Unlock the Walk-In Multiplier: How Can K-12 Schools Achieve 80% Growth in Admissions
LoEstro Advisors presents a masterclass on “Driving Enrolments & Admissions in K-12 Schools” by Sumit Handa, Co-Founder & Partner with 25+ years of marketing and sales expertise, scheduled for May 19th, 2025 — register for this exclusive session that previews the key strategies and best practices covered in this article.
Parents visit school websites, call helpdesks but getting them to visit the campus — that’s where schools lose them. This hits home for most schools. Schools are spending heavily on marketing, generating online interest, but somehow parents just won’t make that crucial campus visit. The missing piece isn’t the marketing budget — it’s having a balanced approach to turn digital interest into physical visits.
The Numbers That Changed Everything
LoEstro Advisors worked with a school facing exactly this challenge. Despite excellent facilities and strong academics, they couldn’t get parents through their gates. Here’s what happened when they implemented the walk-in multiplier framework:
The 3-Pronged Bucket Framework that Drove the Walk-in
I. Databases & Partnerships
The management mapped existing families as goldmines through sibling mapping, discovering that many current families had school-age siblings or cousins currently not enrolled. The admissions team nudged & nurtured current leads and reactivated previous year’s non-converted inquiries, current non-converted walk-ins, and transfer certificate holders through strategic feedback calls.
The management established partnerships with preschools to feed their grade 1 & 2 students and collaborated with K-8/K-10/coaching institutes for 10th to 11th grade conversions. They identified other strategic partnerships that helped increase enrolments. The management also created a comprehensive list of corporate parents and established partnerships with companies in the city, providing a consistent stream of walk-in prospects. The leadership activated existing employees, partner vendors, and alumni networks with meaningful incentives to drive referrals.
II. Involvement of Stakeholders
1. Parents as Walking Testimonials –
At the school, the management created a belief that parents can be their strongest advocates. To build deeper connections, they organized fun weekend activities where parents and children could participate together—like sports matches and performing arts buddy contests. The management also made a focused effort to connect personally with parents who had concerns, inviting them to meet the school head or coordinators to address their issues directly. Parents who referred other families were acknowledged at school events and celebrated on social media. The team also gathered heartfelt testimonials from happy parents and shared them widely. Additionally, the school invited influential parents to speak to their students about their careers, creating meaningful role models within the school community.
2. Teachers as Champions –
The management displayed “Star Employee” feature in the lobby to celebrate top-performing employees. The management recognized employees for their efforts in driving referrals and organized various engagement activities. School leadership mapped out career plans with individual teachers, focusing on their career paths and continuous upskilling opportunities.
3. Students as Brand Ambassadors –
The management involved students in interviewing successful professionals through podcasts. The faculty guided 100% of students to speak on trending topics that explained complex developments in space, technology, geography, science, and development or any other field of relevance. This not only built public speaking confidence among the students but also created viral videos that explained concepts innovatively. The management recognized students for their unique traits beyond their achievements in extracurricular and co-curricular activities. The school introduced student exchange programs and global exposure opportunities to broaden student perspectives.
III. Social Media That Actually Worked –
No fancy social media agencies were recruited – the management just focused on execution. The counselling team shared grade-specific updates through WhatsApp status updates. The team uploaded daily Facebook and Instagram posts featuring school-specific updates. Collaboration with local influencers and city pages further created word of mouth. The school amplified every offline event through social media, scaling open houses, parent and student events, concerts, annual days, culmination ceremonies, sports competitions and many others.
The Conversion Breakthrough
The school deployed trainers to fine-tune every phase of the counselling process for when walk-ins entered the campus. The counselling process can make or break everything. Typically, in a school set-up, the boots on the ground are typically the counselling team or relationship executives. Getting parents to visit is only half the battle. Once they’re on campus, how the school treats them determines whether they become part of the school family or walk away to competitors.
The school counselling team was trained on a complete lead conversion framework: the pre-counselling prep work, building rapport with new parents, anchoring fee discussions, and creating the right urgency during peak admission seasons to close admissions.
The school implemented the “Guest at Home” philosophy. Instead of treating visiting families like prospects to be processed, they started treating them like guests they would welcome into their own home.
Simple changes that delivered huge impact: Security staff greeting families by name and personally escorting them, tours customized based on what the school learned about the child during pre-visit calls, keeping children engaged in fun activities while parents handled paperwork, and same-day closure techniques that felt natural, and not pushy.
Why This Matters for School Operators
Current parents & families are sitting on referral goldmines. Past enquiries aren’t dead leads. Local vicinity has untapped partnership opportunities.
Most schools treat counselling as just “showing parents around and discussing fees.” But every conversation, every interaction, every moment from gate to see-off is either building trust or breaking it. The counselling process isn’t just about information sharing — it’s about creating a long-term relation with parents.
The question isn’t whether schools have these assets and touchpoints — it’s whether they’re systematically activating and optimizing them or leaving everything to chance.
What’s Your Biggest Untapped Bucket?
Join Us on 19th May, 2025
If this article resonates with you, we invite you to take the next step. Join LoEstro’s Masterclass on Driving Enrolments & Admissions in K-12 Schools, conducted by Sumit Handa, Co-Founder & Partner at LoEstro Advisors, with 25+ years of expertise in marketing and sales.
What You’ll Gain from This Session:
1. Multi-Channel Marketing: Master diverse offline and online marketing channels, learning to strategically scale campaigns for maximum impact across multiple touchpoints.
2. Conversion: Refine your counselling process to achieve 33%+ conversion rates by understanding critical enrolment touchpoints and implementing proven prospect-to-student strategies.
3. Retention: Understand student retention dynamics and learn effective strategies for managing admissions and dropouts to maintain optimal Net Student Strength (NSS).
4. Data-Driven Growth: Gain proficiency with budget templates, marketing checklists, and analytical dashboards to monitor marketing inputs and admission outputs, establishing data-driven decision-making for sustainable growth.
