Reaching Prospective Private School Parents at the Awareness Stage
The Customer Journey. Every marketer knows it’s important, but breaking it down into actionable steps can feel overwhelming. In private and independent school marketing, the process can feel especially daunting given the long timeline from first awareness to enrollment – and the significant investment families are often considering (think: choosing 12 years of $50,000 tuition times two children vs choosing a new eyeshadow palette).
Welcome to the first installment in our miniseries, where we’ll explore each stage of the Customer Journey. Each article outlines what families and decision-makers are thinking, doing, and searching for – along with strategies to help reach those audiences effectively at every stage. By the end, you’ll have a clear picture of how each step connects, and ideas on how to craft strategies that get right-fit families to convert at the most important places in your school’s admissions funnel.
Once they’re posted, we’ll also cross-link these articles so you can seamlessly navigate each step as you build your strategy.
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, let’s dive into the first stage: Awareness.
Awareness: The First Step in the Customer Journey
Awareness is where it all begins. At this stage, your audience may not even know they need your brand in their life yet. Their focus is typically on identifying a problem or exploring something they’re curious about. This means your job is to grab their attention and introduce your brand in a way that sticks.
What Are People Thinking at This Stage?
In the awareness stage, people might be thinking about one (or many) of a few things. They (or their child) may be:
- Exploring a first school for their child
- Experiencing a social problem at school for the first time
- Curious about a specific style of curriculum, and wanting to learn more about it
- Looking for inspiration or ideas about how to challenge their child more
- Researching schools with specific programs or extracurricular activities in their area
- Finding schools in a neighborhood or city they are planning to move to
- Looking for a school that can offer something specific for their child (i.e. a high school with impressive college admissions stats)
At this point, their knowledge on the subject might be quite limited. Those with family and friends who’ve been through similar situations may be a little more informed. Ultimately, audiences at this stage are in discovery mode – learning more about their problem or desire and seeking possible solutions.
It’s up to you, the marketer, to ensure that your content is providing the answers and guidance they need, at the right inflection point.
Hint: An “inflection point” is any point on the customer journey where a critical action takes place (or fails to take place) which causes your audience to change course — either toward or away from conversion.
What Questions Are They Asking?
Awareness-stage searches are often broad and mostly exploratory as audiences focus on understanding their options, rather than choosing a specific solution. Your goal here is to provide educational, trust-building content that helps guide them toward the next stage.
If your audiences are in the Awareness stage, they are likely starting some of the following questions:
- What do experts say about (insert any potential reason for exploring a school here)?
- What brands (schools) in my area do this well?
- What are people in my neighborhood asking about my same questions?
- Who can I lean on for support during this exploration process?
- What options are available for my family?
It’s important to spend some time thinking about proper messaging at this stage, so that you can get in front of key audience members with attention-getting, helpful insights into what your school can offer.
For example, if a family is looking for a school that can offer more competitive athletics for their Olympic hopeful, they may gravitate towards messaging and high-quality photography that display your athletic options, coaching expertise, student athlete testimonials or outcomes, or qualities of determination and grit in the athletes. If they’re looking for a more challenging or unique academic experience for their child, images and messages depicting engaged learning, out-of-the-box opportunities, and college admissions data may spark interest for that family.
Tip: To get here, it’s important to dig into these three questions: What kinds of families and students are we looking to attract? What does our school do really well? What can we confidently promise to these families we are looking to attract?
Looking for more insights? Check out our blog on uncovering your school’s true differentiators here.
Where Are They Looking?
In a world where information is everywhere, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. Regardless of the nuances of your particular target audiences, it’s safe to assume that individuals in the awareness phase are browsing:
- Search engines (think Google, Bing, AI-powered tools, etc.)
- Social media platforms
- School review websites
- Video platforms like YouTube or TikTok (for user-generated content and honest reviews)
- Podcasts and webinars
- Reading comments or testimonials on social and in online forums or communities
- Your website (and competitors’ websites)
Meeting your target audiences where they are requires a combination of SEO best practices, high-impact creative content, a relevant social media presence, and strategic messaging that can answer their questions without requiring a heavier lift to conduct research. Start by looking at your website analytics for the most common attribution sources. You may also want to survey new or applying families to find out where they first learned about you or conducted their initial search.
What Makes Messaging Effective at This Stage?
Ultimately at the Awareness stage, the best messaging directly addresses your unique audiences’ specific needs and interests. Your campaign may work to educate or inspire, but ultimately it should spark enough curiosity that viewers feel inclined to dig deeper.
Consider these tips when crafting effective content:
- Use simple, relatable language that makes it easy for your audience to find what they’re looking for – and to know what you want them to do
- Leverage attention-grabbing visuals or headlines
- Build curiosity and trust without being pushy
- Offer low-investment ways to learn about your school (think immediately accessible virtual tours over registering for a big annual open house event on campus… that can come later)
- Remain authentic to your brand and its realistic offerings
Awareness is just the beginning. Getting in front of your audience at the right time with the right message sets the foundation for deeper engagement down the road.
As you refine your strategy, keep these key steps in mind:
- Identify your audience’s core problems and interests so your content speaks to them directly
- Leverage SEO and social media to appear where your audience is already searching
- Create engaging, value-driven content that sparks curiosity and encourages further exploration
- Test and analyze performance so you can refine your approach over time
Check out our blog on spring cleaning your marketing efforts here to get an idea on where to start.
Next In The Series
In our next post, we’ll explore the Familiarity and Consideration stage, where potential customers start evaluating their options and narrowing down their choices. Check back soon to keep learning!
At Metric Marketing, we develop measurable and practical strategies to help private and independent schools like yours to make the most of your marketing efforts. We’d love to discuss your private school’s marketing requirements with you. Contact us today to speak with our marketing professionals or use the form below to sign up and receive more marketing tips in your inbox.
