Creating a Marketing Plan - Summary
Here's the summary of a 12-step program to create a marketing plan specifically for your school. If you've been waiting for when you can download all 12 parts at once, this would be a great time to do so.
And yes, it will eventually become a book...next year. The format of "Marketing Matters" will also change in the coming months, so these 12 steps will not be as readily available as they are now. And, as in all things, they will change...which is part of the reason for this summary.
The current 12 Steps to a Customized Marketing Plan for your school are:
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Your school is a community; not a family
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Know yourself
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Know your competition
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Determine your "remarkability"
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Determine your "position"
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Determine your "brand"
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Marketing is education
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"How" do we make a plan to market the school
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Assign responsibilities
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Your school's Web site
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Execute your plan
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Evaluate
There are two which will change as we move forward. Steps 1 and 2 will be different, the current steps 7 and 8 will combine, and the current Step 10 will be presented a little earlier, and in two parts: as a segment of the new Step 1, and after remarkability, position and brand have been determined. This would be the new line up:
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Pray about your direction, realizing that God and His will must be a part of your plan
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Know yourself
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Know your competition
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Determine your "remarkability"
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Determine your "position"
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Determine your "brand"
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Create your school's Web site
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Realize marketing "is" education: "How" do we make a plan to market the school
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Assign responsibilities
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Implement your plan
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Evaluate
This is how I put Step 12 (if you'll remember, we also back-tracked a bit in one of the steps, keeping in mind the importance of being flexible enough to adjust) into action. You'll notice that each step now starts with an action, rather than just a statment. Marketing is all about "doing;" not just creating, but crafting. I can make a birdhouse, but my daughter can turn it into a work of art that's not only functional but beautiful.
At the suggestion of a colleague, I also changed "Execute your plan" to "Implement your plan." "Execute" has a connotation of finality, whereas "Implement" requires that a process continues.
Note that the new Step 2 ensures your actions are aligned with God's will for your school. The two sub-Steps appear as questions since you must answer them before proceeding, and they possess an "optional" implementation at this point in making your plan. For some folks, it's important to have a team to brainstorm the next 5 steps of the plan. For others, you may have some great insights about the school because of your attachment to it. If you're just taking on an administrative position at a school, you would probably benefit from the insights of others that have some history with the school...but be careful. You may have willing volunteers, but become bogged down by "We've never done it that way before" comments. Folks with this kind of mindset may not be much help in implementing the plan when they find out they'll have to do things they may not agree with.
As for the "Vision" for the school, is your fact-finding in steps 3 through 7 going to play a part in creating that vision, or has the administrator determined the vision, and your job is to market the school to support that vision? You may find that the vision that has been created is not a strength of the school. At that point, you must be flexible to realize a discussion needs to be held to determine which direction to take - the beaten path or the road less travelled.
© Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2009 (Original Publication Date: 200908024)
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