School marketing is a highly competitive industry especially in Nigeria. Historically, schools relied on word of mouth, and took advantage of the imbalance of supply and demand within the sector in Nigeria.

At the same time, school marketing managers are under pressure to generate leads and to bring parents through the admissions funnel.

Two(2) questions to answer:

As a school owner, do you have a Termly or Sessional budgets for the marketing of your school?*

If NO, why?.............................

See, No matter your reasons, you must have a budget set aside for the marketing of your school if truly you want to stay relevant in this 21st century. In most developed nation, they have a school marketing managers whose work is to generate leads and to bring parents through the admission funnel.

Are you struggling in your school business in terms of growth or you still need more Profits in your business?

If yes, consider having a termly or sessional budget and also a school marketing strategist to reduce you of stress by generating leads and bring parents through the admission funnel.


Here are my tried and tested approach that might instigate a change of approach:

1. Setup a standard to parents about your school fees mode of payment.
In my school, we used operations 2 weeks before resumption and 2 weeks after resumption for all school fee to be paid into the schools account.
NB: Don't be scared of loosing students or taking new steps in business. It's a calculated risk.
If you keep to the standard, over time, people will adjust.
Also, give them some discounts for a one time payment. This strategy goes a long way to ensure that my school gets all schools fees on or before 6 weeks of resumption.

2. Messaging method:

How distinctive is your message?
If you glance over any of the print adverts that schools commonly adopt, how many times can you see that the same words are being used to describe a school?
My litmus test for messaging is to draft an internal messaging document and generate all of the key words and pledges that you intend to make to parents. Then, hold this up against your competitors
Is your message clear and distinctive?
Educators tend to use a lot of jargon, and this sometimes shows up in adverts. Parents prefer simplicity and honesty. The challenge is to create a message that is distinctive and accessible.

3. Worst case scenario planning:

The tendency for lot of schools is to spend money. Of course, this helps but it’s not the golden ticket. I like to plan for the worst-case scenario and assume that we will not spend a single kobo on advertisement.
In this way, planning makes you think of the strategies and tools that can be used digitally and through bootstrapping to make the foundations very strong. If you didn’t have a budget, your social strategy would have to be aggressive and thorough. If you didn’t have a budget, you would have to optimize your website yourself and maintain a strong digital presence.
Digital presence is the sense that your Google Business Profile, Social media platforms must be very ACTIVE.

Does your school has a GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE?
If NO, then you are missing alot because with #5000 - #10,000 you can create one for your school today.

One of the benefits of this Google Business Profile for school is that it gives prospective clients to easily reach you ONLINE.
For example, when some parents newly packed to a new area, research as made it clear that, they visit the search engine like Google.com, and type Primary school in Ikorodu Lagos.
Automatically, Google will display lists of the registered schools in their database located in Ikorodu or any area inserted to the clients, and from the list, the clients begin to search for the one closer to his or her area as a choice.

Can you see what you are missing if you don't have an online presence on Google � � � ?

NB: Once you add a layer of spending on top of this, you create a framework to succeed. If you spend without having these things in place, you create a framework of complacency.

3. Digital strategy:

Parents in Nigeria shop around because they have more choices than ever before. Schools need to have a digital real estate strategy to counter this. Similarly, parents often seek independent opinions and they check independent school reviews to see if the promises are being met. Schools need to ensure that they have strong relationships with the review websites, enabling them to keep track of what the reviews are saying. Another thing is that schools need to decide on where they want their brand to be located online so when parents seek additional advice, they look in places where they have a strong digital profile.
Quite often, schools spend money on different forms of advertising without checking what their profile looks like in the public domain, and then wonder why the enquiries are slow.
It is essential to manage this, as parents in Nigeria now value independent opinions more than ever.

As the market becomes even more competitive, schools have to find ways to ew schools opening, the figure is set to increase. I would like to see schools adopt more resourceful approaches and to engage parents in different ways rather than relying on lamppost advertising, and billboards around the city. Parents know they are in the driving seat, so this means that school marketing managers or strategist will need to be creative and resourceful in their planning and implementation.

Written by:

Adedayo Oluwafemi Daniel
(Adefemsolutionist)
A Certified Social Influencer, Business Growth Strategist, Entrepreneur and Team Lead of the Solutionist Academy.
0 8 1 4 6 3 0 2 2 7 2