One of the primary goals of each educational centre is to attract and retain students. But because there are so many options available to prospective students, many educational centre owners find it challenging to stand out and interest students in enrolling in their programs.
Fortunately, there are a few effective strategies you can use to increase student enrollment and grow your centre.
Keep reading this article, and you will explore several techniques that can help you attract more students. Let’s get started!
Common Mistakes In the Enrollment Process
Before you start working on strategies to increase student enrollment in your educational centre, make sure not to make these common mistakes:
1. Not Tracking the Leads
Leads are individuals who have shown some level of interest in your learning centre, but have not yet enrolled in it. For example, leads are people who have visited your website, attended an event, or something similar.
Not checking these leads can be a critical mistake for an educational centre because it can result in missed opportunities and a failure to convert potential students into actual ones. If you don’t track the lead, you risk losing their interest, and additionally, losing them to a competitor.
2. Not Showing a Unique Selling Proposition
A unique selling proposition (USP) is what sets your educational centre apart from the competitors and makes you stand out. If you do not show your USP it can be a significant mistake in attracting students and, most importantly, enrolling rate.
If you don’t have a clear USP, your potential student may struggle to differentiate your learning centre from others and may choose to enroll elsewhere. You certainly don’t want that to happen.
You must clearly communicate your USP and explain why your centre is the best fit for them. For example, you can highlight your innovative teaching method, show how you provide personalized attention to students, or highlight something that you think is your greatest strength.
When your potential students can clearly see why your educational centre is the right choice for them, your enrollment rate will increase.
3. Not Following Up Effectively
Communication is crucial to building strong and trustworthy relationships with students and their parents. If there is a lack of communication or they are unsatisfied with the information they get, it can be a costly mistake for an educational centre.
Students and parents can get the impression that your educational centre is not committed to helping them achieve their academic and educational goals. And no one wants that.
You can avoid this mistake by automating responses, providing comprehensive information, and following up at regular intervals.
Student Enrollment Tips
Now that you know which mistakes you must avoid in your educational centre, we’ve prepared a list of proven techniques for increasing enrollment rates:
1. Enhance Marketing Efforts
The power of marketing is remarkable, and you should make the most of it.
- Build a good website that will represent who you are, what you offer, and why students and parents should choose you. Search engine optimization is something you can start doing if you don’t already—using the right keywords on your website will help you rank in a better position on Google, and, therefore, you will be more visible.
- List your centre on the Google business list. Google uses our location, and when people search for an educational centre in their area, your centre will pop up. This is a free and really effective thing you can do to improve your reach among potential students and their parents.
- Use social media to showcase your uniqueness and practices to attract new students. People like to see how you do your jobs, and this is your chance to stand out. Social media is really powerful for branding and can significantly improve your enrollment rate.
2. Leverage Word of Mouth
Digital marketing is a really powerful tool, but do you know what else can be even more effective? The oldest marketing strategy—word of mouth.
People always share their recommendations and experiences with family and friends, and it’s most likely they will choose a recommendation from their close friends over a stranger’s.
That’s why you have to give them the best experience possible so they can recommend it to their friends and family, who will then enroll in your programs, be happy and satisfied with the educational centre, and recommend it further to their friends and family.
3. Offer Trial Classes or Open-to-Public Events
Whether your learning centre is working online or in person, trial classes and open-to-public events can be a tipping point in increasing student enrollment and promoting your lessons. And here’s how:
Trial classes and events give potential students and their parents an opportunity to experience the centre’s teaching style and curriculum firsthand. This will give them more information and help them decide whether the institution is suitable for their needs and goals.
On top of that, these classes and events can help create a sense of community among current and prospective students. They can interact, ask questions, and hear someone’s experience, which will help them feel more comfortable and confident about enrolling.
Trial classes and open events can also be great for brand promotion. Make sure to provide high-quality trial classes and host engaging events, and it will certainly create a positive impression on your target group and increase the enrollment rate.
4. Make Collaboration with Local Schools and other Organizations
Cooperation with local schools and other organizations is an effective way to represent your learning centre to potential students or their parents, who maybe wouldn’t hear of you otherwise.
5. Use Education Software
A lot of challenging tasks in managing an educational centre can be erased or really minimised with the power of technology.
We’ve already mentioned the importance of clear and consistent communication and tracking leads. You can easily automate these processes if you choose the right platform.
If you use AOneSchools as your school management software, you can automate sending messages and notifications to your students and their parents, which will improve general communication.
On top of that, with AOneSchools, you can easily streamline the process from new inquiries to registration, which will be appealing for users. And you can manage all your leads using only one platform.
Managing student registration will be a piece of cake because AOneSchools allows you to collect new student data efficiently. Also, general student management will be easier because you can send automated push notifications to your students’ parents about their attendance.
Using education software will help you organise and manage administrative tasks, give you more insights and information about students, which will help you plan for the future, and—what’s most important—education software will improve the overall students’ and parents’ experience, which will increase student enrollment as well.
Increase Student Enrollment Rate with AOneSchools
As the competition is growing among the academic centres, it’s harder to get parents’ attention now and make your educational centre stand out.
Still, it’s more than possible.
If you use AOneSchools for your learning centre, you will improve general user management, student tracking, scheduling classes and timetables, and also upgrade your administrative work like keeping track of payments and invoices and creating business reports.
AOneSchools was founded in 2015, and it’s currently used by more than 2,000+ education providers throughout Southeast Asia.
Get in touch with us, and we will help you boost your educational business and increase enrollment rates!