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When I first started my position as an administrative assistant for a school that was just opened, our enrollment was very low and our enrollment cap was 300 students. At that time we barely had 90 students, so I took over the admissions and enrollment responsibilities and started working in developing the marketing aspect of the school. As you know my background is in Marketing and Education, the two things that I am passionate about, so I truly have enjoyed the responsibility and loved the opportunity to do what I love the most which is marketing but more so really, is to get know our parents and connecting with them….ahhh welcoming them each morning through our doors was such a joy, and touring our new families around our campus,  some of them they just have come from overseas and didn’t know how to fill an enrollment application, so I was there to help them with the enrollment process, . This was in year 2005, where some of the social media platforms did not exist at that time, some of them were around but nothing like they are today, so I  kind of was in a disadvantage considering what we have these days and what we can do in social media…I was not able to leverage these opportunity like you can now… I had to rely on old school marketing method, such as flyers, brochures, speaking to parents, word of mouth marketing…etc. So I had to use three strategies to help me with our enrollment growth which I am going to share them with you.

The 1st strategy that helped me the most in marketing our charter school in the community was:

Word of Mouth Marketing

So with our enrollment being so low in our first year of the school, I knew I had to do something fast to spread the word about our school in the community, so I started connecting and communicating with our current parents, I took advantage of being the administrative assistance of the school to communicate and connect with our current parents and ask them about their concerns, expectations, and what would they like us  to improve, quickly I became the go to person in the school that parents call for any problems or concerns, and by building that trust, I assigned Parents Ambassadors to help me market our school since as I mentioned social media was not like these days at the time, I relied heavily on the word of mouth Marketing in our community, I literally asked our parents to market our school in an indirect way, I asked them to share what they love about their kids school to their neighbors, friends and extended family, and encouraging them to take our school message to other families they know, and spread the words in their community centers, events, and meetings, and soon enough, I was surprised when parents started bringing their neighbors to enroll their kids, their relatives and friends. I truly believe if you want your school to succeed you need to connect with your community, becoming a part of the school community is what will make or break any school, and I know this does not happen overnight but it is a process and you have to be patient.

Develop place in our charter school neighborhood

I searched out activities in the community, and participated in parades, and sponsored Holidays festivals and community carnivals  and made sure to distribute basic flyers that I have created on words document to spread the word and highlights all the unique features that our school have and focused on the school core message. Remember at that time, my resources were very low, we didn’t have a marketing department that could help me with creating flyers or brochures or any of these things which is the case of most Charter Schools where the budget is very low so a Marketing Department is

Also as a school, I took the initiative to create opportunity such as hosting community events, this is truly an effective way to make personal contact with your school’s neighbors. For example, our school focus was college prep, and since the school was in a low income area,  so seminars such as college financial aid or partnering with colleges to host academic fairs in our school was essential to educate our parents about financial aids, some of them were thinking they can not afford college for their children, and college was not even an option for them, so hosting these seminars in our school, kind of opened their eyes to doors that they were not considering, also these events helped us in taking the opportunity to speak one on one with families and assign parents ambassadors to speak with prospect parents so they can hear first hand what they like about our school.

Sharing and documenting the participation of Charter School Events in local Newspaper.

Take a look at what is been communicating and said about your school, look what the public reads and hears, Are these really the stories you want people to hear about your academy? For me, I made a decision, no one will be telling the public what our school was about except. I looked to find if we have a local newspaper in our community, because I know every community has a local newspaper and I thought if I  can connect with a journalist in those newspapers, that would help to feed them with the information that I wanted to be out there about our academy. I know they would be more than happy to share the exciting and positive things that happens in our academy in their newspaper. So I made sure in every event that we had in our school to take photos, videos and write a press release and email the journalist, so he can write the story I wanted everyone to know, once your school name is in the local newspaper, this will create a buzz in the community and families will get anxious and more interested to know more about your school because they get to hear it not from you but someone else.

I believe if you fully invest your time and energy into the community of your academy, you will definitely see results and success. If you love what you do you can make anything happen, don’t feel you are obligated to enroll students, have passion toward your charter and enjoy the process of your marketing and enrollment efforts, as long as you stay consistent with your message which is aligned with the school Mission, then you will excel and get new leads for your school and make a huge difference in the recruitment effort you’re putting.