Crafting a successful marketing strategy is a fundamental element in the successful management of any school. Whether you’re an established institution looking to enhance your reputation or a new school seeking to attract families, a well-crafted marketing plan can be the difference between success and struggle.
This guide will walk you through the key steps involved in creating a robust and effective school marketing plan.
Introduction
Before we dive into the details, it’s important to understand what a marketing plan is and why it’s crucial for your school’s success. At its core, a marketing plan is a strategic document that outlines your school’s marketing goals and the steps you’ll take to achieve them. It helps you define your target audience, understand your competitive landscape, and establish clear, measurable objectives.
The Importance of a Marketing Plan
A marketing plan is more than just a document. It’s a roadmap that guides your marketing efforts, ensuring that every initiative aligns with your school’s goals and contributes to your overall success. Without a marketing plan, your efforts can become disjointed, making it harder to measure results and make strategic decisions.
1. Defining Your Marketing Goals
The first step in creating a marketing plan is to define your goals. Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). For example, you might aim to increase enrollment by a certain percentage, improve your school’s reputation, or attract high-quality faculty. Be clear about what you want to achieve and how you’ll measure success.
You should also consider your organisation’s hierarchy of objectives, with specific objectives being derived in support of more broad, organisational level objectives.
2. Understanding Your Current Situation
Before you can map out your future, you need to understand where you are right now.
A thorough analysis of your school’s should include both internal and external factors, and the micro and macro environment that your school operates in.
Here are several frameworks and tools that can help conduct a thorough analysis. While it maybe impossible to utilise all the tools available, analysing your school’s situation through the lens of a recognised framework is certainly better than acting on gut feeling:
- PESTLE: Helps to scan for external factors that may affect the business.
- VRIN Analysis: Helps to understand if your company’s core competencies are a source of sustained competitive advantage.
- Competitor Analysis: Understanding your direct and indirect competitors is crucial to creating a successful school marketing plan
- Porter’s 5 Forces: Helps to understand the external factors that may affect profitability of a market.
- Positional Mapping: Can help you to understand your position in the market vs competitors.
- Resource Based View: What resources and expertise does your school have at its disposal that can help it gain a competitive advantage.
- Stakeholder analysis: Who are the key stakeholders and what is their role in reaching your marketing goals.
Summarise your scanning of your school’s internal and external environment using a SWOT analysis to identify your school’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This will give you a clear picture of your current situation and the challenges you need to overcome to achieve your goals.
3. Identifying Your Target Market
Your target market is the group of people you want to reach with your marketing efforts. This typically includes prospective students and their parents, but it might also include alumni, community members, or other stakeholders.
Many schools serve several market segments, your plan should decide which market segments to target and outline who they are,their behaviours and pain points. Consider demographics, psychographics, behaviours, and other factors that characterise your ideal audience.
Luckily, schools have a wealth of information sources available to understand current customers:
- School management systems contain demographic data about parent’s that can be useful for developing customer personas.
- Website analytics data can help to understand your customer’s interests and what content they engage with, as well as providing characteristics of previous website leads.
- Feedback from current parents can also help to understand what drives them to choose your school.
4. Defining Your School’s Niche
Once you’ve identified your target market, you can define your school’s niche. Your niche is the specific segment of the market that your school serves best. It’s where your school’s strengths meet your target audience’s needs. By focusing on your niche, you can differentiate your school from the competition and attract the right families to your school.
5. Articulating Your School’s Benefits and Competitive Edge
What makes your school unique? What benefits do you offer that other schools don’t? Answering these questions will help you articulate your school’s benefits and competitive edge. These are the features, advantages, and unique selling points that make your school stand out and attract prospective students and their families.
6. Creating a Clear School Identity
Your school’s identity is the image that people have of your school. It’s what they think of when they hear your school’s name, see your logo, or visit your campus. Your identity should reflect your school’s values, culture, and aspirations. It should be authentic, consistent, and compelling, creating a strong and positive impression on your target audience.
7. Selecting Your Marketing Tactics
Your marketing tactics are the specific actions you’ll take to achieve your marketing goals. These might include social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, events, direct mail, and more. When selecting your tactics, consider your target audience, goals, budget, and other factors.
This is also a good time to allocate work to your team and set a timeline for tasks to be completed. Think What, Who, When, and put this information into a table, or Gantt chart so that team members can easily see what their responsibilities are.
8. Setting Your Marketing Budget
Your marketing budget is the amount of money you plan to spend on your marketing activities. It should be realistic, based on your school’s financial resources, but also sufficient to achieve your marketing goals. Remember, marketing is an investment, not an expense. The money you spend on marketing can generate returns in the form of increased enrollment, improved reputation, and other benefits.
The admissions cycle for many international schools can be seasonal. It is important to consider this in you budget planning and to allocate your budget at times where it is likely to have the most impact.
9. Exploring New Market Opportunities
As you develop your marketing plan, be on the lookout for new market opportunities. These could be emerging trends, unmet needs, or other developments that create potential for your school. Opportunities can be either strategic in nature, for example, increased attractiveness of a new market segment, or tactical, such as reaching new customers on an emerging social media platform.
By staying attuned to the market, you can seize opportunities and adapt your marketing strategy to changing conditions.
10. Launching, Reviewing and Adjusting Your Plan
Once your marketing plan is complete, it’s time to put it into action. But your work doesn’t stop there. You should regularly review your plan, measuring your performance against your goals and making adjustments as needed. This will help you stay on track, learn from your experiences, and continually improve your marketing efforts.
With so much data available in modern marketing, it is important to select, and monitor against KPI’s that align with your marketing objectives.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a well-thought-out marketing plan is a crucial tool for any school. By clearly defining your goals, understanding your current situation, identifying your target market, and outlining your tactics and budget, you can create a roadmap for success. Remember, the most effective plans are flexible, allowing you to adapt and evolve as you learn more about what works for your school. So, get started on your marketing plan today and set your school on the path to success.