A unique school helps students with emotional and behavioral issues, yet faces funding and marketing hurdles. We explore strategic grassroots and networking solutions to boost enrollment and awareness.

Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of The Problem Machine Podcast.

• Neurological approach makes this campus a standout for struggling students
• Competitors undercut by securing grant funding and better marketing
• Direct-to-parent outreach is vital for this school’s growth
• Grassroots efforts and testimonials offer high-impact, low-cost marketing
• Strategic vision and metrics are needed for lasting enrollment solutions

Resources:

• DevNoodle
• PodcastChef

Connect with our hosts:

• Alex Garashchenko - LinkedIn
• Brian Mattocks - LinkedIn

Quotables:

• 22:01 - Brian: What you do is you do a student appreciation day where you have students bring families back in. You have students bring families and friends back in. What you're looking for is network expansion, lateral expansion, the relationship expansion. of the people that have been affected positively by the school.
  Alex: When I was, when I was touring the campus, she said, if they come here for a tour, they sign up.
  Brian: So, you know, then, what do you do? You take all of the money that you're going to spend trying to go apply for grants. You throw a couple good open houses where you know to give awards to the students that went through the program. Where you incentivize them to invite folks, peers, colleagues, friends, family, to come see them get this award. Then what happens? Once they're on site, all the magical stuff.
• 14:42 - So what I'm not hearing is a channel that's direct to parents. You're going to need to get direct to the decision-maker. The schools, essentially hostile referral partners here, don't help. They're not incentivized to help. You may like to believe that they're going to some more altruistically solve the problem. But again... they've got their job on the line as well. So you are gonna need to strategically build a comms channel directly to the parents. And if you can't begin the process of building that educational program out to those folks, they're never gonna be in a position to decide positively for the better quality outcomes.
• 18:49 - Brian: But you have a better product. And so you need to get in front of the decision maker and you have no access. Find the decision makers, find out where they congregate and go.
  Alex: And it may also increase in the enrollment more because what if those behavioral issues are not at the threshold where the school would recommend that they go to a different school entirely. But the parents want that. That's where you create that bottom-up pressure to essentially drive those decisions.
• 24:43 - They're probably not hostile, but they're not incentivized. The incentives are against you. So getting those folks to come out for those things like award ceremonies and grassroots efforts and stuff like that might just turn a couple heads as well. So there's ways to potentially close that incentive gap as well. You make somebody... feel special and appreciated and the outcomes that they're able to influence and create positively have an impact both on the student and the referral partner by virtue of helping pick the right solution to the problem, you're really then starting to stack or restack the incentives in your favor. And that makes sense, especially for the parents who've attended, whose children got an award, who then potentially post in the group. the support group that they're in on Facebook or wherever it is and say, Hey, we graduated, you know, and that becomes a resource.
• 04:46 - I think if it is someone in administration for the school district, you're already on the wrong side of the fence. Because if there's a cheaper option that's going to hit your budget with significantly less, you'd probably recommend that school. over the others. On the other hand, let's say they do recommend both options to the parents and the parents ultimately have the choice. Online, the differentiation that this school has is not seen. They built an entire program that they also license and train other schools, teachers, counselors, other private schools on, they built it in-house. It's their system.