If you are a private school, you know that the bulk of your target market attends public schools, making them your primary competition. The breakdown in the market share is roughly 83% public and 17% private, according to data from Easy Demographics. So, why is competing versus public schools easier than a competing against a giant like Walmart?
Walmart is like a snowball rolling downhill; it has an almost unlimited capacity to draw in more customers. It can continue to get bigger and bigger. It grows and takes many customers from K-mart, Target, Sears and other competitors. Public schools don’t get bigger so readily. Even the best of public schools are more likely to pack students into existing spaces. Funding for programs that don’t contribute towards increasing a schools’ state-wide exam scores often get cut and some schools with exemplary programs are unable to expand themselves. For public and private schools, however, not being able to grow in the same way as a business like Walmart is a huge advantage for a school who struggle with getting more full-pay family. The likelihood of the competition making it harder for you is considerable less. K-mart wishes it could say the same.
Let’s say that the chart below demonstrates the 6 other schools in your marketing area with whom you might cross and the number of new full-pay students each school needs to enroll this year:
| Enrolled Full Pay Students | New Full Pay Students Needed | |
| School A | 700 | 80 |
| School B | 250 | 50 |
| School C | 300 | 60 |
| School D – This is your school | 250 | 50 |
| School E | 300 | 55 |
| School F | 200 | 45 |
| School G | 150 | 35 |
Assume that the current order also represents the schools that tend to get first choice in the crossover of applicants. At the end of the day, Schools A, B and C will hit their enrollment numbers with little difficulty because they get first choice, most of the time, over Schools D, E, F and G. However, as long as these schools are not expanding, they will only take around 190 students from the market. They are not going to suddenly increase that number to 250 students, because unlike Walmart, they are not on the expansion trail.
This may seem like a “so what”, but this relieves a huge burden. It is one of the reasons that non-profit schools don’t like profit schools. They are quite aware that profit schools have no reservations about expanding; it fits their business model.
Your plan should be to formulate strategies that will demonstrate to the full-paying family that your school has enough value to compensate for the cost difference between your program and the public school. This is not an easy task, but when you compete using the following approach options, it can be accomplished.
- Have a solution for the customers needs that no one else can produce.
- Have a focused marketing strategy to dominate Schools E, F and G and win over a few more students from Schools A, B and C.
During The Five Pillars, we will talk about battling the competition and positioning your marketing strategies to matriculate more full-pay families. Without the Walmarts in the competition, you will have a chance; seize the opportunity.