11 Signs Your School Marketing Needs More Strategy
In Gertrude the Governess, Canadian humourist Stephen Leacock recounts how Lord Ronald, one of the story’s characters, “flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.” It’s the perfect metaphor for tactics without strategy. Strategy is, or ought to...
read moreDifferentiate or Die: 9 Ways to Set Your School Apart
At the turn of this century, Jack Trout wrote a book titled Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition. A generation later, I can’t think of a better description for the situation independent schools find themselves in. With increased competition,...
read more12 Messaging Traits that Drive School Success
If you’re not sure what messaging is, you’re not alone. Messaging is often poorly defined and couched in other terms like brand personality, identity and values. You may not always notice messaging, but parents do. Whether it’s compelling or confusing, messaging...
read moreROI of School Marketing: What You Need to Know
When John Wannamaker and then Henry Ford said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half,” people at the time chuckled approvingly. But I bet your Head of School or Board Chair wouldn’t find that very amusing. In...
read more10 School Messaging AI Prompts That Really Work
There’s no shortage of speculation about AI in school marketing—but how many people are actually using it to generate meaningful results? Like many others, I had my share of adoption jitters. But having pushed past them, I now see the real value AI brings to school...
read moreDo a number on your messaging
If you want to make your messaging more impactful, use numbers. Numerous studies confirm that using numbers makes messaging more believable, compelling and memorable. An article from the Wharton School refers to this phenomenon as “Quantification Fixation.” The author...
read moreBridging the Reputation Gap
Here’s a bitter pill for school marketers to swallow. What you see as the high academic quality of your school’s educational program is meaningless unless parents agree with your assessment. Likewise, your belief in the outstanding calibre of your faculty doesn’t...
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Great messaging needs great data (not Mad Men)
The “Mad Men” notion of people coming up with marketing and messaging ideas while drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes is great TV fare but definitely not reality. No school marketing and communication professionals I know have ever developed a campaign that way –...
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These 11 century-old maxims will make your messaging shine today
Is it possible that messaging maxims from over a century ago can still be relevant today? The answer is a resounding yes. In 1923, Claude Hopkins, an immensely successful advertising writer and strategist, wrote Scientific Advertising. As you can tell from the title,...
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The Funnel meets the Flywheel
We’re all very familiar with the admissions funnel. It’s a variation of the sales funnel developed by agency executive Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898. The problem is that, at 126 years old, the funnel is feeling its age and is becoming less helpful to schools. The good...
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