Making Teachers the Star of Your School’s Marketing Efforts

If I asked you to describe your school and what truly makes it a special place, what would you say?

Would you tell me about your innovative curriculum? Or perhaps your beautiful campus? Maybe you would describe your championship sports team.

No matter what characteristic you start with, invariably, you will describe your wonderful faculty and staff and the incredible things they do in the classroom every day.

Teachers Are Your School’s Greatest Marketing Asset

Your teachers are the greatest marketing asset of your school. They are what makes your school a special place. Without your faculty, your school is just a building and some equipment and supplies. Your teachers need to be the star of your school’s marketing efforts!

Intuitively, you know this, but many schools fail to use the quality and the characteristics of their faculty in their marketing efforts. You need to talk about the quality of your teachers when you are marketing your school.

Your faculty page, your social media, and your school tours should all reinforce the quality of your teachers. Ultimately, this reinforces the quality of your school.

What’s the best way to do it?

Gather Data About Your Teachers

Including brief facts or data points about the quality of your teachers on your website is a great place to start. Try messages like these:

• Our teachers average more than 15 years’ experience in the classroom.
• 72% of our teachers have a master’s degree.
• All of our teachers are accredited by . . .

To gather these bite-sized facts, send a quick survey to your faculty via a Google Form.

Include questions like these:

• Where did you get your bachelor’s degree?
• Where did you attend graduate school?
• Do you have a master’s degree?
• How long have you been employed by the school?
• How long have you been teaching?
• What is your favorite memory of teaching at our school?
• Why do you love teaching at our school?
• What do you do in your spare time?

Once you have gathered this information, you now have a set of data points you can use to talk about the quality of your teachers.

Improve the Faculty Page on Your Website

Many schools think about the faculty page as a place to share contact information for their staff. But this part of your website gives you an excellent opportunity to reinforce the quality of your teachers.

Having a well-designed and comprehensive faculty page can also help to increase the community in your school. Being able to connect with faculty members over shared interests is a great way to break down the barriers between parents and staff.

Take the example of one of our clients, École Saint-Landry Charter.

On their faculty page, they provide the standard photo and contact of their teachers but also list their credentials. Since École Saint-Landry Charter is a French-immersion school, it’s important for the school to highlight their teachers’ French credentials.

Some things you can do to enhance your faculty include:

• Have it designed well. This gives a nice impression of your school and staff.
• When you click on a teacher’s picture, the user receives a brief biography or answers to some specific questions. This might be that teacher’s favorite moment at the school or activities they enjoy outside of the classroom.
• Note the university where each teacher received their degree.
• Add a quote for each teacher, whether it’s a funny quote or something about their teaching philosophy.
• Include pictures beyond just a basic headshot. If possible, have pictures of your staff teaching in their classroom or doing activities with students! If you think about the message you want to deliver about your faculty, isn’t their engaging, high-quality instruction the whole point?

Sabot Stony Point does a great job with that final point. What do you first notice when you scroll through their faculty pictures? They are all shown teaching kids! This choice deliberately moves the focus from the teacher as an individual to one who is shown impacting the children around them.

When you read the descriptions, they show a cadre of caring and engaged teachers — especially when it comes out in their own words:

“Seeing my students explore and discover how our world works is what makes me love what I do. Teaching is […] about helping a child find what they love and letting them dream. It is about setting them up for success and helping them when they feel that they have failed. It is about helping a child discover what they love and what they are passionate about.”
— Sara Jo Padenich, First-Grade Teacher

What parent wouldn’t want that?

Promote Them on Social Media

It can be hard to constantly post new content on social media. However, if you have completed step one and created profiles on each teacher, you suddenly have a lot of content that you can easily repurpose for social media by highlighting one of your great teachers on #TeacherTuesday.

Not only does this give you content that you can use to ensure a consistent volume of posts but it also allows you to brag about your wonderful staff.

Some schools, such as Moore Public Schools of Oklahoma, even turn #TeacherTuesday into video content:

Include Teachers as Part of Your Recruiting Efforts

I know that having tour visitors pop into a classroom can be seen as disruptive to the educational environment. However, as a prospective parent who is touring your school, I want to see some of your top teachers in action.

If your school tour does not currently show off how great your teachers are in the classroom, then you need to rethink your approach. Prospective families aren’t buying your facilities — they are buying the experience that their children will have in the classroom every day.

Also, use your teachers as part of your follow-up protocol to prospective parents and guardians.

Having the teacher who might teach that prospective student in her class call that family after the tour. It’s a small gesture that can influence a parent to choose your school.

Your teachers are what makes your school special. I still fondly remember my favorite teachers, as does everyone else. Emphasize the quality and caliber of your teachers, and you will give potential parents and guardians greater insight into your school and, ultimately, recruit more students.