Priya Pandit
School Success Manager at SchoolPad
The new age teaching methodologies, updating curriculum to be in sync with the changing times and curating events that can engage and stimulate students are the backbone of every school. But equally important and of strategic importance is the admission process. The more simplified it is, the easier it is for the parents, translating into quicker admissions. The admission enquiry process for a school is one of the essential processes that fuels the entire system. Every school strives to quickly get its quota of admissions to keep growing and improving its educational initiatives and outcomes by investing more every year. In the last decade of working with schools and helping them manage their admission enquiries and admissions, apart from other processes, we have helped them evolve their admission processes and have made the entire process more effective and meaningful.
Consolidating and summarizing our learnings from the last decade of working with schools, we figured out that with the increasing number of new schools coming up every year leading to intense competition, one differentiator that works like magic is the parents’ experience, right from their first interaction with the school which is usually the enquiry they make for the admission. The experience they get, not only after the child gets admitted to the school but even before that, can help position the school favourably in the parents’ minds. This experience can positively influence them and makes them believe in the school, which further helps them evaluate and decide on the ideal school for their child. Hence it is a no-brainer that schools need to build an exceptional experience for parents from the day they enquire about the school, whether online or offline and keep building on it organically.
To help you build this kind of experience, we thought of writing this article and putting together the top 3 components of the admission process, which have helped schools significantly boost their conversions and build better brand perception. Working on these components will help improve your school’s admission process, make it more effective and create an exceptional experience for parents even before they get their child admitted to your school.
Simplify your admission form and make it easily accessible: This is the first point of experience for the prospective parents where they show interest in your school and sign up for the admission process. One thing that generally ruins the experience at this point itself is the complexity of the process of filling in the enquiry/admission form. Make sure you get this right. It should be as hassle-free as it can be. Make your form more accessible by making it available online, in school or even acceptable through the post so that the parents can apply from anywhere and at any time. Simplify your form by breaking it into stages. Get the essential information in the first stage, and then at different points in the admission process journey, get the rest of the data. In a nutshell, make the application form a no brainer and easily accessible.
Keep your admission enquiries engaged: Once the parent submits the application form and enters the journey from enquiry to admission, this is your best chance to give him an experience that helps you convert. But be aware that this is also one of the make or break stages of your journey. It is extremely crucial for you to give out the most relevant content for the parent at this stage and share it in a way that helps the parent visualize the child’s growth journey with your school. Do it engagingly so that the parents stay involved and consume this content to make a conscious decision for their child. Here are a few ideas that you can apply during this stage:
Share short videos of students showcasing their creative skills. These could be dance performances, music performances, some artwork etc. These should be the most exceptional award-winning and touching performances that make parents visualize their children learning and performing the same way.
Share parent testimonial videos or graphics. Testimonials help build trust.
Share graphics and videos around your teaching methodologies. Focus on the differentiators here and how your school stands out from others.
Showcase some achievements in the form of graphics or slideshows. These could be the top results or some state-level awards. Anything that you consider as a proud moment for the school can be shared with prospective parents.
Do live events around relevant topics like parenting, hygiene, fitness, career growth etc.
And the list keeps going. The idea here is to use all the relevant channels like social media, WhatsApp, SMS, etc., to ensure that this journey turns out into a story where the parents can visualize their child as an integral part of it which helps them arrive at a decision. Make sure you have a professional plan to share these content pieces. Don’t flood your parents’ WhatsApp or SMS with so much content that instead of building on the experience, you ruin it completely. Choose the sharing interval and days consciously.
Follow up and leave no communication gaps: Communication is the key during this journey of converting an admission enquiry into the actual admission. Make sure you have your people and policies in place so that your follow-ups around the enquiries keep happening in a genuine and balanced way and there is no piece of information that parents miss out on. At each stage of your process, make sure you keep the parents informed and follow up a second time to confirm whether they have received the relevant information. A small communication gap might lead to a prospective parent losing out on the admission for their child and someone else getting it, which might end up in chaos later on.
This year’s admission season brings in a lot of hope and optimism. The hope is that the pandemic will fade out and that the schools will start working like usual and will be even more lively from the coming academic year. With all that hope and optimism, let’s ensure that we leave no stone unturned in giving a magical experience to parents by implementing processes to make our schools more efficient and more organized.
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