Work with us

We are here to grow your enrollment, be it one kid or one class/cabin at a time. Our offerings have been thoughtfully curated to meet a range of priorities and goals. If you envision something different OR you have no idea what you need (it’s more common than you think), let’s talk.

let’s do this.

Thrive Hive’s signature offering, the school enrollment growth blueprint, builds your enrollment marketing strategy from the ground up–and the sky's the limit.

  • School systems + digital audits - We want to understand how you work on the daily and quantitatively how your marketing is performing (website, social media, email.)

  • Community research - What you say about your school might be different from how it’s perceived by faculty, parents, alumni, donors, and other constituencies. We’ll bring to surface both the crossover and the variances.

  • Competitive analysis - Whether they are perceived or actual, every organization has at least one competitor. How do they position themselves online? What are their audiences saying?

  • Value proposition + key messages - Stemming from your mission + vision and steeped in the aforementioned data, we will develop your value proposition–your unique stake in the ground–and messaging that is relevant and resonant for the current state of the school.

  • Enrollment marketing playbook - This north star will set you up for strategic and implementation success, from stories to be told to unique + guest content opportunities to email + video recommendations, and everything in between.

  • Accountability support - We want to see you succeed, and will build in coaching sessions that allow us to provide hands-on guidance and feedback.

Students and campers come at all ages and stages. Gone are the days of starting an independent school in Kindergarten or overnight camp at age 7. After diving into your enrollment trends over the past three-five years and talking to your families to find out why they enroll when they do, we will outline a step-by-step marketing plan to appeal to lateral entry families including social media, email, thought leadership, and personalized outreach.

We will work with you on the roadmap for the next steps for your organization through: 

  • Conversations with you around goals and vision 

  • Engaging in community-wide stakeholder conversations

  • Analysis of competitive landscape 

  • Digital and communications audit 

  • And whatever personalized approaches we need for your organization.  

We analyze, distill themes, and will come back to you with recommendations and a blueprint of how to move your organization forward. 

Feeling the admission and/or marketing overwhelm? We will customize a weekly or bi-weekly coaching intensive that streamlines your systems, puts you on the path to success, and keeps you focused. 

Looking to hold an off-site treat? In need of faculty ambassador/marketing training? Seeking guidance on how to conduct focus groups? 

The Thrive Hive will customize a workshop, series of trainings, or an off-site retreat to fit your admission + marketing needs.

1. Admission Criteria:

  • Who is the ideal family to enroll and how do we find them?   

  • Who have been successful - and unsuccessful - families during the enrollment process?  

  • How can we replicate that and be selective, while still serving the right families for the Gan?   

2. Professionalizing the Tour + Visit Experience 

  • Reframing the tour by understanding "Features vs. Benefits" 

  • Looking at the swag we give out - is it representative of what we want Gan families to have?   

3. Marketing Language  

  • Consistent messaging, clear messaging 

  • What are the three words we want people to walk away with after visiting on a tour?  

  • How do we incorporate that into social media posts?  

4. Internal Meetings Tune Up 

  • Are we having the right meetings at the right times with the right people 

  • How can we be sure that we are using our internal time effectively?  

5. Looking at the Calendar 

  • What should we be doing in each season and month of the year? 

  • What events are best at which times of the year?  

  • What events should be rethought or reworked?   

1. Gut Check:

  • Is your marketing driving inquiries? 

  • When was the last time your web content was refreshed?

  • Do you plan out your social media posts? 

2. Revisiting your value proposition 

  • Is your value proposition a regurgitation of your mission or a statement of your features and benefits? 

  • Is it rooted in data or developed because it sounds good? 

3. Key  messages 

  • Do you have them? 

  • What do you want current families + faculty saying about your school? 

4. Internal Meetings 

  • How often do you meet with admission + educational leadership? 

  • Are your meetings purely tactical? 

5. Looking at the Calendar 

  • Marketing is cyclical. How can you build a template that can be replicated year over year? 

  • What training is needed to ensure that admission and other departments are respectful of your time and bandwidth?

A school marketing job unlike most other marketing jobs, and it’s not as black and white as B2B vs. B2C. Professionals don’t go to school for Admissions, meaning individuals come in from many backgrounds, but not all are created equal and not all are a good fit. 

The Thrive Hive can:

  1. Evaluate and recommend how to staff your department

  2. Create job descriptions for available positions

  3. Screen and interview candidates

starter packs

We are here to grow your enrollment, be it one kid or one class/cabin at a time. Our offerings have been thoughtfully curated to meet a range of priorities and goals. If you envision something different OR you have no idea what you need (it’s more common than you think), let’s talk.

Focus groups and surveys can yield a wealth of information that can inform your enrollment marketing strategy and accompanying content + plans. The Thrive Hive can work with you in one of two ways:

  1. Develop an audience research roadmap including processes, questions, and key metrics. 

  2. Create the process, facilitate the focus groups and surveys, analyze results, and provide recommendations. 

Every strategic move you are making should be rooted in data. Our M+M looks at all of your digital analytics and produces a synopsis deck that can serve as a benchmark, be shared with Board members and in-house professionals, and be used to make decisions. 

  • User demographics, engagement, follower base, and content are important considerations for KSDS’s social channels

  • Assessment of the front end of the website from a content and usability standpoint, as well as from a Google Analytics perspective

  • Sweep of school review sites to assess the broad perception of your school 

  • Curated research to evaluate what keywords are important to your school and where you currently rank

Take a deep dive into your admission and enrollment systems and processes to be sure that you are working in a way that is smart, helpful, informative and shares the right information with the right people. 

Are you meeting with the right people at the right time? 

Are your forms as helpful as they can be? 

Are you attracting the right families to your school?  

How can we build bridges between departments at the school?  

How can we hit our target enrollment numbers? 

After looking at your school’s processes and tracking documentation, we will build the right systems to help you hit your goals.  Together. 

In this 10 part coaching series, we will set up your admission and enrollment office for success. After an intake call to understand your work experience, we will meet to cover the building block of how to do admission and enrollment right. We will cover this and more: 

  • Basic vocabulary 

  • What happens when (Seasons of the year) 

  • Application hardware 

    • Application form 

    • Recommendations 

  • Admission review process - how are students getting accepted 

  • Calendar of events

  • Meetings - who should you meet with and when?  And why?  

  • Tracking documents 

  • Building internal relationships

  • Feeders   

  • Kinks to fix - Create “Stuff that went wrong this year” list 

  • Retention practices 

  • Ambassador programs: Parent, Student, Faculty 

  • Communications Template 

  • Orientations

Your faculty members can be your best ambassadors, if you acknowledge their primary role and make it easy for them to participate in the school’s marketing activities. We will take a deep dive into your unique faculty body and develop a playbook for sustaining positive relationships.