Spring Clean Your Marketing

There’s something about the shift from winter to spring that motivates us to get our lives in order - and our work lives are no different. In private and independent schools, many marketing and admissions teams are closing the chapter on next year’s recruitment and looking ahead to the next cycle - making this the perfect time to hit pause for just a moment and complete a few ‘spring cleaning’ tasks (or delegate them). Spending just a little bit of time to get these things sorted now will set you up for a more successful year, and your future self will thank you.

Here’s what we’re putting on our spring cleaning list (in no particular order).

1. Update Your Admissions Messaging

Review all the places where you share admissions deadlines, open house dates, current tuition, and other time sensitive information for prospective families - even if you changed them throughout the season, it’s a good idea to take one final pass through every marketing touchpoint (or ask someone else to). Think about places like your website, landing page, email workflows, staff email signatures, and your Instagram bio link tree. Take the time to remove past dates and replace them with messaging about next year’s admissions season. Then make yourself a handy little cheat sheet of all the places you found this information, so reviewing it next year is a breeze!

2. Review Your Website Content

Now that your key admissions information is up to date, it’s a good time to do a quick audit of everything else and make sure your website is fresh and ready to go. Think about things like:

• Featured content or news stories on the homepage

• Your faculty directory 

• Your course list

• Links to PDFs 

• Forms and contact links

• Photos you no longer have permission to use

• Photos of spaces that have changed

While we’re talking about dead links, it’s also a good time to ensure you’ve set a website error message! Adding just a little bit of messaging and branding to a 404 page can ease frustration when a dead link inevitably slips through.

3. Audit Your Print Materials

Gather and scan through all the print materials that are in circulation, and take some time to go through and identify anything that needs to be updated. If there’s anything that needs to be changed or reprinted, now is a great time to identify that and make plans to make that happen well ahead of next fall. (For the future, consider moving some of these materials to digital formats where information can be updated in real time - without the expense of a reprint. Any materials you need to keep in a printed form can then be created to last a little bit longer, without any dates or information that is unlikely to age well.)

4. Check In on Your Social Media Profiles

It’s good practice to do a quick scan of your social media profiles once or twice a year - inside and out. Take a look at your audience-facing profile and make sure your bio is up to date, your links and working (and trackable), and you’re creating a fantastic first impression. Then take a look under the hood as well to make sure your admins are up to date, your settings are as expected, and your data is flowing between social platforms and your social media management tools and/or GA4.

5. Review Your Email Automations

Any email that’s been designed to ‘set it and forget it’ can only be ignored for so long. Now is a great time to review all your low-touch email workflows and ensure your messaging is up to date, people are flowing through as expected, links are working, etc.

6. Update Your CRM

As new families are coming in - and current families may be leaving - be sure to update tags and segments in your school’s CRM. While you do this bit of spring cleaning, keep an eye out for any families who may benefit from some deliberate re-engagement that could result in a late enrolment (or a head start on recruiting next year).

7. Plan Outstanding Photos & Videos

Is there anything you still need a photo or video of this school year? Now’s the time to take it, while students are still on campus. Take the time to go through your existing photography (including video), make sure everything is organized and accessible, double check that you’ve secured consent from your current families and staff who are featured, and make a list of what’s still needed between now and May.

8. Do Some Market Research

Spring is a great time to talk to your current families and get feedback on what’s working, before the end of the school year jams everyone’s schedules. It’s also a good time to circle back to families who inquired but didn’t apply or were accepted but didn’t enroll, and ask them where they landed and how they made that decision. You can make some phone calls with standard questions, put together a quick digital survey, or even plan a small focus group. However you do it, this information will be gold as you start to refine your messaging around next year’s recruitment campaign, admissions events, and more.

9. Review Your Marketing Data 

Now that your admissions season is winding down, it’s a perfect time to lock in your data for the year and compare it against past admissions seasons - then start to make plans for next year based on what you are seeing and learning. (It’s no coincidence that the Metric team is busy having these types of conversations with both current and future clients right now. It’s not too late to call us!)

10. Plan Your Summer Projects

Summer is the perfect time to prep for next year, and some projects require a little bit more lead time to have them up and running for August or September. If there are things that are on your list - like updating your recruitment campaign, optimizing your email automations, or rethinking your admissions landing page - now is the time to finalize your plans and start putting them in motion.

BONUS: Do Some Professional Development

At certain points of the year, it’s almost impossible to invest in yourself - so plan to take advantage of any slivers of time you see over the next few months. Commit to a weekly podcast, pick a book, or enrol in a short online course to continue growing your skills as a marketer. Time spent on professional development is never wasted. (One last self-serving idea: dig into the Metric blog or read some of our case studies to mine some ideas that you can apply at your school.)

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.