HOW TO INCREASE PRIVATE SCHOOL ENROLLMENT
small private school increases enrollments
Overview
A small private school focuses on servicing Pre-K through 6th grade students who have special needs and ADHD. In addition, the private school is bilingual, and offers summer camps to help make their revenue stream more consistent year round.
Traditionally, this small private school has attracted students through word of mouth. But as they’ve become more specialized in terms of their target student, they’ve been tasked with casting a wider net on a national and regional level to raise awareness of their school. To do so, they’ve relied heavily on PPC (pay per click) advertising. And, they’ve been successful. One recent enrollment came from a family several states away, who decided to move to the area so their child could attend this school.
So imagine a cutting edge, small private school with an amazing curriculum catered towards a particular type of student. How do you market a private Pre-K through 6th grade school on a local and national level?
Challenge
Small schools have small marketing budgets, and this small private school was no exception.
Most of their small marketing budget was going towards Google ads and Facebook ads. But, as their target keywords became more competitive, the cost to advertise for those keywords continued to rise.
With the cost per lead rising, how can a small private school develop a way to drive a more predictable inflow of parents interested in scheduling school tours?
Solution
The solution to reducing paid ad spend is quite simple. First, identify the keywords with the most conversions and highest cost per clicks. Then, develop an SEO content strategy that will help the website rank organically for those keywords.
That’s what we did for this small private school. They were spending $10-15 per click on keywords like “special education schools in miami” or “private school miami.”
The opportunity for our private school client was to create blog post and landing page content that would rank for those key terms.
Example blog content focused on:
- “Top” pieces of content (blogs present several private school options in the local area)
- Customer questions (stuff parents asked educators every day about student disabilities)
- Ultimate guides (everything you ever wanted to know about ADHD)
The content we created online were the same conversations taking place offline. By bringing that conversation online, we hoped that more offline conversations could take place between educators and curious parents.
Result
The results?
- 10x increase in organic search traffic year over year
- #1 ranking for the terms, “private school miami” “special needs school miami” “adhd schools miami” and “summer camps in miami for 4 year olds”
- First page search results for terms like “special needs school miami” and “summer camp miami”
- Reduced need for PPC advertising
Some really good stuff, as evidenced by this graph detailing the increases in organic search volume and organic keywords:
The increase in organic traffic brought on an increase in parent inquiries and scheduled school tours. The private school got connected nationwide to some really cool student stories, and was able to present families in need with an education solution.
We also were able to decrease paid advertising costs significantly with a rise in the value of inbound traffic:
After 2.5 years of working together, the school grew so much that they achieved the ultimate result: they were able to take everything in house and continue to grow.
