Lorraine Said:

Can anyone give me an idea how to market a vocational school with short courses offered? Answers will help us!

We Answered:

Identify a targert group for each course or program offered. Determine how this group will pay, as marketing might need to included the affordability. Find the strengths of your courses/programs that distinguish your facility. Be careful--while you don't want to be cliche, you might want to be simple. As you identify your strenghts connect this to the image of your school, and how this ties who you are marketing to.

Most studnets attending a vocational school are seeking skills for a job market. They are seeking schools that have credentials. They are seeking professional atmospheres.

Marketing is a combination of efforts for your target group/groups. One of the first ways to market is to simply make your name better known. Once you have a plan, put your staff out there at community events frequented by your target audience (keep in mind if Mom and Dad are payers, you'll need to target them to a degree too). At these open air and indoor events try to have staff on hand who are knowledgable about the programs and enrollment, probably enrollment staff is best. If you have key programs you train for try to have visuals on the back wall showing professionals doing what it is you plan to teach the students to do. So show the end results on the back wall. Make the process easy and simple, and consider using other students to assist who are near graduation or graduated (if you have any).

Depending on your targets, consider other events or activities that might be a place where your target will be or will look. There are many--job classifieds, free tv guide in newspaper on sundays, phone book, internet, etc. Try to attend high school events that allow marketing of post high school schooling.

Consider marketing in unique sectors, for example, consider marketing to high school students while high school, like a summer camp after graduation. Identify laws that might allow 16 or 17 years olds attend your courses and consider marketing this rather rarely tapped into group.

Finally, put some effort into helping the target visualize themselves doing what you offer. I would even consider an explanation of companies you work with for job placement.