Tutoring Class Enrollment Marketing Strategies

Tutoring Class Enrollment Marketing Strategies

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The marketing strategies for enrolling students in tutoring classes are varied, with the aim of increasing potential customers' attendance for trial classes and enrollment numbers. Common methods include rankings, giveaways, scholarships, etc. These methods can effectively attract consumer attention, but are there other marketing strategies? Knowledge Academy's Teacher Mantou has organized and analyzed commonly used marketing methods in the tutoring industry to share these strategies with tutoring centers, hoping to enhance their competitiveness in student recruitment.

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Collecting Student Lists or Personal Information

Before marketing, it's crucial to gather intelligence. Having a list of potential customers significantly reduces marketing costs. For tutoring centers, student lists and personal information are invaluable marketing resources. How can we collect student data? Here are some common methods:

Near schools or busy transportation routes, such as student commuting stations or popular dining streets, conducting surveys with gifts can help understand students' questions regarding teachers' teaching methods, course content, and most importantly, their views and willingness to attend tutoring classes. Students often leave their contact information unintentionally while filling out surveys, which is convenient for future phone recruitment.

When schools hold events such as fairs, Christmas dances, sports days, speeches, or forums, tutoring centers can sponsor and simultaneously hold lottery events. Students must fill out lottery forms, which allows for identity verification when winning, thus leaving behind valuable contact information for future calls and enrollment.

Tutoring centers can ask current students to provide class directories, inviting other students to attend trial classes or participate in activities as fellow students of the tutoring center.

Tutoring centers can directly or indirectly purchase lists from schools or acquire household registration data related to school-age children from local government offices. Lists obtained from schools tend to be accurate and very convenient for enrollment purposes, while household registration data may be less accurate but still serves as important confidential information for telemarketing students.

According to interviews, many tutoring centers still purchase student lists, leading to a clandestine industry of selling lists.

Competitors are also an important source of student lists commonly used by tutoring centers. If we can obtain student lists from competing tutoring centers, not only is the accuracy of the information high, but there may also be interview and call records that greatly reduce the development time for the tutoring center.

A common method of obtaining these lists is by sending someone to apply for a position at a competing center. Once hired, they can act as a short-term or long-term spy to collect information and student parent lists.

Elementary school tutoring centers often take advantage of private kindergartens during the graduation period to enroll students, holding events where parents can participate or even directly requesting lists from the kindergarten, as these children are about to enter elementary school and are potential clients for elementary school tutoring centers.

Utilizing Google or similar online search engines effectively can help collect student or parent lists and personal information by searching with various keywords. In today's world, personal privacy is nearly nonexistent, and many schools or related institutions also publish data online. With careful searching, one can always find useful information for recruitment.

Types of online information include names, phone numbers, emails, addresses, LINE IDs, Facebook accounts, etc.

Smart tutoring centers establish fan pages to promote events and attract students or parents to join. When potential customers engage by checking in, liking, commenting, sharing, or reviewing on the fan page, it can be converted into advertising audiences. By running Facebook ads, they can easily expose enrollment ads to potential clients, including classmates or peers of fans. Thus, Facebook is currently a very important yet often overlooked platform for list collection; detailed practices can be found in the following Knowledge Academy course.

Unlock FB Secrets to Ignite Your Wealth Code

The new generation of tutoring centers often utilizes online recruitment, and LINE official accounts serve as a crucial tool for list collection, replacing SMS as a messaging and communication platform. Detailed methods can be found in the following Knowledge Academy course.

Seize the LINE OA Cross-Border Recruitment Wave

Today's students live entirely in the internet age and were born alongside the internet. They spend every day immersed in the online world, with the internet being as crucial as air and water. The most frequently used online spaces by students are communities and games, many of which also feature social networking functionalities.

Therefore, the internet is filled with various communities or forums made up of students, where they gather to chat and share. Ask students which online communities they frequent or which apps they use; if you can infiltrate these spaces, unexpected rewards await.

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Marketing Strategies

Tutoring centers have numerous marketing and exposure methods. Below are the marketing strategies collected and organized by Teacher Mantou from Knowledge Academy:

Rankings often represent the effectiveness of a tutoring center, and many students and parents consider them a significant criterion for choosing a tutoring center (especially parents). Rankings also provide students with a future goal and vision that they can strive to achieve. Each successful student admitted to a prestigious school becomes a living advertisement for the tutoring center, helping recruit the next cohort of students. Some tutoring centers even offer free programs to enroll outstanding students, hoping that these students will later feature on the rankings. The primary aim is to increase their own rankings and improve admission rates, which is also a marketing method to enhance the competitive advantage of tutoring centers.

Whether rankings are genuine has long been unverified by third-party organizations; they rely solely on self-promotion by tutoring centers, especially after the implementation of personal data laws, which prevent the display of full names in rankings, making it increasingly difficult to verify their authenticity.

Tutoring centers distribute flyers in high-traffic areas such as schools, bus stops, and train stations to increase visibility and achieve enrollment or raise awareness.

Compared to flyers handed out on the street, practical giveaways (such as pens, tissues, rulers, notepads, fans, binders, etc.) are more likely to encourage consumers to take them, further drawing attention to the promotional slogans and names of the tutoring centers. On the other hand, some tutoring centers offer giveaways (such as tablets, bicycles, translators, MP4 players, headphones, USB drives, etc.) after payment, making consumers feel they are getting great value.

Tutoring centers attract outstanding students by offering scholarships, indirectly enhancing the visibility of their rankings and creating a complementary relationship with them.

Common discounts include multi-subject discounts, group discounts, limited-time offers, and tuition vouchers. Regardless of the method, the aim is to increase consumer willingness to achieve (early) enrollment and payment.

Having renowned tutors can help students choose well-known or preferred courses and teachers, thereby increasing enrollment rates for tutoring centers.

Having students admitted to prestigious schools write letters of appreciation and praise for the tutoring center can increase the credibility of the center’s enrollment efforts. Recently, it has become popular not only to write formal referral letters but also to have students take photos or even record videos, using visuals and animations to endorse the tutoring center, making it more persuasive and genuine! If the backdrop is a prestigious school, that's even better.

Tutoring centers use the collected or purchased lists to contact parents or students by phone, inviting them to attend free trial classes. Some tutoring centers even hire graduates during the summer to make calls, offering hourly pay and bonuses for inviting younger students to enroll.

Students can refer their classmates to attend trial classes or enroll in courses, with the referrer receiving a "referral bonus," thus attracting more classmates to the tutoring center and achieving promotional effects in schools.

Tutoring centers often help student clubs organize events in the capacity of sponsors, thereby enhancing their visibility.

School publications or magazines published by schools are excellent platforms for tutoring centers to sponsor and place advertisements.

English magazines aimed at students are often advertising hotspots for tutoring centers, as students reading these magazines are drawn to these ads, enhancing their impression of the tutoring center. Additionally, some tutoring centers that prepare students for civil service exams advertise in military magazines to attract military personnel seeking tutoring after service.

Tutoring centers often organize activities during winter and summer breaks or during holidays to attract interested participants, hoping to enhance goodwill towards the center, leading to future enrollment in regular courses. Common activities include summer science camps, English camps, Halloween, Christmas, etc.

Younger students often listen to radio stations, especially those focused on English, making them the first choice for exposure for tutoring centers.

With the implementation of the 12-year national education policy, many parents place greater emphasis on diverse learning for their children, with enhanced English skills being a top priority. Tutoring centers often conduct speeches at schools regarding relevant English proficiency exams (such as the GEPT, TOEFL), providing information on registration and exam types. This not only increases students’ knowledge about the exams but can also boost enrollment rates for the tutoring center.

Advertising relevant content for tutoring centers on public transport frequently used by students (e.g., buses, trains) attracts their attention and increases enrollment rates.

Advertising at locations where students frequently wait, such as bus stops and MRT light boxes, is very effective for attracting their attention and increasing the visibility and enrollment rate of tutoring centers.

Tutoring centers may invite popular idols to endorse their centers, enhancing their image. For example, a well-known English tutoring center may invite "Vanessa Wu" as an endorser, significantly boosting the center's reputation; similarly, a famous Korean language tutoring center might emphasize that "SJ Kyuhyun" is their endorser, attracting many fans to sign up for Korean language courses.

On important exam days, such as the university entrance exam or civil service exam, tutoring centers often distribute unit summaries, pre-exam guessing materials, fans, tissues, and other flyers and giveaways outside exam venues, even setting up stalls to serve students from their centers and cheering them on. Since parents usually accompany students to exams, this further enhances the exposure of tutoring centers.

Tutoring center teachers often engage in community service during their days off, such as jointly donating receipts or cleaning nearby streets. Even wearing the tutoring center's uniforms near commercial areas and shouting slogans can enhance exposure and improve the center's image.

Most tutoring centers conduct information sessions for potential clients, including advancement seminars, enrollment sessions, and important exam briefings. By conveying knowledge related to further education, these sessions reinforce the value of tutoring centers in the minds of parents and students, while also stimulating enrollment and developing potential clients.

In recent years, tutoring centers have attempted to hold live-streamed information sessions on Facebook, hoping to reach parents and students who cannot attend in person. Although competitors may also watch the live stream, due to the fierce competition in the tutoring industry, open and transparent tutoring centers are increasingly favored by students. Busy parents may also find it difficult to attend information sessions. Therefore, live-streamed sessions cater to modern preferences and have significant potential for development.

Some tutoring centers provide news media with current events as topics, aiming to appear on television news programs. Although viewers may not necessarily learn the center's name from the TV, the centers can use the opportunity for substantial promotion, assuring parents and students of their credibility, making it seem as though the center is well-known and even garnering interviews from television stations.

Some tutoring centers cultivate renowned teachers, who are defined as those with outstanding teaching results, such as a higher proportion of students being accepted to their top-choice schools. However, some renowned teachers are emphasized more for their fame, especially in franchise tutoring centers. Having widely known teachers can significantly help expand business.

Tutoring centers rarely spend large sums on television advertising, but participating in talk shows can create effects that may even surpass traditional TV ads, such as with Xu Wei's English.

Appearing on television programs is a shortcut to becoming a renowned teacher, as many talk shows in Taiwan require topics and often invite people with experience or expertise in certain fields. For example, math teachers might be invited to test celebrities with elementary math problems. If a tutoring center's teacher can appear on television or radio programs, it can greatly assist in building brand awareness during recruitment.

Many exhibitions occur annually, ranging from national education fairs to local exhibitions held by various city governments or schools. These exhibitions gather numerous parents or students and are the best opportunities for tutoring centers to recruit.

Students often use buses as their primary mode of transportation, so advertisements on buses frequently feature tutoring centers' ads.

Students need to queue while waiting for buses, making advertising at bus stops or stations very visible to students.

For students living in Taipei and Kaohsiung, the MRT is just as crucial as buses. Students need to wait at the station before taking the MRT, and once aboard, they stay in the carriage for some time. These spaces are very suitable for tutoring center promotions, making ads easy to notice.

More tutoring centers are increasingly hiring bloggers or influencers for endorsements. Initially, it may be done out of acquaintance, but many tutoring centers now allocate budgets to hire well-known bloggers or YouTubers for promotions. This is because interesting personalities and topics often capture students' attention and encourage sharing. Influencers resonate easily with students, and engaging content tends to spread, significantly boosting the tutoring center's visibility.

Although reading online has become more common than reading printed newspapers or magazines, some well-known magazines hold considerable authority in the eyes of parents or students. If tutoring centers advertise in these magazines or even have related reports, it indirectly elevates their status in the minds of parents and students, especially for franchise or large tutoring centers. Increased authority can drive enrollment promotion and help break free from price competition.

In recent years, online advertising has gradually surpassed traditional media. For example, the spending on online advertising in the U.S. exceeded television advertising in 2018, indicating that online ads can more effectively influence consumer decisions. Additionally, the flexible spending amounts and target audience settings in online advertising improve cost efficiency, making it very advantageous for tutoring centers.

Ads placed on median strips are also popular among tutoring centers. This space is usually managed by local governments, and advertising costs are relatively low. It's worth noting that ads on median strips are easily seen by drivers, so it's best to focus on content aimed at parents, and since vehicles are often moving, the text or graphics in the ads must be simple and easy to understand.

Lectures are similar to information sessions, where sessions are typically hosted by the tutoring center itself, often led by the center's director or staff. Lectures are primarily conducted by external speakers, and the venue may not necessarily be at the tutoring center. The purpose of the lecture is to interact with the community, moving away from the recruitment intention of information sessions. The main goal of lectures is to enhance the tutoring center's image, attracting potential customers through engaging topics and soft discussions. Once attendees participate in the lectures, they not only recognize the social value of the tutoring center but also become advocates for it. The potential benefits of hosting lectures are significant.

It's important to note that hosting lectures requires consistency; holding only one or two lectures will not yield benefits. Lectures are a form of content marketing that often requires ongoing hosting to resonate with audiences—an enduring effect that traditional advertising cannot achieve.

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