11 ways to surprise and delight parents
“Surprise” and “school” isn’t a word pairing that would generally be regarded as positive. There is little that parents dread more than the unexpected call from their child’s school. Based on that, surprising parents may not sound like the basis for an effective...
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Why your school needs to be like Alexa
The advent of digital assistants is having huge impact on our culture but Google and Alexa also account for larger shifts in how we engage with brands and technology. Those shifts are influencing the way parents engage with independent schools and are shaping their...
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Meaty Messaging – The Messaging Inventory
Thirty-four years ago, Wendys launched what was probably its most successful ad campaign ever. It featured three elderly women examining a hamburger from an unnamed restaurant and discovering it had a huge bun but a very tiny patty. One of the women repeatedly...
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Maximizing e-newsletter impact
School e-newsletters are a huge pain. No one, other than those who have to prepare them, would believe the amount of time they take. On top of that, they are a magnet for all kinds of heated and time-consuming discussions about who should control content, why parents...
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10 Other Reasons Parents Are Choosing Your School
Independent school marketing is in many ways a cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy. We promote schools based on certain attributes and then we research why parents have chosen our schools and remain satisfied with them based on those same attributes. That, in turn,...
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7 paths to being a parent-centred school
To distinguish themselves in a competitive marketplace, schools must become parent-centred. These days, being a child-centred school doesn’t provide much competitive advantage. Child-centred approaches are clearly linked to educational success and have been woven into...
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The Parent Experience Prescription
The Parent Experience (PX) at your school has the potential to be the greatest contributor to retention, ambassadorship and enrolment success. That’s why schools should be giving some serious thought what their PX prescription will be. An e-book that I...
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The Hierarchy of Parent Communication Needs
The impact of word of mouth on independent school admissions is pretty much undeniable. There is a litany of data demonstrating that the most frequent and the most effective way that prospective parents hear about a school is from family, friends and peers. Great. We...
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My one-question branding hack
–> The terms “brand” and “DNA” appear together in business literature as often as “critical” and “thinking” do in the educational world. The assumption is that just as DNA is a way of defining a person’s uniqueness, so too brand is the way of articulating...
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For better marketing results – Get Experiential!
–> Consumer brand marketers are finding innovative ways to cut through the clutter and independent schools would be wise to pay attention. The goal of marketing is to make someone feel something. That’s becoming increasingly difficult in large part because we...
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