Closing the deal with a full-pay family at your school’s cost is a difficult task. We are talking about the tuition, logistic, and emotional costs. Furthermore, the full-pay family has more educational options than non-full-pay families. You must convince the family that your value is worth the cost.
During the full-pay family’s campus visit with you, did you deliver your key messages that differentiate you from the other schools they visited? Even if you did, they may not have fully understood or heard the benefits among all of the sounds coming from the various school visits, so you need to reiterate your key messages throughout the process. Here are some ideas to help you make sure that your messages are getting through:
- Take advantage of every opportunity to communicate your information. They want to complete the process and during the process, they may contact your office many times. You need to provide, verbally or in print, information that will reinforce your brand messages. Think about ways to leverage your school’s latest achievements and events in the response emails you’re sending them. What messages are you sending in the thank you letter to the family?
- Follow-up with a testimony from an articulate, euphoric teacher, student or parent who loves your program. Select one who can re-enforce your differentiating factors with real stories about his or her child’s experience. Don’t wait until you send your acceptance letter out to take this type of action. You know those full-pay families who you are trying to attract need this information now to make the best buying decision.
- Engage the prospective student. Convince the prospective student with a different plan than his parent(s). Student-to-student is the obvious strategy. Establish a connection between the prospective student and your student. Which student? I would choose one who is a good balance between being a student with similar interests and a student who is the best salesperson. When in doubt, I would go with my best salesperson student who can build the relationship with anyone.
- Make the full-pay family feel special during the process. How do you do this? From the interview, you learned that selecting the essay topic was going to be difficult, so you send the student some ideas. Your fifth grade candidate will be studying Egypt this year, based on your interview with him, so you send them a couple of cool pictures that you found of sarcophagi, even better if you photographed King Tutankhamen’s tomb while you were in Egypt during your last vacation. Younger children love stickers; send them some that are relevant. Making the family feel special is the most important factor of this process. It can actually make up for many short-comings and help them to overlook your competitors’ advantages when the choice is close. Parents want their kids to feel special and welcome – it’s all about feeling good.
- Send targeted messages. Keep in mind, What is the problem to be solved for the customer –” WITPTBSFTC.”
- Text messaging is hot. If you can text that picture of the slam dunk while you are sitting at the basketball game, do it. Or the volcano project in 3rd grade. How about the picture of the quilt that the 1st graders are doing for their hunger awareness project? Send it to the parent! That parent looking to change to your first grade program will love it and see your teachers in a good light.
- Hang out! I think Google Hangout has some awesome potential. This connects your people with the prospects in live video. This can work for day students, but it has greater potential for boarding.
Keep in mind you need to do most of your marketing and communications with families before they are accepted. By the time they are accepted, everyone is trying to get into the game and you are back to the beginning when so many sounds are coming to them at the same time.
With the Five Pillars workshop, you will get a better understanding of developing and implementing this type of strategic marketing thinking in a more organized, effective manner.