Where Schools Miss Out on Marketing
One of the reasons we founded 38 House was to help schools elevate their communications and marketing efforts. We’ve seen and worked with schools who had limited resources and time, but wanted to bring their marketing to a new level. The beginning of that process starts with a shift in mindset toward operating more like a business and less like a school.
Initially, that shift in mindset can make people bristle. It’s important to say that it doesn’t mean becoming transactional or less relational with your families. Instead, it means changing the way you think about marketing your school to your constituents, and becoming much more effective in delivering your message.
Think Like a Business… You Do Have a Product You’re Selling
Schools don’t often like to think of themselves as businesses, but for a marketing department, they are. Schools have revenue, expenses, employees, and customers. The product that you’re selling is the student experience and student outcome. Your customers are your current families, alumni, and prospective families. They are often making, have made, or will make an enormous investment with your school. Switch into this mindset to begin understanding and thinking about marketing your business (school).
Understand Your Customer
Break down your target audiences and create a plan to address each of them. I suggest selecting 4-6 audience subsets to target. It may be alumni, current families, and prospective families. You may want to break down further. Either way, your marketing target audience is not just prospective families. Study and get to know each of those target audiences. What will resonate with each audience?
At regular intervals, audit your content and determine whether you’re effectively addressing each of your target audiences.
Expand Your Marketing Team to Hundreds of People
You can use existing tools like social media, email newsletters, and print publications to turn your alumni base, parent base, and students into an extension of your marketing department. One of my goals while Director of Communications and Marketing at Christ School was to ensure that every alumnus, parent, and student knew the good things happening at school. When we started an aviation program, we spread the news wide and far. When a student received UNC Chapel Hill’s Morehead-Cain scholarship, we sent it to everyone. I went so far as to budget a portion of our ad spend to target current families and alumni. This seems simple, but the effect compounds over a long period of time into important gains. You get to a point where your proud alumni and current family base organically market the school in a way that you never could.
A side benefit of this strategy is higher student retention – especially at boarding schools where parents are less plugged into the day-t0-day happenings. An example? When a student called home and complained to their parents that there was, “nothing to do this past weekend,” I wanted the parents to have already seen the Monday newsletter with dozens of photos and information about student activities the past weekend and offerings for the weekend ahead.
Building an intentional plan and strategy around turning your constituents into a giant marketing department is key. Create a culture of excitement around what’s happening at your school. It’s something we can help with. Reach out if you want to brainstorm or talk about how we can help.
