How to Enroll More Students In Your School

“How do we increase student enrollment in our school?”

It’s a question we hear all the time. And if there was a quick answer, this blog would be about three sentences long. Enrollment marketing isn’t complicated—but it takes a lot of time and resources, something few school marketers have. Here’s where we’d start.

1. Improve Your K-12 Website

If enrollment is slipping, don’t start with ads. Start with your website, because that’s where every interested family goes first. Many school communicators have their hands full just keeping their websites up to date, but there is so much more that goes into a good website. 

If you can tackle only one thing right now, make it your website—specifically, your homepage and enrollment page. Are they welcoming and interesting? Do they sell the story of why someone would want to enroll their child in your school?

We see a lot of transactional, cold, informational-only webpages. Remember that your school enrollment page needs to be both informative and enticing. 

Not only does your website need to be written so real people can understand it, but it also needs to be built so search engines can understand it. Are you using H2’s correctly? Is your website UI built logically for an external audience (not an internal, department-driven audience)? How much education jargon is on your site? 

You can audit for content, accessibility, and/or brand. You should probably do all three. Whether you like it or not, AI is reviewing your website and drawing conclusions.

See: Five Things to Do This Summer to Get Found Online

2. Communicate Your School Differentiators

Why should someone send their child to your school? If you’re saying generic buzzwords, you may have already lost some of your potential families. Every school promises excellence and a lifetime love of learning. And these things are probably true for you, too. But what makes your school stand out against the competition? Those things are your differentiators. 

“Your school or district brand should inform some of your differentiators,” said Ashley Winter, CEL content manager. “If your district prides itself on inclusivity or being a warm, caring community, your school website should infuse those same emotions on every page—and especially your enrollment page. If your school prides itself on rigorous academics, I want to see that shine through. Your goal is to identify those authentic qualities and ensure your school website communicates them through the content on its pages, the photos you select, and even your website’s navigation design.”

3. Find Families Where They Are

Your families are online. They’re asking Facebook groups for school recommendations. They’re house-hunting school districts on Reddit. They’re on NextDoor asking about experiences with the local school district. And they are absolutely, definitely asking ChatGPT and Gemini to compare their school options.

Does that mean you need to have a marketing presence in all of those online spaces? Well, yes. But it doesn’t have to be through paid ads! Word-of-mouth marketing is your in, but it does take time and effort to build brand ambassadors.

School ambassadors are people willing to distribute information on your behalf. It’s a Board member re-sharing your Facebook enrollment posts into community groups. It’s a staff member liking and commenting on your important social posts. It’s a parent willing to answer Reddit questions about “Is <Name> a decent school district?” or submit an honest review on Niche.com. 

Having someone in your corner willing to reshare an enrollment post is wonderful. But having a group of people willing to share referendum data or counteract rumors online? That’s the kind of thing all school communicators dream of having…and you can have it too. You just need to start building an ambassador network. Today.

4. Spend Money on Advertising

Yup. We did say you shouldn’t start with paid ads…but you probably do have to fork out some dollars to increase enrollment. It’s likely that your competitors are spending money on display advertising, search advertising, and social media ads. You don’t want to be invisible online, especially with increased digital competition.

Our advice? Don’t spend money you can’t measure. Developing a multi-channel enrollment strategy that includes digital advertising is the gold standard. Splashing up a few ads on Facebook without a strategy or metrics to inform your plan? Not the best use of dollars.

5. Create an Enrollment Marketing Strategy

Create a reusable enrollment marketing strategy.

What goes into an enrollment marketing plan? Start with realistic goals. Maybe you’re hoping for a 10% increase in Kindergarten enrollment next year. That’s a nice, solid stretch goal. Now, what’s going to get you there?

Increased presence. That means wherever people are asking, “What school should I choose?” you need to be there, waving your foam finger. How are you going to get your school in front of those families?

We don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all enrollment marketing plan. For some districts, hosting an enrollment event is a sure-fire way to get community members interested in what they have to say. For other schools, the only thing that matters is making it onto a top ten listicle of “best schools in the Midwest.” Your audience and their habits dictate what works best. Our advice? Don’t paper cars in a digital-first community. Don’t rely solely on social media ads in a community where word-of-mouth reigns supreme.

Still not sure where to start? Take a look at what your successful competitors are doing. Do that, too.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

A good K-12 enrollment marketing plan is useless without metrics. You’re probably tracking the total number of enrollments. “Last year, we had 500 elementary students. This year we have 460.”
Does that mean you lost 40 students? Is that 40 single-child families, or four larger families?

How many leads do you get every month? What months do you get the highest number of leads? Are you capturing lead email addresses? What grades have the highest retention rates, and what grades have the lowest retention rates?

How many people look at your school enrollment page each month? Do any of those people convert to enrolled families? What percentage of people who clicked on your social media ad convert into an enrollment? How quickly do you follow up with interested families when they reach out with questions?

You can’t improve what you can’t measure. And you can’t build a successful enrollment strategy without data. As you build your marketing plan, be sure to define what success looks like and how you’ll measure progress.

When something works? It stays in the plan for next year. When something doesn’t? Time to adjust. That can mean taking a hard look at district traditions such as enrollment deadlines, lottery dates, and information nights, and shaking things up. Just because you’ve always done Kindergarten information nights in April doesn’t mean April is the best month to host them. What does the data say?

Birth Rates Are Dropping. Not Everyone is Going to Win the Enrollment Game.

Is another Kindergarten enrollment cliff coming? A lot of experts think so. That means the competition for enrollment is fierce.

Not every school will be able to maintain full enrollment. That’s a fact. So now, more than ever, enrollment marketing is a necessity for schools. Public schools, private schools, charter schools, online schools—there are so many options for families. The good news? You don’t need to compete in every sector; you just need to be visible to the right families. 

Tell your story, authentically. Build your website with families in mind. Update your writing to meet modern tech needs (we’re a skim society, not a read society). Spend your marketing dollars where you get the biggest bang for your buck. And most importantly? Call your CEL besties if you have a question. We’re happy to show you examples of enrollment marketing strategies that we love.