With years of experience crafting Parent Personas for schools, I have seen firsthand how this practice transforms our approach to marketing and admissions. By collaborating with our admissions teams, we’ve been able to craft detailed profiles based on current and prospective families, ensuring that our marketing efforts resonate with the right people. This approach not only benefits us on the marketing side, but also strengthens the connection between the school and their community.
What are Parent Personas?
Parent Personas are detailed profiles that represent the families that your school aims to attract and serve. These personas are most efficiently and effectively created alongside the admissions team as they are based on real insights from current and prospective families.
These personas go beyond just descriptions—they’re tools that help you develop everything from marketing campaigns to school events. Parent Personas give you the opportunity to be intentional about the ways that you can interact with your school families which furthermore sets the stage for more meaningful connections.
Creating a Parent Persona
Creating well rounded Parent Personas is key to ensuring your marketing efforts are relevant and impactful. Here’s how my team ensures our personas are as detailed and effective as possible:
- Define the Basics
Name, age range, level of education, occupation, salary, and “entry”
This section is straightforward. Come up with a name that represents your parent group, define an age range, tell us what their level of education is, what they do for work, estimate their annual salary, and tell us how they found out about your school (website, referral, etc).
- Identify Needs, Concerns, and Expectations
Create a bio that encapsulates your persona.
Here are some questions you can ask:
- What grade is their child in?
- Where do they spend their money/time?
- What kind of school were they at before? (if applicable)
- Why are they looking to change their school? (if applicable)
- What do they love about your school specifically? Or about the idea of coming to your school?
- What are their top 3 needs?
- What are their top 3 concerns?
- What are the expectations they come in with?
- Reflect
Now that you know a bit about your parents, this is when you need to look inward.
Ask yourself:
- Based on their top 3 needs, how can we help serve those needs?
- Based on their top 3 concerns, what are solutions we can provide?
- Based on their expectations, where is the disconnect between what they expect and what we offer?
Putting Your Parent Personas to Work
So, now that you have your first Parent Personas, how can you put them to work? One example from my experience involved a Parent Persona representing families hesitant about private school tuition. By understanding their concerns, my team and I were able to develop a campaign that focused on value. We used testimonials from parents, teachers, and even current students to highlight the short- and long-term benefits of private school education. We were able to target this demographic directly and the campaign effects even trickled into our other parent categories as well.
As a result, we saw an increase in:
- Tour Bookings: Families who had expressed hesitation finally took the next step.
- Social Media Engagement: Campaign posts resonated with current and prospective families, meaning people were liking, commenting, and sharing our posts with the community.
- Retention Rates: Our campaigns reignited trust and satisfaction among our current families, resulting in higher retention rates.
Parent Personas ensure that your school’s marketing efforts are purposeful and impactful. They can help guide your messaging, connect with families, and build lasting relationships. Whether you’re creating big marketing campaigns, brainstorming email topics, or coming up with ideas for school events, Parent Personas serve as a roadmap to success.
