If you’re a leader tasked with growing your school’s enrollment, does this sound familiar? Enrollment softens, cost-per-click climbs, the team runs faster, and seats still need to be full before the open enrollment window closes. The good news: there’s a way off this treadmill. Networks that invest in building their brand build something no ad budget can buy: a reputation that keeps filling seats, enrollment cycle after enrollment cycle, in the good years and the hard ones.

Here’s the case for treating brand as insurance, not overhead. 

The treadmill is getting more expensive. Average Google Ads CPC for education advertisers jumped from $4.38 to $6.23 in a year (42%!), with cost-per-lead now around $901. Meta and LinkedIn costs are climbing too. Meanwhile the field keeps getting more crowded: charter enrollment grew 15% over six years, even as district schools lost nearly 2 million students and ESA programs expanded2. More networks competing for the same applicants means a rising cost per enrolled student for everyone still chasing leads instead of building demand.

Bad years aren’t hypothetical. According to annual NCES Digest of Education Statistics data collected from 2010 to 2022, an average of 190 charter schools closed each year3. Missing enrollment targets is one of the standard conditions written into charter contracts and often cited as a reason for non-renewal. But paid media can’t be the lone solution to a soft re-enrollment season or a funding formula that shifted overnight. Brand equity, the reputation that gets a prospective family to your site first, or gets a re-enrolling family to say yes without a single ad touch, is what will work for you in years when budgets decline and competition spikes.

The math behind why it works. Analyzing more than 1,000 Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) effectiveness case studies, Les Binet and Peter Field found that budgets split roughly 60% brand-building to 40% performance activation produced the strongest combined short- and long-term growth4. Separately, WARC’s 2025 “Multiplier Effect” research found that shifting from a performance-only strategy to an integrated brand-plus-performance approach to marketing lifted ROI by an average of 90%, while shifting the other direction cost an average 40% decline5. 

Why? The majority of your potential student families aren’t shopping in the moment you message may reach them [5]. Lead gen only ever reaches the 5%. A strong brand is what makes families think of you first when they finally do start looking.

Brand, in practice. A sign that your brand building is working is share of search: your network’s share of branded search volume against every other option a family in your market is considering. It’s been shown to track roughly 83% of a brand’s market share over a rolling 6–12 month window, and it moves months before your enrollment numbers do6.

Over the last 3 years, Commerce House has partnered with a Texas charter school network to grow enrollment. Seasonality impacts messaging for school districts so our campaigns evolve throughout the school year to stay relevant and focus on what our core audience has top of mind. But a steady focus on the brand promise and key differentiators (with increased urgency leading up to the application deadline) has yielded a steady increase in applications. Specifically, a 115% jump in branded search volume.

While branded search is an early indicator of brand success, it’s not the only factor. In Niche’s 2025 parent survey, 87% of parents checked review platforms before contacting a school, and two-thirds said other parents’ reviews directly swayed their decision. Chosen schools scored 74% on “ease of finding information” while rejected ones scored 42%7. 

That 32-point gap is a clear brand identity PLUS an intentional content strategy and strong value prop delivered by school staff.

The reframe: The networks seeing enrollment growth are investing in brand building activities and running performance media, weighted toward the asset that compounds. If your budget is almost all lead-gen, the best move isn’t dropping performance marketing. It’s redirecting enough of it to build the reputation that makes every future lead cheaper, and protects you the year leads get expensive.

Treat brand like insurance now, and you’re the network still filling seats affordably when it gets hard for everyone else.

Commerce House has partnered with many education brands (from pre-k-12 to higher education) to find the right balance of brand-to-performance marketing. Reach out to us at hello@commercehouse.com to set up a complimentary brand audit and get started evaluating the right mix for your school.

  1. Click-Vision, “Education Marketing Statistics: Benchmarks & Trends for 2026” ↩︎
  2. National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, “New Report Shows Charter School Enrollment Grows Across the Nation” (November 2025 Enrollment Report)
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  3. National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), “Inside Charter School Growth: Closings” and State of Charter Authorizing research — NACSA is the nonpartisan membership association for the agencies that approve, oversee, and renew charter schools, not an advocacy group on either side of the charter debate ↩︎
  4. Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, Les Binet & Peter Field research ↩︎
  5. WARC, “The Multiplier Effect: A CMO’s Guide to Brand Building in the Performance Era” (2025, with Analytic Partners and BERA.ai) ↩︎
  6. Marketing Week, “Share of Search Represents 83% of a Brand’s Market Share, Think Tank Finds”, reporting IPA share-of-search research led by James Hankins with Les Binet ↩︎
  7. Niche, “Parent Survey: 4 Key Takeaways for K–12 Enrollment Leaders” (2025 K-12 Parent Survey) ↩︎