You don’t have to attend a workshop to start using the Five Pillars strategy. You just need to start thinking how the customer thinks and apply the methodology. It’s sitting right in front of you and waiting for you to adapt it to your program. Remember the Five Pillar’s strategy is both a skillset and a mindset. Here are a couple of ideas to help you to develop your skillset.
Pillar 1 – What is the problem to be solved for the customer?
When something is wrong about their child’s educational experience, the full-pay parent will look for options despite their paying their local taxes to support the school system. Your job is to know what it is that is not right for them. Once you know their thinking, you demonstrate that you can relate with their conditions. Take a look at your ads. Do they identify the problem that needs to be solved for the customer? Which of these reflect your type of advertisement?
Example 1: Come and learn about our opportunities; you’ll be amazed.
Example 2: Are You Tired of the School Cutting Back on Your Child’s Opportunities?
If you selected example 1, you approach is more school centric. Try applying the example 2 approach which focuses in on the problem of the customer. Apply this approach, not only to your advertising promotion, but to the content of your admission letters, and the set-up of your admission events, and then watch the attraction that will start building.
Pillar 2 – Establish Yourself as the Educational Expert
Everyone wants to buy from the best. You need to demonstrate to families that you are the best in class – Master Educators. How do you do that? It’s not difficult. You let them taste your
expertise for free or at a very low cost. Think about how other businesses have worked with you. You’ve been to places where they let you taste the sugar-coated nuts, the Wisconsin cheese, or the orange chicken. How about the free weekend to try out a time share or test driving a new car? You taste it and your mind says that you can use more and you know that it is good. Why do you know that it is good? You tasted it. Even if you don’t buy immediately, you know that brand of Wisconsin cheese is great. When you go to buy cheese, you’re going to think about that Wisconsin cheese.
You want to give them a taste of how you educate students, the caliber of your expertise, and how well you know the respective age level. Create programs and articles to give them that taste.
- Offer a writer’s workshop for young writers
- Have a robotics day
- Publish an article on how to help middle school children through those fast growing years.
- Publish an article on how parents can work with their kindergarten age child with mathematics.
Once they come to your event, you get their contact information and begin your relationship with them through whatever other experiences you have established in your process.
This is two of The Five Pillar’s strategies that you can begin using now. In a future article, I will talk about the other three or visit the Marketingtofullpay.com website to read about them. As you start using these Pillars, you will see increased interest and engagement from full-pay families, because you are addressing their needs.