Independent Schools Marketing Consulting
The landscape for private schools has changed so much over the last decade that many independent schools are struggling to keep up. But it’s now imperative for schools to be both business-minded and tech-savvy to survive. Marketing your school is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’: it’s essential to keep it thriving.
A reduction in parents’ purchasing power means schools are having to work much harder to attract and retain their parent base. The mastery of digital and inbound marketing has become essential to this. But many schools lack the skills, time or knowledge to deliver it.
The decision on where a parent is going to send their child to school is on a level with choosing a house. So it’s vital to position your school’s marketing so that the right-fit parents are drawn to your school – first with their hearts and then with their rational brains. You can't persuade parents to act. You have to move them to act. Because parents, quite rightly, love their children more than anything else. I know I do!
Put an end to your marketing guesswork
The good news is that online engagement is the perfect medium to do this. Investing time up front on a structured marketing plan will, in the long-term, save your school time and effort – two resources no multi-tasking school staff can afford to waste!
Whether you’re an independent school head, proprietor or governor muddling through because you’re struggling with too many commitments to know what marketing actions to prioritise or a school marketing manager who needs objective support, I can help.
Paper marketing and brochures don’t fill seats in schools anymore…
I’m mum to twin girls who attend an independent school so I offer the marketing objectivity of both a professional 'outsider' and parental 'insider'.
I'm a professional journalist who has worked for the BBC, conversion copywriter and magazine editor with 15+ years’ experience working across sectors including education, health, pharma, property law, accounting, finance and management consultancy in the UK and EMEA.
Read the case study below to learn more about my experience and to discover the social media, parent communications and content marketing tactics I used to enable one school to:
· boost website traffic by +169%
· increase enquiries by +97%
· drive up enrolment by +39.7%
· win the UK Content Awards 2019.
The parents that independent schools want and need are now the millennial generation (that is anyone born between 1981 and 1996: ages 24 to 39 in 2020). Marketing to millennial parents isn’t easy. They lead hyper-connected lives. They google everything and depend on their phones to do their research.
They're able to recognise hype, insincerity and misinformation. They distrust traditional advertising, rely heavily on social proof and want to buy from a brand or organisation with which they have high emotional engagement. In other words, they have to believe in you.
Getting your schools’ online marketing right is vital. Everyone in the school needs to be aligned with this effort, starting with the SLT, admissions team and right through to staff, parents and pupils.
Get clarity on the action steps to take
Your inbound marketing funnel via its digital presence on the right mix of platforms for your school audience should:
Help prospective parents hear your story in an authentic way
Continually reassure existing parents of the value you offer
Influence prospective parents’ decisions
Answer prospective parents’ questions
Convince prospective parents to inquire and visit
Guide them to commit through an easy admissions process
Essentially, it’s the series of steps that leads parents through the process of becoming familiar with your school.
Done right, it ends with the right parents enrolling (and retaining) their children in your school because they’re convinced with their hearts and minds that it’s exactly the right school for their family’s values and aspirations.
Stop googling and feeling stuck
So where do you start? I help you do the foundational and competitor research needed to create an actionable customised marketing plan for your school.
I’ll meet with to discuss and then audit the following main areas:
Your school’s challenges and goals now
Your school’s target audience and demographics
Your school’s reputation and brand
Your school’s key marketing messages
Armed with this knowledge, I help your independent school solve challenges like these below:
✎
“We need direction. We just don't have the expertise to do the necessary research to create a strategic marketing plan we can follow, let alone the time.”✎
“We're winging it. We're getting by with a scattergun approach to our school's marketing but don't have a defined brand and we know it's not really working to differentiate us.”✎
“We know we should be harnessing automation, digital and social media better but we don't know what to prioritise or what platforms to use.”✎
“We don't understand our target audience intimately enough. We need clear step-by-step bespoke guidance for the most effective marketing to boost enrolment and retain parents.”
STUART DOUCH, HEADMASTER, SOMPTING ABBOTTS PREPARATORY SCHOOL
“For us, Sarah has been a marketing sorceress. She carried out surveys, studied our market in depth, then rebranded us. She re-designed an ineffective website into one that’s a lead-generation ‘machine’, and sells our USPs as an independent school. Thanks to this, and her content and video marketing strategy plan, we’ve witnessed 97% growth in enquiries, 39.7% increase in enrolment and 167% rise in visitors to the website to date. Before the new website, we failed to rank for the keywords prospective parents might be searching for. Now for all 10 of our target terms, we’re on Google’s first page – for most, in the top five results.”
If you would like objective help with how to tackle your marketing approach for your independent school, whether you need insight-led guidance or help with execution, please click below to arrange an exploratory 30-minute call or to fill in my intake form.