It’s counterintuitive, but the way to grow your business is to focus entirely on your existing customers. Just thrill them, and they’ll tell everyone.
Anything You Want
Derek Sivers (Founder of CDBaby)
Turns out that's not just true for businesses.
The best way to grow your independent school is to make your current families so happy they can't help but talk about you.
The best way to grow your club or organization is to make it so rewarding for your current members that they talk voluntarily about how much they love it.
If you want to grow your community organization, make your volunteers feel even more appreciated and rewarded. They'll tell people for you.
If you want to have more dates, make your current significant other so happy that…wait, yeah, that one doesn't work.
If you want to grow your readership of your school newspaper, blog or newsletter, write the articles your existing readers want to read. They'll share them with like-minded potential readers.
And colleges, if you want more students, if you want more applications from those students who are most likely to enroll, and if you want more donations from your alumni, stop spending so much money trying to find and sell to potential students. Slash the budget for the marketing consultants and the direct mailings and the branding experts. Redirect that money towards your existing customers (your current students and their families). Make them feel so lucky to have found you that they can't help but tell everyone how great their experience is. That will be worth more to you than any mailing list or social media campaign.