The NEWS About Your School

     This Marketing Matter begins this particular way because of the letters stand for the four directions, North, South, East and West.  I still remember parents and teachers telling us, "There's NEWS in the weather."  Indeed, newscasts incorporated weather forecasts, and of course, spawned a cable television channel dedicated to weather.

     With that in mind, you might remember a Marketing Matter that talked about the FACE of Catholic Education.  FACE was an acronym for Faith, Academics, Community and Experience - four qualities, or tenets, about Catholic schools in general.

     In the Advancementality blog, we've talked about the "Remarkability" of your school, and finding 3 to 5 things that make your school "Remarkable," and therefore, marketable.

     The middle ground is finding four qualities - and that's a good number to shoot for.  If you can make an acronym out of them, or use alliteration, those tenets become memorable, and therefore can be talked about.  If they're talked about, that's good Word of Mouth advertising!

     Our Church does it - the Catholic Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.  While the four letters don't make a word, we remember those words since we use them every week at Mass in the Creed.

     You might tie these in to the name of the school too.  For example, if your school's letters where BMHS (such as Bishop Martin High School), you could say that you educate the whole child - Body, Mind, Heart and Spirit.  Or pick one letter and build the four qualities around that letter to make it the four qualities memorable ones.  Such an exercise will help you crystallize your thinking relative to what you need to market your school to the area it influences.

© Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2008 (Original Publication Date: 20081006)

Back to Marketing Matters Index