Marketing

Why does a school need a differentiated marketing strategy?

Education Advisers believes that all schools need a differentiated marketing strategy to be successful.

Why?

There are more than 2000 UK independent schools competing with each other to attract the best pupils. However, no more than 25% of independent schools have dedicated marketing managers in a full time role. Most of the marketing material and key straplines seem the same – how is a parent to select a school which stands out? You will usually only convert an enquiry if the parent visits your school and you have an effective admissions procedure. Firstly, they must become aware of your school’s existence and secondly, there must be several factors to make your school differentiated. Ideally your strategy should also appeal to differentiated market segments, because not all parents are the same and you may wish to position your school differently to separate groups.

What is a differentiated marketing strategy?

Anyone can be different – that is not the point. A differentiated marketing strategy should create a desire for the right profile of parent to visit your school. It should be, inter alia:

• D istinctive – it should stand out from other schools
• E xciting – Yes we know schools are not exactly exciting, but your communications have to excite parents to want to act i.e. book a visit
• S uperior – the school should appear to have a better offering than its near competitors
• I nspired – all school staff must buy into the strategy and be motivated to join in the implementation
• R ealistic – it should be financially sound, measurable and implementable
• E ffective – it should produce the right profile of pupils in the target quantities within the allocated recruitment cost

Why not ask us to help differentiate your marketing?

When it comes to marketing implementation we take pride in producing distinctive and differentiated plans. We can tackle all aspects of schools marketing or just those causing you problems, such as

• A sound financial plan
• Advertising and media
• Prospectuses and video (streaming or dvd)
• Exhibitions
• School seminars
• Foreign education agents
• UK consultants
• Local centres of influence
• Referrals from alumni and parents
• Your website and the internet
• Fees, pricing and awards strategy

Of course, our speciality is new technology. As you will see elsewhere on this site, we build incredibly effective websites, use videos and DVDs to powerful effect and we can also ensure that your site receives masses of relevant parent traffic from other websites, while minimising the inevitable time wasters who also characterise the internet.

What differentiates us?

You can see our credentials elsewhere on this site. However, the key differentiators of Education Advisers are:

• Our Principals have extensive experience of Independent Schools, Technology and Marketing
• We operate our own extremely successful websites to advise parents on school or college choice
• We actually place hundreds of children in independent schools or colleges – so, we know how parents think and how schools treat new enquirers

How can my school benefit?

We have written a report on differentiated school marketing strategies, which is available FREE to private school employees. Additionally, we are happy to discuss your present marketing strategy. Call us on +44 (0) 1622 813870 or 812852. It will cost you nothing at all to contact us - simply fill in the following webform and submit.