Getting Started With Local Marketing For Your Microschool

There are many ways to go about marketing your school and there is more to it than just promoting your school. So let’s start at the beginning!

Before you start marketing your school we recommend you define your value propositions and your reasons to believe.

Value Proposition

Your Reasons to Believe

These are short and compelling reasons that will make parents believe your value proposition. 

Both your value proposition and your reasons to believe are important pre-work before you start working on your marketing assets to start promoting your microschool. Having these defined will help you write compelling copy for your marketing assets that speaks to the families in your community.

Marketing Assets

1. A simple website introducing your school and providing details about: Your school vision, your learning approach and curriculum, student age range, pricing, and a form for people to get in touch with you

2. A flyer or postcard with high-level information about your school vision and the above details pointing people to your website for more information.

3. Your school's social media presence. Choose the top 1-3 channels your community is likely to engage in.

4. Create your school’s Google Business profile so it can be found through Google Maps searches

Brand Awareness & Lead Generation

With your marketing assets in place, you can start promoting your school and spreading the word about this new type of education coming to your community. In our experience, new mircoschool founders should spend most of their time dedicated to marketing creating brand awareness (letting parents know that your school exists) and generating leads (getting them to express initial interest in your microschool).

We recommend you start hyper-local and hyper-personal and work outwards from there. Think about the families in your community that you want to serve with your microschool and ask yourself where you could "meet" them. Here are a few tactics Catalyst founders were successful with:

1. Let your network know what you are doing. Share what inspired you to create it, how it will help the community and invite them to share the news with their network.
2. Talk to your community and network about your school. Let them know that you are gathering waitlists for enrollment. 
3. Use your digital network and expand it! Which local Facebook groups are you part of where you might find your parent audience? Share the news about your school there with as much information as possible and offer a way for them to get in touch with you. 
4. Research and sign up for small, local school choice, education, parenting, or family events (kids fairs, farmers markets, etc.). 
5. Encourage supporters to help recruit other students. Nothing is more powerful than a passionate parent telling other parents about their decision to make a change in their kids' education. 

These steps can take a significant amount of time and it can often feel like nothing is working. But rest assured, you are spreading the word and making families aware of your new school. Even if they don’t sign up right away, the time you spend in this phase will pay dividends for months and years to come. 

Need more tips on how to promote and grow enrollments for your microschool? Check out how the KaiPod team can support you!