Defining your business based on competitive pricing is a trap to avoid. The true way to stand out and to compete with other language schools – if you face the situation that you have many other local language school providers around you – is not in lowering your pricing nor trying to hire cheap staff or do everything yourself (see the article Why \”Do It Yourself\” Mentality Can Kill Your Language School Business)
The real power in attracting students that spend the right amount of money that attracts your level of service and your unique way of doing language training. You can only differentiate yourself based on how you design your classroom and learning experience and how a student will remember the time they have spent with you for the rest of their lives.
The key is to attract the right people who are able to pay the amount of money you ask for that language school experience – and to make sure that students that do not have access to those funds are still able to take part by discovering if and how they are eligible to receive student grants.
This is a powerful way of you communicating the true value of your language training – and you will receive the money value that you place on your services.
On the other hand, you are able to help students to become an ambassador for your language school if you are able to help them to show if there are legal options to get parts of the language school tuition or the complete training sponsored.
The key here is not to communicate that they get something \”for free\” but that they are able to obtain the necessary funds to pay the money being asked and necessary to book a language training with your language school instead.
Luckily there are many programs that can help you with this. The most prominent well known is the Erasmus exchange program that is very popular in Europe. A Google search for \”government sponsored language programs\” will show you a surprisingly high number of options for almost any country. Examples for the United States include the Critical Language Scholarship, the Boren Awards for International Studies or the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.
A very interesting way is also to find and research fellowships as opposed to looking for scholarship and grants.
What is the difference?
Scholarships provide funding to students for university tuition and other study-related expenses and can be either need-based or merit-based.
Fellowships are on the other hand mostly merit-based only and offer funding for a unique work placement, professional training, independent projects, research, or graduate and doctoral study.
Fellowships are offered in virtually all disciplines, at all career levels.
Another overlooked option is that you might want to get in touch with local businesses if they are able to get interns and volunteers to work at their offices in exchange for sponsoring a student a language training course. You will find some additional inspiration at the article Offering Internships At Your Language School.
In the end, it comes to this: with you helping students to be able to study with your language school with the help of grants, scholarships or fellowships you are helping your own language business to grow without lowering your standards and without the need to lower your pricing on your services offered.
Also adding all that helpful content to your language school website will certainly help you with the ranking of your website in the search engines as you will not only most likely end up on the directory pages of those sponsored networks.
It will also give you multiple opportunities to exchange and write and link content where natural referrals between different related language websites will occur.
See also the article Sharing Your Language Know How Strategically With Guest Posts
