There’s more to a successful schools marketing strategy than branding and a display stand.
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\nSo what do you get when you entrust a precious cat to a cattery for a couple of weeks holiday? Well, of course, you would expect to have relative peace of mind \u2013 no one, but no one, is going to understand and appreciate your cat the way you do, so you hope that at least the cat will enjoy the basics and be safe and well when you return. And after your pet-free travels, you would expect to get back an apparently healthy and even appreciative cat \u2013 oh, the freedom of not having to catch mice all day!
\nHappily, after a recent holiday I think we got all of the above, in addition of course to what I thought a hefty bill, but which was actually only two thirds of what it would have been if we\u2019d used another local cattery. And who knows how the second establishment could have done the job any better?
\nBecause more interesting than all of the above is what else we got, over and above the service from a third cattery some 10 years ago. We were no sooner away than we had an email from the cat \u2013 \u201cHello Mummy, I am having a lovely holiday and I hope you are too …\u201d And attached were three photographs of, yes, a happy-looking cat \u2013 and I know that sounds silly, but we all know how a cat can look decidedly grumpy, so the shots were rather more reassuring than the narrative. When we collected the cat, we were given prints of the photographs, and one of the photos had been used to make us a key ring \u2013 I have to admit, our happy cat looks faintly threatening with her face filling such a small frame \u2013 and a handwritten card (no, not from the cat, don\u2019t be silly) from the owner of the cattery thanking us for allowing her to look after Tom (a female cat, long story), saying what a pleasure it had been and hoping we would all come again.
\nAll of which caused me to reflect upon the very concept of marketing: how, like Topsy, it seems to have grown in a way we could not have foreseen even 20 years ago and how it has changed the world. Certainly it has been part and parcel \u2013 and the trumpeter \u2013 of a changed world in schools, particularly, of course, independent schools, since \u2013 mostly \u2013 they have more competition to worry about and maintaining market-share is vital to their very existence.<\/p>\n
“We have gone through years when heads mooted the possibility of appointing a marketing professional”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
As national director of the Boarding Schools\u2019 Association for eight years, I spent much time and energy trying to reassure parents in particular that boarding schools were no longer the cold, distant, remote and closed worlds they may well have been for previous generations. Not marketing \u2013 I mean actively refusing to do it \u2013 was part of the climate of those times. In many schools there was almost a sense of entitlement to pupils: \u201cEverybody knows we are an excellent school \u2013 of course they will want to come or to send their children if they came years ago \u2013 we\u2019re fine, and advertising is very expensive, and I can\u2019t see the value of it …\u201d
\nAs the British boarding market began to shrink, for social and economic reasons well-rehearsed, heads and governors of boarding schools began to realise the potential of, in the first place, the Hong Kong market for bright and willing pupils. And to be known there, it was obvious a presence would be useful. So exhibitions and fairs, first in Hong Kong and then in China, gave schools a platform for frontline marketing, face to face with prospective pupils and their parents. And cheek by jowl with their own rivals, other boarding schools, who seemed to have bigger stands and brighter pictures, more glorious flowers, more people to man the stand, better suits \u2013 oh, the competition to recruit the brightest and the best.
\nAnd in those early days of toe-in-the-water marketing, learning from each other and getting better every time you or your staff ventured out, I heard of one headteacher, in a school with a number of Hong Kong pupils attracted by word of mouth and family connections, who declared that she would no more tout her school with a display in Hong Kong than she would raise her skirts on the corner of the street. She viewed marketing as a sordid business in which excellent schools had no need to dabble.
\nBut how the world has changed. We have gone through years when heads mooted the possibility of appointing a marketing professional, often to be greeted with cries of \u201cHow much?!\u201d or grumbles of \u201cI thought we appointed you to sell the school \u2013 what\u2019s the problem?\u201d And in the early days, if you could find a marketing professional, they probably had no background in schools or even education, but came from the hard-nosed world of \u2018Mad Men\u2019 and promised you they could easily pick up the niceties of their new territory \u2013 no problem.
\nThen of course they needed a budget \u2013 more cries of \u201cHow much?!\u201d And that could grow exponentially also \u2013 part for advertising, part for overseas exhibitions \u2013 and how their number has increased in recent years \u2013 part for new branding, including a new prospectus. Oh, and the website. And whose job is that anyway? How often does one look at a random school website to find that the last posting is three months old, and it\u2019s June, but the top story is a rugby win in February? And now, social media. And tomorrow …?
\nMarketing is likely to take a hefty shift every time a new head is appointed, with a new vision for the school and a new impetus for how it will look or behave or appeal. And it must be costing a fortune. Indeed, it would be interesting to survey schools \u2013 if they had the records \u2013 to find out what they were spending on marketing 10 years ago and how much the operation entails now.
\nHowever professional the business of marketing schools is now, there is no doubt that it has all become much more personal. I was impressed by a school which sent away visiting prospective parents with a goody bag \u2013 not revolutionary in itself, but in addition to the usual pen or pencil, post-it pack with school logo, most recent newsletter for events passed and grades attained and calendar of events to come, this school enclosed a handwritten school card from the young guide who had accompanied them on their tour. He had enjoyed meeting them. He was particularly interested in … (here it really was personal, even if most of the note was standard issue, dutifully copied out). And he really hoped that their son would be joining the school and that he would be a friend next year.
\nThe cattery reminded me: the best marketing is personal. I might have said on their behalf that schools are warm and welcoming places where excellence is possible because of the partnership between parents and school. Schools now say it for themselves \u2013 loud and clear.
\nGo marketing!
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