Utilizing School Facts and Figures in Your Education Marketing Strategy

Every year, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) compiles facts and data that give insights into U.S. schools for the coming year. This data is great, but it’s not always clear how to utilize it in your corporate social responsibility program or your education marketing strategy. Here we break it down for you, and provide you with some key info on how to use this data to your advantage.

56.6 MILLION STUDENTS

That’s the number of K–12 students expected to be enrolled in public schools for the 2019–2020 school year. Add 5.8 million students who are expected to attend private schools and that’s 62.4 million students who could be using your product or be impacted by your program. That’s great, right? Well yes, but it’s important to look more deeply into that number, breaking it down to the target audience that aligns best with your education marketing strategy. You may think you want to reach all those students, but ask yourself:

• Is my product or program relevant to students in all of those grade levels?
• Would my program be more impactful if it was geared to a certain subject matter?
• Does my organization have the capacity to handle that many users?

You may find that your product or program actually does apply to all 62.4 million students, but in most cases it’s beneficial to begin with a smaller, targeted audience that you can learn from before you expand to the entire student market.

3.7 MILLION TEACHERS

Often, the best way to reach students is through the teachers, so while this number is much smaller than the total number of students, it may be an even more important number to pay attention to. Those 3.7 million teachers have the important role of being users, decision makers, purchasers, and sometimes all three rolled into one. It’s important to recognize their role in your product or program and address that in your education marketing strategy. And don’t forget, those 3.7 million teachers talk to each other and value the opinions of their colleagues. Look for ways to capitalize on their positive feedback and testimonials in your outreach campaigns.

$13,440 PER STUDENT EXPENDITURE

The projected per student expenditure for schools in the 2019–2020 school year is $13,440. Multiply that by the number of students in a school and that number can get quite large. But, it’s important to keep in mind that that number needs to cover a lot of things. Your marketing messages need to be direct, both in expressing how your product or program can help schools and students, and clear in their call to action, to make sure you get a fighting chance at a piece of that pie. Recognize that you’re competing against countless other stakeholders for some of that budget, so it’s even more important to get your education marketing strategy correct right from the start.

The full report from NCES includes much more data than what we’ve listed here, and it can often be difficult to wade through it all and figure out how the information can apply to your product or program. At MMS, this is data we’ve looked at for many years and have used to help our clients succeed. For help in analyzing this data to best suit your needs, please reach out to us for an initial complimentary consultation.