Are you ready for a whole new generation?

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There’s something going on with your prospective parents and some of your newer parents. You may not know exactly what it is by I bet you recognize some of the symptoms. The diagnosis is that we’re on the cusp of a generational shift.

Here’s just a bit of background. Demographers categorize generations by year of birth. Each generation has unique characteristics shaped by the social dynamics and world events of its time. Knowing that, consider this.

Generation	Born	Age in 2015
Gen X	1965-1979	36-50
Millennials	1980-2000	15-35

You can see that over the past five years, more and more of your prospective parents have become millennials. They are very different than the GenXers that preceded them. So, what do you we know about millenials? Here are eight distinctive qualities.

• Entitled. They have always been treated as special and important.
• Sheltered.  They were highly protected as children.
• Confident.  They are motivated and goal-oriented.
• Collaborators. They are team-oriented and like to share
• Achievers.  Grade point averages and other success markers are rising with this generation.
• Pressured.  They are trophy kids and feel pushed to work hard, plan for the long term.
• Conventional.  They are very respectful of their parents’ opinions.
• Digital Natives. They were raised on technology.

Is this starting to ring a bell yet? Parents that are driven, expect high levels of attention and are prepared to tell the world when they receive it – and when they don’t.

But wait. There’s more. Here’s some interesting marketing data on the millennial generation.

• According to a recent study, millennials said they trusted the reviews of peers (68%) more than professionals (64%)

• Millennials trust product information from user-generated content (social networks 50%; peer reviews 68%; conversations with friends 74%) far more than from traditional media (TV 34%; Radio 37%; Print 44%)

• Another study found that this generation is heavily reliant on crowd sourcing to make brand purchase decisions. 94% said they use at least one outside source to make a decision and an incredible 40% said they use four or more sources.

• And it works both ways because 74% of millennials believe that they influence the purchasing decisions of others.

So, what does all this mean in terms of your marketing and recruitment efforts? Here are some approaches to consider.

• It’s all about ambassadors. Your most prized educational leader or the praise of a recognized educational expert doesn’t stand a chance against what other parents are saying about your school. Inform, engage and inspire your current parents to use all of their networks to say wonderful things about your school. Many of them crave the opportunity to do just that.

• There are no secrets. You can’t play the game of telling parents only what they want to hear because they are so connected that they are going to hear about everything else anyway. And you can assume that any shortcomings – whether staff, program or facilities related – are well known to your prospective parent community. The only solution is to be open and honest. Many times, parents are more interested in how you are addressing challenges than the fact that they exist.

• Meet them on their turf. If your prospects do most of their research and make most decisions online, then be a facilitator. Yes, this means you need to have a robust social media strategy to capture the crowdsourcing potential. But it also necessitates a strong content marketing plan. Provide valuable resources to engage and empower parents. And make sure that parents can take immediate action through online applications and registration. 

• Demonstrate results. There’s nothing like the success story of an alum to appeal to parents who are true achievers. Deliver that story in a way that makes it easy to share (like video) and you can magnify the impact. Take a data driven approach and post empirical results on your website. That doesn’t necessarily mean standardized test results. Transform assessment data that you are using into information that is of interest to prospective parents.

• Involve grandparents. This is a generation that admires and respects their parents. You can bet they will consult them when making a decision about school. Grandparent and special friend days only happen once grandchildren once the sale has been made and students are in the school. But grandparents are important influencers for this cohort. It could be worth considering a recruitment campaign targeted specifically at grandparents.

• Accept them for who they are. There’s no question that parents who always feel that they are deserving of special attention can be a pain in the butt. But trying to modify their behavior is an exercise in futility. They are paying significant amounts of money to send their kids to your school. Treat them like the customers they are.

As it relates to prospective parents, millennials are just coming of age and you are going to be dealing with them for many years. Now’s the time to develop your millennial strategy.

What do you think?
Are you seeing the millennial shift in your school? What are you doing about it? Let me know.

My Stupidly Simple Explanation of Branding

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Branding is complicated. It’s time consuming. It can be damn expensive. So, selling your boss or your board on the idea of engaging in a branding project can be a monumental task.

But here’s what makes it even harder. Most people don’t know what a brand is. In part that’s because marketers create a whole language around branding that is totally unintelligible. It’s also a result of the way words get re-purposed and often misused – particularly in social media.

So, as a way of helping organizations, schools and businesses understand why branding is really important and with deference to the many, many marketing experts and authorities who know way more than me, I offer the following rather simple explanation of branding.

Have you ever had a conversation with a significant other that goes something like this?

“Do you love me?”

“Yes, I love you.”

“Why? Tell me why you love me.”

For most people that results in a big gulp and a desperate stalling tactic like, “What do you mean?”

But if you were able to provide an honest answer to that question, it would be complex and multi-layered. It would involve the way someone looks, thinks and acts, particularly when those acts are directed at you.  The answer would be revealed in your experience with that person or perhaps in what others have told you about him. It would also be based on how you imagine your loved one would react in certain circumstances – perhaps as a spouse or a parent.

Now, imagine you want to replicate that relationship many times over. Let’s say you want more people to love you, or those who already love you to love you more. You are going to need an accurate and effective answer to “Why do you love me?” – one that reflects the many ways in which many different people can love you.

And guess what? The answer to that question is your brand. So, based on all that, here’s my definition of a brand.

A brand is an expressive representation of the complex relationship that customers and other stakeholders have with an organization.

It's a simple concept but I think that some of the words need explaning.

Expressive – Brands have to appeal to the head and the heart – and even more, they have to motivate, inspire and incite action. You want people to be excited about telling other people about you.

Representation – It can be words, photos, videos, graphics, events, and yes even a logo. A brand can be communicated in a myriad of ways.

Relationship – If it isn’t already obvious, just like relationships are two-way streets so is your brand. You can’t unilaterally decide what your brand is. In branding, perception is truly reality.

Customers – Many organizations don’t traditionally think about constituents as customers but the reality is that people have choices about whether they affiliate with your organization. For example, parents at independent schools pay a small fortune in tuition and deserve to be treated like customers. Fundraising organizations would also be wise to look at donors from a customer centric perspective.

Stakeholders – I know this one of those words that gets used too often but the point is that many people other than customers have important relationships with your business or organization. Think about previous buyers, suppliers, employees and alumni. All of those people have something to say about the nature of your brand.

By the way, I know the “love” thing is going to be a bit much for some people. If it makes you feel more comfortable you can substitute “respect” or “admire” for “love” and ask, “Why do you respect me?” I would argue however that the most passionate (and therefore successful) ambassadors for your organization are going to be those that can say, “Let me tell you why I love XYZ school.”

At a branding workshop for independent schools that I led early this year, the person opening the session said, “This morning we’re going to talk about the big, bad ‘B’ word.” One of the reasons that branding is a pain in the butt is that people don’t know what it is. Hopefully, my simple (some might say naïve or mushy) explanation is a step in the right direction.

What do you think?

Is a lack of understanding getting in the way of branding projects at your organization?

What definitions of branding have helped you?

How are you advancing branding projects in your organization?

Heads of school are the key to marketing success

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More than ever before, it is critical that heads of school become integrally involved with marketing.

Why now, you ask? Because marketing has morphed from being a fixed set of activities that emanates from a particular office to something that now touches every department in a school.

When parents register their children at your school, they are buying way more than an education. What was once a product has become an experience. And parents – as customers – now see their relationship with a school through the lens of that experience. A whole new imperative for school marketing has been established.

This is what the people at McKinsey have to say in a brilliant article called We’re all Marketers Now.

In today’s marketing environment, companies will be better off if they stop viewing customer engagement as a series of discrete interactions and instead think about it as customers do: a set of related interactions that, added together, make up the customer experience.

So, every interaction a parent has contributes to the quality of her overall experience with your school. The implications of that are far-reaching. As McKinsey puts it, “To engage customers whenever and wherever they interact with a company … marketing must pervade the entire organization.”

Putting that into practice, marketing has to be part of every department’s plans and the way that every staff person conducts himself. Interactions with the front office, teachers, educational leaders, the business office – even custodians – all contribute to the parent experience. Everyone now has some responsibility for marketing.

Now we get to the hard part. How exactly will the marketing department extend its influence and provide direction and support throughout the whole organization? And as the McKinsey article asks, “ … if everyone’s responsible for marketing, who’s accountable?"

Realistically this is not something that school admissions or marketing professionals are going to be able to deal with on their own. Even directors of enrolment management or advancement don’t have the implicit authority to put marketing on every department’s agenda and demand accountability. You don’t have to be a clairvoyant, to see, as McKinsey does, that, “Behind the scenes, that new reality creates a need for coordination and conflict resolution mechanisms within and across functions ...”

Enter heads of school. It is only with their involvement, influence and authority as well as their knowledge, experience and judgment that a positive and pervasive parent experience can be established.

Want to understand why that’s true? Who else can persuasively speak to faculty about the ways in which they can meaningfully contribute to the parent experience? Who is going to have the conversation with the people in the business office about ensuring positive interactions with parents?

How else can we ensure that the people who guide parents into a school – the admissions department - remain part of the parent experience and, in that way, contribute to retention success? And finally, who will speak with trustees and lay people about the ways in which their actions contribute to the parent experience and positive enrolment results?

Only heads of school have the reach and the credibility to raise the prominence of marketing and the parent experience. It is only heads of school that can demand marketing accountability from every department and every staff person.

I understand that the last thing that heads need is more on their management plate. Ultimately, this may be a responsibility that can be jointly assumed by heads and trustees or perhaps the appropriate authority can be conveyed to someone else in the organization. However, it seems inescapable to me that the head will have to maintain some increased involvement in marketing.

In the past year as I have spoken at admissions conferences about independent school marketing, I inevitably have encountered professionals who are confounded by how they are going to affect the necessary formidable change in their schools. As incredibly competent and well meaning as they are, the answer is that marketing’s effect on enrollment (and other) results will only be fully realized with the involvement of heads of school.

What do you think?

Am I wrong? Can this kind of change happen without the increased involvement of heads? Have you had some relevant, noteworthy experiences. I’d love to hear from you.

Let's hear those amazing independent school customer service stories

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I’m betting that there are some independent schools that have “knock your socks off” customer service stories.

Exceptional customer service is increasingly becoming the most effective way for companies and organizations to differentiate themselves from their competition. Even so, there are some customer service stories that stand out as being truly remarkable. As an example, you can read this story of how someone from the Morton’s Steakhouse in Hackensack NJ personally delivered a meal 24 miles away at Newark Airport. Not surprisingly, social media channels lit up with this story being told and retold.

The potential for outstanding customer service to impact on organizational results is the reason that this past fall representatives of a number of colleges and universities attended a three-day conference with representatives of Ritz Carlton, Disney, Kimberly- Clark and Southwest Airlines.

Increasingly delivering outstanding customer service is becoming a necessity for independent schools. That’s why I’m currently working on a number of publications and presentations detailing the benefits to independent schools of focusing on the customer experience.

But I would also bet that there are dozens of great independent school customer service stories – occasions when a teacher, administrator or someone in the business office went absolutely above and beyond to solve a parent’s or a student’s problem. And I’d love to hear about them. If you have an amazing story that you would like to have retold, you can include it as a comment below or email me directly.

I’m looking forward to being blown away by your stories.

The truth about one-page letters

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Imagine this. You’re meeting with your lawyer to review an important business contract and she hands you one page. You ask, “Where is the rest of the contract?” and she replies, “We have a rule in our office that contracts can only be one page. I couldn’t get all of the clauses in, but I got the most important ones.”

Absurd, right? Who could possibly imagine that the length of a contract determines its effectiveness? When it comes to contracts, we clearly choose completeness over brevity.

Why is it then that when it comes to letters, we are convinced of the opposite? I can’t tell you how many times clients have asked me to draft a letter with the overriding instruction being it has to be one page.

I’m well aware of the many famous quotations that say it’s harder to write a short letter than a longer one. And as a writer, I know that my first draft will almost always be too long. But that just says that three pages might be better than four and yes, that one might be better than two. It doesn’t mean that a one-page letter is a necessarily superior form of communication.

To be clear, I’m not talking about perfunctory letters that are simply designed to convey a small amount of information. The letter letting me know that my electricity is about to be disconnected for non-payment doesn’t need to be more than one page.

But if your letter is intended to have impact, to shape opinion or to influence decision-making, imposing a one-page limit is counter-productive. In discussing clarity v. impact, Seth Godin says, “…often, being crystal clear about categorization, topic sentences and the deliverable get in the way of actually making an impact.”

It seems to me that if you are bothering to write in the first place, you might as well do the best possible job of communicating. You demonstrate your respect for your customers by not sacrificing form over function. You are saying to the reader that you are so important to our organization that we are prepared to take the time to fully explain what it is we have to say.

On top of that, multi-page letters deliver greater results. For example, in the fundraising world, they have been proven to result in more donations.

Let’s turn this around. The real question isn’t whether a one-page letter is superior. Rather, it’s why your customers or constituents won’t read a multi-page letter from your organization. The answers to that question may reveal deeper, more important issues. Here are some possibilities.

Your letters aren’t well written. The insistence on brevity is often an admission of ineptitude. People read columns, articles and books every day. They all exceed one page. If a letter is well written – with an effective hook to interest the reader – and with content and style that is compelling, people will make it through that extra page or two.

It’s not important to them. If people aren’t reading your letters, it may indicate that you have lost touch with them. What you are writing about isn’t important to them. Or, apropos to the point above, you have in the first paragraph or two failed to establish why the reader should continue on. In either case, you need to spend a little more time re-connecting with your reader.

They are not engaged. If your customers don’t perceive there to be any value in their association with your company, they are not going to be interested in your letters – whether they are one page or four. Any communication with a constituent is only as good as the experience that has preceded it. You may have a much larger problem on your hands that has more to do with branding than letter-writing.

The reality is that when someone says, “People will never read more than one page” it’s not an assessment of the inclination or ability of the reader. It’s an admission that there’s something lacking in the relationship with the customer to whom the letter is being written.

So, the one-page letter becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Providing less information and context diminishes the possibility of engagement and makes it even less likely that the constituent will read a longer letter in the future. Unless you break the cycle, you will be doomed to a future of brief but ineffective communication.

What do you think?

Do you insist on one-page letters? Are people just too rushed to be bothered to read multi-page letters? Do you have any experience or data to shed light on the question?

How are you unboxing your school?

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You may never have heard of it, but "unboxing" is not only all over YouTube, it may be a great way of achieving marketing success at your independent school.

There’s a video on YouTube that shows a pair of hands unpacking five cartoon branded plastic eggs each with a toy surprise inside. No big deal. There are billions of videos on You Tube. But get this. This video has over 93 million views. Now that’s a big deal.

It’s all part of a phenomenon called “unboxing” that I recently discovered after listening to an interview with Mireille Silcoff who wrote an article about it for the New York Times. There are thousands of unboxing videos on YouTube. You can watch people unpacking everything from high tech gadgets to cosmetics to toys. Wikipedia even has an entry for unboxing.

What’s going on here? Why would millions of people watch someone else unpack something?

The process of unpacking something you have just bought is a very visceral experience.  It’s pure emotion – excitement, expectation, pride of ownership. There is great anticipation. That first look at or feel of whatever is in the box can be a “oh wow!” kind of moment. And it’s so powerful that people love to watch other people unpack things. Think about birthdays or Christmas and watching someone unwrap a gift. There aren’t many other events that can provide such vicarious enjoyment.

From a marketing perspective, it’s one more reminder that sales is a transfer of emotion and that people don’t just want to buy a product – they want to have an experience. The best marketers meticulously consider those first moments that a customer spends with a product to ensure that the unboxing experience is not only fantastic but is consistent with the overall brand experience of the company.

So, here’s the question. Can the unboxing experience be replicated in independent schools? Are there interaction points and special moments or milestones that can effectively be unboxed?

Here’s one. When a student is accepted, the package that is sent to parents is an obvious unboxing opportunity. What does the envelope look like? Does it have to be an envelope? What’s the first thing that is visible when the package is opened and how does that shape the experience you are trying to create? Does it create a sense of excitement, pride and maybe even accomplishment? Is there something in the package for the student? Perhaps there should be a separate student package. If you don’t have a formal acceptance package, maybe you should create one just for the purpose of creating an experience. If your acceptance process is finalized online, there are ways of creating a web-based or email based unboxing experience. Acceptance is a key moment in the sales process. You want to completely validate the choice that parents have made and align it with your school’s brand.

Another possibility. A child’s first day of school is a watershed moment for parents. Tapping into that emotion and making it an essential part of their experience with their new school can be very powerful. How can you unbox that experience? Perhaps parents with first-time school goers can receive a kit in advance with helpful information and useful things like labels or tags as well as something for kids like stickers. Maybe it comes in a box or a special folder that identifies it as something the school has specially created for first-time school parents.

Here’s a related possibility. Every moment of a child’s first day of school is a real-time unboxing experience filled with awe and wonder. What if you use video to capture some of those moments and send it to parents. I saw a news segment the other day about a parent that had strapped a GoPro camera to her child’s chest so that she could experience her daughter’s first day of school. It’s a little extreme but there’s no question that it reflects one parent’s desire to vicariously be part of her child’s first-day unboxing experience.

Once you get comfortable with the premise, I’ll bet there are dozens of unboxing experiences that you can create in your schools – from things as momentous as grade 1 graduation to those as mundane as tuition packages.

The key is to always think about parents as customers and look for the ways in which you can create validating experiences that reinforce your school’s brand. 

What do you think?

Is it possible to create unboxing experiences? Have you created unboxing experiences in your school? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Big data for not-so-big organizations

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Read any business, marketing or management publication these days and you're almost certain to find an article about Big Data. The natural conclusion is that big data is for big organizations. That could be because just the term "big data" will leave those responsible for smaller organizations either terror-stricken or in a boredom induced coma. But concluding that not-so-big organizations have nothing to learn from the lessons of big data is a big mistake.

First, let's deal with this big name, "big data." While its true that there are companies that are combing terabytes of data to develop the algorithm that will predict the buying patterns of consumers in Wichita, those organizations represent the vast minority. Don't be intimidated by references to big data. Rather, consider how increased use of data can help you make better decisions.

Quoted in a CNN Money post, Sheryl Pattek, a principal at Forrester Research said, "It's not really a question of big data as much as it's a question of the right data. It's about turning data into insights that you can act on to drive business."

In other words, when it comes to data, size doesn't matter. However the value of data is irrefutable. As a recent report from Teradata concludes, "The evidence is proving that companies that act quickly based on data-driven decisions are succeeding over their peers."

This is particularly the case with marketing efforts. As the same report says, "data-driven marketing bridges the gap between what you do and what customers want."

So, where to begin? What data should you be sure to be assembling and how can you use it?

Contact information. This may sound ridiculously obvious but an e-marketer report on big data (ironically titled, Using Big Data Still a Challenge for Marketers) concluded that contact data was the most important for marketing success. Do you have an email address, or better yet, the most current email address for every customer or constituent? Do you have a program in place that makes it easy and encourages people to update their contact info? Once you've dealt with those questions, shift the analysis to prospective customers or donors and ensure that you have complete information for them. For example, do you have a first and last name to go with every prospect email address? Without that info, you eliminate the possibility of email personalization and the chances of converting that prospect into a buyer become slim.

The e-marketer report also presented the most valuable data that execs said was unavailable to them. Those data categories are essential to organizations. These are some of them and what you can do about them.

Web behavior. You better have Google Analytics running on your site. If not, stop reading this post and immediately contact the person responsible for your site. There is a ton of information that Google Analytics makes available to you that in turn will give you insight into the behavior of visitors to your site. Some examples: Where are they coming from? Is it from searches in a browser and if so what are the keywords that are delivering them? Alternatively, is there an external link that is responsible for referrals? What pages are people looking at on your site? Are they the ones that are important to purchases or donations? Should you re-jig content to increase conversions? The list of questions and resultant actions is endless. Google even provides a bevy of success stories that you can learn from.

Demographics. Hopefully you have lots of information about the people you engage with - whether as prospects or buyers. This includes age, income, location, maybe even marital status, number of children and other data that might be uniquely important to your organization. For example an independent school may want to know what schools siblings attend or attended. You should be able to construct the profile or profiles of your archetypical buyers. Then the question becomes where do you find more just like them.

Purchase (or donation) history. If you can track not only what people have committed to but the path they took getting there, you have powerful information. Combine this with demographic data and you could build powerful personas that you you can use to target marketing and messaging. For example if you discover that people with a particular combination of demographic markers are more likely to buy (donate/apply) when presented with certain information, you can target that segment and get them that information sooner or exclusively.

You can see that the same big data that C-level execs are looking at can benefit any organization - even those that aren't so big. The CNN post referenced above said that big data "seems to mean everything and nothing at the same time." That may be true but there is no denying that, as I said in a previous post, the discipline of data is the foundation for marketing innovation. No matter how large your organization don't dismiss the big ideas behind big data.

What do you think? 
How are using the premise of big data to further the success of your organization? What did I miss? What advice do you have?