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PROLOGUE
The Parent You're Marketing To Doesn't Exist Anymore
A mom hears about your school at daycare pickup on a Tuesday. By Thursday, she's read your Niche reviews, scrolled eighteen months of your Instagram, and asked a parents' Facebook group what your school is really like.
She never requested the viewbook. She may never fill out your inquiry form. She's already deciding.
She's 36. And she is not the parent your admissions playbook was built for.
Here's the shift most schools haven't caught up to: Millennials aren't the next generation of school parents. They're the current one, nearly all of it. The oldest are in their mid-forties. Every parent touring your school this fall grew up comparison-shopping everything from strollers to pediatricians with a phone in their hand.
Your playbook isn't bad. It's just calibrated for Gen X, parents who trusted institutions and expected to be sold to. Millennial parents don't distrust your school. They distrust polish. A glossy brochure reads as marketing. A real parent's five-sentence Google review reads as truth.
Two things to do this week:
Read your last ten Niche reviews the way she does. Are they recent? Answered? Would you enroll?
Time your own inquiry response. She gets same-day answers from her dentist. If your reply takes three days, the silence is the message.
If you want to go deeper, we're hosting Felicia DePriest Holcomb inside the MarCom Society this month for a session on exactly this: The Millennial Mindset, and what actually moves these families to choose a school and stay. Details below.
Your school hasn't changed. Your buyer has. Is your marketing talking to the parent in front of you, or the one from 2010?
Thanks,
Brendan
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UPCOMING EVENT
For MarCom Society Members Only
The Millennial Mindset: Engaging and Recruiting Families
Discover what truly moves Millennial parents to choose - and stay - in a school. This session explores the generational experiences shaping Millennial parents' expectations and how schools can respond.
Bio: Felicia DePriest Holcomb has expertise in marketing, enrollment management, and fundraising. She currently serves the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, partnering with its 42 schools to develop mission-driven strategies that increase enrollment and strengthen community engagement. A teacher by trade, Felicia holds education degrees from Avila University and Emporia State University, as well as a certificate in Catholic School Management from Villanova University and a graduate certificate in grant proposal development from Fort Hays State University. Felicia is passionate about creating authentic connections that help Catholic schools - and the students they serve - thrive.
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