How to Conduct a Winning School Tour

Get four tips below on how to conduct a winning school tour.

Getting the school tour right is one of the most critical things you can do to improve your student enrollment. The hardest part of enrollment marketing is getting a prospective parent or guardian interested enough to take a tour of your school.

But what is almost more important is giving them an incredible school tour — and, most critically, “closing the deal” as they are walking out your door. What are the benefits of having a strong school tour? 

Let’s look at two hypothetical K–8 schools:

• School A has 100 families tour the school and manages to enroll 60 new students. They have a “closure rate” of 60%.
• School B has 100 families tour and enrolls 70. They have a closure rate of 70%.

The 10 incremental students that school B enrolled equates to about $126,240 in additional state funding or tuition (average per pupil spending in 2021 = $12,624) that year. An additional $126,240 in one year is enough to hire additional teachers!

Taken over the entire time these students are at the school (assuming these 10 were kindergarteners), this is an additional $1,136,160 more for the school — all from enrolling and retaining just 10 students from kindergarten through eighth grade.

Now imagine if you enrolled far more than just 10 new students. 

You can quickly see how improving your school tour — or even implementing one to begin with, if you’ve never done tours before — can have significant financial benefits.

Though each school will present itself differently, here are four effective ideas to improve your school tour experience and enroll more students.

Table of Contents

School Tour Tip #1: Make it Easy and Guardians to Sign Up for a Tour
School Tour Tip #2: Make a Welcoming First Impression
School Tour Tip #3: Tell Your Story the Right Way
School Tour Tip #4: End Strong and Follow Up

School Tour Tip #1: Make It Easy for Parents and Guardians to Sign Up for a Tour

Your target parent is generally going to be a millennial. These families, who grew up with the internet, can be frustrated when they go to your website and can’t find the dates of your open houses and tours.

And please, don’t ask these families to call you to schedule a tour. If they wanted to call you on the telephone, they wouldn’t have gone to your website in the first place.

In this critical “buying stage,” you need to make it very easy for them to register for a tour. The ideal solution is to create an online form that allows them to sign up for your school tour right there.

Tip: This same form should also provide them with a link to put the tour of your school on their calendars. There are many plugins for WordPress websites that are free and can automate this for you.

Once you have their contact information from this online form (remember to ask how they heard about you for future marketing purposes), send them a nice confirmation email with a link to your marketing video about your school.

You are in the courting process now, and this is going to set the overall tone and set their perceptions about your school.

School Tour Tip #2: Make a Welcoming First Impression

First impressions are everything, so go the extra mile to be as welcoming as possible when families arrive for their tours.

• Consider reserving a few prime parking spaces out front for “Future Families” so these parents and guardians won’t have to scramble for parking.
• If it’s a private tour, put a sign out front that welcomes the Smith family by name to your school.

When these families check-in, the administrative/reception staff should greet them by name and let them know that the school tour guide is expecting them. You probably only have a few families a day touring. This makes it very easy to print the list out to give to your front desk so they can greet guests by name.

By the way, notice that good hotels will always do this when they welcome guests. This instantly creates a relationship and a warm feeling.

Also, ensure that your front reception area is clean and doesn’t have boxes or other things stacked around it. Often, schools don’t realize how your front office creates the first impression. It is not a storage closet.

These are all small things, but they add up to creating the first impression for these prospective families — an impression that says they are wanted and welcomed at your school.

Once the school tour guide shows up, it might be tempting to jump right into the tour. But before you do it, stop!

Take the first five minutes to ask the families more about their child:

• What are her strengths?
• Her interests?
• What does she want to get out of her time at her school?

Knowing these things will allow you to customize the tour for that child’s interests, and show the family that you are interested in providing them with a great experience.

Remember: families are not “buying” your school. Instead, they are “buying” the experience that their child will get at your school. Your school tour should be about the benefits of your school to their child!

Armed with your knowledge about the child, you can now use much more powerful language during the tour. “This is where Emily will take her freshman English class.” Or, “This is where Nate will meet for robotics.”

Talking in this fashion helps the parent to envision their child at your school.

During the school tour, try to have your principal or head of school at least stop by and say hello.

If you are the principal who is giving the tour, great — but if it is a different staff member, the principal needs to at least make an appearance and introduce themselves. People want to meet the leader of the school.

I can appreciate that a principal is pulled in many different directions during the school day, but student enrollment needs to be prioritized, and families will appreciate that you thought they were important enough to interrupt your day.

One of the most critical things that many schools don’t do is showing a classroom in action. You must include this in your tour!

No teacher likes the disruption of a school tour coming to their classroom, but the classroom experience is the core thing you are “selling” to families.

If you are showcasing how great your teachers are and how strong your academic program is, let prospective families see it for themselves!

Tell your teachers that since they are the stars of your school, you need to show them off during the school tour. Give them a heads up before you arrive with the tour so that they can anticipate the brief disruption.

School Tour Tip #3: Tell Your Story the Right Way

Your school tour must be scripted out with key talking points. There is so much to cover that if your school tour guide hasn’t thought through your tour in advance, it can be very easy to forget something.

Once you write it out, you may find you have missed an important point you want to tell people.

I recommend covering these things in any school tour:

• Their academic successes, rating on state grades, graduation rates, curriculum, etc. This is much stronger if it is quantifiable (percent of honors diplomas, state rating, etc.)
• Do they give a compelling story of what makes their school different from the one down the street?
• If applicable, do they discuss cost? This is more important for a private school, but for charter schools, don’t assume that people understand a charter school is free.
• Do they showcase their diversity? Families want their child educated in an environment that looks like the real world. Don’t make a parent or guardian ask for this. Bring it up proactively.
• Are they talking about the level of technology at their school — or, better yet, how technology is weaved throughout the curriculum? You can read more about the importance of having special programs and innovation here.
• Where do students go after this school? If you are a high school, talk about what colleges your graduates are admitted to. For elementary schools, mention the strong high schools that rave about your graduates.
• What is your “wow factor”? What is the one thing a child can get at your school that is so super cool that families wish they were students again? If you don’t have a “wow,” make one.

School Tour Tip #4: End Strong and Follow Up!

Don’t make the mistake of finishing the tour, wishing a family goodbye, and hoping they call you. The follow-up is the most important thing you can do to drive your enrollment numbers higher.

Before each parent or guardian leaves, let them know what the next steps are.

• Is it a shadow day?
• Is it filling out an enrollment form?
• Is it attending an upcoming open house event?

Don’t be afraid to try to close the deal either. At the very least, make sure you ask if they have any additional questions or concerns you can answer.

Once they leave, follow up with a thank-you card. Then continue to reach out to them weekly to encourage them to enroll.

I once worked for a sales manager who told me that he never lost a sale by following up, but he lost a lot because he didn’t follow up. You can automate a lot of this, and it doesn’t take a lot of time, but don’t be afraid to court and recruit these families.

A platform that automates follow-ups can make this process a lot easier. Watch the video below to learn more about one such platform, SchoolMint Connect:

Partner with SchoolMint to Improve Your School Tour

The four tips above are all simple tactics you can start to employ tomorrow to improve your school tour process. Some of the tips might seem a little challenging at first, but over time, they will become second nature to you.

If you’re looking to jumpstart your process, though, and see what it’s like from a family’s perspective, consider partnering with SchoolMint’s K-12 strategic marketing solutions team.

By using our secret shopper service, you’ll get a third-party observation of what a typical parent or guardian goes through during your school tour and enrollment process.

Click here to get in touch with one of our enrollment consultants.