Six Ways to Market Your School Through Your Parents

Whenever I conduct focus groups or a survey at a school to help develop a marketing plan, I always ask the parents how they first heard about the school. Their answer is consistently through the referral of someone else—typically your current parents.

Your current parents are the most important marketers for your school. The following are six ways in which you can ask your parents to help spread positive word-of-mouth about your school to their friends:

• Tell the story of your school by communicating experiences in their own words. This story can be shared in person and on the Web.
• Invite a friend to experience your school by visiting and touring campus.
• Write an online review of their experiences online at GreatSchools.com, Google or Yelp. Online reviews feed in online searches and may interest prospective families to consider your school.
• “Like” your school’s Facebook page and participate in the conversation. As the number one social media site in the world, our prospective families are here.
• Direct friends to your website to check out your school.
• Refer a friend to the admissions office by having a designated form on your website that does this automatically.

As you put together your word-of-mouth marketing campaign, your goal is motivate your parents to use the “Tell-Invite-Write-Like-Direct-Refer” strategy to help you market your school.

Even if your parents just choose one of these strategies, you will be well on your way to maximizing the power of word-of-mouth marketing through your parents.