey framework I just laid out, and that's okay. The execution of any marketing strategy isn't going to be as formulaic as the method. But what this framework does so well is it helps you think holistically about reaching families no matter where they are in their journey with your school. Whether they're in the awareness phase and just discovering that your school exists or whether they're a vocal advocate of your district and all the phases in between. So as you think about your enrollment marketing strategy this year, I want you to ask yourself two questions. One, where are you spending too much time and too many resources in the enrollment journey? And two, where are you spending too little time and too few resources in the enrollment journey? Because you might find, for example, that you have a well built plan and resources allocated toward families in the interest phase of the customer journey.

In other words, those families that are shopping around and comparing schools. But you might not have a plan, resources, or a program allocated to support your advocates. And that deficit matters because your advocates are the ones that will give you that really good word-of-mouth that is so critical to engaging with families that are shopping around and even the ones just discovering who you are. In other words, those awareness based families. By now, it should be clear how each part of the customer journey complements one another and builds on one another. If you completely neglect one, you could weaken another. But don't worry. That's why the customer journey framework exists to ensure that you don't miss out on engaging with parents or guardians no matter where they are on their journey to being happy, vocal members of your school community.

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