How Many Messages Does It Take...

     Remember that commercial - "How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?"  The owl counts three, then bites his way to the center.  Even though it's meant to poke fun at the wise owl, it contains a couple of powerful marketing messages:  first, we've seen it so many times that we remember it, and remember it because it is memorable; second, because that message is ingrained in our minds, we transfer that knowledge to other matters.

     Let's take marketing your school to prospective parents. By the way, this is September, so you should be starting to market your school to next year's kindergarten parents.  Get those brochures to places where mothers of young children wait - doctor's offices, supermarkets, gyms, and hair/nail salons.  The narthex of the local Catholic Church is a good place too, but I don't know lots of mothers of young children that hang out there after Mass is done.

     We're also conditioned by some of the messages we hear in the Gospel.  Since today the Catholic Church celebrates the birthday of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, recall that she was only asked one time to me the mother of our Savior - and she said "yes."  Similarly, Jesus told the beggar to get up and walk only one time - and so he did; Jesus told Lazarus to come out from his tomb only once, and he did.

     We transfer that knowledge to believe that all we have to do is tell prospective parents once about our school, and then expect them to enroll their children.  Or maybe we tell them three times.

     Think about Palestine 2000 years ago - no radio, no cable, no satellite, no computer, no Internet, no ipod, no cell phone.  There weren't a lot of conflicting messages out there or other points of view that were bombarding the population simultaneously.  Today, we know it's different.

     So then why do we think our message will be absorbed by parents with only one to three exposures to our message?  The current research today says it takes about NINE exposures to a message to begin to make the target audience aware of it, and then additional exposures reinforce the message to move the target audience to take action relative to it.

     Think about the classroom.  Do you tell students about a new concept just once, and expect them to embrace it wholeheartedly?  Or is there a lesson plan developed, an introduction, the pedagogy involved with the presentation, the practice necessary to master the concept, then an assessment made to see if the knowledge has been satisfactorily grasped?

     If you say the latter, then why do you send prospective parents a brochure and wait for them to call you?

     Some schools have stated an approach like this might cost $20 per parent, and that's a lot of money.  That's true - but if your tuition is $3000 per student, it's only losing proposition if you approach 150 prospective students this way, and all of them say "no" to your school.  Something tells me if you approach 150 potential students in this manner, you're going to get more than one.  Something also tells me that if you approach 150 prospective students, and none of them want to enroll in your school, something's fundamentally wrong with the school.

     The real objection is that it's a lot of work - anything worthwhile is.

© Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2008 (Original Publication Date: 20080908)

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