The Five Rules of Marketing

This week's Marketing Matter is a preview to my follow-up book to "Retention: A Systems Approach to Growing Enrollment."  Right now, the working title is "Marketing: A Systemic Approach to Increase Inquiries."  If you've been a visitor to the SchoolAdvancement.com site, you already know something that a lot of schools don't realize.  You know that successful marketing does not increase enrollment; successful marketing increases inquiries to the school.  A great enrollment program turns those inquiries into enrollments.

There are still schools that think that a great Web site and some great marketing collateral will help their enrollment to grow, but fail to understand that their greatest potential audience is a very limited one; namely, parents of students that will be enrolling in Kindergarten in the fall.  Many enrollment committees believe (and school administrators hope) that each grade level could and should experience enrollment growth.  While that's a lofty goal, the reality is that it probably won't be achieved.  It's more difficult for a parent to leave the local public school to enroll their 5th or 6th grader in your Catholic or Christian school unless there is a significant change that happens or needs to happen.  For instance, the child might be exhibiting behavioral problems or might have unpleasant experiences at their current school, or parents may not be satisfied with the academic progress their child is making.  The fact remains that the longer a child remains in a particular educational environment, the more difficult it is to extract them if there is no compelling cause to do so.

That's not to say, however, that it does not happen.  For instance, I've seen a situation where a dozen students that were enrolled in one Catholic school all went to another Catholic school 10 miles away.  Why?  All the parents knew one another, and all the children were friends.  Parents started talking about the possibility, and it became reality.

How different is that from one's current mindset!  Are you thrilled when one or two new students come to your upper grades?  The influx of 12 new students necessitated the hiring of a new teacher because they brought siblings with them to help fill the empty desks in other grades.  The unintended consequence was that the perceived windfall caused a significant expenditure to be made on a new teacher, and the school was in no better a financial position that they were prior to accepting this new flock of new students.

As for The Five Rules of Marketing for your school are:

1) Know Yourself

2) Know Your Market

3) Know Your Target Audience

4) Communicate Remarkable Qualities Through Channels Your Target Market Utilizes

5) Check and Adjust

These will be covered in greater detail in the book, and provide a 12-Step Process to creating a marketing plan for your school.  Why a 12-Step plan?  Because 12-Step plans are used when people are trying to change their behavior to make an improvement in the results they're seeking.  As for now, here are some quick insights into the Five Rules:

1) Know Yourself means you know your strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities, and how they affect the remarkable attributes of your school.  Your school's brand must associate itself with these unique qualities. If you don't develop your brand, you become like every other educational entity in the marketplace.  If parents see no difference in your school from other schools in the market, you become a commodity, and, when dealing with commodities, the lowest price wins.

2) Know Your Market means to know what other educational entities and options are available to parents in your local area, and knowing what "position" you hold in that marketplace.  That position should also be congruent with the position your brand holds in the mind of your target audience (see how all these start to fit together?).  For example, if you see yourself as the only faith-based school in your market, but parents see you as the most expensive school in the market, the discrepancy can lead to some unpleasant consequences.

3) Know Your Target Audience means that you must know who your marketing materials must be geared to.  In the case of elementary schools, it's women between the ages 25 to 39 that have young children.  Mom makes the decision where the child is going to school (but interestingly, one of the largest influences on enrolling a child in a Catholic school is if the father attended a Catholic high school), so your marketing materials must appeal to mom.  It also helps to know some specific qualities pertaining to these individuals, such as what generation are they from, and what common characteristics they possess.

4) Communicate Remarkable Qualities Through Channels Your Target Market Utilizes means that your materials must be available where members of your target market "wait," as well as in the different technological channels they utilize.  For instance, today's mom in your target audience is probably not the stay-at-home housewife who does the laundry on Monday and the ironing on Tuesday while watching soap operas on television.  Your school's remarkable qualities need to be communicated and emphasized, and must touch them emotionally.  It is the only through an emotional experience that those who are not apt to change will experience an event that may cause them to change their way of thinking.

5) Check and adjust means you need to monitor your performance and adjust accordingly.  Before you can do that, however, you must be aware of what the goal is.  If you come up with a marketing plan for your school which will be evaluated as successful if you enroll 10 additional Kindergarten students than last year, then you're setting your school up for disappointment at best, and failure at worst.

Next week, a little more about #4.

© Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2011 (Original Publication Date: 20110404)

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