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.

How to personalize the parent experience

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A recent Huffington Post article asks the question, “Is 2014 the year of personalization?” Examples of personalization in marketing abound from the sublime of Virgin America's Chatter initiative that will use video screens to deliver a personalized travel experience to the ridiculous of Nordstrom's personalized panties.

For any business or organization, personalization is an important, and maybe even essential way to differentiate and build strong customer relationships. So, how do independent schools jump on the bandwagon and begin to offer their customers a personalized experience?

Let's start with the obvious. Parents expect that their children are going to receive individualized attention and that any interaction related to their child's progress will be uniquely focused. But let's face it - meeting the individual needs of diverse learners isn't exactly groundbreaking in 2014. You are more likely be notable by the absence of differentiation, than by its presence.

Also, let's be clear about who the customer is. Parents pay for the education their children receive. From a customer relations perspective, students are essentially a proxy. If you want to impress the customer, it's the parent that must be the focus.

First, let’s deal with the prerequisites to personalization.

Data is the foundation of personalization. It starts with basics – contact info, names of other family members like siblings or grandparents. Beyond that good data could include birthdays and other milestone dates. However, the real crux of useful data is that the details of every meaningful interaction a parent has with the school must be recorded whether its a meeting with a principal or a negotiation with the tuition office. That leads to the next point.

Data discipline and consistency are vital to personalization. Every staff member must understand the importance of recording the details of interactions and effective data conventions must be in place. Something as simple as recording a date as 3/5/14 as opposed to 5/3/14 can yield disastrous results. This also means using the right tools. Schools need a database that provides necessary structured data fields as well as the ability to create specialized areas in which to record information that is particular to the school.

What can you do with all this data? Here are a few basic ideas that share one common theme. Parents want to know that you know who they are.

Personalize the personal meeting. Any time a head of school, a principal, an educational consultant or someone from the business office meets with a parent, it’s essential that they access to detailed information and ideally have familiarized themselves with it. It’s both impressive and comforting to a parent when the person with whom they are meeting can ask about other family members, knows about unique circumstances and the details of previous meetings or calls.

Acknowledge important events. This should include personal letters recognizing a birth or a death in a parent's family. Personal birthday wishes for students are commonplace. Take that to the next level and send each parent a birthday greeting. What if you sent birthday cards to siblings not yet at the school? You can also recognize significant achievements in parents’ lives, whether those are in business or in communal efforts.

Personalize the business experience. Think about your last call to a local utility or financial services company. It makes a huge difference when the person with whom you are speaking can access notes about your individual circumstances and previous interactions. A parent’s communication with the school’s business is no different. When a parent calls, the person on the line should be able to call up a database record and speak knowledgably about that parent’s circumstances. In addition, every form that a parent is required to fill out, whether online or on paper, could have the name, address and contact info fields already completed.

Tailor the web. A school that I work with recently introduced a personalized parent dashboard that upon login, presents essential links for each child including teacher names and contact info, class lists and parent resources. Using cookies would make it possible for a parent visiting the website to be presented with the items he or she viewed most often.

While these may all sound like common sense, in a busy school environment, it takes forethought and discipline to make any of these happen on a routine basis. Think about all the ways a parent interacts with the school and be vigilant about finding ways to personalize the parent experience.

What do you think?
Is personalization a key to independent school success? How are you personalizing the parent experience in your school? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Branding to the converted

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Preaching to the converted is usually taken as a waste of time. The same could be said of branding. Why bother branding to those that have already bought?

But I had an experience last month that ought to send a shiver down the spine of any independent school advancement professional – or for the keeper of the brand in any organization.

I was speaking with a woman whose oldest child is a grade one student at an independent school to which I consult on marketing and admissions issues. She told me that as a parent she didn’t really know how to articulate what distinguishes this school from others. And in a moment of panic, I thought, “Houston, we have a problem.”

You see, this is a school that mounts aggressive recruitment campaigns with very healthy budgets. And the marketing is effective. It generates hundreds of inquiries and provides a school of over 1500 students with enough new students to offset attrition and maintain stable enrolment.

The problem seems to be that four years after they signed on, parents clearly can’t remember why they chose the school and what makes it different. The reality is that current parents don’t see all the fancy advertising. The expensive viewbook they were once given is gathering dust somewhere – assuming it was spared from the recycling bin. They don’t look at the admissions section of the website.

And yet current parents are any school’s greatest salespeople. If they can’t articulate the brand, the return on marketing investment isn’t going to be very exciting. So, what to do?
Here are some suggestions for what is not an uncommon challenge.

1. Live the brand. A brand is way more than a logo and a tagline. If the brand is that which truly distinguishes a school, then it is defined by the sum of all experience with the school. Every interaction has an impact on that brand. Based on that, the goal is to have everything that happens at the school – educationally, programmatically, even administratively, reflect the brand. It’s possible that although the parent in my story felt that she couldn’t distinguish what was different about the school, her description of her family’s experience at the school may in fact reveal unique qualities. If she’s living the brand, she becomes an effective ambassador.

2. Communicate the brand. Current parents should be just as much a target of communication efforts as are prospective parents. Knowing what’s going on in their kid’s grade one class isn’t enough. They have to know about the notable events and successes throughout the school. More importantly that communication should also reflect the brand. Whether you’re using e-newsletters, social media, websites or old-fashioned print, what you say and how you say it has to convey the values, priorities and essential characteristics of the school.

3. Measure the brand. Let’s start this one with the basics. You absolutely need to be surveying your parents regularly. Are they satisfied? What areas need improvement? How do they assess the quality of core curriculum components and key aspects of student life? Assuming that those elements are reflective of the brand, those questions are already measuring your success at conveying the intended brand. You can go further. Ask parents about the extent to which they identify with the principles that are at the core of your brand.

An interesting question then arises. What happens if parents don’t identify with those principles? Well, you have two choices. One is to redouble your efforts to live and communicate the brand. The second choice is more intriguing. Even though the brand being articulated by your parents is different than what you intended, it’s possible that brand is more authentic and equally attractive. Maybe you need to rethink the brand.

Any way you slice it, branding and marketing efforts must be inbound as much as they are outbound. That way, current parents become powerful brand advocates for their school – and you reserve your spine chilling moments for horror movies.

The Marketing Gap of 21st Century Education

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There is a major gap in the way independent schools are marketing themselves. Here it is. The promise of a 21st century (21C) education is more meaningful to educators than it is to parents.

At the core of this issue are differing views on what it will take for today’s children to be prepared for their future as adults and what that future will look like. Educators and educational literature clearly point to an era in which skills will trump knowledge and in which there will be a set of professional/vocational roles never seen before.

But I believe that parents still want their kids to know the three R’s and view educational success in terms of their children becoming doctors, lawyers, accountants and engineers. In their eyes, the best schools have the best results in standardized testing and send more of their students to the best colleges.

While independent schools proudly promote their adherence to 21C principles, parents are looking for other markers of success. This discordance may or may not be keeping parents from enrolling children, but it will certainly lead to disappointed customers in the future.

I’ve been reading (and would encourage everyone involved in education to read) Seth Godin’s treatise on education called Stop Stealing Dreams. He provides some relevant views and analysis. For example, he says:

“Parents don’t ask their kids, “what did you figure out today?” They don’t wonder about which frustrating problem is no longer frustrating. No, parents have been sold on the notion that a two-digit number on a progress report is the goal—if it begins with a “9.”

A little cynical perhaps but successful marketing requires you understand the motivation of buyers even if you don’t agree with them. To deny the ways in which parents measure success, will lead to unmet expectations.

Godin tells a powerful story about the way sales of LEGO were saved. It seems that in response to sagging sales, LEGO moved from selling packages of assorted blocks to pre-defined kits – ones that provided the necessary blocks and instructions to build a particular thing - a robot or a spaceship or a tractor. It worked. Sales increased because “they match[ed] what parents expect[ed] and what kids have been trained to do. There’s a right answer! The mom and the kid can both take pride in the kit, assembled. It’s done. Instructions were followed and results were attained.”

The 21C educational maxims of creativity, collaboration and communication are too often falling on deaf ears. In addition, parents aren’t convinced of the need for 21C super-skills like bravery, responsibility, judgment and willpower. The purchaser is buying something other than what the vendor is selling. That can only lead to problems.

Here’s what I think independent schools should be doing about this:

Acknowledge reality. Parents are likely not interested in the tenets of 21C education. Children are still being taught to think in a very 20th century manner by both parents and society. Godin sums it up by saying, “We’re entering a revolution of ideas while producing a generation that wants instructions instead.” It’s important that schools and their marketers are honest about the views of target segments. We can’t be deluded by our own marketing material.

Conduct Research. Find out what your parents consider to be the markers of educational success. Determine the attitudes of your parents toward the principles of 21C education. Perhaps ask parents about their vision of success for their children as expressed in more emotional terms – happiness, preparedness, having more opportunity than parents did. All of that will be invaluable marketing from recruitment and retention points of view.

Find common ground. Parents ultimately want heir kids to have the tools for success. Or as Godin poignantly says, “Parents were raised to have a dream for their kids—we want our kids to be happy, adjusted, successful. We want them to live meaningful lives, to contribute and to find stability as they avoid pain.”

Perhaps schools need to a better job of acknowledging that primal parental motivation and with that as a basis, explain that the definitions of “adjustment,” “success” and “meaningfulness” have shifted.

Avoid jargon. Explain better. Schools have an obligation to train parents while educating their children. The term “21st Century Education” is one dimensional and not well understood. Schools should provide literature, workshops and lectures for parents explaining the concepts and the need for the techniques. Provide parents with practical examples of how all of this is being implemented and the ways in which their children are benefiting.

Empathy is a critical ingredient to successful marketing. It’s important that we put ourselves in the shoes of parents and view the world that way. Godin says, “What matters is that finding a path that might be better is just too risky for someone who has only one chance to raise his kids properly.” Smart independent school marketers will listen carefully and guide themselves accordingly.

And what do you think? Are independent schools doing a good job of marketing the promise of a 21C education? What can or should be done? Please comment with your ideas so we can create an important conversation.